Digital Persecution: An international interdisciplinary conference at the intersection of practice, policy, and research

Description

The aim of the conference was to start a discussion with some key thinkers and researchers in the technology, FoRB and human rights spheres so that they could consider the impacts of technological advances (both good and bad) for religious and ethnic minorities, and to highlight what needs to be done and what actions need to be incorporated into policy to defend the right to freedom of religion or belief.
An international interdisciplinary conference at the intersection of practice, policy, and research organised by Open Doors, in partnership with the University of Birmingham and the University of Roehampton, Global threats to fundamental human rights and freedoms are not new. However, as cyber capabilities, information diplomacy, at-scale data management and a convergence of wider technological capacities accelerate, new patterns of risk are emerging for minorities, with religious minorities a significant focus. These powerful, technology shaped dimensions of human rights are characterised by:
• Censorship
• Disinformation
• Surveillance
• Combination of each of these with the powers of law, policing, and public systems.
As this new technoscape of coercion, control and nascent resistance grows, it adds to the complexity of analysis and response required of diplomacy, governments, nation-states, international law, civil society, private sector and other social actors. Civil society leaders and at risk communities, themselves under threat in many local contexts, stand perplexed by the scale and pace of the technological challenges which increasingly render old modes of human rights advocacy as irrelevant and in need of renewal.

Estimated audience numbers (if applicable)

125

Period	25 Feb 2022
Event type	Conference
Location	London, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International