Global Partners & Associates (GPA) Human Rights team is looking to appoint a project and research assistant to support and develop our work promoting human rights in internet policy processes. The initial contract is for a full-time position starting as soon as possible and no later than July 2013. However, for the right candidate, we would agree to the role being part-time until September in order to accommodate studies...
News and Analysis
Parliaments & Parties are recruiting
We are seeking an Arabic-speaking Projects Administrator to support our project work in the MENA region, and to provide direct assistance to our Director. Access the full job description here
Opinion: Sowing seeds in stony ground – Chris Mullin
“Every morning I get up and thank God that he never made me an expert on the Middle East,” a famous journalist once remarked to me. That was pretty much my view, too. As a journalist and later as a politician, I generally steered a wide circle around matters Middle Eastern for the very good reason that reform seemed a lost cause. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the Arab spring have changed that...
Opinion: Transition to Democracy in Jordan
Ola Thiabat, who ran for election to Jordan’s parliament in January, told the Jordan Times that her husband’s family forced him to end their marriage because of her campaign. “When I first decided to run for the parliament, he supported me and paid all my expenses, until his family asked him to persuade me to withdraw from the elections for the benefit of one of their relatives; when I refused to comply, he divorced me” said Thiabat...
News: Post-WCIT Statement: Civil Society Call for a Positive Internet Governance Agenda
At the conclusion of the World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai (WCIT’12), a number of civil society groups from around the world agreed to issue a statement calling for a positive agenda for internet governance. WCIT ’12 saw attempts by governments to assert control over the internet. Rejecting this approach civil society groups recognised that this was only one in a series of conferences leading up to WSIS 2015 which will look at who controls the internet and how it should develop...
News: Political Parties in Democratic Transitions – the challenge for Egypt
Political Parties in Democratic Transitions, edited by Greg Power and Rebecca Shoot, and published by the Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy was launched in Copenhagen at the end of September. The event brought together journalists, politicians, academics and international assistance organisations to reflect on the challenges for political parties in Egypt...
Opinion: Optimism in a difficult climate – Archy Kirkwood
Elected politicians from mature democracies should be required to spend at least a week of every year working alongside their peers in newly established representative institutions in other parts of the world. You learn how much context matters. Even after a long spell in both the elected and revising chambers in the United Kingdom I am constantly amazed by the fortitude and determination shown by public representatives who daily face impossible odds and personal risks in the service of their parliaments in other parts of the world...
Opinion: State vs user – Social media in China
Global Partners is currently evaluating a media project in China. This piece is based on research during a trip to Beijing in July 2012. Weibo, ‘the Twitter of China’, is a popular three year old. Already bigger than Twitter it has 320 million users with big plans to take on the global micro-blogging market. Its success is all the more impressive because it has taken root in rather hostile circumstances...
Letter from Baghdad
“Habibi, can I smoke here?” None of us knew the answer to the old woman’s question. Unlike most of Western Europe, certain countries in the Middle East seem to positively encourage smoking indoors. We didn’t know the view of Baghdad airport. One of us turned to an airport official, sitting idly outside one of the many single-room offices in the building to check...
We’re recruiting
We are looking for an Arabic speaking Project Assistant to provide support to our projects in the MENA region. The Project Assistant will provide support to our MENA team based in London. Access the full Job Description here
African Civil Society Groups Demand Internet Freedom
A diverse group of civil society groups from across sub-Saharan Africa today launched a statement affirming the internet’s central role as a space to enable democratisation and promote human rights. The statement calls on a wide range of stakeholders to strengthen their support for human rights online, to extend initiatives to improve access to information, and to facilitate effective civil society participation in all governance processes addressing internet-related issues...
News: GPA appoints new FoE Associate
Gene Kimmelman will join GPA as an associate to develop its work on the internet and freedom of expression. Having worked in the Justice Department since August 2009 on antitrust issues, he is highly regarded and exceptionally well-connected in Washington. A recent Washington Post article describes him as one of the department’s most influential antitrust policy makers...
Access to Information in Brazil
This May, the Brazilian government took an important step towards openness and transparency as its Access to Information (ATI) Law came into effect.* Two months into the implementation process, Brazilian public bodies had received over 17,000 information requests and the Office of the Comptroller-General (CGU) – the regulator responsible for its implementation – reported that over 83% of requests had been processed and answered...
Letter from Egypt
The two run off candidates in Egypt’s presidential elections could not have been more divisive. The comments of Tawfiq Ukasha, one time presidential hopeful, reflected the views of many: "If Morsi wins, I have visas for three countries ready." But he reflected the views of the felool - a derogatory term used to describe the remnants of the Mubarak regime...
Human Rights and Communication Technology Seminar, Seoul
Over dinner in a hot and humid Seoul I sat next to the South Korean Minister for North Korea – the man responsible for North Korean refugees living in the south. Born in Pyongyang, where his family still live, he has had had no contact with them in sixty years. And the deep wound caused by partition came up in every conversation with South Koreans, haunted by loss, separation and sadness at the fate of those in the North...
Letter from Baghdad
It’s easy to miss the bullet holes in the walls of Haider Muthana’s office. They form eight neat craters in the ceramic tiles that cover one half of the room. Muthana is the head of the parliamentary directorate responsible for the internal organisation of Iraq’s Council of Representatives, supporting the legislative process and the work of the committees...
Freedom of Expression on the Internet
We are working with project partners in India and Sri Lanka to strengthen freedom of expression on the Internet in South East Asia. This project is one of the first to apply the recent recommendations of the UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression. It aims to build on these, creating country specific recommendations and civil society outreach initiatives in the region.
Transparency and Open Information (Egypt) project starts
Global Partners is travelling to Egypt at the end of this month to kick off its Transparency and Open Information project, funded by the Arab Partnership Initiative under the FCO. GPA will be working the its project partner AFA (the Arab Forum for Alternatives) to help set up an information taskforce. The task force will be made up of civil society, academics and public officials...
Global Partners Attends the 2011 Internet Governance Forum
Global Partners is attending the sixth annual Internet Governance Forum (September 27-30, 2011) in Nairobi, Kenya. The Internet Governance Forum developed out of the World Summit on the Information Society as a global, multi-stakeholder forum for developing bottom up approaches to Internet Governance challenges. We are co-organising workshops on “Development, Empowerment and Access to the Internet”, “Exporting the Internet: Human Rights and Technology”, “Human rights: a unifying approach for development, freedom, access and diversity?”, and “Copyright and Human Rights in Internet Governance”...
UNESCO Privacy Project begins
Digital communication technologies present significant new challenges for protecting the right to privacy. UNESCO has commissioned Global Partners to map the key challenges and opportunities for privacy protection on the Internet, and to produce a global overview of legal and regulatory approaches affecting privacy on the Internet. The project is being delivered together with Toby Mendel (Centre for Law and Democracy) and Ben Wagner (European University Institute), and is being overseen by an advisory committee of regional and international privacy experts...
A Forum in need of reform
The internet is changing the world. Like the printing press before it, the internet is transforming the way humans interact and instigating change, which is spreading through all elements of life. It brings with it a huge range of challenges and opportunities, not least the challenge of governing in a world which is fast changing, decentralised and trans-boundary...