(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Doha: With the participation of 300 governmental and non-governmental organisations, the National Human Rights Committee has completed all arrangements to organise the Doha International Conference on 'Social Media: Challenges and Ways of Supporting Freedoms and Protecting Activists, which will be held on February 16 and 17.
The Conference is organised in partnership with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the European Parliament, the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions and the International Federation of Journalists.
The Chairman of the National Human Rights Committee (NHRC), Dr. Ali bin Smaikh Al Marri, noted that the conference will witness the participation of 300 governmental and non-governmental organisations.
Journalists' unions, major companies and social networks, including Google, Facebook and Twitter as well as international celebrities and human rights defenders, media practitioners, international experts and representatives of the technology community, relevant special rapporteurs, chairpersons of United Nations treaty bodies, judges, lawyers and representatives of victims of social media activists will also participate.
Dr. Al Marri said that the conference aims to discuss the opportunities created by social media to promote human rights, and explore the repeated forms of interference in the use of these means, adding in this context that the discussions will identify good practices and lessons to benefit from social media in the realising human rights, explore the impact of online speech restrictions set by national laws and policies on journalists, human rights defenders, and political activists.
He also pointed out that social media platforms have changed the prevailing concepts in the cultural, political and media communication in the world, and digital devices have become mobile newsrooms, and that there is no obscure access to the other easily, where the scope of opportunities for the exercise of fundamental rights and freedoms of expression and assembly Association and participation in public life is unparalleled.
Dr. Al Marri noted that the protection of human rights now and in the future is increasingly dependent on the ability to clarify how human rights principles are applied to social media, and to take advantage of those platforms, which have become an indispensable tool for realizing a range of human rights and promoting economic and social development.
'New technologies and interdependence have helped the growth of civil society networks, including cross-border growth. However, the emergence of these new opportunities has been followed by emerging threats to civic space. At the same time, digital technologies have also created new excuses for governments to stifle social media activity and restrict civil space, often based on security pretexts, he said. He said that the conference is exploring the possibility of harnessing social media to be an important tool to enhance the civil space or to spread hatred online, which may lead to acts of violence in normal life, so it has included many social media platforms in its terms and conditions a special ban on 'hate speech.
Dr. Al Marri revealed some of the expected outcomes of the conference, including the development of mutual understanding among different stakeholders on the opportunities, risks and good practices to work to expand the civil space in and through social media, and develop ways to address the challenges and threats faced by activists on social media platforms.
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