In this series, Women In Power, we feature women who have done groundbreaking work in the field of gender, sexuality, women’s rights and the likes to get an insight into their lives and their work. More and more people are joining the feminist movement and working on gender and we wish to bring them in the limelight, one life at a time.
With pulsating advancements in technology and internet facilities come great freedom and responsibilities. However, increasingly, this has been taken for granted by many and used to harass some segments of the society. Social media happens to be the biggest platform of such abuse of technological accessibility. As there is no stringent censorship on the content shared online, on social media platforms, through cellular networking etc., people tend to misuse this perk as a method to target other people. The most affected parties of social media harassment are women, LGBTQ, religious minorities among others.
Digital rights are a relatively lesser known human rights phenomenon in South Asian societies. Masses are unaware of the rights and responsibilities that they have as a user of digital space and technology. Nighat Dad is a Pakistani lawyer and digital rights activist who campaigns actively to educate people about the rights and responsibilities they have in a digital space. Dad originally hails from Jhang, Punjab and has received her law degree in criminal and family law from The University of Punjab, Lahore. Dad has ample experience working in the digital rights arena and has recently won the prestigious Human Rights Tulip Award 2016. She is the executive director of the Digital Rights Foundation, an organisation that campaigns and educates the masses about online spaces, use of cellular phones and how to deal with online harassment. Her work is basically targeted to educate and empower the marginalized communities in order to fight online harassment.
Feminism in India spoke to Nighat Dad regarding her work experience as a digital rights activist, her take on the newly passed cybercrime bill, the role of DRF in empowering women and her plans on launching a cyber-harassment helpline in Pakistan.
Q1. When did you start working as a digital rights activist? Tell us about your work as a digital rights activist.
I founded the Digital Rights Foundation in 2012 with the goal to work around internet governance in Pakistan. Internet freedom, digital rights, educating the masses regarding their digital rights and responsibilities etc. are some of the main objectives of the Foundation. Additionally, the DRF also acts as a watchdog for surveillance of the cyber laws and policies. It keeps a close eye on how the government is regulating these cyber laws and campaigns against any surveillance carried out by the government on the digital spaces of people which transgresses the humanitarian boundaries. Moreover, the DRF also provides trainings and workshops to journalists, human rights activists, NGOs etc. to educate them on how they can use cyber space and their cellular phones in order to facilitate their work.
Q2. How did the idea of DRF cross your mind? Tell us the current projects DRF is working on.
The basic goal was to mainstream the idea of digital rights in the country. During my time as a digital rights activist, I have noticed that people are unaware of their rights and liberties in the online spaces. Surprisingly, a lot of mainstream organizations working for human rights issues did not have apt knowledge about the rights that people have in online spaces. Therefore, the main goal of DRF was to raise awareness regarding the internet freedom and also to inform the policy makers and legislators how they can make cyber laws that are human rights friendly.
At the moment, the DRF is involved in multiple projects ranging from digital security trainings, violence against women online, online surveillance etc. We are also working with different stakeholders, researching and releasing different reports on the matter. Every year, we issue a “Freedom On The Net” report, which analyses the issue of internet freedom in Pakistan. This report is conducted by Freedom House, a think-tank in the US, and Pakistan is amongst the 65 countries where this report is covered by different partners. So DRF is the foundation that does it from Pakistan, every year.
DRF also looks into different existing legislations regarding cyber spaces and how these legislations are being misused, for instance, the blasphemy law and how it is misused in online spaces. We released a similar report last year on blasphemy cases in digital spaces, in which we looked into different case studies. So we explore different areas where existing legislations are being misused by different entities.
DRF has also taken an initiative to draft a response to the legislation on data protection and the privacy protection mechanism in Pakistan. So we will be drafting a policy brief really soon and we will be sharing it with the members of the Parliament who have been very interested in the cybercrime debate. So we are looking forward to join hands with the policy makers to come up with a new data protection legislation which is very integral for internet users in Pakistan, who are not aware of their privacy rights or any other digital rights while they are using online spaces and mobile technologies.
Q3. Like you mentioned earlier, there is a scarcity of information amongst the masses regarding their digital rights. Why do you think this is so?
I think this is mainly because the area of digital rights is particularly and relatively newer than the traditional concept of human rights. Technology is going through a boom in the current century and as it is growing, the use of internet and mobile phones has increased. So, this whole digital space phenomenon has started after 2005. Now we have 3G and 4G in Pakistan which came 2-3 years ago, this allowed more access of internet to people. So I feel that accessibility (of technology and internet) was an issue and a cause of scarcity of information amongst the masses regarding the digital rights.
However, I also think that there is limited knowledge regarding this particular field because there are not a lot of people in Pakistan who are talking about it. There are only a handful of digital rights activists who talk about these issues and they are also sometimes silenced by the State, labelling them as propagandists and anti-state agents. There is a harrowing lack of digital literacy in our textbooks and literature which is also a reason why people are not aware of their digital rights and responsibilities.
This issue is, however, not just valid in the Pakistani context. This is a global issue and even many developed countries are struggling with the right balance of security versus internet freedom.
Q4. How does your work as a digital rights activist help women?
Under our campaign called the “Hamara Internet” campaign, we look into the issue of violence against women online. Our aim is to mainstream the idea of digital rights awareness amongst the women who use internet or cell phones. We think that women face a lot of problems when it comes to accessibility of technology – like patriarchal, cultural and societal restraints – which cause hindrances for women to access technology and internet. However, on the other hand we have a lot of women who use technological platforms to voice their opinions, example Qandeel Baloch and other feminist activists, who raise a voice on social media platforms regarding the misogyny and sexism in our society.
So, under Hamara Internet, we cover all these issues, from fighting online harassment to taking legal recourse. We help to equip women regarding legal cyber law actions, to take informed decisions, how to secure themselves in digital spaces; what to share and what not to share online etc. We encourage and empower women to reclaim their online spaces and fight back against the harassment that they go through online.
Q5. While working with women and other communities, did yo