UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : OHCHR/Special Procedures - Press Conference: Elections in the digital age

[Other language spoken]

So today the idea is just to present some of the some of the results of the report on the highlights of the report on the election, the Super electoral cycle.

So 2023 and 2025 was the Super elect, super electoral cycle in which half of of the citizens in the in, in, in, in the democracies elected their local, national and and international representatives.

And then it was a very important test for humanity and for our democracies.

So the right to freedom of assembly and association play an essential role for the effective exercise of the right to participate in political and public life, including the realisation of the right to vote and elect and be elected in genuine elections and to push back against the global democratic backsliding that we are living worldwide.

Associations such as civil society and political parties are fundamental in elections.

And then, although the role of political parties is more clear, some governments, especially the more repressive and coercive environments, do not recognise that the participation of civil society is also vital for the elections.

So civil society promote electoral integrity, human rights and inclusive political participation.

Also, civil society advocate for legal reports, reforms, support, manage generalised groups, educate voters, prevent electoral violence, monitor elections to enhance transparency and public trust, also contrast misinformation, promote peaceful engagement and expose fraud, among many other important tasks.

But despite these essential activities, they were stigmatised, suppressed and criminalised by the use of smear campaign and disinformation, weaponization of foreign age laws, antiterrorism and extremist measures.

And also, civil society faced harassment, arbitrary detention, torture and even killings.

In a similar way, opposition parties and candidates face political persecution, arbitrary restriction and legal obstacles, including registration requirements that were burdensome and state control of an internal procedures.

And then opposition parties also face financial barriers such as high registration fields, fees and restricted funding.

The political repression in the this super election cycle from 2020 three 2025, the first quarter escalated globally.

The political repression with opposition figures subjected to arbitrary detention, prosecution and attacks, and where the judicial systems were also used to silence dissent and candidates were attacked by both state and state actors.

In the same way, the right to peaceful assembly, including protest, although they were there, is essential for electoral participation, which has been proven in quickly.

And the cycle also saw an increase in global protests that were manifesting dissatisfaction with election process, alleged fraud, repression, exclusion and other societal issues.

But in response, many governments restricted the right to assemble through also administrative restrictions, arbitrary arrests, excessive force, a stigmatisation and criminalisation of protesters.

And in extreme cases we saw mass detentions and the use of deadly force.

And these actions will reflect A broader trend of silencing dissent and stifled public dialogue.

And also another of the conclusion of the report is the was the problematic use of digital technologies.

So many states use biometric voter registration without transparency, oversight and legal safeguards deepening the distrust on this systems.

And then surveillance technology like facial facial recognition and spyware were also used against activist opposition leaders and enabling discriminatory mass surveillance and political repression.

And then all these discouraged participation suppress, turn out and enable post election reprisals, creating chilling effect especially by on marginalised groups by instilling fear and undermining public identity.

And following the Super electoral cycle, freedom of peaceful assembly and association are still facing increasing threats with new governments curbing civilian activism through funding restriction and criminalisation and stigmatisation.

And then the rhetoric is around.

For example, they use the funding and vilification of USAID also created even more stigmatisation, revive foreign ageing laws and justify crackdowns in many different countries in different regions.

The cycle_that democracy extends beyond the Election Day and then ensuring freedom of assembly and association through the cycle to the electoral cycle and in electoral moments is essential for genuine elections.

Civil society and media and media must be respected and post election expressions protected to keep authorities accountable and without space for peaceful engagement.

Elections cannot be considered free, fair or genuine.

So it's a relation between the respect of freedom of assembly and of association and the actual existence of of free and fair elections.

The report includes a list of recommendations that I can mention later.

But then the most obvious recommendation, and perhaps not so obvious if I need to say it, is that authorities like must understand that being in a public position means that they need to be open to receiving and considering criticism from the public, the media, the Civic Society and other organisations and from protest.

So dissent is part of democratic societies and rather than being repressed as it is being now, should be welcome and permanently protected.

So the report is also a window of opportunity and needs to be to become also a guide for the next elections because we are having elections all the time.

And then how all those recommendations can actually meet the possibility for governments to do reform and to actually take more into account the need of the respect of freedom of assembly and of association.

That is from my side.

Thank you, thank you, Miss Romero.

The next speaker will be Miss Irene Khan, who is the UN Special Rapporteur on the freedom of opinion and expression.

[Other language spoken]

Let me start by saying that last year we saw countries populated with about a total of half of the world's population going to the polls.

As you heard, from liberal democracies like the European Union to electoral autocracies like Russia, both the right to freedom of expression and the right to vote are endangered.

We saw enough over the past year to make that statement, and from my perspective, the perspective of my mandate on freedom of expression, I would say that there are three key trends that come together to create a perfect storm endangering our right to freedom of expression and our right to vote.

And these three trends, first, rising authoritarian trends, polarised politics in backsliding democracies.

The second are social media platforms awash with hate speech and disinformation.

And the third factor is a media sector that is too weak to debunk the lies.

Authoritarian governments determined to hold on to power and populist politicians eager to win elections at all costs, are manipulating information to destroy their political opponents.

Restrict voter participation, Disrupt the electoral process, and delegitimize election results.

And what are some common practises that we've seen in recent elections?

Vilification of minorities, smear campaigns against women, politicians, attacks and journalists and human rights defenders.

Threats to electoral officials, observers and judges.

Public officials and politicians bear significant responsibility for polluting the information environment.

In this way, they are turning the right to speech into a weapon to attack vulnerable groups.

Advocacy of hatred to incite violence is increasingly evident on campaign trails and social media platforms.

It is actually prohibited under international law, even when it masquerades as political speech.

Secondly, while information manipulation has long existed in electoral politics, digital technology and social media platforms have taken that threat to a new level, enabling and amplifying disinformation and hate speech as never before.

For instance, in several recent elections, divisive, incendiary and hateful statements from political leaders went viral, instigating deadly violence against vulnerable minorities, chilling free expression, and impeding voter dissipation.

At a time of rising hate and lies, I'm alarmed to see large social media platforms and search engines backsliding on their commitments to electoral integrity, safety, transparency and risk management.

The largest platforms have radically scaled down staff and resources and rolled back key policies with no apparent human rights due diligence.

And although economic considerations and the rise of generative AI have played a part in their decision, there is no doubt that so have political and ideological considerations.

And I fear that there would be more black backsliding by platforms given the policy position taken by the US administration on freedom of expression.

Let me now come to the third factor that I talked about.

The decline of independent, free, pluralistic media journalist covering elections have been violently attacked.

Public officials in many countries have sought to discredit independent media as liars, traitors, foreign agents.

In some countries, independent media no longer exists because of total state control.

In some others, the media has been captured by actors aligned with the state or other powerful interest.

And the concentration of media ownership in some of the largest, longest liberal democracies in the world have led to heavily partisan coverage that undercuts public trust, incredible journalism and encourages divisive political debate.

And as readers and audiences shift to digital platforms, the financial problems of the media outlets make them more vulnerable to closure or capture.

Then let me now turn to the role of states.

Some states have adopted good electoral practises based on human rights, but many others have disrupted the Internet, blocked websites, sponsored disinformation, attacked independent media fact checkers, criminalised legitimate political expression, all under the guise of fighting disinformation.

And in many countries, electoral bodies are unable to play their information related roles because they lack capacity, expertise, resources, but most of all because they lack institutional independence and are under undue political influence.

My report makes many recommendations.

I will not go into all that, but let me just mention that undermining freedom of expression in the name of fighting disinformation is short sighted.

Freedom of expression is vital to healthy democratic discourse.

It is possible to restrict disinformation or any form of information under international law, but it must follow the restriction, must follow the principles of legality, necessity, proportionality and legitimate objectives.

The other point is the backsliding of social media platforms that should ring an alarm bell that States and international community ignore at their peril.

There needs to be smart social media regulation not to control content but to encourage companies to comply with the human rights obligations and the companies themselves must live up to their obligations under the UN Guiding Principles.

Democracy needs a healthy legacy media as well alongside trustworthy on online environment and the decline of media freedom must be addressed urgently by states.

And finally, experience shows that we need to have approaches that are multifaceted, multi stakeholder, all of us around the table with civil society, governments, companies to sit down to fight these problems.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you to the special Rapporteur.

The experts will now take questions.

If there are any questions for either rapporteur, please raise your hand and state your name and organisation.

[Other language spoken]

Yes, thank you so much.

Iman from the Kuwaiti news agency.

I have actually question on on the report of the Special Rapporteur of freedom of expression.

It's not related to the report, but my question is actually if you have noticed a further decline in freedom of opinion and expression particularly in the Western country or even globally following the world in Gaza specifically.

And if you could give also some finding regarding the word in Gaza and the targeting of journalists there as part of the effort of the Israeli military there to score what is happening there.

So if you could like elaborate or answer to this question.

I know it's not in the report or I presume it's not in the report, but it is so much.

Sorry.

[Other language spoken]

I did not hear that clearly.

Yeah, actually if, if, if you have, if you have some finding funding about the targeting of journalists in Gaza, especially actually as part actually if the Israeli effort, let's say to obscure the what is happening there.

So if you have some data or yeah, more information on that.

[Other language spoken]

Let me start with your second question first about Gaza and targeting of journalists.

As you know, in Gaza, we've seen the highest number of journalists killed in any conflict in recent times.

And among that those killings, there has been clear evidence that a number of them have at least on based on the information that is available to us because remember, we don't have full access to the place.

In fact, international media has not been even allowed into the area.

There have been cases where there was targeting particularly of of Al Jazeera journalists in a number of cases, but also other freelance journalists and also not just journalists targeted journalists and killing of journalists, but in addition to that targeted attacks on media equipment.

Under international law, both journalists and their equipment are civilian and therefore protected and should not be targeted.

So clearly there is that that is an allegation of a war crime that needs to be investigated and I hope that the international community will be very active on it and that the International Criminal Court will look at these issues.

In relation to the decline of freedom of expression, I think it's a global decline.

Indeed, in every region of the world we see a push back against freedom of expression.

We see pressure on journalists.

It happens in different forms.

Whereas in some countries you may see a journalist being killed, in some countries you see see outlets being shut down.

But in other countries, and particularly in Western countries, what we have seen is closure of media outlets.

There are parts of the United States where there are what's called media deserts because small radio stations, small outlets, community based newspapers are disappearing.

Now at 1st, at first sight you might say, well that's economic reality.

But if you dig deeper in that, you will actually find a capture of media by large media companies and that is reducing media pluralism and media diversity.

There is a chilling, you know, when, when, when leading government officials go out and talk about media being the enemy of the people or media being fake or journalists being liars.

That creates the hostile environment in which other people become emboldened to attack journalists.

And that is happening across the board.

As I said, whether it's Western liberal democracies or electoral autocracies, there is a lot of pressure on independent media.

[Other language spoken]

Are there any other questions?

Emena, do you have a follow up?

[Other language spoken]

But yeah, about the second question actually about the decline of freedom is expression.

It was actually related my question, it was if this if you noticed that the the the decline is has increased after the war in in Gaza, is that is is there any relationship on that?

Yes, let me say that what I have seen, in fact, if you look at my report which I presented to the UN General Assembly in October, where in which I examined the impact on freedom of expression of the Gaza conflict around the world.

And they're clearly there has been a suppression, active efforts sometimes to suppress expression, protests, slogans, even, you know, symbols.

There has been clearly active action, action taken by authorities to stop that.

In many Western countries, Canada, the United States, Germany, other parts of Europe as well, where you're not allowed to say certain slogans.

From the river to the sea has become a slogan of terrorism rather than an expression of Palestinian aspiration for for freedom.

We have seen a scarf become a symbol of terrorism and support when it's actually a show of solidarity for a people under attack.

So simple things like that, even, you know, going out to protest, if you have a huge amount of police surrounding half a dozen or a dozen protesters, that's a sign of intimidation and that stops people from shouting slogans.

I have been myself on the outskirts of 1 demonstration in Berlin, where people were being told by the police that you can go in there, but there are certain slogans you cannot use.

Now Germany has freedom of expression.

In Germany you cannot simply rule out certain things.

Sure, if I say something that is hate speech, the police can come in and arrest me and there would be a court case.

But you cannot tell someone, you cannot say that beforehand.

Prior censorship, and that is happening everywhere.

That is happening and in many cases authorities are doing nothing, no action against those who are making those threats to others.

And what we then see is it's not just Palestinians then it happens to a climate activists and then slowly it creeps.

That is the real danger.

The downward slide of censorship is the first sign of an authoritarian trend, and I think liberal democracies should wake up to that danger.

[Other language spoken]

And the same, the same.

It's happening with the right of freedom of assembly and, and, and, and association.

Irene already mentioned what is happening with the protests.

And then we have seen that as a, as a trend also in many different settings, many different type of governments, many different countries and many different regions.

And then the also it's, it's very clear the double standards that the, that the different institutions have been applied, not only the, the law enforcement agencies, but also certain political discourse that actually stigmatise and criminalise certain type of assemblies and certain type of protest and not others.

And this is something that is also putting a lot of pressure on the, on the guarantee of the right of freedom of assembly and the, and the right to protest in even the, the so-called more stable democracies, including Germany.

As, as as I was saying, but also I've been I've been following cases in with, with students, for example, that were participating in pro Palestine protest in the UK, in France, in the Netherlands, also in the US.

And the US is having a a very big backslide also with protest.

But then last year I started also with the curtailing of the right of freedom of assembly and protest on the pro Palestine movement.

And then I want to also mention the differential impact on on certain groups.

So in all these countries and others, we see that are the Arab population, the migrants, the Afro descendant black people and even the Latinos who are actually more repressed and more curtailing the right to participate in the pro Palestine movement that any other type of actors.

I have even cases in which monitors of of of elections that were, for example, like wide were actually allowed to do the monitoring.

Well, they've you see that they were like a black or a Latino monitor of election in the US.

They were actually actually removed from the, from the protests instead of, of, of having them allowed to, just to do their, their work.

And this is actually eroding also the capacity for, for governments and law enforcement officials to, to fulfil the, the, the obligation to facilitate freedom of assembly and the, the right to protest.

[Other language spoken]

Are there any other questions for the special rapporteur, for the special rapporteurs, anything?

Doesn't seem to be that there are the questions with either of you like to add anything because we have a little time or would you like to close?

I just like to add that as a journalist, I know you don't like to be in the news, but I think this is a time when unfortunately you are being put in the news because of the pressure that is coming and this pressure you.

All you have to do is to look at the legislation, the online safety bills, the policing acts in in many countries around the world and what happens in the one's region, particularly in the West, is usually copied in others.

So this is what makes this issue are so dangerous globally, and I hope that journalists will continue to pay close attention to what is happening because you know you are going to be directly affected.

Sorry, we have a question in the room.

Yes, please, I have to.

I'm sorry I came late because today there are so many meetings on freedom of expression that the only worthwhile one or one of the two worthwhile 1 I missed and discovered just 5 minutes ago.

I have two or three question.

First, it may be a little bit beside the point, but in Europe and America the issue about work work ISM is becoming a central issue in any kind of intellectual life.

In Geneva, at the university, they want to purge the library of any bad sort so that citizens could only think good.

This is not a joke, it is a central issue.

I like to know if you think this is totally outside the the the point beside the point of freedom of attrition, because those criticising the walkway are have their mouth shut sometime in a very very harsh way.

This is my sorry for my clumsy English, but you see what I am referring to.

Second thing, lately I was addressed by one of the UN press officers very kindly.

I hope that this time you will behave etc.

If this is an example, if the UN give this example of independence of juries, what do you think of that?

And 3rd, Madame Khan, I know you from the time you were a lawyer at High Commission for Refugees.

I have greatest regard and respect for you.

But when there was this issue of uprising in Canton Vu, you made a report and the public minister public, Eric Cotier, sent A10 letter page showing claiming that there were mistakes.

I never heard that this report was being corrected.

I wrote there was at Mormon La Ferdie, Mormon Pre de Lausanne.

I think you made a report and I wrote to you to know what you thought of the, let's say, the critics of the minister publicly.

As far as I remember, you were in charge of that report.

In any case, sorry, I can't.

So I, I want to be, you know, fair to you.

Which year are you talking about?

Recently?

[Other language spoken]

Five years ago.

I wasn't even the special rapporteur, so it couldn't have been me.

[Other language spoken]

But if you are picking up something specific, then I have a right to ask you to be specific.

And I would suggest, I would suggest send an e-mail.

My colleagues are here, you can get their and we do that to raise it in a press conference.

In this way, you have to be prepared.

I made at the time I never got a report, but OK, that doesn't change basically the issue.

So about the work issue which I considered on the work issue, I'm very happy to take that because I have considered it.

I think it doesn't matter whether it is vogue or whether it is conservative point of view or whatever point of view.

Freedom of expression as a right is very clearly stated that ideas and images and information of any kind, of any kind in any media.

We can search, we can find, we can read, we can share, we can use any media to communicate with others.

The freedom of expression is a very broad right, and whether it is vocalism or whether it's conservatism, it does not matter.

It can be restricted, but under certain very limited circumstances and the effort of any society at any time to create a single narrative, whether it is a work society or whether it is a conservative society.

When you try to create a single narrative, we know where you're going.

You know we're going towards authoritarianism.

And that is something that is incompatible with freedom of expression.

In fact, freedom of expression, the purpose of it is actually to create or give people access to diverse sources of information and to be able to to create diverse sources, whether it's art, whether it's politics, whether it's media in whatever field.

So trying to have just a single point of view, censorship, taking out books from libraries or telling academics they cannot teach certain subjects or telling us what what clothes we should wear.

That happens to women as well, for example.

And that is also part of freedom of expression.

So it's a very broad right.

And I think efforts of that kind are extremely dangerous because they're trying to destroy our human rights.

And these are rights.

Freedom of expression, for example, is a right that promotes human dignity.

So it is undignified for people, too.

[Other language spoken]

If there are no further questions, I think we will now close this press conference.

I'd just like to thank both the special rapporteurs for being here with us today.

And thank you for joining us at this briefing.

OHCHR/Special Procedures - Press Conference: Elections in the digital age - 19 June 2025