Volker Turk: Human rights are the basis on which the digital age should be based

However, the pace of its development also poses serious risks, Volcker Turk warned, ranging from restrictions on freedom of expression and violations of privacy to discrimination and increasing threats of our common sense of truth and reality.

On Monday, Turk addressed a high -level event on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the World Information Society in Geneva, where he said: “In the face of this tremendous change in particular, we need more human rights, no less.”

The High Commissioner stressed the need to give priority to human rights and use it as a road map to work at this moment on the fundamental change. He stressed that “the legal obligations of countries and the duties of companies to respect human rights provide guidelines to combat misleading information and protect our data from illegal use.”

These guidelines also help to combat algorithm, digital hate speech, enhance confidence and comprehensive digital decisions.

The World Information Society Summit

The World Information Society Summit is a United Nations multilateral list on digital governance and cooperation with a vision aimed at strengthening information and knowledge that focuses on human, comprehensive and directed towards development.

The World Information Society Summit was established In 2001, it was held in two phases in December 2003 in Geneva and November 2005 in Tunisia and Italy.

Since then, the forum has gathered the diverse stakeholders to cooperate on digital governance and enhance a person’s digital environment, comprehensive, and directed towards development. Mr. Turk said: “The summit helped create space for countries, technology companies, civil society, and others to harness the strength of information and communications technology for development.”

Towards a comprehensive digital environment for everyone

The High Commissioner stressed that the coming months will witness decisive decisions on the regulation of the digital field, including the new United Nations mechanisms on artificial intelligence and data governance.

He concluded his speech by saying: “We have an opportunity to make teams. We must unite the mine – states, technology companies, international organizations, civil society, and others – to work towards a comprehensive and open digital environment for all, everywhere.”