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Resolution 2256 (2019)
Internet governance and human rights
1. The internet is a common asset,
the uses of which influence many aspects of daily life and also
affect the effective enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
The internet has become so important that the future of our societies
now also depends on the future of the internet. It is vital that
the growth of the internet provide our societies with more information
and knowledge, innovation and sustainable development, social justice
and collective well-being, freedom and democracy. To achieve this
goal, there is a compelling need to ensure more effective protection
of human rights on the internet.
2. The numerous and well-thought-out texts adopted by the Committee
of Ministers of the Council of Europe in this domain clearly show
the crucial importance of these issues. The Parliamentary Assembly
recalls, among others, the 2011 Declaration on Internet governance
principles and the following recommendations: CM/Rec(2012)3 on the
protection of human rights with regard to search engines; CM/Rec(2012)4
on the protection of human rights with regard to social networking
services; CM/Rec(2013)1 on gender equality and media; CM/Rec(2014)6
on a Guide to human rights for Internet users; CM/Rec(2015)6 on
the free, transboundary flow of information on the Internet; CM/Rec(2016)1
on protecting and promoting the right to freedom of expression and
the right to private life with regard to network neutrality; CM/Rec(2016)5
on Internet freedom; CM/Rec(2018)2 on the roles and responsibilities
of internet intermediaries; and CM/Rec(2018)7 on Guidelines to respect,
protect and fulfil the rights of the child in the digital environment.
3. The Assembly recognises universal access to the internet as
a key internet governance principle and considers that the right
to internet access, with no discrimination, is an essential component
of any sound policy designed to promote inclusion and support social
cohesion, as well as an essential factor of sustainable democratic
and socio-economic development.
4. The Assembly highlights the importance of guaranteeing the
right to an open internet, and of building an ecosystem which safeguards
net neutrality. It notes that the economic players that control
the operating systems and their application stores can impose unjustified
restrictions on users’ freedom of access to content and services
available online, and that the risk of such restrictions increases
with the transition towards ever smarter devices.
5. The Assembly underlines the need to guarantee the effective
protection of the right to freedom of expression and freedom of
information, online and offline, and the obligation incumbent on
Council of Europe member States to ensure that this right, which
is a pillar of any democratic society, is not threatened either
by public authorities or private-sector or non-governmental operators.
At the same time, more must be done to counteract the dangers brought
about by abuses of the right to freedom of expression and information
on the internet, such as incitement to discrimination, hatred and
violence, aimed at women or ethnic, religious, sexual or other minorities
in particular; child sexual abuse content; online bullying; the
manipulation of information and propaganda; and incitement to terrorism.
6. This requirement is also connected with the necessity to guarantee
that the internet becomes a secure environment in which users are
protected from arbitrary action, threats, attacks on their physical
and mental integrity and violations of their rights. Security must
be reinforced with regard to the following: databases managed by
public or private institutions; internet communications and transactions;
vulnerable users and victims of racist or hate speech, of online
bullying or of any other infringement of their dignity; the strategic infrastructures
and key services that rely on the internet to operate; and our democratic
societies, which are threatened by cyberterrorism and cyberwarfare.
7. Equally, the protection of privacy and personal data in cyberspace
must be reinforced, to prevent the technologies that are now so
much part of our daily lives from becoming a means of manipulating
opinions and insidious checks on our private lives. In this respect,
the Assembly underlines once more the threat to human rights posed
by the large-scale systems set up by intelligence services for the
mass collection, preservation and analysis of communications data,
and it condemns unreservedly the deviations and abuses of power which,
under the pretext of security, undermine the foundations of democracy
and the rule of law. In addition, the Assembly is concerned that
the interest of private companies in having easy access to and use
of the greatest possible quantities of personal data still outweighs
the protection of internet users, despite significant advances in
this area.
8. If these challenges are to be successfully addressed, we must
work together more effectively. The Assembly therefore calls for
critical reflection on internet governance and underlines the crucial
importance of the issue, which must be a core aspect of public policy,
both at national level and in regional and global multilateral relations.
It is vital that governments, the private sector, civil society,
the academic and technical internet community and the media continue
to engage in an open and inclusive dialogue, with a view to developing
and implementing a shared vision of a digital society that is based
on democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights and freedoms.
Dialogue platforms such as the global United Nations Internet Governance
Forum (IGF), the European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG)
and the South Eastern European Dialogue on Internet Governance (SEEDIG),
as well as the various national initiatives, help to foster such
a shared vision and a better understanding of the respective roles
and responsibilities of the stakeholders, and they can serve as
catalysts for co-operation in the digital realm. In this respect,
the Assembly also welcomes the decision taken by the United Nations
Secretary-General on 12 July 2018 to establish the High-level Panel
on Digital Cooperation, tasked with mapping trends in digital technologies,
identifying gaps and opportunities, and outlining proposals for
strengthening international co-operation.
9. The Assembly therefore recommends that the member States of
the Council of Europe focus their internet governance work more
effectively on the protection of human rights, fully implementing
the recommendations of the Committee of Ministers in this domain
and, in this context:
9.1. implement
public investment policies which are coherent with the objective
of universal access to the internet; these policies should be intended,
in particular, to remedy the geographical imbalances (for example
between urban and rural or remote areas), offset the digital divide
between generations and eradicate gender inequalities, as well as
other inequalities resulting from socio-economic and cultural gaps,
or from disabilities;
9.2. be active in international forums to uphold net neutrality
and safeguard this principle within the framework of national legislation,
which should, inter alia:
9.2.1. clearly establish a principle of freedom of choice in
content and applications, regardless of the device;
9.2.2. provide users with the right to delete pre-installed applications
and easily access applications offered by alternative application
stores, with the obligation of the economic players concerned to
offer appropriate technical solutions to this end;
9.2.3. impose transparency on the indexing and ranking criteria
employed by application stores and, in this respect, provide for
the gathering of relevant information from device manufacturers;
9.2.4. provide for the recording of and following up of reports
from end-users, and for developing comparison tools regarding the
practices of the economic players concerned;
9.3. consider holistic policies for combating computer crime
and abuse of the right to freedom of expression and information
on the internet; such policies should draw not only on up-to-date
criminal legislation but also on strengthened means of prevention,
including the setting-up of police forces specialised in detecting
and identifying online criminals and equipped with appropriate technical resources;
awareness raising and improved education for users; enhanced co-operation
with internet operators and greater accountability on their part;
9.4. ensure, at the same time, that any national decisions
or actions involving restrictions on the right to freedom of expression
and information comply with Article 10 of the European Convention
on Human Rights (ETS No. 5) and prevent user protection and security
requirements from becoming pretexts for silencing dissenting views
and undermining media freedom;
9.5. recognise and implement effectively the “security by design”
principle and, in this respect:
9.5.1. ensure that security
is a fundamental design feature in the conception of the overall internet
architecture and computer infrastructure of essential services,
in order to reinforce resilience with regard to various forms of
criminal or terrorist assaults and to reduce the risk and potential
consequences of breakdowns;
9.5.2. provide for risk management and incident reporting obligations
for operators of essential services and digital service providers;
9.5.3. promote stronger European and international co-operation
aimed at achieving a high level of security of network and information
systems;
9.5.4. advocate the development of harmonised international security
standards concerning “the internet of things”, including the establishment
of a certification mechanism;
9.5.5. provide for the responsibility of private businesses (but
also, where appropriate, of public authorities) for damages resulting
from insufficient security of the connected objects they produce
and commercialise, and introduce compulsory insurance schemes (entirely
financed by the business sector) to mutualise risks.
10. The Assembly underlines that children need special protection
online and that they need to be educated about how to steer clear
of danger and to benefit as much as possible from the internet.
The member States of the Council of Europe, together with all relevant
stakeholders, must make full use of Committee of Ministers Recommendation
CM/Rec(2018)7.
11. The Assembly considers that the Council of Europe Convention
on Cybercrime (ETS No. 185, “Budapest Convention”) should be better
used to enhance interstate collaboration aimed at strengthening cybersecurity.
The Assembly therefore calls on member States to:
11.1. ratify the Budapest Convention,
if they have not yet done so, and ensure its full implementation, taking
due account of the guidance notes on attacks on critical information
infrastructure, distributed denial-of-service attacks, terrorism
and other issues;
11.2. support the completion of the negotiation on the second
additional protocol to the Budapest Convention on enhanced international
co-operation and access to evidence of criminal activities in the cloud;
11.3. strengthen synergies between the Budapest Convention,
the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against
Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (CETS No. 201, “Lanzarote Convention”)
and the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating
Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (CETS No. 210, “Istanbul
Convention”) to address cyberviolence, following the recommendations
in the “Mapping study on cyberviolence” adopted by the Cybercrime Convention
Committee (T-CY) on 9 July 2018;
11.4. support, and make best use of, the capacity-building programmes
implemented by the Cybercrime Programme Office of the Council of
Europe (C-PROC).
12. The Assembly encourages the member States of the Council of
Europe to engage with the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation
established by the Secretary-General of the United Nations and contribute
to its work. The Assembly recommends that the member States of the
Council of Europe work together to improve, at both domestic and
international levels, decision-making processes concerning the internet,
advocating internet governance that is multi-stakeholder and decentralised,
transparent and responsible, collaborative and participatory. In
this respect, they should:
12.1. actively
participate, including with their parliamentarians, in the IGF,
the EuroDIG and other regional and national internet governance
dialogue platforms;
12.2. promote the open nature of the decision-making process,
so as to ensure the balanced participation of all interested parties,
in varying ways depending on their specific role in relation to
the issues being addressed, and aim, as far as possible, at consensual
solutions, while avoiding stalemates;
12.3. enable the various groups of players themselves to administer
the processes for appointing their representatives, but require
that the procedures established for that purpose be open, democratic
and transparent;
12.4. encourage an approach involving the re-composition of
interests within various groups of stakeholders, for example through
associations or federations that have to meet internal democracy criteria;
concerning users’ representation, encourage a balanced representation
of gender, age and ethnicity;
12.5. develop, at the national level, multi-stakeholder mechanisms
which should serve as a link between local discussions and the work
of regional and global bodies; ensure fluent co-ordination and dialogue
across those different levels and foster both a bottom-up approach
(from the local to the multilateral level) and a top-down approach
(from the multilateral to the local level);
12.6. avoid concentrating powers exclusively in the hands of
public authorities and preserve the role of organisations tasked
with technical aspects and aspects of internet management, as well
as the role of the private sector;
12.7. seek to identify the decision-making centres that are
most appropriate in terms of effectiveness, in the light of their
knowledge of the problems to be dealt with and their ability to
adapt solutions to the specific features of the communities responsible
for ensuring their implementation, having also regard to the horizontal
distribution of decision-making powers among players of different
kinds;
12.8. require that all those participating in internet governance
ensure the transparency of their actions, as this is an essential
precondition of responsible governance. To this end:
12.8.1. it
must be possible to identify each stakeholder’s responsibility with
regard to the final decision and its implementation;
12.8.2. at the multilateral level, the community of States should
lay down clearer procedures, in consultation with other stakeholders;
12.8.3. the meaning of decisions taken should be comprehensible
for those affected by them and these decisions should be made public
and therefore be documented, categorised and published in such a
way as to be easily available to everyone;
12.9. keep a proactive attitude to uphold the participatory
and collaborative aspects of the decision-making process, and in
this respect provide the partners concerned with the means of being meaningfully
involved in decision making and move beyond the circle of professionals
in this field, so that experts in other fields can contribute to
the development of the internet.