Over the last several months I have run across online articles espousing the notion that online access, or even broadband access is an intrinsic human right. I recall that this has been put into law in Finland…where they still have far less than universal coverage on connectivity. If you ever read this bog, you might see that these last two sentences have engendered a lot of questions for me…
Maybe we can work back to the broader principles here… First off, I have seen several variations of this idea, where online access in any form is a universal human right, to where giving broadband access to all humans is universally given… Several countries have put this fine sounding notion into law, while doing little or nothing to help implement it. This all seems to be confusing to me; there is a sense of rearranging the deck chairs in the Titanic going on here.
Of course, there are deeper perspectives to consider here, as we move away from comparatively rich western democracies. The fact is that only about ¼ of humanity has internet access in any form…this leaves us dreamers with over five billion fellow humans unconnected. If you look over some of the links below this piece you will see that there are some who are working to change this…and good for them, at least somebody is doing something regarding this topic (instead of a lot of pretty sounding bloviation, that is).
So far we have taken the assertion that online access (in any form) is a human right. The obvious next question is why? In my research I have found only one justification, that the internet is political discourse and political changes are originating from… This sounds a lot like liberation theology at this point…but seriously, are there more (valid) reasons for presenting internet access as a universal human right?
In theory, the internet is fast becoming a repository for almost all learning and education, all news crosses these online paths, and beyond even the exigencies of using social networking tools to create such (at this point in time) ambiguous changes in the world scene as the ‘Arab spring’ are these tools of real value to all humans in all cultures?
This takes us to the next (and probably biggest) question…just what is a universal human right? The UN creates a charter of Universal Human Rights (about 50 years ago), when the only topic to consider (in that bipolar political world) was government support versus oppression. While we haven’t made huge strides in simplifying that topic area, in the ensuing years other, possibly subtler, topics have entered the arena where universal human rights could be argued.
For instance, is there some sort of hierarchy of human rights…is internet access as important as universally condemning and attempting to abolish the practice of slavery? I was wondering to myself if online access would be more important than universal literacy…for instance.
Well, to cut to the chase, I haven’t found anything online which would present a clear notion of this idea, I haven’t found any sort of list or categorized grouping of human rights…I guess that there might not be as much universality in deciding which of these rights should be of greater value…hmmm.
This is where there are plausibly hundreds if not thousands of arguments nipping away at various aspects of this broad idea of UNIVERSAL human rights (see some of the links below…).
I suppose the curmudgeon in me would say that none of these human rights are universal, simply because (in practice) they aren’t. Further, since there is no real method in place, no overarching power to implement these rights, there is no reason to expect any real progress in accomplishing any of these possibly worthwhile hopes…
The hope of one person, a culture, a government, tribe, society, religion, or ethnicity might very well be the bane of other groups, whose hopes in this multicultural, post modern world of fractured ethnicities, religious and sectarian grievances would tend to cancel out the other…
Maybe there is no UNIVERSAL…
Online access as a human right:
Broadband is a human right
http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2011/09/broadband-is-human-right.html
Access to the Web is a Human Right: How to Make It Happen
http://bigthink.com/ideas/37934
Berners-Lee: Web access is a ‘human right’
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/041211-mit-berners-lee.html
AHUMANRIGHT.ORG CONNECT EVERYONE
http://ahumanright.org/blog
UN Declares Internet Access AHUMANRIGHT
http://ahumanright.org/blog/2011/06/un-declares-internet-access-a-human-right
TEDxAthens – Kostas Grammatis – A Human Right
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT3NBbD_ml8
Human Rights:
UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr
Are Human Rights Universal?
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/56666/thomas-m-franck/are-human-rights-universal
Are Human Rights Universal?
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Human_Rights/Are_HR_Universal%3F.html
Shashi Tharoor, "Are Human Rights Universal?" World Policy Journal, Vol. XVI, No. 4 (Winter 1999/2000)
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/tharoor2.htm
Postmodernism and Universal Human Rights
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/li_18_4.html
