Thinking Human Rights: Citizens, Technology, and the "Right to Protect" (Mazzucelli)

Colette Mazzucelli writes for Diplomacy and Power:

In the 21st-century world, countries and their cultures differ. The abuse of human rights does not: post-election turmoil in Kenya, 2008; brutality against the protesters in Iran, 2009; longstanding sexual violence against women in war-torn Congo; mass starvation over time in North Korea. The list grows as globalization intensifies.

In the face of these ongoing abuses, a series of questions: Is there a local-global consciousness emerging to combat the atrocities states inflict arbitrarily on their citizens? And can that consciousness use digitally networked technology (DNT) to make a difference by slowing the trends of abuse? For example, is the exponential growth of mobile phone use in the developing world a revolution that allows civil society to find its voice preventing the murder of innocents by state leaders? And what can this transformation mean for the West with its interventionist ideals and its international norms, most notably, Responsibility to Protect (R2P)?

Are we bearing witness to a sea change that makesthe  “ordinary people” of the world a bulwark of protection against would-be political entrepreneurs seeking power at any human price?

Experience taught us in Rwanda the speed with which genocide was carried out by extremists with a political agenda as the West chose selective indifference. Failures to prevent mass murder in Bosnia and Kosovo showed the limits of transatlantic power. If responsiblity-to-protect is not to remain too closely linked with intervention, criticised as a tool to facilitate Western neo-colonial adventures, citizens must assume that responsibility to defend the human rights of fellow citizens. Their actions can make a difference.

Mobile applications, whether on the cell or smart phone, are evolving rapidly as millions acquire new means to communicate. The empirical data, which is still limited, informs us that technology can be used to incite ethnic conflict or to deter human rights abuses. Joshua Goldstein and Juliana Rotich, for example, discuss the impact of digitally-networked technology during Kenya’s 2007-2008 post-election crisis.  Their research findings illustrate how text messages incited violence across Kenya. In comparison to Rwanda, however, where radio mobilized the 1994 genocide leaving moderate voices unable to respond, in Kenya, the use of SMS also circulated messages of a moderate nature.

Michael Joseph, the CEO of Safaricom, the largest mobile phone provider in Kenya, distributed SMS texts to the company’s 9 million customers to counteract the hate messages that had incited mob violence after the 2007 Presidential election. His effort underlines the multi-directional nature of mobile technology, and the Kenyan case also highlights the emerging role telecommunications leaders and visionary designers are playing as tensions between state and society escalate in contested elections.

Violence in Kenya also sparked the design by David Kobia and Erik Hersman of Ushahidi, a revolutionary platform combining Google Maps with a tool allowing mobile users to report cases of abuse in precise detail, including images and written observations at the time and place of the incident.

The application of Ushahidi in other countries experiencing human rights abuses makes digitally networked technology, mobile use in combination with blogs, interactive maps, and satellite imagery, the people’s choice in developing countries to forge local-global interactions. There are policy and educational implications for the transatlantic area as we identify a DNT-R2P connection in polities where citizen initiatives redress the heavy footprint of the state. This civic dimension of the responsibility to protect --- the agency to act on behalf of human security --- must rely on the courage and conviction of local engagement not foreign interventions.

As Barbara Slavin writes, “Internet and cell phone technology have become to Iran’s current democracy movement what the telegraph and cassette tapes were to previous political upheavals.” This is why transatlantic support for public spending to help Iranians evade government Internet filters is a critical element in policymaking. The Iranian people have a right to communicate with each other and with the world through blogs, text messages, and video images. Digitally networked technology offers Iranian citizens a chance to construct alternative narratives, thereby nurturing the internal democracy building that challenges a brutal theocratic regime.

Another area where DNT can support human rights initiatives is in the protection of those working on behalf of NGOs like Peace Brigades International, whose members accompany the human rights defenders protecting internally displaced persons (IDPs).  Francis Deng observes that digital networked technology provides the “eyes and ears” for the world to make sure that the dangers facing humanitarian workers as well as the plight of the IDPs they defend are not forgotten.

As the use of mobile networks increases around the world, another challenge for the transatlantic is to develop educational initiatives that bring DNT right into our study of global affairs. Innovative curriculum development is evolving as a necessary component of humanitarianism in a model that President John Sexton has defined at New York University as the “global network university.” Its aim is to “maintain human community” as NYU classes, held simultaneously in Abu Dhabi and New York, and networked with other locations in Prague and Buenos Aires, “break the time-space continuum.”

The perils and the promise using technology of a multi-directional nature are unprecedented. The policy and educational responses of the transatlantic may help establish a DNT-R2P connection aiding citizens in fragile polities as they protect themselves against oppressive regimes at home.