On September 26, 2024, IT for Change and FIAN International organized a briefing for the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights on the implications of digitalization on these rights. We invited our partners Third World Network, TNI, Medicus Mundi and GI-ESCR.
We helped provide an overview of the imperative of acting to protect these rights in the context of digitalization and the ways in which the Committee can act to do so. IT for Change's inputs were primarily on the following points:
1. The sovereign right of nations and peoples to pursue their path towards digital development, the right to enjoy the benefits of science and technology and equitable participation in the data economy, and the right to safeguard and protect their Indigenous/traditional knowledge
2. The injustices of the existing algorithmic order—based on intellectual property—adversely impact the individual and collective rights over knowledge and the right to innovate of smaller actors, e.g., startups, especially in the global south.
3. The impact of technological advances on worker rights and labor protections, and its dilution of decent work principles and safeguards.
4. The imperative of alternative data stewardship arrangements, governance, and structure to redistribute power and enable the realization of economic, social, and cultural rights.
Find our Executive Director, Anita Gurumurthy's detailed inputs here.