Positive Agenda of Human Rights on the Internet Infrastructure

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                           The internet presents a new challenge in thinking about the protection and promotion of human rights. It is a transformative communication technology that enables peer to peer generation and exchange of content, and an enhanced degree of social organisation. It has been used to great effect by human rights activists around the world but it has also exposed many to a greater degree of surveillance and control. It is striking that until 2011, the international human rights movement was almost silent on how human rights should apply online. The absence of any serious consideration of the internet by the traditional human rights bodies such as the UN led to many speculative ideas, that the internet required creating a new set of rights and even a new human rights system. Internet activists often stood apart from the mainstream human rights movement.

•  Commercial 
• Internet infrastructure owned and controlled by multiple non-state actors and at least in part, where feasible, by citizens themselves;
• Public-private solutions to infrastructure investment for less economically viable, remote and rural areas in order to ensure access to the poor and marginalized; 
• Non-state national domain name management; 
• Multi-stakeholder IP address management;
• Appropriate liberalisation of fixed line & mobile telephony markets; 
• Appropriate liberalisation of internet provider market;
• Adherence to Network Neutrality principles. 

• Policy-related 
• Promote international human rights law as the normative framework for any internet governance discussions;
• Support multi-stakeholder governance of key internet resources; 
• Ensure full democratic oversight over any communications surveillance; 
• Provide rule of law, due process guarantees and judicial oversight for any interventions on users communication and sharing of any information gathered as a result of such interventions; 
• Promote anti-monopoly regulation preventing of technological and economic concentration in communications devices and infrastructure, to ensure an absence of single points of control; 
• Foster regulatory approaches that foster affordability and access for the poorer members of communities;
• Support internet users in properly assessing, managing, mitigating and making informed decisions on communications risks; 
• Guaranteed citizens access to communication networks with providing personally identifiable information.