Internet as a Human Right

Rangamini Werawatta

“Disconnecting people from the Internet is a human rights violation and against the international law” - United Nations

This statement was issued by the United Nations (UN) in a report in June 2011 declaring that disconnecting people from internet is a human rights violation and is against international law. “There should be as little restriction as possible to the flow of information via the Internet, except in few, exceptional and limited circumstances prescribed by international human rights law,” the report says.

As humans we all like to be connected. We like to interact with others, get to know what is happening around us and be informed about the latest news. Humans are a race who were not meant to live alone. This has become the unique selling point for many successful businesses and technologies throughout the history.

If we take the revolution in the transportation system from carts to cars, boats to ships, airplanes to space ships, the drive behind it was to stay connected. If we take the television, newspaper, radio, internet, mobile phones, telephones, it has become a part of our lives as connecting with people, getting latest news and information is a vital aspect of our lives.

Due to this reason, ‘Social Networking’ and ‘Social Media’ has become a highly profitable industry and with tools such as Facebook, Twitter and e-mail, some have become billionaires while many have become addicts to online social networking. Today almost all of us have a mobile phone which has access to Facebook or Twitter. Although we now talk very less of the topic ‘internet’, all of these social networking sites, social engineering tools and new media tools are products of the internet.

With the introduction of the internet, people managed to escape from the ‘Earth’ and migrate in to a ‘Global Village’. Today Facebook has around 750 million users, Twitter has around 200 million users, LinkedIn has around 47 million and Google+ which was introduced 01 month back has already accrued 25 million users.

Though the internet has become a basic necessity for people today and it has been declared a basic human right by the United Nations, we should understand the power of these tools which can be manipulated and misused by some for personal gains and creating uneasiness in the society by disrupting the law and order of a country as in the world as a whole. If we take a look at the recent riots that took place in England, the police have discovered that the Blackberry Messaging Service (BBM) which is encrypted and secure was used by some participants to organize riots. Further Facebook and Twitter services were also suspected to be used by these participants for organizing riots. This led the UK Police to suspend social media services during this period.

This example itself elaborates the gravity of the use of social media and new media and social networking. But it does not mean that social and new media is a force to be feared.

New and Social media has changed our day to day life. We get news alerts, various updates (stock, finance, etc) to our mobile phone, email as it happens and when it happens enabling us to stay connected with our friends, business, community with just a click of a button.

If we consider the uprisings in the Middle East region known as the ‘Arab Spring’ which occurred recently, it was highly helped and boosted by the new and social media. (In simple, New media refers to the media which has digitized its content into bits and social media refers to media use is used to network and socialised.) The video taken by an Egyptian protestor in the streets which was uploaded to internet created a massive dialog within the Egyptians as well as the international community. Though Egyptian government tried to stop the citizens from accessing the internet at that point, the final result was a regime change.

So these stories show the good side and the bad side of the internet and its by-products; ‘social and new media’. The question which lies ahead of us is where to draw the line with regards to this technology? How are we going to use it? And how can we as Sri Lankans handle this?