Economic, social and cultural rights - What does the internet have to do with them? | Association for Progressive Communications

By APC

Published on 22 September 2017
Page last updated on 28 April 2023

In 2016, APC produced its annual edition of the Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) on economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs) and the internet. Some of the topics are familiar to information and communications technology for development (ICT4D) activists: the right to health, education and culture; the socioeconomic empowerment of women using the internet; the inclusion of rural and indigenous communities in the information society; and the use of ICT to combat the marginalisation of local languages. Others deal with relatively new areas of exploration, such as using 3D printing technology to preserve cultural heritage, creating participatory community networks to capture an “inventory of things” that enables socioeconomic rights, crowdfunding to realise rights, or the negative impact of algorithms on calculating social benefits.

This video draws on some of the many cases featured in the 2016 GISWatch edition on economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs) and the internet, and adds an imaginary twist that enables easier understanding of the topic. How can we explain the impact of the internet with a simple metaphor? What if we imagined for a few minutes that the internet was a live animal, that moves and adapts, even camouflages itself, like a zebra? What if a six-year-old girl had the chance to connect the dots between ESCRs and the internet in front of our very own eyes? Enjoy and reuse this video, produced by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) with support from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).