(AGENPARL) – ven 02 dicembre 2022 You are subscribed to Collected Releases for U.S. Department of State. This information has recently been updated, and is now available.
12/02/2022 11:26 AM EST
Office of the Spokesperson
The text of the following statement is released by the Governments of the United States of America and the European Union in advance of the third U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council Ministerial in Washington, D.C. on December 5, 2022.
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The U.S.-EU partnership is a cornerstone of our shared strength, prosperity, and commitment to advancing freedom, democracy, and respect for human rights around the world. In the framework of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council, we address the misuse of technology threatening security and human rights and have committed to strengthen our cooperation on protecting human rights defenders online; promoting the open, free, global, interoperable, secure, and reliable Internet as stated in the Declaration for the Future of the Internet; combatting online harassment and abuse; eliminating arbitrary and unlawful surveillance; combatting government-imposed Internet shutdowns; and countering disinformation and foreign information manipulation and interference.
Digital technologies are a vital resource for human rights defenders and civic actors around the world, including in the context of documenting human rights violations and abuses, and international humanitarian law violations. However, these technologies can also be misused to target human rights defenders and undermine civic space. The United States and the European Union (EU) are deeply concerned by the rapid growth of online threats against human rights defenders and the ongoing contraction of civic space around the world. Human rights defenders continue to face threats and attacks, including arbitrary or unlawful online surveillance, censorship, harassment, smear campaigns, disinformation to include gendered disinformation, targeted Internet shutdowns, and doxing. Online attacks often pave the way for physical human rights violations and abuses, including beatings, killings, enforced disappearances, and arbitrary detention.
Women human rights defenders are disproportionately impacted by threats and attacks, which are more often gendered and sexualized than threats against their male counterparts and increasingly take place online. Many women human rights defenders face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and sexual and gender-based violence, including on the basis of other characteristics, including race, religion, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or gender identity. Acts of gender-based online harassment and abuse have a chilling effect, leading to self-censorship and disengagement of women from public life and discouraging the political and civic ambitions of adolescent girls.
We also emphasize the responsibility of the private sector, in particular technology companies and digital platforms across the digital ecosystem, to respect human rights in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. We urge companies to prevent the misuse of their products and platforms, conduct due diligence, take effective action to address all forms of online violence and unlawful or arbitrary surveillance against human rights defenders, support victims and survivors in their search for remedy and accountability for violations and abuses, and provide a safe space for human rights defenders to carry out their work. We encourage companies to establish a grievance mechanism for internal and external reporting of misuse. We also support stronger accountability for technology platforms and recognize the role of government to enhance online safety, security and privacy.
We will continue leveraging our joint expertise to identify and mitigate threats faced by human rights defenders online. The United States and EU will work to develop effective policies to mitigate threats to democracy and human rights online, and to promote appropriate oversight and safeguards for the use of surveillance technologies. We will take a multistakeholder approach, including through working with partner governments, private sector, academia, civil society including human rights NGOs and human rights defenders, survivors of online harassment and abuse, multi-stakeholder organisations, and international organisations. We commit to counter the proliferation of foreign commercial spyware and hacking tools by actors that misuse them to target human rights defenders and others, and to promote accountability for companies that are complicit in enabling human rights abuses.
The United States and EU are also committed to fostering cooperation through our missions around the globe. U.S. Embassies and EU Delegations play an instrumental role in monitoring developments and conducting joint outreach on issues surrounding human rights defenders’ protection. The United States and the EU stand ready to engage with government partners to strengthen and support their national efforts, including capacities and institutions, to prevent and address threats against human rights defenders.
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