Digital Rights, AI and Human Rights
Throughout 2025, each issue of DTP’s eNews featured a contribution to our series on digital rights, artificial intelligence and human rights. The series highlighted reports, articles, podcasts and international instruments on how digital technologies and AI affect human rights, from privacy and freedom of expression to the rights of children and Indigenous Peoples.
All contributions to the series are collected below, with the most recent first.
Concluding this year’s series on human rights and digital rights, we provide a link to a new report from UNDP, The Next Great Divergence: Why AI May Widen Inequality Between Countries. The report highlights how many countries remain without the infrastructure, skills, and governance systems needed to capture the benefits of AI, especially in Asia and the Pacific, and makes recommendations on how to harness AI’s opportunities while managing its risks in support of broader human development.
Continuing this year’s series on human rights and digital rights, we provide a link to a UN document, the “Berkeley Protocol: A Practical Guide on the Effective Use of Digital Open Source Information in Investigating Violations of International Criminal, Human Rights and Humanitarian Law”. It includes easy forms covering online investigation, digital threat and risk assessment, digital landscape assessment, online data collection and considerations for validating new tools.
Continuing this year’s series on human rights and digital rights, we provide a link to the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law, the first international legally binding treaty in the field.
Continuing this year’s series on human rights and digital rights, we provide a link to the Submission to the Global Digital Compact: Key Priority Issues on Child Rights and the Digital Environment, from a variety of international NGOs. This stems from General Comment 25 on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment from the CRC Committee adopted in 2021, and recommends that the Global Digital Compact incorporates the principles of the General Comment, and outlines of policies for governments and legislation for corporate responsibility.
Continuing this year’s series on human rights and digital rights, we provide a link to “Human rights by design: future-proofing human rights protection in the era of AI” from the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights. This is a follow up to her report in 2019 “Unboxing AI: 10 steps to protect Human Rights” which provided guidance to governments on the main principles that should be followed to prevent or mitigate the negative impacts of AI systems on human rights. Among her new recommendations she calls on member states to take urgent action to implement the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
In our continuing focus on Digital Rights, Artificial Intelligence and human rights we provide a link to a podcast from thoughtworks with the participation of Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker, a First Nations Nyungar woman working on new technologies, and Tom Sulston, head of policy at Digital Rights Watch. They link digital rights to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and point to the human rights challenges arising from the privatisation of what should be a set of common goods.
In our continuing focus on Digital Rights, Artificial Intelligence and human rights we provide a link to a briefing paper from the International Commission of Jurists, “Digital Technologies and Human Rights: a Legal Framework”. The briefing is aimed at contributing to the understanding of the international human rights legal framework applicable to the design, development and use of new digital technologies. It concludes that “international human rights law provides the… framework to guide the development and application of new technologies… as well as accountability and access to effective remedies and reparations in the case of abuse and violations”.
In our continuing focus on Digital Rights, Artificial Intelligence and human rights we provide a link to a webinar, “Balancing Progress and Human Rights: Media Freedom in the age of AI” organised by New Naratif with the participation of the Manushya Foundation. In it Dr Jean Linis-Dinco, Manushya’s Digital Rights Advisor, argues that “AI systems are being deployed to police the poor, silence dissent, and extract data from workers and communities, all while enriching tech firms and state actors”.
In our continuing focus on Digital Rights, Artificial Intelligence and human rights we provide a link to “Key Human Rights Challenges of AI” a document from the European Network of National Human Rights Institutions. While not exhaustive, the document includes challenges to freedom of expression and information, and threats to transparency, accountability and effective remedy. To address the multiple challenges it recommends the use of human rights impact assessments to address these.
In our continuing focus on Digital Rights and human rights, we provide a link to a paper from the OECD, “Rights in the Digital Age: Challenges and Ways Forward”. It attempts to address issues such as does the digital change traditional expectations of how governments can uphold and protect rights, and how to balance the tensions between different rights implicated in digital technologies.
In our continuing focus on Digital Rights and human rights, we provide a link to an article by Dr Rys Farthing, Director of Children’s Policy at Reset (Australia), “Prohibiting targeting to children and children’s best interests: Can the two coexist?”. In this article Dr Farthing, a speaker at the recent DTP webinar on digital rights and children’s rights, makes a number of recommendations warning “that consent alone is not adequate for determining best interests (of the child), nor are broad declarations about not causing evidenced harm”.
DTP webinar on digital rights and children’s rights | Read more
In our continuing focus on Digital Rights and human rights we include an article Artificial Intelligence and Indigenous Peoples’ Realities by Nina Sangma, who was the Communications Program Coordinator at DTP partner NGO the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact. In her article she exposes the practices of Tech corporations that exploit Indigenous data and cultural knowledge in what amounts to a new form of colonisation.
In our continuing focus on Digital Rights we provide a link to an essay, AI Human Rights Literacy by Saah Agyemang-Badu, Felisa Tibbitts, and Sage Phillips in Current Issues in Comparative Education. The authors argue that the three rights most impacted by artificial intelligence in the field of education are the right to privacy, the right to equality and the right to education. While the technology promises enhancement to access to and efficiency in education, unless regulated it can undermine freedom of expression and democratic participation.
In our continuing focus on Digital Rights we provide a link to the Global Digital Compact adopted by the UN in 2024. Linked to the Sustainable Development Goals, “it is anchored in international law, including international human rights law. All human rights, including civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, and fundamental freedoms, must be respected, protected and promoted online and offline. Our cooperation will harness digital technologies to advance all human rights, including the rights of the child, the rights of persons with disabilities and the right to development”.
In our continuing focus on Digital Rights we provide a link to an article by Rowena Rodrigues on artificial intelligence. In “Legal and human rights issues of AI: Gaps, challenges and vulnerabilities” Rodrigues identifies the legal and human rights issues associated with AI, and analyses solutions proposed in relation to each issue and the shortcomings in the responses to each of these issues.
In our continuing focus on Digital Rights we provide a link to a collection of articles, Digital Rights are Human Rights from the Digital Rights Fund. Sixteen experts show how each of the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is linked to digital rights, and that the digital age presents new and urgent challenges to human rights.
In our continuing series on Digital Rights we provide a link to a paper prepared for the OECD “Rights in the Digital Age: Challenges and Ways Forward”. It looks at the impacts of the digital realm on internationally recognised human rights, including new ways of claiming rights as well as ways they can infringe on rights. The paper argues for the development of safety online and how to ensure access to the internet.
In the second of our series on Digital Rights we provide a link to a document, Securing our human rights in a digital world, from the Alliance For Universal Digital Rights. This outlines nine principles that will enable all to enjoy the right to safety, freedom and dignity without discrimination.
In the first of the 2025 series on Digital Rights we provide a link to a webpage of the sustainable energy company Iberdrola, which provide a definition of digital rights and links them to the rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.