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Freedom of expression on the Internet: opportunities and challenges for Latin America

Document Citado por Related
Vincent
AutorEleonora Rabinovich
Páginas57-58

Page 57

See note 25

The right to freedom of expression has been deined as "the fundamental pillar" of the democratic system. It has been subject to generous interpretations issued by the organs of the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS). As a result, high standards for the protection of such right have been created.

Such standards offer an appropriate regional framework when thinking about the exercise of freedom of expression in the digital area. The "dual dimension" – individual and collective - of the freedom of expression allows its scope to be reinstated in order to deal with current situations in different countries of Latin America arising as a consequence of cases of inequality in the access to technologies and cases of policy decisions, legal regulations and judicial decisions which tend to limit the expression on the Internet. On the other hand, the wide recognition of the freedom of expresion, in all its forms and manifestations, also becomes useful to assess the forms to exercise expression which are speciic to an interactive and multidirectional media such as the Internet.

The Special Rapporteurship for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) addressed, in the past years, several of the different aspects of this phenomenon. It did so through Joint Declarations – with the UN Rapporteurship, OSCE and the African Commission on Human Rights - and through a speciic chapter in its last Annual Report.

In such report, the Rapporteurship develops valuable principles to protect the right to freedom of expression in the digital area, including topics such as net neutrality, intermediarie’s liability, the locking and iltering of contents, the relation between privacy and surveillance of communications, and the access to the Internet, among others. The Rapporteurship emphasizes that Section 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights – which proclaims the right to freedom of expression - is "fully applicable to communications, ideas and information one can spread and have access to via the Internet". Likewise, the Rapporteurship highlights that the online environment does

Page 58

not only make it easier to exercise such right, but it also provides the best conditions for the exercise of other fundamental rights, such as education and freedom of association.

During the hearing held in the IACHR the past October 28th – where a group of organizations expressed our opinions regarding the...

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