Women's human rights online & the Universal Periodic Review

From 21 May to 4 June 2012, the second cycle of the Human Rightsⁱ Council's Universal Periodic Review (UPR)ⁱ will begin at the UN Office in Geneva. The UPR is a unique mechanism for stateⁱs to tell other countries what they have achieved in promoting human rights – but also for non-state actors to raise issues of concern in a non-confrontational fashion. This edition of GenderIT.orgⁱ will allow you to learn more about the current discussions about women's human rightsⁱ on the internetⁱ, with a particular focus on the country reports for Brazi, Ecuador, India, the Philippines, and South Africa for the UPR process made by APC and their partners. These reports raise for the first time internet-related women's human rightsⁱ issues as part of the UPR.

In the edition, we ask three women human rights defendersⁱ and co-authors of the country reports for Brazil, Ecuador, the Philippines, and South Africa about the importance of the UPR for the rights and daily lives of women, the trends in exercising women’s and sexual rightsⁱ online, and their tips on how women’s and sexual rights activists can support their advocacyⁱ through the UPR process. Do not also miss editorial by Daysi Flores, the regional coordinator of communication and connections for Just ASSociate Mesoamerica, who shares her thoughts on resistances online.

The edition is a part of APC's “Connect your rights: Internet rights are human rights” campaign financed by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida)

Photo by US Mission Geneva. Used with permission under Creative Commons licence 2.0.