Advocacy

2020

IT for Change contributed an input on gender and digital technology in the post-Covid moment to a report for the NITI Aayog, titled 'Covid-19: Impact on Women and Girls'. This report was prepared by a group of organizations working for gender equality and women's empowerment. The input is based on our ongoing project, ‘Centering Women in India'…

2020

Data is almost universally recognised as the most valuable economic resource today. Seven out of the top 10 companies globally by market capitalisation are data-centric. In these circumstances, it appears strange that there has hardly been any worthwhile attempt to look at who has economic rights to various kinds of data, and how these rights…

2020

Response to Call for Inputs by the Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association for his report to be presented at the 75th session of the General Assembly on Women and Girls and FoAA.

The inter-related political rights of expression, assembly, association, petition and protest are the cornerstones…

2020

Disasters are gendered. They play out differently for men, women, and gender non-conforming people. So also the COVID-19 pandemic. In the domestic-private spaces, an incredulous increase in levels of violence against women during these weeks, a “shadow pandemic” — as the UN Under-Secretary-General referred to it — has laid bare the patriarchal…

2020

We are pleased to announce that Fondation Botnar has commissioned IT for Change to develop a framework focusing on ‘Health Data as Global Public Good' that centrally includes community ownership of data into it. The research for this project will lay out the nature, role and governance of health data in the emerging digital society and economy…

2020

IT for Change has responded to the Government of India's consultation white paper for the Strategy for National Open Digital Ecosystems (NODE), by recognising the role and potential of NODE(s) not just as a much needed digital evolution of governance in India, but as also providing an alternative vision of digital ecosystems to the dominant…

2020

IT for Change was among 150 signatories to an open letter led by Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF), urging Gilead Sciences to give up its exclusive rights on patents and regulatory and trial data in remdesivir. Monopoly-based patents regime in this could obstruct access to lifesaving treatment for Covid-19.

As the…

2020

The Data Governance Network (DGN) was established by the IDFC Institute in 2019 to bring together some of India's leading policy think-tanks. It identifies policy gaps in data governance and seeks to bridge them through policy interventions, research and advocacy. IT for Change was selected to be one of the four research nodes in the DGN for…

2020

IT for Change and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), with support from the European Commission (EU), are undertaking a five-year (2020-2024) project on Gender and the Digital Economy, called 'Re-wiring India's Digitalising Economy for Women's Rights and Well-being: An Action-oriented Knowledge Intervention'. This project is supported by a grant…

2020

IT for Change is engaged in a project that addresses gender-based hate speech in the online public sphere. Supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada, the project responds to the current reality in India where women are not only speaking up against patriarchy, but also claiming public-political space despite…