WS #181 Defending Voice & Expression in Africa and the Middle East

Summary

This discussion focused on the challenges to freedom of expression in Africa and the Middle East due to cybercrime legislation and content regulation. Panelists from various organizations shared insights on how these laws are often misused to suppress dissent and target activists, journalists, and marginalized groups. They highlighted trends such as overly broad restrictions on online speech, criminalization of disinformation, and enforcement of authoritarian values through content laws.

The speakers emphasized that vague and restrictive cybercrime laws create a climate of fear and self-censorship, undermining democratic participation and free expression. Examples were given from countries like Tunisia and Nigeria, where such laws have been used to arrest critics and stifle political discourse. The discussion also touched on the role of online platforms and the need for responsible content moderation practices.

Panelists outlined several strategies for advocating against repressive legislation, including engaging with parliamentarians, building capacity among legal professionals, and participating in early stages of policy development. They stressed the importance of international collaboration, citing efforts around the UN Cybercrime Treaty as an example. The need for flexible funding to support civil society interventions was also mentioned.

The conversation concluded by emphasizing the importance of multi-stakeholder approaches in internet governance and the need for increased participation from Global South organizations in policy discussions. Overall, the panel highlighted the ongoing tension between addressing legitimate online harms and protecting freedom of expression in the digital space.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– Trends in cybercrime legislation in Africa and the Middle East that restrict online expression

– Impacts of overly broad content restrictions on local communities and democracy

– Tactics for advocating against restrictive cybercrime laws and promoting rights-respecting regulations

– Opportunities for collaboration between civil society, governments, and platforms to address online harms responsibly

– Challenges in participating in policy processes, especially for organizations from the Global South

The overall purpose of the discussion was to examine threats to freedom of expression online in Africa and the Middle East due to restrictive cybercrime laws, and explore ways to promote more rights-respecting approaches to regulating online content and addressing cybercrime.

The tone of the discussion was primarily serious and concerned when describing the negative impacts of restrictive laws, but became more constructive and solution-oriented when discussing advocacy tactics and opportunities for collaboration. There was an underlying sense of urgency throughout about the need to address these issues.

Speakers

– Annelies Riezebos, Senior policy officer at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Expertise: Freedom of expression online, content moderation, disinformation

– Jacqueline Rowe, PhD student at University of Edinburgh, worked with Global Partners Digital

Expertise: Platform regulation, content governance, hate speech and disinformation policies

– Adeboye Adegoke, Senior programme manager at Paradigm Initiative

Expertise: Internet governance, digital rights advocacy

– Aymen Zaghdoudi, MENA senior policy counselor at AccessNow

Expertise: Ethics of journalism, impact of digital development on freedom of expression in MENA

Additional speakers:

– Maria Paz Canales, Global Partners Digital

Freedom of Expression Under Threat: Cybercrime Legislation in Africa and the Middle East

This discussion, part of the Freedom Online Coalition’s efforts and relevant to the Global Digital Compact, brought together experts to examine the challenges to freedom of expression in Africa and the Middle East arising from cybercrime legislation and content regulation. The panel explored how these laws are often misused to suppress dissent and target activists, journalists, and marginalised groups, while also considering strategies for promoting more rights-respecting approaches to online content regulation.

Key Trends in Cybercrime Legislation

Jacqueline Rowe, a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, highlighted several concerning trends in cybercrime legislation across the regions:

1. Overbroad restrictions on online speech, often justified by public safety concerns

2. Criminal restrictions on disinformation

3. Enforcement of authoritarian value systems through content laws

4. A shift towards platform regulation frameworks

Rowe noted that many of these laws “were not aligned and included content restrictions on much broader categories of online content and expression than would be considered permissible under international standards on freedom of expression.”

Aymen Zaghdoudi, MENA senior policy counsellor at AccessNow, expanded on these points, emphasising the use of vague terms and disproportionate sanctions in cybercrime laws. He provided specific examples, stating, “Apart from the content-based offences, which I will come to later, it contains several problematic provisions. Conscious of the time, I will mention just two examples. The first one is the obligation for ISPs to store all data related to communication traffic and other types of data, which is a big threat to the right of privacy.”

Adeboye Adegoke, senior programme manager at Paradigm Initiative, further illustrated how these laws are used as tools to target activists and opposition voices. He provided examples from Nigeria, where cybercrime laws have been used to arrest critics and journalists. Adegoke explained, “So you could see that it is all about just looking for a way to criminalise people that the authorities do not agree with. So that law at that point comes handy as a tool that could be used to criminalise the person.”

Impact on Local Communities and Democracy

The panellists agreed that the vague and restrictive nature of these cybercrime laws creates a climate of fear and self-censorship, undermining democratic participation and free expression. Adegoke highlighted the chilling effect on free expression, noting, “I think that there is a situation where this is applicable. At some point, there is that there becomes, there is no clarity about what expression is you know, is safe and what expression is not safe.”

Zaghdoudi emphasised the reduced political participation and public debate resulting from these laws, providing a specific example from Tunisia where cybercrime legislation led to a significant drop in election turnout. Adegoke stressed the overall undermining of democratic processes.

Strategies for Addressing Problematic Cybercrime Legislation

The panellists outlined several strategies for advocating against repressive legislation:

1. Strategic litigation to challenge laws (Adegoke)

2. Engaging with parliamentarians to amend laws (Zaghdoudi)

3. Capacity building for judges and lawyers (Zaghdoudi)

4. Early engagement in policy processes (Adegoke)

5. International advocacy at the UN level (Rowe)

Adegoke emphasised the importance of proactive engagement, stating, “I do think that one key thing that we have to think about is also about early engagements with policy processes to ensure that we are in a more strategic position to influence outcomes.”

Zaghdoudi expanded on the tactics for addressing problematic legislation, highlighting the importance of engaging with parliamentarians, building capacity among legal professionals, and leveraging international mechanisms to pressure governments.

The speakers also highlighted the need for flexible funding to support civil society interventions, particularly when responding to new legislative proposals on short notice.

Role of Platforms and International Bodies

Rowe stressed the need for platforms to improve content moderation globally, especially in non-English speaking regions. She also emphasised the importance of the UN Cybercrime Treaty negotiations and the role of UNESCO and regional bodies in developing platform regulations. Rowe noted the Budapest Convention as a global standard for rights-respecting cybercrime legislation.

The panellists agreed on the importance of multi-stakeholder approaches in internet governance and the need for increased participation from Global South organisations in policy discussions. Adegoke highlighted the challenges faced by organizations from the Global South in participating in policy formation processes and stressed the need for consolidating efforts among civil society organizations.

Conclusion

The discussion highlighted the ongoing tension between addressing legitimate online harms and protecting freedom of expression in the digital space. It emphasised the need for continued collaboration between civil society, governments, and platforms to develop rights-respecting approaches to cybercrime legislation and content regulation. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, the insights and strategies shared in this discussion will be crucial for safeguarding freedom of expression and democratic participation in Africa, the Middle East, and beyond.

Annelies Riezebos: Bye. So welcome everyone. We are here in this session on defending voice and expression Africa in the Middle East. I think we are going to get started we have some people joining us online it’s pretty busy in the venue but not here, unfortunately, but we hope some more people will be joining us soon. So, for those of you who don’t know me I am Annelies reasonable so I’m a senior policy officer at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and I’m in the Department of multilateral affairs and human rights. So we work, I work on issues related to freedom of expression online. And this includes content moderation, the response to disinformation online, and the promotion of information integrity. So I’m really happy that GPD invited us to moderate this session today. And I think we’ve had a good intro in discussions already at the Internet Governance Forum here in Riyadh on the future of the internet. And for the Netherlands, this is also a key priority that we believe in an open worldwide free and secure and inclusive internet. And the internet is essential and can be foundational for achieving the sustainable development goals, and also freedom of expression which this session is about is one of our priorities in our foreign human rights policy and freedom of expression should be upheld online and offline. And the stakeholder approach is also essential in this and I’m really glad that we have a panel right now where we are joined by our colleagues from civil society, and also within the freedom online coalition we have made sure to seek coordination among countries and to include firm human rights safeguards online. Also, for instance, this year with the global digital compact which we negotiated. And here we are here together to speak about the opportunities that the online space provides for the freedom of expression worldwide, but also the challenges that arise from such for legislative reforms that have that have been taken by some countries, and I’m really glad that GPD together with article 19 has done extensive research on this topic because there might be legislation that is not in line with human rights standards which cracks down on vulnerable groups human rights offenders journalists individuals, or other marginalized groups. And this is incompatible with international human rights law so in this session I’m really glad that we will be focusing on these kinds of legislative measures, specifically in the MENA region, and my panel today we have Jacqueline row with global partners, digital. I’m inside duty, who is joining us now you’re on the screen now as well. Welcome, you’re with access now and then we have boy I think okay who’s here with me in the room who is with paradigm initiative. And our objective here is to foster in depth understanding of the trends in the region. And also to really delve into the misuse of content restrictive legislation, but I’m really hopeful that we can also discuss some methods of how we can work together to have cyber crime legislation that is actually rights respective. I hope that together we will identify a path towards the much needed. regulation of the online space, which is essential, but in such a way that it doesn’t infringe on the potential on the online human rights enjoyment. We will have to do this all in only 60 minutes, so I’ll take it away right away. I’ll give the word to Jacqueline, who will give us some more an overview of the research that GPD and Article 19 did on this issue, and then the other panellists will also explain the trends they see in cybercrime legislation in the region, and we’ll have a roundtable dialogue to discuss how we can work together. So, Jacqueline, you are with GPD, and you worked on the report An Ever-Tightening Net, which is on this topic, and Jacqueline is a PhD student, and she works on designing responsible natural language processing at the University of Edinburgh, and has worked with GPD on platform regulation, content governance, and policies surrounding hate speech and disinformation. All right, Jacqueline, take it away.

Jacqueline Rowe: Great, thank you, Annelies. I hope I can be heard by everyone. Great. Yeah, so thank you for your introductions. It’s great to be with you all today remotely. As Annelies said, I was involved in the writing of this report, and I thought I’d give just a very brief overview of what the report is, what it covers, and then talk about some of the key trends that we documented in that report. So the goal was to understand across Africa and the MENA region how restrictions on online content are impacting freedom of expression today. And so we looked… A lot of this work was looking at cybercrime legislation, particularly like content-based criminal restrictions on online expression, but we also looked at a range of other areas of kind of law and policy, including platform regulations, anti-terror legislation that applies in the online context, as well as kind of press and media regulations and disinformation legislation as well. So we were focusing kind of beyond just specific cybercrime regimes, but really trying to get a picture of where these different restrictions are found in countries’ legislative kind of frameworks, and how specifically we were really interested in how are those restrictions being enforced in practice. So not just looking at the text of the law, but also looking at how they’re being enforced and who they’re being enforced against. So our focus within this work was, broadly speaking, do these restrictions and how they’re being enforced align with international human rights law or not? And we were focusing primarily on kind of freedom of expression concerns, but there were a number of other human rights that are obviously also relevant to these discussions as well. So with our partners with Article 19, who we were really pleased to work with on this project, we looked at over 150 different legal frameworks from countries all over the region, and tried to gather, as I said, concrete examples of how they’re being enforced against different groups. We found that it’s a very diverse region, the whole of Africa and the whole of the Middle East. There are diverse approaches taken to cybercrime and to what content should be criminalised online. Some of the regimes we looked at, of the legislations were aligned, you know, more or less with international human rights law and with the Budapest Convention, which is the kind of, I’m sure most people here will be aware, but the kind of global standard, the norm on rights respecting cybercrime legislation. And when I say that they were aligned, I mean the criminal restrictions they placed on online expression were limited to very specific, narrowly defined categories of egregious online harms. So these are kind of child sexual abuse material, incitement to genocide or advocacy of genocide, hate speech, which incites discrimination and violence, and incitement to terrorism. So kind of four very specific content categories that can permissibly be criminalized under international human rights law. So while some of the country’s kind of legislative packages that we looked at were more or less aligned with those restrictions, unfortunately a lot of them were not aligned and included content restrictions on much broader categories of online content and expression than would be considered permissible under international standards on freedom of expression. And within the report what we tried to do was kind of was group these areas of divergence from human rights standards into four main themes that we observed. So the first theme or trend that we looked at was a lot of governments in the region are using public safety concerns or public safety narratives to justify overbroad restrictions on online speech. So for example implementing a restriction on online terrorism or content which undermines national security, which is kind of using this language of being in the interest of public safety, but in reality we saw that those restrictions were being enforced against, as you mentioned in your introduction Annalise, journalists, human rights defenders, political opponents. The broad definitions used in those pieces of legislation, even though they sound like they’re directed towards public safety, are in fact not being used to protect public safety at all. So this was the first trend that we looked at and we documented in the report. The second theme was the prevalence of criminal restrictions on disinformation. Over a third of the legal frameworks that we looked at included some kind of restriction on disinformation and while disinformation is of course a legitimate concern and can pose human rights risks in itself if allowed to spread, again international human rights law is very clear that it should never be criminalized and we saw in the report we documented a lot of examples of how those restrictions are being used to censor political expression and other expression by vulnerable and marginalized groups. The third trend that we documented in the report was restrictions on online expression which we see as enforcing authoritarian value systems, so this might include prohibiting criticism of political figures of religion or religious leaders, this might include bans on LGBT content or content which advocates for LGBT groups, as well as any kind of expression or advocacy for marginalized groups as well. And so these restrictions are very far from international standards on what can permissibly be restricted and we saw that they had really disproportionate impacts on particularly vulnerable groups in practice. And the final trend that we look at in the report is the shifting away or adding to individual restrictions on what people can say online in criminal law towards more holistic platform regulation frameworks which also apply criminal penalties to platforms for failing to take down these broad categories of illegal content as well. So those are the kind of trends we looked at in the report and the main focus of the report was monitoring and reporting some of those risks and concerns but we did also include various recommendations that we developed together with article 19 as well and I can get into those perhaps a bit later on. Thanks.

Annelies Riezebos: Thank you so much Jacqueline for that overview of the report and it’s really good that you made it and that you identified the four areas and that we see that there are so many trends where platform and cybercrime legislation is not aligned with IHRL. Ayman, I would like to give the word to you, perhaps we can go even more in depth and add to the insights what AccessNow has gained from investigating cybercrime in the region. Ayman is AccessNow’s MENA senior policy counselor based in Tunisia and he has previously actually worked at article 19, I understood, where he researched ethics of journalism and the impact of digital development on freedom of expression in the MENA. and he’s also an assistant professor at the Institute for Press and Information Sciences in Tunisia. Could you provide an overview of the specific cybercrime decrees that you’ve encountered and also the advocacy efforts that were employed to challenge these laws?

Aymen Zaghdoudi: Thank you very much. I’m very glad to be here. Basically, the cybercrime decree law was issued by the President of the Republic in 2022, one year after his coup and in the absence of the Parliament. Apart from the content-based offences, which I will come to later, it contains several problematic provisions. Conscious of the time, I will mention just two examples. The first one is the obligation for ISPs to store all data related to communication traffic and other types of data, which is a big threat to the right of privacy. As you know, based on this data, authorities can have an idea about our daily behaviour and conduct. The second example is related to the communication interception. Basically, whether in Tunisia or other cybercrime legislation within the region, we didn’t see any safeguard when it comes to communications interception. But the most problematic provision is Article 24, of course, which contains content-based offences, broad terms, and even the scope is very broad, criminalising not only the publication of content online, but also or even sending, preparing, or even generating content that might be considered against Article 24. It contains disproportionate sanctions from 5 to 10 years in prison. of prison, for defamation, slander, disinformation, hate speech, but always, you know, ill-defined terms, vague terms. So long story short, if we analyse this Article 24, which contains content-based offences, under the three-part test, it won’t be able even to pass the legality condition. So it’s unclear, it was issued by the President without any public debate. The problem also that it contains crimes that are already criminalised based on other pieces of legislation, like the press law, the criminal law, the telecommunication law, etc. And now we do have journalists, lawyers, judges, politicians, students, human rights defenders, and many others, either in the prison or persecuted for criticising the government.

Annelies Riezebos: Thank you so much. And lastly, I would like to give the floor to our in-person panellist, Adeboye Adegoke. Adeboye is a leading civil society voice in the internet governance space in Africa, a senior programme manager at Paradigm Initiative, and a member of the G20 think tank on the governance of artificial intelligence, as well as a member of the advisory network of the Freedom Online Coalition. So really glad to have you here. Adeboye, you have many years of global, regional, national experience with digital rights advocacy. Could you go into depth a bit about the trends you’re seeing in Africa, and also how we can move forward to combat the threats that we see to freedom of speech there?

Adeboye Adegoke: All right, thank you very much, Annalise. And thanks, Jacqueline and Amax Godi. I hope I got the pronunciation of your name right, but please pardon me if I didn’t. It’s a pleasure to be on the panel with you, and also to listen to the research that you had worked on, and the findings from the research. I do think that the narrative that we have in Africa are similar, whether you’re looking at Africa or Middle East or the MENA region generally. I think within the Africa or sub-Saharan African context is similar, or the similarities that we have seen is in cyber laws that were enacted primarily for the objective of addressing cyber crimes concerns. They often come with provisions that are vague, especially touching on cyber defamation, cyber stalking, you know, similar names like that. And what we have seen is that these provisions have become a tool of targeting, a tool used to target human rights offenders in society, actors, activists, and also people belonging to minority or marginalized groups. If you pick a random African country, I can tell you for a fact that somebody has been arrested because of something they said online, or because they belong to an opposition political parties, or because they work for a human rights organization, relying on provisions of cyber crime laws. So it becomes very, very challenging for people who are working in this context, because then there is a tool that has been legalized in law that can be used against you if you dare have an opposing view to the narrative that the government is probably interested in pushing. And in specific example, in Nigeria, for example, I’m from Nigeria, so I’m even more familiar with the happenings in Nigeria. We’ve tracked hundreds of cases of people who got arrested using the provision of such law. And what the context I also need to bring into this is that the law itself has become a tool, and even the people who use the law, they know exactly that it is a tool of oppression. And why do I say this? There is a case we are currently working on in Nigeria of a lawyer who had written a book where he exposed corruption in the judiciary, and how some senior law lawyers corrupted the judiciary so that they can always get judgment in their favor and all of that. So the lawyer was initially arrested on the basis of libel laws. And it turns out that the states in which the case emanated from had decriminalized libel. So when he was arrested, the police arrested him and they were justifying it on the basis of the libel law. And then when there was hopra and pushbacks, it turns out that people were aware, said that the libel law that you have used to arrest this guy is outdated. The amended version of the law stated clearly that libel is not a criminal law. So even if you have a case to pursue against this man, it has to be a civil case. You have to approach the court and all of that. The moment that information came out, then immediately the police released new charges under the cybercrimes act. So you could see that it is all about just looking for a way to criminalize people that the authorities do not agree with. So that law at that point comes handy as a tool that could be used to criminalize the person. And the idea is not justice. The idea is when you use criminal laws to arrest somebody who is alleged to have committed maybe defamation or something like that, you have the leverage to put the person in handcuffs, in chains. You have the leverage to put the person behind bar because you say it’s a criminal offense. So these are the ways in which this has played out, not just in Nigeria, in Zambia, in Malawi, in Cameroon, in Senegal. Literally every country that we have walked in Africa, we have seen cases like this that have come up over time. But I think in terms of moving forward, what do we need to do to address these challenges? Nigeria has taken some steps positively. Some other countries in Anglophone West Africa like Sierra Leone as well, I think Liberia as well, has also taken some steps to decriminalize cyber defamation as a. puts it in some of the laws of cyber stalking as it’s put in some of the laws. So in Nigeria, for example, there was an amendment to the Nigerian law on cyber crime just less than a year ago. And the amendment ensures that the blanket provision, which allows just any powerful person to get other people arrested for things they said online, was removed from the law. Although the law still exists, the provision still exists, but the implication has been strongly reduced to only affect issues that could lead to public unrest. It’s still problematic because public unrest, public interest are also very problematic phrases which are not clearly defined. But there has been some progress. That’s the point I want to make. And the process leading to this progress is a lot of work by civil society organization and human rights defenders who have challenged the provisions in the law. As a matter of a prior initiative, we went to court. We went to regional courts to challenge it. And the regional court gave us judgment to say that the dual provision is against the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and is against international human rights law. And the regional court then ordered Nigerian government to amend the provision of the law. So that litigation was very useful in forcing the hands of Nigerian parliament to amend the provision of that law. It’s going to be difficult for anyone in Nigeria right now to arrest somebody on the basis of those provisions. So that’s just an example of what civil society organization can do to explore every advocacy measure, pushing the parliament to change the law, using the media, but also using regional courts. Because I think as advocates, we cannot run away from litigation. It makes us look adversarial. But the kind of battle we have to deal with, that we have to fight, requires us to explore every possible avenue. And that’s how we’re able to change the law in Nigeria.

Annelies Riezebos: Thank you, Boye. That’s nice. And it’s good to hear how you’re already showing. I think you said this cybercrime law became a tool that came in handy for suppression, and I’m glad to hear you mention already some of the options that society at least has to advocate for progress and for change. Thank you for that. I think I would also like to discuss a little bit more how we can work together as governments, international organizations, also the big companies that are hosting a lot of the platforms that we’ve been discussing. So we can maybe delve a little bit deeper into the collaboration that we, we can foster together. I wanted to ask you the effect that these kinds of legislative reforms have on local communities. I think you’ve showed clearly how there are cases of people who are unable to express themselves online because of the tool that came in handy, the cybercrime legislation. Could you share maybe, I’m not sure, maybe Boye or Ayman, a little bit more of your experience working with the communities? How have the restrictions actually affected the individual’s ability to express themselves online? And what is maybe the effect that we see more broadly in the information space of these content legislation? I’m not sure. Do you want to take it? Yeah, Boye can start. Thank you.

Adeboye Adegoke: Thank you very much. I think that it’s, from what we have seen, I think one of the dangers of such laws is that you end up having a system where people self-censor themselves, which has a direct chilling effect on the freedom of expression contest. I think that there is a situation where this is applicable. At some point, there is that there becomes, there is no clarity about what expression is. you know, is safe and what expression is not safe. And just as I said in my previous intervention that when the authorities use this law, they don’t use it to pursue justice. They use it to oppress. They use it to encourage a climate of fear where people are scared to oppose the government, where people are scared to express how they feel about, you know, how they are being governed, how they feel about government policies, et cetera. That is the real challenge. The real challenge is that it creates a climate of fear whereby even when people see that things are going wrong, they don’t want to speak because they feel like if they speak up, they might be criminalized for speaking up. And I think that is the general effect of when you criminalize speech, it creates a climate of fear in the ecosystem whereby people don’t even want to speak. And when there is a climate of fear, that is self-censorship whereby even before, I mean, while we deal with issue of censorship generally in our region, we also then also have to worry about the fact that even people are now self-censoring themselves by refusing to weigh in, you know, in how they are being governed. And I mean, most of the countries in these regions are democratic countries and expression is key in any democracy. If there is no freedom of expression, we can’t reasonably say that democracy is at play. So what is the essence of democracy when people cannot speak their mind? So that is what happens. So it touches not just on individual ability to speak, but also in the essence of democracy itself. Democracy is defined as government of the people, by the people, for the people. So the element of by the people gets taken away when people can’t have an opinion, when people can’t speak on issues. And this also gets heightened during election period. In fact, what we are also seeing is that there is more clamp down on speech around election because during election, people get to get more active about debating governance issues, debating candidates and assessing the issues. incubates, et cetera. So that itself, the role that freedom of expression needs to play in the democratic context, it is directly affected. And that way, we see a situation whereby this country retrogress in their democratic index. And if you look at maybe reports like the Freedom on the Net report, you can also see this clearly demonstrated about how a lot of countries continue to retrogress because they continue to enact laws that makes it difficult to experience democracy, to experience freedom in such a restriction.

Annelies Riezebos: Thank you. Yeah, I think it’s really good that you link this issue directly to democracy. Ayman, do you have something to add to this about the local communities and the effect this also the legal uncertainty and the arbitrariness of the legislation has?

Aymen Zaghdoudi: Yeah, sure, thanks. I mean, I agree with what Boya said. This legislation are really scaring. And when I say scary, I’m not exaggerating. Because, for example, when I take Tunisia as example, we have seen a huge shift once the cybercrime law in Tunisia was enacted by the president. For example, more and more we see censorship. And when we say censorship, we don’t talk only about political censorship. Even people are afraid to share their sexual, for example, identity. They try to avoid expressing their opinion regarding public interest subject. Another example, at the moment, for example, political show in the radio and TV are reduced almost to nothing, to zero. Because. were even expert, independent expert, they tend to reject media interviews invitation because they are scared that they might be prosecuted based on the cybercrime legislation. I think also another example is the last presidential election two months ago in Tunisia. For example, the turnout used to be in Tunisia between 50% to 65% in 2014 and 2019. And in the last presidential election, the turnout was about 28%. And this also shows the level of involvement of the Tunisians when it comes to public debate. So for example, six months before the last presidential election, we’ve seen journalists in jail based on cybercrime decree. Candidates to the election also have been jailed, human rights defenders. So the impact is very clear, tangible. Also, for example, when we take the example of Saudi Arabia, for example, if we check social media in Saudi Arabia, almost you don’t see any criticism to the government. And this is because we’ve seen in the past years, people have been jailed for 34 years of prison, just for a post on Twitter or X to criticize the government. So the impact is tangible. And maybe later I will come to explain more what kind of tactics we can adopt to tackle this type of legislation.

Annelies Riezebos: Thank you so much. Yes, I would like to delve into the tactics actually of advocating against these types of legislation. But maybe also some of the recent trends that we’ve seen, for instance, with the UN Cybercrime Convention that because we do need to have, I think, good frameworks for cybercrime, to address cybercrime. I think, Jackie, you also mentioned how important it is that there is a, that, for instance, disinformation is addressed. So we do need some good legislations out there. And I think the report, the research that you did also goes a bit into what good legislation would look like. Could you reflect on that a bit more?

Jacqueline Rowe: Yeah, certainly. And I think it’s quite a kind of meaty question, right, of this, like, there is such a thing as online harms that should be illegal and that cause harm to people. And then there is also this misuse of the narrative about online harms to justify these censorship and really repressive approaches to managing cyberspace that we’ve seen time and time again. So I think the UN Cybercrime Convention is an interesting point where those views have been heavily contested, right? Like I, GPD has been involved in some of those negotiations. And my colleagues can perhaps speak more to that than I can. But I think it’s clear that what regulatory system may work in a jurisdiction where you have an independent judiciary and an independent media regulator that has plenty of funding and is well established for decades is actually very different to what might work in a country where democracy is more fragile or non-existent. And so I think there’s that need to keep in mind the importance of context. I think we’ve touched on it a little bit in the discussions, but I also think that the links between cybercrime legislation and platform regulation are also really important and really complex, because if a government says this type of content is illegal online, then it’s only a matter of time before then they also begin to exert pressure on platforms to enforce that restriction beyond the reach of the government itself, right, or the Ministry of Digital or the Ministry of Digital or whatever kind of regulatory body is tasked with enforcing that. And so I think as well as the UN Cybercrime Convention, you also have like UNESCO’s initiative draft guidelines for regulating digital platforms. And you also have, at least for the Middle East region, like the League of Arab States has been developing this draft international strategy to regulate digital platforms and digital media. media companies, I can’t remember the wording, and so there are also these quite influential moves to drag online platforms further into this debate as well, and of course there are responsibilities that online platforms can and should carry, and I’m not by any means saying that they have acted responsibly, particularly in countries that have less market dominance and perhaps less influence, where there’s linguistic diversity, there’s cultural diversity, we know that platforms have really neglected key safety issues in certain jurisdictions, but equally forcing platforms to just blanket enforce already very overbroad restrictions on online expression is also not the answer either. So with all that complexity in mind, in the report we made 11 recommendations for governments, I guess, or people looking to develop more rights-respecting cybercrime regulations. I won’t go into those all in detail as people can check out the report, but the main one is that criminal restrictions on online expression must align with international guidance, with the guidance from the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, the three-part test for permissible restrictions, that nothing should be criminalised outside of those very narrow categories. And then the second kind of recommendation, or key recommendation that I’d maybe want to just flag here is that the solution to harmful content is not necessarily criminalisation, like there are some types of content which, as I just said, they do need to be criminalised, but for issues like disinformation, for issues like harassment or speech which is offensive but which isn’t hate speech, yes, those content types are harmful and they do need a policy response, but that policy response must be much more, it’s about a socio-technical system, we can’t just criminalise this content and expect it to go away, there are social pressures, there’s market pressures, there’s advertising pressures that platforms, there’s recommendation algorithms that are out of whack, there’s all these other issues that feed into those harms and why they’re harmful, and I think that the points to address those harms is not at the level of the individual who’s posting that content on their social media.

Annelies Riezebos: Thank you. Yes, that’s a clear overview. I think, Ayman, I saw you put something in the chat that we can’t see here in the room, so maybe you would like to address that and also go into the tactics for addressing these legislations that we do not want to see in relation to international human rights standards.

Aymen Zaghdoudi: Yeah, thank you. So basically, before coming to the blog post on the impact of the UN Cybercrime Treaty on digital rights in the MENA region, I want to talk a bit about different tactics that we can use to tackle this sort of legislation. So whether Tunisia or Saudi Arabia or Libya, Jordan, Egypt, many other countries in the region, they have adopted the same approach. So it’s an approach consisting of adding content-based offences to the cybercrime law. And here I want to emphasise that content-based offences are not cybercrimes. There is a definition of cybercrimes and then regimes or governments in Africa or MENA are trying to include content-based offences like defamation, slander, fake news in this category of legislation with harsher sanctions compared, for example, to similar crime under the criminal law or the press law. And when it comes to advocacy efforts, there are different tactics, of course, depending on the political context and opportunities we do have. Of course, if we have the opportunity to conduct dialogue with the parliament, that is ideal for us, because then we can bring examples, try to convince them through arguments. So I will mention at least three different tactics based on Access Now experience. So first of all, we’ve tried this tactic when it comes to the UN Cybercrime Treaty, for example. So asking states with strong respect of the rule of law to reject any mutual cooperation request when it comes to content-based offences. And this can sometimes be successful, of course, and they say sometimes, because we have seen in the past, some regimes were not in need of this sort of cooperation, as they just can send criminals to their embassy and cut the journalists into pieces, just because it happens that the journal that this journalist had criticized the government. The second tactics is to meet MPs and try to convince them either to reject the bill, or to amend existing laws. And we have been using this strategy, for example, in Tunisia and Jordan. So just this morning, I participated in a conference or like workshop with Tunisian MPs, trying to convince them to, to adopt a sort of law proposal to amend the law 54. And basically, we wanted to suppress Article 24, related to defamation, online defamation, and other type of content based offenses. The third tactics, it’s more like capacity building. And this also we’ve been trying this like path in Jordan and in Tunisia, even in Morocco, even though they don’t have cyber crime, but they have other problem when it comes to freedom of expression in Morocco, or Libya. So we conduct sort of trainings and workshops with judges, and lawyers, and trying to equip them with sufficient materials and legal arguments, so that they can better deal with freedom of expression cases.

Annelies Riezebos: And these are clear tactics that you’re you’re describing. So speaking with countries who have a strong rule of law, the work you with MPs, and then the capacity building. I think you also mentioned the work that you did on strategic litigation. Is there anything further that you could add on the tech? to say that Paradigm has taken to address and advocate for better cybercrime laws or to take steps towards a better situation where the laws are not misused?

Adeboye Adegoke: Yeah, I think there are many layers to the intervention that we have done at Paradigm in 64 that any civil society organization can do. There is an aspect of trying to put out a fire when it’s already hot there, but there is also an aspect of trying to ensure that the fire never starts in the first place. So I’ll give an example, especially with respect to platform regulation. We have been very keenly involved in Nigeria’s efforts to, at platform regulation, Nigeria has been having a conversation around coming up with some sort of laws around platform regulation or around online harms, right? And we’ve been in that conversation right from the get-go. I’ve even worked as a member of the steering committee. The conversation has not exactly gone 100% the way we want it to go, but we kind of find ourselves in an advantage position that we got involved right from the beginning. What our involvement means is not just that we are going to be able to 100% influence the outcome of what the bill will look like, but it also means that we can use our privileged position to galvanize the entire civil society community, the human rights community, to let them know what the conversation, because what typically happens traditionally is that you don’t get to hear about the law until it is brought to the parliament, at which time it’s already too late to engage or even influence. But because of this early engagement, we already know what the thinking of the government is, and we already also started thinking about strategy to ensure that it doesn’t become another tool of oppression in the ecosystem. So I do think that one key thing that we have to think about is also about early engagements with policy processes to ensure that we are in a more strategic position to influence outcomes. But beyond this, what then happens when there is already a law and the law is doing a lot of harm? hands to the freedom community, to the human rights community, and all of that. I do think, as I mentioned earlier,

Maria Paz Canales: if we can move maybe to give the floor to Jackie or to continue the flux of the conversation.

Annelies Riezebos: Yeah, exactly. Yes, thank you for everyone. That’s Maria Paz, who is also with GPD. Thank you. Yeah, Jacqueline, maybe we still have a little bit of time. Let’s continue and ignore the technical disruption for now, because we wanted to touch upon a little bit the positive things that we can do, but also the moments we have in the coming period as well for collaboration between civil society and governments, and also international organizations. I think you mentioned UNESCO. We have the UN processes that are going on. Could you go into that a little bit, and at least in the room we’re here and we’re eager to learn.

Jacqueline Rowe: Yes, sure. Hopefully you can hear me okay again. Yeah, well, I was also just reflecting a little bit as Ayman and Boye were talking about some of the kind of civil society initiatives and strategies that are being used in various different contexts. I guess maybe this is also partly like a recommendation for funders, which includes national governments as well as international organizations that are funding this sort of work, and maybe just to highlight that it’s very difficult to plan those interventions in advance because it’s not always predictable exactly when a government is going to release a new draft, or a new consultation, or a new proposal for a problematic piece of legislation. So I think maybe there’s a challenge also for funders to work out more flexible ways of supporting civil society in those initiatives as and when they’re needed, which often might be at short notice or kind of in an ad hoc fashion, consultation fashion. So I was just thinking that that may also be relevant as a consideration. In terms of collaboration, I think There’s been some really exciting moments of collaboration between different civil society organizations in the negotiations of the UN Cybercrime Treaty. Right. And we’ve seen large coalitions of not just civil society organizations, but also companies weighing in, as well as different different kind of support by different governments for this pushback against broadening out the content based offences that could be included in the UN Cybercrime Treaty. And so I think that’s been quite a positive example of CSO activism, people working together. Unfortunately, I mean, the draft treaty that we have is undoubtedly better than it was because of that kind of very tireless activism. But I know that there are many that would still argue that the treaty should not be signed, should not be passed. So there are perhaps limits even then. And that’s a huge amount of effort and coordination that’s taking place across all of those different CSOs to bring these issues to the agenda of the governments that are negotiating that treaty. I think also, as you mentioned earlier, Annalise, platforms are a huge part of this conversation. And I do think a point that it’s important to make is that as long as platforms continue to neglect their content moderation responsibilities, particularly in non-English speaking areas where there’s linguistic diversity, diversity of different dialects, where they continue to moderate content poorly, content which should be taken down but which they don’t have appropriate local content moderation expertise to deal with in a timely fashion, that only continues to give authoritarian governments more excuse to tighten up criminal restrictions on this sort of content. So I do think that there is a big responsibility on online platforms to invest more in online safety in all of the jurisdictions in which. operate, not just in the global north, the global majority. And I think that will also be quite a key part of, if platforms can show governments we are dealing with these issues responsibly, we are investing money, you know, these are the technical challenges, these are the policy challenges, I feel like that also is quite an important part of the puzzle, so that then we can have a more informed debate around where the gaps are and where regulation might need to fill some of those gaps.

Annelies Riezebos: Thank you so much. Yeah, that’s an interesting perspective you take there. I’m not sure if we have Ayman back on board already. We don’t see him here in the room, but Boya, maybe you can, do you have anything to add about the action-oriented steps that we can take to talk about solutions together as civil society as governments? I think the multi-stakeholder nature of the Internet Governance Forum itself is one of those places, so where can we continue that conversation as well?

Adeboye Adegoke: All right, I think I’ll just also use your podium to land on the point I was making previously. I think it’s also about, it’s about consolidating efforts as a civil society organization. There are a lot of debates, processes that goes on in policy formation processes at the national level, even at the regional or at the global level. For example, the UN Cyber Treaty. What I have seen is that for a lot of organizations from the global south, the capacity for participation is very limited, and that also informs how well they are able to engage or they are able to influence the outcome of some of these processes of negotiation, whether at the national, regional, or global level. So one of the things that we’ve done in Paradigm City, for example, is that we have changed our strategy towards policy engagement, or policy influence, but what we used to do was The microphone is working, but the zoom is off.

Agreement Points

Cybercrime laws are being misused to restrict freedom of expression

Jacqueline Rowe

Aymen Zaghdoudi

Adeboye Adegoke

Overbroad restrictions justified by public safety concerns

Vague terms and disproportionate sanctions in cybercrime laws

Laws used as tools to target activists and opposition

All speakers agreed that cybercrime laws are often vaguely worded and used to target activists, journalists, and opposition voices, rather than addressing genuine cybersecurity concerns.

Impact on democracy and public debate

Aymen Zaghdoudi

Adeboye Adegoke

Reduced political participation and public debate

Self-censorship and chilling effect on free expression

Undermining of democratic processes

Both speakers highlighted how cybercrime laws lead to self-censorship, reduced political participation, and ultimately undermine democratic processes.

Similar Viewpoints

All speakers emphasized the importance of proactive engagement in policy processes, including working with parliamentarians and using strategic litigation to challenge problematic laws.

Jacqueline Rowe

Aymen Zaghdoudi

Adeboye Adegoke

Engaging with parliamentarians to amend laws

Strategic litigation to challenge laws

Early engagement in policy processes

Unexpected Consensus

Role of platforms in content moderation

Jacqueline Rowe

Need for platforms to improve content moderation globally

While not explicitly echoed by other speakers, Jacqueline Rowe’s argument about the responsibility of platforms to improve content moderation globally was an unexpected point that could potentially align with the overall concerns about online content regulation.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The speakers showed strong agreement on the misuse of cybercrime laws to restrict freedom of expression, the negative impact on democracy and public debate, and the need for proactive engagement in policy processes to address these issues.

Consensus level

High level of consensus on the main issues, with speakers providing complementary perspectives and examples from different regions. This strong agreement suggests a unified stance on the need to reform cybercrime legislation to better protect freedom of expression and democratic processes.

Different Viewpoints

Approach to addressing problematic cybercrime legislation

Aymen Zaghdoudi

Adeboye Adegoke

Engaging with parliamentarians to amend laws

Strategic litigation to challenge laws

While both speakers advocate for addressing problematic cybercrime legislation, they emphasize different approaches. Aymen Zaghdoudi focuses on engaging with parliamentarians to amend existing laws, while Adeboye Adegoke highlights the use of strategic litigation to challenge laws in court.

Unexpected Differences

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement revolve around the specific strategies to address problematic cybercrime legislation and the focus of capacity building efforts.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among the speakers is relatively low. They generally agree on the problems caused by overbroad cybercrime legislation and its negative impact on freedom of expression and democracy. The differences mainly lie in the emphasis on various approaches to address these issues, which can be seen as complementary rather than contradictory. This low level of disagreement suggests a potential for collaborative efforts in addressing the challenges of cybercrime legislation and its impact on freedom of expression in Africa and the Middle East.

Partial Agreements

All speakers agree on the need for improved content moderation and capacity building, but they differ in their focus. Jacqueline Rowe emphasizes the role of platforms in improving content moderation globally, Aymen Zaghdoudi stresses capacity building for legal professionals, and Adeboye Adegoke highlights early engagement in policy processes.

Jacqueline Rowe

Aymen Zaghdoudi

Adeboye Adegoke

Need for platforms to improve content moderation globally

Capacity building for judges and lawyers

Early engagement in policy processes

Similar Viewpoints

All speakers emphasized the importance of proactive engagement in policy processes, including working with parliamentarians and using strategic litigation to challenge problematic laws.

Jacqueline Rowe

Aymen Zaghdoudi

Adeboye Adegoke

Engaging with parliamentarians to amend laws

Strategic litigation to challenge laws

Early engagement in policy processes

Key Takeaways

Cybercrime legislation in Africa and the Middle East often contains overbroad restrictions on online expression that violate international human rights standards

These laws are frequently used to target activists, journalists, and opposition voices rather than address legitimate cybercrime concerns

The vague language and harsh penalties in many cybercrime laws create a chilling effect on free expression and undermine democratic processes

Early engagement in policy processes and multi-stakeholder collaboration are important for developing rights-respecting cybercrime regulations

Platforms need to improve content moderation globally to help address legitimate online harms without resorting to censorship

Resolutions and Action Items

Civil society organizations should continue to engage in early policy processes around cybercrime and platform regulation

Advocates should explore strategic litigation to challenge problematic cybercrime laws

More capacity building is needed for judges and lawyers on freedom of expression issues

Funders should develop more flexible ways to support civil society interventions on short notice

Platforms should invest more in content moderation for non-English speaking regions

Unresolved Issues

How to balance legitimate cybercrime concerns with protecting freedom of expression

The appropriate scope of content-based restrictions in cybercrime laws

How to effectively regulate platforms without enabling censorship

The role of international bodies like the UN in setting cybercrime standards

Suggested Compromises

Focusing cybercrime laws on technical offenses rather than content-based restrictions

Developing more nuanced policy responses to issues like disinformation beyond criminalization

Platforms improving self-regulation to reduce pressure for government content restrictions

Unfortunately a lot of them were not aligned and included content restrictions on much broader categories of online content and expression than would be considered permissible under international standards on freedom of expression.

speaker

Jacqueline Rowe

reason

This comment highlights a key issue with cybercrime legislation in many countries, setting up the main problem to be discussed.

impact

It framed the subsequent discussion around how cybercrime laws are being misused to restrict freedom of expression beyond what is permissible under international law.

Apart from the content-based offences, which I will come to later, it contains several problematic provisions. Conscious of the time, I will mention just two examples. The first one is the obligation for ISPs to store all data related to communication traffic and other types of data, which is a big threat to the right of privacy.

speaker

Aymen Zaghdoudi

reason

This comment broadens the discussion beyond just content restrictions to include privacy concerns, showing the multi-faceted nature of problematic cybercrime laws.

impact

It expanded the scope of the conversation to consider how cybercrime laws can threaten multiple human rights, not just freedom of expression.

So you could see that it is all about just looking for a way to criminalize people that the authorities do not agree with. So that law at that point comes handy as a tool that could be used to criminalize the person.

speaker

Adeboye Adegoke

reason

This comment provides a concrete example of how vague cybercrime laws are weaponized against dissent, bringing the abstract discussion into stark real-world terms.

impact

It grounded the theoretical discussion in practical realities, leading to more focus on specific cases and enforcement patterns.

I think that there is a situation where this is applicable. At some point, there is that there becomes, there is no clarity about what expression is you know, is safe and what expression is not safe.

speaker

Adeboye Adegoke

reason

This insight highlights how vague laws create a chilling effect through uncertainty, even without direct enforcement.

impact

It shifted the discussion to consider indirect effects of cybercrime laws on free expression, beyond just direct enforcement actions.

And maybe later I will come to explain more what kind of tactics we can adopt to tackle this type of legislation.

speaker

Aymen Zaghdoudi

reason

This comment signaled a shift from problem description to solution-oriented discussion.

impact

It pivoted the conversation towards constructive approaches and strategies for addressing problematic cybercrime laws.

I do think that one key thing that we have to think about is also about early engagements with policy processes to ensure that we are in a more strategic position to influence outcomes.

speaker

Adeboye Adegoke

reason

This insight emphasizes proactive engagement in policy formation, rather than just reactive advocacy.

impact

It introduced a new strategic approach to the discussion, focusing on early intervention in the policy process.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by first establishing the core problem of overbroad cybercrime laws, then expanding the scope to consider multiple human rights impacts. The conversation then moved to concrete examples of enforcement and chilling effects, before pivoting to solution-oriented approaches. This progression allowed for a comprehensive exploration of the issue, from theoretical frameworks to practical impacts to potential remedies.

How can funders provide more flexible support for civil society organizations responding to new problematic legislation?

speaker

Jacqueline Rowe

explanation

This is important because civil society often needs to respond quickly to new legislative proposals, which can be unpredictable and require ad hoc interventions.

How can online platforms improve content moderation in non-English speaking areas with linguistic diversity?

speaker

Jacqueline Rowe

explanation

This is crucial because poor content moderation in these areas gives authoritarian governments more excuses to tighten criminal restrictions on content.

How can civil society organizations from the Global South increase their capacity for participation in global policy formation processes?

speaker

Adeboye Adegoke

explanation

This is important because limited capacity affects how well these organizations can engage with and influence outcomes of policy negotiations at national, regional, and global levels.

What methods can be used to develop cyber crime legislation that is rights-respecting?

speaker

Annelies Riezebos

explanation

This is crucial for balancing the need to address cyber crime with protecting freedom of expression and other human rights online.

How can we foster collaboration between civil society, governments, and international organizations to address problematic cyber crime legislation?

speaker

Annelies Riezebos

explanation

This is important for developing more effective strategies to combat threats to freedom of speech while addressing legitimate cyber crime concerns.