SOCIAL, CULTURAL, AND HUMANITARIAN COMMITTEE
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Social, Cultural, and Humanitarian Committee Yale Model United Nations Korea May 17 - 19, 2013
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Table of Contents History of the Committee 3 Topic I: Technology and Education Policy Topic History 4 Current Situation 8 Role of the Committee 15 Topic II: Internet Censorship Topic History 17 Current Situation 22 Questions to Consider 27 Role of the Committee 28 Suggestions for Further Research
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Glossary 32 Notes 35
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History of the Committee
One of the most integral components of the larger United Nations, the General Assembly was created between 1945 and 1946 to regulate fiscal issues and offer advice on all manner of foreign policy. SOCHUM, the Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee, is one of six committees under the direction of the larger General Assembly. Each constituent member of the United Nations is equally represented in the body, whose roles are defined in Chapter 4 of the Charter: Article 11 The General Assembly may discuss any questions relating to the maintenance of international peace and security brought before it by any Member of the United Nations, or by the Security Council, or by a state which is not a Member of the United Nations‌ and may make recommendations with regard to any such questions to the state or states concerned or to the Security Council or to both. Any such question on which action is necessary shall be referred to the Security Council by the General Assembly either before or after discussion.
Article 13 The General Assembly shall initiate studies and make recommendations for the purpose of: a) promoting international co-operation in the political field and encouraging the progressive development of international law and its codification; b) promoting international co-operation in the economic, social, cultural, educational, and health fields, and assisting in the realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion. Although SOCHUM is a powerful governing force, it chooses to cooperate with other branches of the United Nations to draft effective legislation and implement its resolutions. By forging partnerships with the UNHCR, the refugee council, and the UNDP, the development arm, SOCHUM aims to investigate human rights violations worldwide and repair the effects of the misaligned policies that bring about or permit such violations.
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As is the case with all General Assembly committees, SOCHUM’s decisions are not binding upon any member state. Still, the tone adopted in many resolutions can act as an impetus for certain nations to respond. Furthermore, SOCHUM oversees “the advancement of women, the protection of children, indigenous issues, the treatment of refugees, the promotion of fundamental freedoms through the elimination of racism and racial discrimination, and the right to selfdetermination” as well as “social development questions such as issues related to youth, family, ageing, persons with disabilities, crime prevention, criminal justice, and international drug control.” Because the responsibilities of SOCHUM extend into so many policy areas, its recommendations are indispensible for the United Nations as a whole.
Topic I: Technology and education Policy: The Future of Pedagogy Topic History Despite the vast array of national and international education initiatives — the United Nations Girls Education Initiative, which works closely with SOCHUM, is one of the more famous ones — literacy rates have remained stagnant across larges swathes of the developing world. Many setbacks plague these third-world countries and prevent their citizens from accessing a full and complete education: the lack of infrastructure, the shortage of qualified teaching professionals, the use and exploitation of children for labor as a way of supplementing meager family incomes, the dearth of school supplies, and so on. Integrating modern technology into classrooms throughout the developing world, however, has the potential to overcome many of the obstacles that have hitherto hindered effective education. The idea of providing modern technologies to developing countries is simple in theory, but the
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historical reality is much more complex. Intellectual property rights, limited transport infrastructure, shoddy electricity and communications networks, political corruption, and already strained budgets have together prevented the most beneficial of advancements in education from reaching the areas where they are needed most. The use modern technology and its integration into the classroom dates back to the turn of the 20th century. Educational film was the first widespread technological advancement to enter classrooms across the United States and areas of Western Europe. Following the invention of the motion-picture camera by French brothers Auguste and Luis Lumière in 1895, French bureaucrats in the Ministry of Education devised a plan of integrating video clips into the nationalized education system. During the first months of 1898, the first French educational film was created and distributed in Paris for a wealthy, educated segment of society. At the same time, filmmaker-bureaucrats were producing similar films in St. Petersburg, Russia. These early educational movies tended to focus on current innovations (The Telegraph) or important, yet oft-misunderstood scientific
phenomena (The Circulation of the Blood). Such early films proved to be both successful and well received, leading to larger-scale projects. Great Britain created its Bureau of Educational Films Ltd. And other countries followed suits. In the United States, Yale University published a successful experiment detailing the effects of educational films on the learning process and offered suggestions on their successful integration into schools. The popularization of 8-millimeter and 16-millimeter film in the 1930’s and 1940’s only served to accelerate this trend. In the 1950’s, American psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner pioneered a new pedagogical philosophy entitled “programmed instruction” that relied heavily on specialized
Students in South Africa use Apple Computers as part of an Apple learning initiative
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MUN Korea “teaching machines” to structure and present material in an ordered fashion to facilitate comprehension and information retention. His theory stressed organizing material into many small units of instruction with frequent progress checks that could be recorded and monitored over time. Skinner’s philosophies aligned very well with the abilities of early computers, producing new hybrid theories called “computer-based training” and “computer-based learning.” From the 1970’s onwards, computers thus became important tools for both educating and evaluating students. Early computer-based assessments were centered on one-on-one interactions between computers and students, with textual passages and rudimentary animations juxtaposed alongside short feedback quizzes. However, with the advent of the Internet, expanding access to information and facilitating communication, and more advanced terminals, increasing response time and processing capabilities, teachers were able to use computers as research tools and as flexible complements to enhance other lessons. During the late 1990’s, increased average Internet speeds and more user-friendly operating systems
gave way to the rise of distance teaching and distance-learning as convenient and affordable methods of education. American school districts began creating “online campuses” for traditional and non-traditional students while certain European countries, including the United Kingdom, strove to utilize online education to target disabled and handicapped sectors of society for whom physically attending school was either difficult or impossible. Entire online schools, of which the University of Phoenix is the most well-known, cropped up under the guise of providing a quality higher education to full-time workers, parents, retirees, active military members, and other demographic groups who would not otherwise be able to take advantage of a typical education pattern. Recently, the United Arab Emirates invested over one-fifth of its national budget towards education spending, which paid for 14,000 iPads for universities. The goal was to both emphasize English-language instruction and industry-friendly courses and research for the building of a knowledge-based economy. In order to stop traditionalists from resisting change and to promote connectivity, the 14,000 iPads were provided all at once.
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Yet the main issue has been providing quality teachers. The acceptance of technology and the spread of English has recently allowed countries like the United Arab Emirates to hire quality teachers from Australia, the U.S., and the U.K., changing the educational landscape.
A video-feed of a college-level class is projected beyond the physical classroom Over the past thirty years, the UN has sponsored projects addressing direct issues, such as the ICT Task Force. Many of the UN’s projects are informed by non-technological issues, such as those focused on providing equal access to education, modernizing educational systems, and establishing societies that are inclusive. The World Bank has, over the past twenty years, focused on projects aimed at equipping schools with computer laboratories and supporting systematic technology-based reform of
educational systems. The EU has focused on “harmonization,” or the “reduction of individual and institutional differences between countries.” On the other hand, the OECD has employed technology to measure educational standards between countries through various indicators, such as those measuring school and teacher effectiveness based on the role of technology. The pervasiveness of technology in schools worldwide has resulted in many positive changes for students, faculty, and administration alike. The US Department of Education catalogued and explained many of these changes in a multi-year study. Among the most significant were “increased motivation and self-esteem,” “advancement in technical skills,” “accomplishment of more complex tasks,” “more collaboration with peers,” and “increased use of outside resources.” Not only do better-educated workers earn higher wages in the short run, but increasing the average level of education in a country can also increases GDP, quality of living, life expectancy, gender parity, and socioeconomic equality for an entire country in the long run. Raising levels of education across all segments of society has consistently been cited as a way to lift less-developed countries out of poverty, with
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technology being one prominent resource to achieve this goal. Unfortunately, the increased use of technology in classrooms has largely been restricted to wealthier, developed countries that can afford what has been historically expensive equipment. Even in countries where public education is not denied or restricted to any socioeconomic group, financial crises, poor leadership, internal corruption, agricultural seasons, and many other factors are preventing beneficial advancements in education from reaching where they are needed most and millions of children from receiving the education they deserve. To what degree, then, is the United Nations responsible for ensuring that all children have access to quality, modern education?
Current Situation The United Nations and the international community more generally have over the last 10 years come around to the view that by expanding access to educational technology throughout the developing world, we can improve the quality of worldwide education. As importantly, technology, by reducing or eliminating the need for expensive supplies (such as physical textbooks)
or human labor (some think that, with the help of technology, one teacher may be able to effectively teach a greater number of children than he or she otherwise could have), may prove a key part of a sustainable approach to improving educational outcomes across the world. Especially in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the on-going European sovereign debt crisis, many developed countries, which traditionally have funded many of the United Nations’ assistance programs for developing countries, have had to deal with increased budgetary pressures. Some may even be looking to decrease, or at the very least, avoid increasing their foreign aid budgets. As a result, any program that promises to improve global educational outcomes at a lower cost than is traditionally demanded by conventional methods has the potential to appeal strongly to the international community. At the same time, many costs associated with improving technology in the classroom involve high startup costs. The proliferation of online higher education may, in fact, enable many teachers as well as students to learn new material, often at
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no cost. In theory, this could beget a virtuous cycle, whereby teachers in developing countries can learn material at low cost online and then help to teach it to their students, all without the need of expensive travel abroad or of physical attendance at universities. Still, to enable such a cycle to even begin, teachers and students must have ways of engaging with online education. For that to be possible, the international community must confront head-on the lack in many developing countries of everything from the screens (of computers, tablets, or other hardware platforms) on which educational material can be displayed to the Internet connections that enable the transmission of that material. However, giving a poor country access to broadband can be an initially expensive project, even if it pays off in the years to come. Investments in technological hardware may also continue to pay off for several years, but are at least initially expensive. The international community must also confront the reality that technology alone won’t solve problems unless people are using it effectively. At the very least, investments in improving educational technology in
poorer countries must go hand in hand with some level of training so that teachers and students know how to use it. More broadly, the international community must insure that educational technology is not stolen (in the case of hardware such as computers) or appropriated for other purposes. While technology can enable increased efficiency and effectiveness in education, it can also create barriers that prevent teachers and students from truly engaging with each other. In countries like India, local governments have been largely frustrated in their efforts to ensure the most basic pre-requisite for a functioning education system: that teachers show up to work. New educational technologies won’t eliminate these deeper educational problems. In some cases, if handled incorrectly, new technologies could even exacerbate them by providing new ways for teachers or students to game the system. It is therefore imperative that when the United Nations seeks to increase worldwide access to education technology it keeps its focus on improving educational outcomes. Technology is not an end for its own sake, but it rather is only helpful insofar as it helps students to learn. What sorts of technology do this? What else must be changed
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with a country’s technological status in order to ensure that increased educational technology makes a real impact in the classroom? These are the questions that SOCHUM must seek to reckon with. The United Nations has made a number of attempts to increase global access to educational technology. Organs that have been a part of such an effort include: The United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative The UNGEI, or United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative, is one of many UN initiatives designed to positively affect education policy in the developing world. Although the primary goal of the UNGEI is to “reduce the gender gap in school for girls” at all levels, a primary impetus driving this change is the integration of modern technology into the classroom. In December 2011, Google announced its newest partnership with the UNGEI in Tanzania. A multimillion-dollar grant will “empower young girls and women” by “merging education and technological innovation.” The Google grant will also pioneer the use of mobile education technology, gathering demographic information
via cell phones to best direct schools’ resources and linking pedagogic centers in remote areas with ones in urban cores. Women of all ages will also be provided with cell phones “to monitor education programs” and to “challenge perceptions about women and machines.” In short, this revolutionary technological policy hopes not only to close the gender gap but also to improve the quality and efficiency of schools in low-income areas. The World Education Forum In 2000, the United Nations hosted a World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, designed to implement a common worldwide framework for education and work towards the goal of universal education for all children by the year 2015. One of the principal tenets of this conference was entitled “Applying New Technologies and Cost-Effective Delivery Systems in Basic Education.” This paper was revolutionary; it was the first time that leaders of many developing nations were confronted with the idea of providing access to technology in all classrooms, rather than just those in the wealthier areas of city centers. The ideas presented in the body of research were groundbreaking and
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praised by many member states. Unfortunately, the ideas were often seen as unattainable, largely due to their expensiveness. Although some mention was made during the conference of a prospective international fund for educational technology that would be administered by UNESCO or by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, little actually came of the idea. A clearly organized financing mechanism designed to match classrooms in need with relevant technological advances is imperative to help the world’s poorest countries achieve developmental parity. The United Nations Millennium Summit At the United Nations Millennium Summit in New York in 2000, all 193 member states and 23 affiliated international organizations signed a Millennium Declaration that laid out eight goals the world would attempt to achieve within the next 15 years. Chief among these was comprehensive primary education for the world’s youth. Although these goals will unfortunately almost certainly be unmet by 2015, technology is one of the
forces that has kept the goal of universal access to primary education from becoming an utter impossibility. In 2010, the United Nations published a press release stating how information technology is directly advancing the UN’s anti-poverty agenda. Social-networking websites were declared to be a major factor in connecting rural society to urban centers and thereby facilitating the free and rapid flow of knowledge. In fact, the United Nations is determined to “make available the benefits of new technologies … especially information and communications technologies” to achieve these goals. Exactly what technologies fall under this definition and how developing countries can find a way to afford them is a matter of utmost important for this SOCHUM committee.
World leaders met at the United Nations Millennium Development Summit in the year 2000 in New York
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The UN Education Index and UNESCO Technology Initiative Because education is a primary component of overall well-being and can be correlated with economic development, the United Nations has created a statistic known as the Education Index that is calculated annually for every member state and released to the general public. The index weights every country’s levels of education on a scale from 0 to 1 and is calculated by weighting adult literacy rates with primary, secondary, and tertiary gross school enrollment rates. A lower value indicates that a country may require significant external assistance in reforming its domestic educational system. Such assistance may often take the form of a technology infusion. To reward countries that invest in and integrate technology into the classroom, UNESCO recently introduced a King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize that recognizes nations that have successfully integrated information and communications technology into the classroom with a large financial reward. However, critics of the current system decry that money is being funneled into countries that have already succeeded in effectively using
technology in the classroom, while countries without similar resources are being left behind.
Map of the world by level of technology penetration.
United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force In 2001, then-UN SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan responded to an Economic and Social Council request for a body that would address the growing “digital divide,” or the gap between countries with adequate access to modern technology and countries that lack such access. The United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force, or UN ICT TF, was subsequently established and was well received by countries around the globe. The body coordinates the annual World Summit on the
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Information Society, or WSIS, and brings together panels of technical advisors that meet regularly to address the question of distributing current technologies to less developed regions of the world. Yet although two of the group’s tenets are “choosing the right technologies for education” and “achieving better quality and cost-efficiency in education through information and communications technologies,” the group does not have enough power to enact significant changes. Thus while advocacy, awareness, and robust debate have all been seen, relatively few tangible results have been achieved. Although the most recent WSIS meeting in Geneva in May of this year produced revolutionary theories pertaining to low-cost laptop distribution and solar panel electricity supplies in rural areas, they have yet to be put into action.
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Questions to Consider Keep in mind these questions: • For what reasons do certain nations persistently lag behind others in terms of economic growth and to what extent can a modern, technologically advanced education system take action to alleviate this? • Why have certain technologically driven educational reforms and related declarations been helpful in successfully reforming pedagogical policy and why have others not achieved this success? • What are the principal factors – economic, infrastructural, cultural, other – preventing developing countries from tapping into modern educational technology? • How could reexamining and modernizing international educational policy through technological advancements serve to advance development, close the gender gap, and increase economic equality? • When thinking of how to help poorer countries develop increased technological capacity when it comes to education, what sorts of technology are the most important? What forms of educational technology give the most “bang for the buck” when it comes to educational outcomes? Does technology necessarily improve student performance, or must pushes to increase education technology also be integrated with broader pushes for educational reform?
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Role of the Committee SOCHUM benefits from jurisdiction in social, cultural, and humanitarian affairs, three broad categories involved in many international conflicts. The topics of educational policy and its related technology fall squarely into this jurisdiction. Any General Assembly items related to social, cultural, or humanitarian is delegated to SOCHUM for deliberation and voting. All 193 United Nations member states are members of SOCHUM and vote on all presented proposals. Although non-governmental organizations may observe within SOCHUM’s body, they are not allowed to vote. On this topic, SOCHUM will have to deal with a myriad of challenges relating to global policy on technology in education. These range from dealing with the specific, thorny policy questions related to integrating technology into classrooms across the developing world: will teachers know how to use technology? Can schools use technology effectively without a broader change to countries infrastructure? How can technology in developing countries’ classrooms be paid for? What should the role of the private sector be in this? However the committee must also make a broader judgment on whether pursuing increased technological penetration in classrooms throughout the developing world is a worthwhile end. At the end of the day, this committee is concerned with increasing children’s learning—can and will technology really achieve this? Is technology a cost-efficient way of increasing learning, or does it merely look good in a classroom? What should the United Nations’ role be in expanding global access to educational technology?
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The committee will have to evaluate the cross-cultural effectiveness of technology on education. What has led to the success of technology education in some countries and can a similar structure of education be set up in others? What issues do some nations face in integrating technology in pedagogy that others do not? Will there be backlash in integrating innovative ways of learning in areas where tradition is tantamount? Finally, the committee should evaluate the effectiveness of current programs of technology pedagogy. How much impact have these programs had? What changes can be implemented to improve the effectiveness of the programs? Are the programs achieving the goal of increasing access to and providing higher quality education or are they increasing the use of technology as an end in itself? This committee can provide a framework that will guide the world’s approach to access to educational technology for years to come.
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Topic II: Internet Censorship: Social Media, Human Rights, and the Sovreignty of Cyberspace Topic History The history of UN regulation of the Internet begins with the 1988 International Telecommunication Regulations, which has not been revised since its inception. As stated in its preamble, the ITRs recognizes “the sovereign right of each country to regulate its telecommunications,” and “promotes the development of telecommunications services and their most efficient operation while harmonizing the development of facilities for world-wide telecommunications.” (International-Telecommunications-Union) Drafted in a pre-Internet era when many telecom structures were state-owned, the ITRs was essential to ensuring that telecommunications traffic could operate globally by giving private telecommunications carriers a global framework and regulated revenue flow to national governments and private carriers through settlement payments.
Defining telecommunication as “any transmission, emission or reception of signs, signals, writing, images and sounds or intelligence of any nature by wire, radio, optical or other electromagnetic systems” Article 9 “Special Arrangements,” gradually became a legal mechanism supporting the growth of the global Internet. Given that the ITRs was not designed with Internet technology in mind, Article 9 allowed the exchange of certain kinds of traffic outside the provisions of the ITRs. (What are the ITRs?) The signers of the 1988 ITRs could also not have imagined social and cultural revolutions that would come with Internet technology throughout the world, and especially not the political revolutions of 2011, known collectively as the “Arab Spring,” that were at least in part influenced by the pervasiveness of social media. There is little consensus in
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academic circles on exactly how important social media was to the Arab Spring, but there are some commonly understood facts. Leading up to 2011, Facebook users in the Middle East almost doubled from 11.9 million in 2009 to 21.3 million in 2010, and increased by 30% in the Spring of 2011. The percentage of a state population that uses Facebook, known in the literature as Facebook penetration, was 1.94% in Syria, 1.37% in Yemen 22.49% in Tunisia, and 7.66% in Egypt. The amount of Facebook and Twitter penetration, pre-existing regime type, and state responses to the use of social media in organizing protests are factors that help determine the peacefulness of the revolution.
Facebookʼs Arabic logo
What is universally understood is that social media by itself did not cause the revolutions: dissatisfaction with the
status quo of growing economic inequality, high unemployment, skyrocketing food costs, corrupt leaders, and oppressive governments fueled the angry masses who used social media as a political tool. The earliest important demonstrations of the Arab Spring began in December 2010 in Tunisia with the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in protest of the corrupt government and high unemployment. Videos of his protest and other demonstrations he inspired quickly spread through Facebook, which was not censored in Tunisia. In the first two weeks of January alone, facebook penetration increased by 8% in Tunisia. Soon protesters began calling for the resignation of President Ben Ali, resulting in his removal from power on January 14. Before January 14, no mainstream media outlets covered the Tunisian revolution—which was largely peaceful despite the previously autocratic regime—so the only indications of political change and upheaval came through social media. News of the successfully ousted Ben Ali spread to Egypt, fueling the fires of the people’s discontent. By late January, Egyptians successfully organized mass demonstrations, using
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social media to mobilize people onto the streets. In response, Egyptian President Mubarak’s regime shut down Internet and cellphone connections for five days beginning on January 27th. Interestingly, most sources indicate that this strategy worked against Mubarak and probably provoked a surge in protest activity as going out into the streets was the only means for people to gain information with the Internet blacked out. Mubarak was forced to resign on February 11 after 17 days of mostly peaceful protest.
President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia In the revolutions of Libya, Syria, and Yemen, social media played a much less pronounced and effective role, in part because their existing autocratic regimes were informed by the earlier revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.
Yemen has low rates of Internet and Facebook penetration so its revolution has been informed by other factors. Libya and Syria were able to keep much stricter control on its Internet infrastructure, leading the revolution to develop into armed civil war. Muammar Gaddafi reportedly responded to initial demonstrations with brutal suppression, and only after NATO air-strikes did Gaddafi flee Tripoli in August 2011, relinquishing power to a transitional government. President Bashir al-Assad of Syria has similarly responded to demonstrations with brutal force, escalating the country into violent and deadly civil war by 2012. Though the power of social media pales in influence to militia power in the revolutions of Libya and Syria, social media has effectively documented human rights atrocities committed in the suppression of protests in both countries, such as using protesters as human shields. In these countries where traditional mainstream media is heavily censored, social media has been a consistent source of information for the international community. Only in Tunisia and Egypt did the use of social media, among other factors, successfully and peacefully help effect a regime change. Despite the escalated violence of the Libyan revolution and Social, Cultural, and Humanitarian Committee 19
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ongoing Syrian civil war, the Arab Spring has shown that social media, in all countries, can help 1) mobilize protesters rapidly 2) undermine a regime’s legitimacy and 3) expose a regime’s human rights atrocities to the international community.
Protesters in Tahir Square in Cairo wave the Egyptian flag Only in Tunisia and Egypt did the use of social media, among other factors, successfully and peacefully help effect a regime change. Despite the escalated violence of the Libyan revolution and ongoing Syrian civil war, the Arab Spring has shown that social media, in all countries, can help 1) mobilize protesters rapidly 2) undermine a regime’s legitimacy and 3) expose a regime’s human rights atrocities to the international community. In Tunisia and Egypt, Internet censorship policies failed to squelch rebellion,
while in Libya and Syria, such censorship may have counter-intuitively helped to mobilize protesters and ultimately proved an ineffective means of suppression. In the countries where social media was not censored, social media helped build what political theorists call a “civil society,” or a public sphere outside of family, state, and the market where people can exchange ideas and information. Some political theorists think civil society is requisite to advancing democratic forms of government, and in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where traditional forms of media like television and journalism are heavily censored, social media helped to advance a dimension of democratization.
Rally and march in San Francisco for greater democracy in the Middle East
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action in line with the concept of national sovereignty. Difficulty lies in establishing the extent to which Internet as an entity exists to be governed. In the World Conference on International Telecommunications held in December 2012, only 89 out of 151 countries signed the revised International Telecommunications Regulations treaty that included slight changes to the domain of spam, human rights, and the role of authoritarian governments as they relate to communications. Such a split in the international sphere highlights the difficulty in establishing a consensus in the domain of Internet censorship. China’s “Great Firewall” restricts access to thousands of websites and many social media platforms, such as YouTube and Wikipedia. Censorship is defended as a conduit for channeling public interest and reflecting the needs of society. In December 2012, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress passed regulations requiring Internet users to provide their real names to service providers. Regulations such as these make the phenomenon of self-censorship, the
voluntary restriction of individual action, prevalent. Service providers are legally responsible to comply with Chinese laws of Internet access. International organizations such as the UN, OSCE, and OAS issued special mandates on freedom of expression that asked for Internet corporations to resist action that would encourage an official limit to Internet access. The extent of the responsibility of private corporations in promoting values highlighted by the UN and other international entities is something that should be considered.
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MUN Korea Current Situation The Arab Spring brought the human rights and sovereignty concerns related to Internet censorship directly to the forefront this year. In July 2012, the Human Rights Council of the U.N. declared Internet access to be a fundamental human right, and affirmed that “the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, in particular freedom of expression, which is applicable regardless of frontiers and through any media of one’s choice.” Even countries notorious for their censorship policies like China and Cuba signed the resolution, though of course the resolution is in no way legally binding. Analysts take comfort in the fact that at least China and Cuba are not comfortable advocating their restrictive human rights policies on the international stage. Though Internet access may seem at first to be beyond traditional bounds of human rights, the so-called right is actually well grounded in U.N. jurisprudence. Securing Internet access as a human right is argued as an extension of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights signed in 1948: “everyone has the right to… receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers.” In the same article, the U.N. declares that “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression.” (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights) Legal scholars argue that Internet access as a right is derived from the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Obviously the Internet provides platforms with which people can express themselves, like social media, but Internet access also provides information, without which people cannot form informed opinions and express themselves. In this respect, Internet censorship can infringe on freedom of expression, thus providing an argument for Internet freedom. Additionally, some private and public services are offered only online, such as student loan and driving license applications in the U.K. Thus, some legal scholars argue, to deny someone access to the Internet is to deny them full citizenship. Of course there are critics that disagree, such as Vint Cerf, one of the Internet’s original inventors, arguing that “technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself.” Cerf argues that Internet access must be disentangled from freedom of speech because “over time we will end up valuing the wrong things. For example, at one
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time if you didn’t have a horse it was hard to make a living. But the important right in that case was the right to make a living, not the right to a horse.� Internet access is a commercial product, requiring capital investment, and could be classified as just a market privilege that should be regulated like any other commercial product, not as a fundamental human right.
Eleanor Roosevelt holding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
However, Internet access can also help protect other human rights. As mentioned in the topic history, citizens of nations like Tunisia and Libya that heavily censored traditional forms of media were able to organize and broadcast human rights violations to the international community through social media. But even before the violation of human rights, social
media and Internet access can be a democratizing force domestically and internationally. Social media is completely free to use and is becoming increasingly accessible to even the lowest economic classes. Even those who do not own a personal computer can access social media on mobile phones. Whereas traditional forms of media are often controlled by large multi-national corporations and/or states, social media is more so within the popular sphere of control. Social media helps people of all economic classes to access and share information, preventing a monopoly of political power in the hands of the wealthy few. In December 2012, the World Conference on International Telecommunications convened in Dubai to revise the International Telecommunications Regulations. The WCIT is the most important work to date that the U.N. has done to shape international Internet policy on matters including expansion of the legal authority of the ITU, data privacy, and Internet censorship. Some countries like the U.S. advocated for only minor revisions to the ITRs, but other saw the WCIT as an opportunity to expand U.N. jurisdiction into areas
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of cyberspace that have not been regulated or are only domestically regulated. The potential for reform during the WCIT raises important questions of Internet sovereignty: what state organizations should have sovereignty over the Internet and what should be granted to private Internet companies? In an age of rapid globalization that has partially been the result of Internet technology, how does cyberspace change our traditional notions of sovereignty?
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Logo for the World Conference on International Telecommunications
Nations in favor of expanding the power of the ITU, including China, Russia and India want to centralize Internet governance, essentially wresting control of Internet resources currently under US control. Currently, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit body that assigns domain names, is under contract with the US Department of Commerce, but other countries would like such functions to be undertaken by a multinational body. Among other changes to the ITRs, India proposes to create a regulatory body called the Committee on Internet Related Policies. The proposed CIRP would take over governance of Internet infrastructure resources like ICANN, but may also contain provisions for standardizing international codes of conduct for Internet censorship. ) India and others are uncomfortable with how much political power the US government has over major US based social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, which can be used to advance its own agendas. Critics point out that while the US advocated for social media to remain open in Tunisia and Libya to fuel pro-democratic protests during the Arab Spring,
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Facebook agreed to remove posts that incited riots in London later that summer. Similar to the CIRP proposal, Russia and Chine proposed to adopt an International Code of Conduct for Information Security, which would commit signatories to “curbing the dissemination of information that incites terrorism, secessionism or extremism or that undermines other countries’ political, economic and social stability.” By adopting either the CIRP or the International Code of Conduct for Information Security, Internet governance would be centralized in the UN, but at the cost of individual state sovereignty over cyberspace. The US and its European allies argue against these proposals and other reforms that would change the decentralized and democratic structure of the Internet. Currently, private companies control the important social media platforms, and both operate under their own censorship policies as well as local state laws. Do these private companies have human rights responsibilities? Twitter has openly embraced its role in the Arab Spring, while has not publicly supported the revolutions, even removing important protest pages that registered with fake
identification. Protestors wishing to protect themselves while committing risky political maneuvers often rely on anonymity and pseudonyms, which violates Facebook’s terms of use. Social Media companies must walk a fine line in deciding what to censor, often falling back on the requirement that the content must incite violence, which is not always easy to determine. As an example, in September 2012 Google decided to block access to a Youtube video ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad that led to violence throughout the Middle East, including the death of the American Ambassador to Libya among other diplomatic personnel. Google kept the video on Youtube but blocked access in Libya and Egypt. Though the video itself does not contain “fighting words,” Google temporarily blocked access because of the “very difficult situation.” Should private companies like Google be making these tough calls, which must balance freedom of speech with concerns about public safety?
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If we are to accept Internet access and Internet freedom as human rights, we must ultimately decide what governmental or nongovernmental organizations will protect those rights. Traditional notions of sovereignty depend on fixed territorial boundaries, but the Internet has no such boundaries. Instead, the Internet encompasses an impossibly wide range of citizens with different cultural mores and local laws. It will be up to multi-lateral institutions like the WCIT and SOCHUM to answer these tough questions.
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Questions to Consider Keep in mind these questions: • Is Internet access a human right? Why or why not? • Should Internet governance be centralized in a body like the ITU? What level of Internet governance should be given to nation-states? • How should nation-states work multilaterally to adopt fair and uniform codes of Internet conduct? • What level of governance should be given to private Internet companies? What are their human rights responsibilities? • What role should social media play in instances of political unrest? • Should we adopt an international code of censorship? What are its dangers? • How does the Internet change traditional notions of sovereignty?
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Role of the Committee As a constituent committee of the General Assembly, SOCHUM has neither the authority nor the mechanisms to create or enforce a legally binding international framework for dealing with issues of political rights and national sovereignty in cyber space. That being said, the very nature of the Social, Cultural, and Humanitarian Committee, composed of representatives from every state in the United Nations, gives it immense influence in terms of setting international norms. A resolution that SOCHUM passes has the power to put pressure on countries, companies, and individuals to conform to international norms. In the case of political rights and the Internet, however, some of those international norms are as yet un-established and controversial. What are an individual’s rights in cyberspace? Can governments limit them? Can corporations? Is the international community a plausible arbiter on these questions? These are the issues that SOCHUM must deal with, keeping in mind that the resolution it produces will help to set international standards and procedures for cyberspace for the foreseeable future.
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Structure of the Committee SOCHUM will be run as a single delegate committee, with most major countries of the world being represented. Each delegate will be responsible for researching and representing the views of his or her country. We strongly encourage every delegate to take part in as many different aspects of committee as possible, including structured debate and resolution-writing. Debate will run according to normal parliamentary procedure. All delegates will receive a packet containing the rules that will govern SOCHUM debate and will have the option of attending a parliamentary procedure training session at the beginning of the conference. This is encouraged for delegates who may have little to no experience in Model UN. While the committee won’t necessarily produce passing resolutions that will pass on both topics, we expect a lively and vigorous debate and resolution-writing process. Coordination between different blocs to combine resolutions will be encouraged. If you have any questions about how committee will operate, how to conduct your research, or any other question relating to YMUN, please do not hesitate to contact us. We look forward to meeting all of you!
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Suggestions for Further Research Here are some sources we found useful in compiling this topic guide. Your research should not end with these, though they are a good place to start. All delegates should complete a position paper before the conference, briefly (in about a page for each topic) outlining relevant history of the topic (and any experience your country has with the topic), your country’s views on the topic, and some proposed solutions or courses of action that your country supports. These do not have to be submitted until the first committee session; however, try to submit them by email by May 1. My email is: ymunkorea.services@yira.org. Topic I • Report on the Effectiveness of Technology in Schools, 1990-1994 by Silvin-Kachala and Bialo • http://www.itu.int/wsis/index.html • http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/EdReformStudies/EdTech/effectsstudents.html • unesco.org, un.org/ga/61/third/third.shtml, undp.org, ungei.org • STEM the tide: reforming science, technology, engineering, and math education in America / David E. Drew ; foreword by Alexander W. Astin • Visions 2020: transforming education and training through advanced technologies http://infousa.state.gov/education/overview/docs/2020visions.pdf • A Study of Factors Related to the Use of Motion Picture Films by Public School Teachers / Nerden, J. T. • Special issue on the application of information technologies to engineering and science education vol. 39, no. 3 • Using technology in teaching / William Clyde and Andrew Delohery • Developing Science, Mathematics, and ICT Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Patterns and Promising Practices http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTAFRREGTOPSEIA/Resources/No.7SMICT.pdf • Building science, technology, and innovation capacity in Rwanda: developing practical solutions to practical problems / Alfred Watkins and Anubha Verma, editors
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Topic II • Social Media, Political Change, and Human Rights, by Sarah Joseph:35 B.C. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. 145 (2012): http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/iclr/vol35/iss1/3 • Human Rights Council. “A/HRC/20/L. 13.” 29 June 2012. <http://www.regeringen.se/content/1/c6/19/64/51/6999c512.pdf> • The 2012 World Conference On International telecommunications: Another Brewing Storm Over Potential UN Regulation of the Internet: <http://www. whoswholegal.com/news/features/article/29378/the-2012-world-conference-international-telecommunications-brewing-storm-potential-un-regulation-internet/> • Twitter, Facebook and Youtube’s role in Arab Spring http://socialcapital.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/twitter-facebook-and-youtubes-role-in-tunisia-uprising/ • 2010 Annual Report: New developments in human rights and the rule of law in China : roundtable before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, second session, October 20, 2010 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-111hhrg63114/pdf/CHRG-111hhrg63114.pdf • Google and Internet control in China: A nexus between human rights and trade? : hearing before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, second session, March 24, 2010 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-111hhrg56161/pdf/CHRG-111hhrg56161.pdf • Access Denied: The practice and policy of global Internet filtering / edited by Ronald Deibert [et al] • Internet Development and Information Control in the People’s Republic of China http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33167.pdf • Technology and the culture of control / Raiford Guins • Blogs and bullets II: New media and conflict after the Arab Spring / Sean Aday [et al.]
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Glossary • Impetus - Stimulus, impulse • Stagnant - Inactive, sluggish • Swathe - Parts, areas • Dearth - Lack • Hitherto - Up to this time • Shoddy - Of poor quality • Phenomena - Occurrence (plural of phenomenon) • Juxtaposed - Placed side by side • Advent - Rival • Parity - Equality in amount or status • Beget - To produce as an effect • Virtuous - Morally excellent • Appropriate - To set apart or authorize for a specific purpose • Exacerbate - To irritate • Game the system - To take advantage of/misuse the system • Insofar - As long (as)
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• Reckon - To deal with, consider • Pedagogic - Pertaining to pedagogy (teaching) • Ensuring - To secure or guarantee • Utter - Complete • Gross - Total, complete • Decry - To speak disparagingly of • Tenets - Opinions or principles usually considered true by members of a group • Preamble - Introduction to a document • Sovereign - Ruling • Telecommunications - Systems of information exchange • Immolation - Sacrifice • Squelch - To suppress, restrain • Counter-intuitive - Contrary to common sense expectations • Jurisprudence - Rules of a government • Infringe - Violate • Disentangled - Disconnected, detached, not a part of
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• Censorship - Forbiddance, ban • Convened - Met • Jurisdiction - Area of authority • Regulated - Controlled • Dissemination - Distribution • Secessionism - Insurgency • Maneuver - Move, tactic • Anonymity - Obscurity, namelessness • Pseudonym - False name, alias
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Notes International Telecomunication Union. “International Telecommunication Regulations. Geneva, 1989. <http://www. itu.int/osg/csd/wtpf/wtpf2009/documents/ITU_ITRs_88.pdf> “What are the ITRs?” <http://www.Internetsociety.org/itr> Sarah Joseph, Social Media, Political Change, and Human Rights, 35 B.C. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. 145 (2012), http:// lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/iclr/vol35/iss1/3 Sarah Joseph, Social Media, Political Change, and Human Rights, 35 B.C. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. 145 (2012), http:// lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/iclr/vol35/iss1/3 Sarah Joseph, Social Media, Political Change, and Human Rights, 35 B.C. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. 145 (2012), http:// lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/iclr/vol35/iss1/3 “Twitter, Facebook and Youtube’s role in Arab Spring.” <http://socialcapital.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/twitter-facebook-and-youtubes-role-in-tunisia-uprising/> “Twitter, Facebook and Youtube’s role in Arab Spring.” <http://socialcapital.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/twitter-facebook-and-youtubes-role-in-tunisia-uprising/> Sarah Joseph, Social Media, Political Change, and Human Rights, 35 B.C. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. 145 (2012), http:// lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/iclr/vol35/iss1/3 Human Rights Council. “A/HRC/20/L. 13.” 29 June 2012. <http://www.regeringen.se/content/1/c6/19/64/51/6999c512. pdf> “Adding to the online bandwagon: UN declares Internet access a human right.” <http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/ pageviews/2012/07/adding-to-the-online-bandwagon-un-declares-Internet-access-a-human-right> United Nations. “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” <http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml> “Government makes public-sector services online-only.” http://www.computerweekly.com/news/1280095879/Government-makes-public-sector-services-online-only Guinchard, Audrey, Human Rights in Cyberspace (September 15, 2010). Society of Legal Scholars Conference (SLS) 2010. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1694483 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1694483 Sarah Joseph, Social Media, Political Change, and Human Rights, 35 B.C. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. 145 (2012), http:// lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/iclr/vol35/iss1/3 ““The 2012 World Conference On International telecommunications: Another Brewing Storm Over Potential UN Regulation of the Internet.” <http://www.whoswholegal.com/news/features/article/29378/the-2012-world-conference-international-telecommunications-brewing-storm-potential-un-regulation-Internet/> India’s Proposal will help take the web out of U.S. control” The Hindu. 17 May 2012. <http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article3427042.ece> India’s Proposal will help take the web out of U.S. control” The Hindu. 17 May 2012. <http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article3427042.ece> “Britain Blames Social Media for Class Riots, Looks to Censorship” http://www.dailytech.com/Britain+Blames+Social+Media+For+Class+Riots+Looks+to+Censorship/article22435.htm “The 2012 World Conference On International telecommunications: Another Brewing Storm Over Potential UN Regulation of the Internet.” <http://www.whoswholegal.com/news/features/article/29378/the-2012-world-conference-international-telecommunications-brewing-storm-potential-un-regulation-Internet/> “Internet Censorship: Goodbye Freedom.” <http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/censorship-of-the-Internet-mea-us-g8nations-cirp/1/215718.html> Sarah Joseph, Social Media, Political Change, and Human Rights, 35 B.C. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. 145 (2012), http:// lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/iclr/vol35/iss1/3
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“As Violence Spreads in Arab World, Google Blocks Access to Inflammatory Video.” http://www.nytimes. com/2012/09/14/technology/google-blocks-inflammatory-video-in-egypt-and-libya.html?_r=2&hp xxiii “Did the U.N. Internet Governance Summit Actually Accomplish Anything?” http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/12/14/wcit_2012_has_ended_did_the_u_n_internet_governance_summit_accomplish_anything.html xxiv “Chinese Internet Censorship” http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1885961,00.html xxv “China Toughens Its Restrictions on Use of the Internet” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/world/asia/china-toughens-restrictions-on-internet-use.html?_r=0 xxvi International Mechanisms for Promoting Freedom of Expression: Joint Declaration http://www.article19.org/data/files/pdfs/standards/three-mandates-dec-2005.pdf
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