THE CONCEPTUAL CHALLENGES

Despite the powerful events in the Middle East and North Africa during the early twenty-first century, the concept of human rights online struggled to gain credence. Few mainstream human rights organisations focussed on the Internet and, as a Human Rights Commissioner in New Zealand, I focussed on the more obvious ‘offline’ human rights issues: discrimination, harassment, violence against women, the rights of gender and sexual minorities, and democratic rights. Those of us working on offline human rights did not recognise that the Internet was a political space where human rights were relevant and under threat.

Our ignorance was understandable: after all, the government tactics complained of were hardly new. Surveillance, harassment, arrest, detention and torture: these have been the tactics of despots and tyrants for millennia. There were several other causes of our ignorance in the early 2010s. Many human rights organisations were deeply immersed in their existing work (whether children's rights, poverty, racism or the emerging issue of climate change), and felt unable to engage in ‘new’ issues like the Internet, even though the Internet had been developing for many years. Few such organisations were using the Internet (other than, perhaps, for email and a rudimentary website), partly because funders would not provide additional money for computer equipment, and partly because they lacked the capacity and capability to develop and use Internet technologies. Few had social media accounts or used online platforms, which themselves were still in relatively early development.

In addition, there were simpler, conceptual challenges to overcome. Back then, I often felt bemused by discussions about human rights and the Internet – like a first year student at the wrong lecture. Then, many human rights advocates, myself included, were struggling to understand:

• – how an Internet interference could be a human rights violation; and

• – who ought to be accountable for Internet-related human rights violations.

We were in the space where understanding is only just beginning: that place between theory and practice; the messy reality of the emerging field of human rights online.