create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life, premised on the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respecting fully and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.8
The universality and interdependence of rights enshrined in the UDHR and the Geneva Declaration subserve the development and democratization of our societies. The 2003 declaration was more focused on describing a philosophy than it was on proposing a specific program of implementation. In the 15 years since the declaration was made, the vision that it presents has gradually taken shape through initiatives led by organizations such as the International Telecommunications Union to define specific universal rights for the information society.
Here, I would like to emphasize an essential point. Universal rights are rights of individuals who hold subjective rights and who are able to exercise those rights. The “person-based” or “people-centered” nature of fundamental rights lies at the heart of the principles of communication that I will consider later, and it therefore imposes an ethical obligation on policies and policymakers.
The information society is not a closed society. Nor is it a place for a privileged few. Rather, it extends across the globe and should become even more universal among people, countries, and media. Indeed, universality lies, as expressed by the United Nations (2008, See, for example, the following statement by UN in December 2008 https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/are-human-rights-universal), at the “core” of human rights, and it connects with the principles of interdependence, indivisibility, equality, and nondiscrimination. This relates to another research topic in communication law, namely minorities and how to guarantee communication rights to groups that are minorities owing to their members’ language, ethnicity, disability, age, or any other sociopolitical reality that may put such a group at a disadvantage in relation to others. The principles of universality and justice demand the creation of conditions that ensure equality for minority groups, sometimes based on their differences relative to the majority.
Communication rights, previously known in general terms as “freedom of expression” and also referred to as the “right to freedom of expression and information,” were fully defined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. These rights include the freedom to “seek, receive and impart” information, and they are characterized by six key features (INCL 2015) that are especially relevant in the Internet-based society. This amounts to a quite vehement stance despite criticisms of the UN system of rights. Though other authors in this volume will return to this topic in greater detail, I wish to highlight that the following are among the principles of communication rights:
They apply to all without distinction. Any discrimination based on language, color, race, sex, religion, or opinion is void.
Their geographic area is universal and knows no borders. This universality is guaranteed by the Internet, unless services or sites are blocked, as they still are in many countries.
Their scope, while not limitless, is broad and affects “information and ideas of all kinds.” The UN Human Rights Committee employs the term “expression” in a broadly defined way to include not only political, cultural, and artistic expression, but also “controversial, false and even shocking expressions.”
They include the right not only to receive information but also to impart or disseminate information. They protect radio listeners, broadcasters, witnesses of events or public protests, and protesters themselves. In other words, both active and passive exercise of the communication rights is guaranteed.
They demand that states create guarantees to protect them and eliminate any abridgments of these rights.
Finally, they include dissemination of ideas or messages in any form or medium.
Communication law and international texts hold that among subjects, professionals enjoy greater protection than private individuals. These professionals include journalists, full- or part-time reporters, bloggers, and those who own or publish their own media. They exercise universal communication rights (the “function of informing,” as Desantes stated in 1976) on the basis of authority tacitly delegated to them from private individuals. From this authority derive professionals’ special privileges or corporate rights, such as professional confidentiality and conscientious objection. The UN has reaffirmed the rights of journalists to gain access to places and events, the right to nondiscriminatory press accreditation, and the right of journalists not to identify their sources9 – a right that is unprotected in many jurisdictions, including in several US states.
The signing of the covenant in 1966 therefore prohibited restricting access of professionals and denying freedom of movement to foreign media or human rights observers.
Related Universal Rights
Though communication rights were already linked to such rights as the right to culture and education and to copyright in the human rights documents of 1948 and 1966, it was not until the first Geneva Summit (Padovani and Pavan 2006; Corredoira 2007) that these links and the complimentarily of these rights became clearer, especially for an Internet-based society. As I mentioned before, within European doctrine (Desantes Guanter 1974; Sanchez Férriz 1975; Derieux 2010a, 2010b), communication rights contain and complete the “right to freedom of expression” and other, older conceptions of “communication rights” from previous centuries.
The working hypothesis that I propose is to consider the content of communication rights (and their three components of seeking, receiving, and imparting information) as relevant for information relationships in the past and today, after the invention of the Internet.
There is a clear parallel between, on one hand, these three components (Corredoira 2006, 2007) and, on the other hand, the right to culture and education. This parallel can be found in Articles 19 and 27 of the UDHR (see Table 3.1).
Table 3.1 Related universal rights.
| Communication rights | Relevant UDHR article(s) | Dimension of the Geneva Declaration | UDHR articles dealing specifically with the Information Society |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEEK | Art. 19. “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” | ACCESS/INCLUSION | Art. 21.1. “Universal, ubiquitous, equitable and affordable access to ICT infrastructure and services, constitutes one of the challenges of the Information Society and should be an objective of all stakeholders involved in building it. …” |
| Art. 27.2 “Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.” | CREATE/PRODUCE |
55. “We reaffirm our commitment to the principles of freedom of the press and freedom of information, as well as those of the independence, pluralism and diversity of media, which are essential to the Information Society.
|
