Assignment #3

Composition

The Internet and social media have become increasingly important in political activity. Blogging, video-sharing and tweeting were crucial in the political events in North Africa and the Middle East in 2011. They are important to human rights defenders everywhere. But the use of these new technologies to assert old freedoms has been met with repression by some governments.

A recent study of 37 countries by Freedom House cites increasing website blocking and filtering, content manipulation, attacks on and imprisonment of bloggers, punishment of ordinary users, cyber attacks and coercion of website owners to remove content, in attempts by authoritarian states to reduce political opposition. It suggests that Internet restrictions around the globe are partly a response to the exploding popularity, and significant role in political and social activism, of sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Governments consistently or temporarily closed down such sites in 12 of the countries studied, including Egypt and Tunisia where democracy advocates relied heavily on Facebook to mobilise supporters and organise mass rallies.

Human rights’ includes a wide range of different rights from the basic ones to more subjective ones, however, they all involve the need of providing a dignified human existence. Human rights can be classified in several distinctions such as civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Although human rights have been classified in a number of different manners it is important to note that international human rights law stresses that all human rights are universal, indivisible and interrelated, which means no right is more important than any other.

Bibliography:

http://www.humanrights.is/en/human-rights-education-project/human-rights-concepts-ideas-and-fora/part-i-the-concept-of-human-rights/definitions-and-classifications