Digitalisation and International Human Rights Law: Opportunities and Critical Challenges

Abstract

At the time when the various universal and regional human rights treaties came into being, the digitalization of societies was still largely in its infancy. Only a very few human rights treaties dealt with the influence of the media and the Internet on situations relevant to the protection of human rights. Nowadays, the parameters have changed fundamentally. Numerous UN human rights committees are increasingly confronted with questions of digi talization and its effects on the legal position of the individual. The same applies to interna tional courts at the regional level, in particular to the European Court of Human Rights. However, their decisions still focus mainly on substantive human rights issues, for instance, by resorting to an evolutive interpretation to outline the freedom of communication and the right to private life in the digital environment. The overall effects of the Internet and the growing digitalization of societies on the general dogmatic aspects of human rights treaties have not yet been thoroughly investigated. The aim of the chapter is, therefore, to shed a first light on the main challenges that typically arise when determining the structural relationship between international human rights norms on the one hand and behaviours of individuals in the digital environment on the other. These challenges relate to specific structural features such as the existence or non-existence of a right to access the Internet, the contouring of new digital spheres of human rights and the dangers resulting from the use of algorithms and increasing anonymization. It is also questionable whether the scope of the extraterritorial application of human rights treaties needs to be redesigned in the digital age. Finally, more general human rights aspects such as the determination and possible extension of both duty-bearers and rights-holders require closer analysis. The chapter examines to what extent a dynamic interpretation of human rights treaties appears possible in the age of digitalization and under what conditions this approach reaches its limits.