Presentations

The annual conference of the Majlis Legal Centre - Negotiating Spaces - chose to analyse the various facets, impacts and internal contradictions of on-line spaces, through a gender lens. AAnita made a presentation on ‘What's happening today to women's rights and citizenship?’, focusing on the network- data complex and its implications for women’s citizenship.

Anita Gurumurthy, Executive Director, IT for Change was a Panelist at the IGF 2016 Main Session, Connecting Human Rights - Emphasising Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for the Internet. In her intervention, she stressed the critical imperative to move beyond the binary of the online and offline, in our imaginary of rights. Human rights violations occur in the very real, hybrid interstices where embedded and embodied life meet the network.  Therefore,the idea of rights has to be re-calibrated to a different sociality in the digital age.

Anita Gurumurthy, representing IT for Change, was nominated to speak at the Opening Session of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) at Guadalajara, Mexico on 6th December, 2016. In her address, Anita highlighted the growing unfreedoms of a datafied world and the urgent need for social movements to come together to develop an internet that can be individually empowering, collectively enriching and ecologically restorative through the democratic rule of law in global governance.

Anita Gurumurthy participated in the 2016 IAMCR Conference, held in Leicester, UK between 27th -31st July 2016. The theme for this year's conference was Memory, Commemoration and Communication: Looking Back, Looking Forward.

Anita Gurumurthy, Executive Director, IT for Change participated in the First annual Multi-stakeholder Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for the Sustainable Development Goals (STI Forum) organised at UNHQ, New York between 6-7 June 2016. In her statement from the floor, she emphasised that the Technology Facilitation Mechanism could effectively support the 2030 development agenda only if its efforts were guided by an unwavering commitment to promote the democratic socialisation of science and technology at the margins.

Anita Gurumurthy was invited to participate in The First General Assembly of the Global Alliance on Media and Gender (GAMAG), on 9-10 December, 2015. At the event, she was a panelist at the session 'Post 2015 SDGs and implications for Gender and the Media'. Organized by UNESCO and GAMAG, in partnership with Greece, 15 UN organizations and the Council of Europe, the conference provided a platform for dialogues between all regional chapters of GAMAG.
 

Anita Gurumurthy participated at the International Development Cooperation Meeting on Gender and Media, convened by UNESCO on 7-8 December, 2015. At the event, she was a panelist at the Round Table discussion 'Strategic link between policy and research on gender and media, including technology'.

Parminder Jeet Singh, representing IT for Change, was invited to speak at the UN General Assembly's High Level Meeting on World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) + 10 Review on 16th December, 2015 in New York, USA. The main objective of this meeting was to do an overall review of the implementation of WSIS outcomes. In his talk, Parminder highlighted the importance of having global governance mechanisms in place to ensure that the egalitarian potential of the Internet is not lost.

IT for Change, supported by Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and the World Wide Web Foundation (WWW), organised a workshop on ‘What are people’s rights in the Digital World? - Moving towards a digital social contract’ (4th-5th December, Bengaluru). The aim of this workshop was to bring together experts and thought leaders around India from different civil society sectors, to evolve a shared vision of human rights with respect to the digital realm.

On 25 August 2015, the Second High Level Committee on Status of Women in India, convened a consultation to focus exclusively on developing Indicators for the Gender Equality Goal 5. of the proposed post-2015 development agenda, in New Delhi, on 25 August 2015. Anita Gurumurthy represented IT for Change and shared comments on developing indicators for the 'gender and ICTs' agenda, comprising considerations of individual access, institutional capability and community-social aspects.