XV Edition GIZ Law Journal

EDITORIAL

EDITORIAL

problem: The Information and Privacy Agency was established as an independent Agency with wide ranging possibilities and competences responsible for supervising the implementation of the legislation for personal data protection and access to public documents. Due to the novelty of this Agency, it was necessary to make its scope known to an enriched public. This was achieved through the cooperation between the Agency and the GIZ project “ Support to EU-Integration Reform Processes in Kosovo” which in turn led to the enforcement of fundamental rights. Because the GIZ Law Journal is also meant to be a marketplace for sharing opinions and information, we thought the 15th edition is an appropriate occasion to review some of the feature-related topics of previous issues and ask the authors for an update. We would like to draw particular attention to the following aspects: For democracy to succeed, it must be based on a human rights framework that includes the rights to free speech and information, which in turn facilitate others, such as the rights to education and healthcare. The protection and enforceability of rights is crucial to avoid that they degenerate into mere toothless tigers. In this regard, the regional human rights regimes play an important role. In her update to the article “ Der Afrikanische Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte und Rechte der Völker: Von einer Handvoll Mitarbeitern hin zur kontinentalen Menschenrechtsinstanz” from 2015, Iris Breutz points out that over the past 7 years, the Court has shaped and developed African human rights protection through landmark rulings - including freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and the right to political participation. The impression that the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights has established itself as an essential part of regional human rights protection is also confirmed by Karin Pluberg in her update of the article “ Values and Pride in Africa: Recent developments in the African Human Rights

A combination of both challenges - authoritarian oriented leader figures and new media - has created new challenges for democratic systems. We asked you to tell us how these challenges are being met in your countries: whether you are experiencing trends of the rise of illiberal populism in your countries and/or regions, whether these trends are affecting your work, and how you are responding; whether there are discussions in and around your projects on the questions about international tech enterprises that might be leading to the erosion of pluralistic and independent press freedom. Where are the boundaries between hate speech and free speech? Should private companies be responsible for controlling unacceptable speech? An interesting article we received from Kosovo deals with another of the rights associated with freedom of expression and information – the right to privacy. Do you remember the times before wide-spread digitalization, when it was possible to communicate with friends and colleagues without it being know to anyone else? We could follow and join groups and movements without having to disclose identities. We could publish and distribute pamphlets, posters, brochures, newspapers, and books without knowing the creator, publisher, and reader. In the modern world, almost every act online impairs or accesses information like participating in an online chat, networking with friends and colleagues, and surfing websites and reading news, or downloading files. In online interactivity, almost every act is an act of expression which generates and stores content, some of which is publicly available, butmost of which is exclusive to select individuals and groups only. Yet each of these acts also generates transactional information and can be monitored by unintended parties. In turn, nearly every act of expression is now observable to communications providers, and in turn, the State. Dr. Shpetim Bajrami points out in his contribution “The Promise of Privacy and Transparency - its Protection and Enforcement in the Republic of Kosovo” that Kosovo has addressed the

Freedom of Speech as a Right to Know? Editorial

Dear Readers, The right to free speech is currently the subject of much international attention. Be it Elon Musk, who mentions the right at least once a day after buying Twitter; be it the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 27) in Egypt, in the context of which the Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Aid expresses that it is unacceptable that people who want to express their opinions freely and stand up for this right are punished with long prison sentences; or be it India’s recent downgrade from “world’s largest democracy” to “electoral autocracy” by the Gothenburg-based Institute Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), because of threats to media freedom, academia, and civil society. The right to free speech is only one side of the coin. A meaningful participation in democratic processes requires a citizenry that is well informed. Commitment to open and transparent governance is non negotiable if people are to get the information, they need to hold their governments to account, build trust, reduce corruption and be active and meaningful participants in their own development. Freedom of speech and access to quality information are as interlinked as they are essential to development and democracy. Today, it is not only the rise of autocracies around theworld that threatens the enjoyment of rights, as does the persecution of independent media and social activists. The growing scale and influence of large tech companies created new problems for existing democratic systems. Consider the heyday of the pandemic, in which battles for interpretive authority were fought on social media: on the one hand, by new forms of negationism as propagated by anti-science and anti-vaccine groups; on the other, by people who feel that governments are exploiting the pandemic to impose more control on societies.

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