How would international human rights law deal with a potentially automized future?
Posted: 20 July, 2021 Filed under: Eduardo Kapapelo | Tags: algorithms, artificial intelligence technologies, autonomous weapons systems, aws, ‘self-aware’ autonomous weapons, Christof Heyns, Future Combat System Project, human rights, Human Rights Council, humanitarian law, law, legal, LGBTI, self-aware, targeted surveillance, Terminator 3 1 Comment
Author: Eduardo Kapapelo
Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria
Introduction
In a scene from Jonathan Mostow’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, the ‘Terminator’ played by Arnold Schwarzenegger says, ‘Cybernet has become self-aware’. While the context of such words are within a scripted science fiction world, they nevertheless seem to be echoes of a futures we seem to be writing – whether willingly or not.
While Mostow’s ‘killer robots’ or ‘terminators’ – are essentially autonomous weapons systems sent through time to kill a person seems farfetched and squarely within the realm of science fiction, perhaps it is not life imitating art, but art imitating life. The United States Future Combat System Project which aimed to manufacture a ‘robot army’ seems to have hinted that the future might not be as fictitious as we think.
Freedom of the press? Not for the Ugandan press
Posted: 20 June, 2013 Filed under: William Aseka | Tags: Africa, African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, African Commission, constitution, Eritrea, freedom of expression, human rights, Human Rights Council, ICCPR, press freedom, right to privacy, Uganda, United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, World Press Freedom 2 Comments
Author: William Aseka
Program Assistant (Human Rights Advocacy for Children with Disabilities), Governance Consulting
The freedom to form opinions and express them without fear of repression is a fundamental tenet for the development of a pluralistic, tolerant, and democratic society. This right represents not only the right to privacy of individuals to hold opinions and formulate thoughts, but also to express them in a public forum, especially as part of exercising the right to political participation. In addition, the right to access information, that is the right to seek and receive information, which also forms an important component of this right and which has added significance in the current age of information technology, is intrinsic to the transparent functioning of a democratic government and the effective and well-informed participation of civil society. In this context, freedom of opinion, expression and information is one of the core civil and political rights as it is essential for the exercise of all other human rights.
The right to freedom of opinion, expression and information is well-established and protected at both international and regional levels both legally and institutionally. The right is enshrined in various international instruments, namely: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 19), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 19), the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (Article 5(d)(viii)), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 13) and the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders (Article 6). The main international human rights body within the United Nations system, the Human Rights Council, also provides through its system of special procedures for a Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, which was established in 1993.
Reform needed in the laws of demonstrations in Africa
Posted: 2 April, 2012 Filed under: Christof Heyns | Tags: Africa, Arab-spring, demonstrations, human rights, Human Rights Council, law, law enforcement, United Nations, use of force 1 Comment
Author: Prof Christof Heyns
Professor of Human Rights Law; Co-director, Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa at the University of Pretoria; United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions
Many lives have recently been lost in Africa, as in other parts of the world, when demonstrations have turned fatally violent. This has been clearly seen inthe countries of the so-called Arab Spring, but numerous Sub-Saharan countries – Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Malawi and South Africa come to mind – have also experienced violent and indeed deadly marches.
These demonstrations reveal the need to bring the legal and policy regimes that govern such expressions of popular opinion into line with human rights standards.
AfricLaw 