Additional Note (ADDENDUM 1)
APC Proposal to the Ford Foundation

Sexuality and the internet – An exploratory research

What is the ultimate goal of the research?

The ultimate aim of this research is to respond to the following question: How may the emerging debates and the growing practice of regulation of online content either impede or facilitate different ways women use the internet and the impact on their sexual expression, sexualities and, sexual health practices, and assertion of their sexual rights. Expressed differently: In what ways do internet and ICT policies shape the sexual practices of women living in different socio-political, economic and cultural contexts?

The complex nature of the topic means that we must tackle the research from two related but different directions:

  • Online practices and internet use in select digital spaces, and how they affect notions of sexuality rights in society at large.
  • The impact of regulatory policies and censorship practices on sexualities, sexual health and sexual rights.

With respect to the application of the research findings, the project will also:

explore the impact of regulation of internet content on human rights and fundamental freedoms - specifically related to sexuality rights - that is grounded in the lived experiences of affected groups;

promote and encourage rights-based policy formulation by creating opportunities and developing platforms for critical reflection on the impact of content regulation on sexuality, sexual health and sexual rights and to act upon the evidence produced;

build a network of researchers, communication rights activists and sexual rights advocates on the issues of content regulation, privacy and security and freedom of expression and its relationship to sexuality, sexual health and sexual rights

support current efforts to build understanding and common ground between the apparently diverging concerns of sexual rights groups and the communication rights movement - whether through direct interaction of representatives from the two groups or indirectly through sharing knowledge insights and priorities - in policy spaces shaping regulatory norms and mechanisms relating to content regulation, privacy, freedom of expression, and access to information in the online environment.

help build an informed advocacy campaign and network to promote and secure women's sexual rights in relation to content regulation, privacy, freedom of expression and access to information in the context of emerging internet governance debates and practices that effectively underwrite censorship in the online environment.

What are the links between this research and broader democracy or governance issues? How will it link the women's rights movement with the communications rights movement?

Content regulation and internet censorship significantly affect broader democracy and governance issues. By placing boundaries, guidelines and restrictions on content, they impact upon people’s capacity to access to timely, relevant and accurate information, exercise their freedom of expression and inhibit the free flow of ideas. These all of which are essential conditions for people to exercise their rights as citizens, hold governments accountable, make informed decisions and amplify their concerns. As such, it is critical to gain deeper understanding through participatory knowledge building on where, how and to what (political, social and cultural) effects these boundaries are being constructed.
We want to explore how we can strengthen rights-based advocacy and rights-based policy-formulation based on a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how women and women-identified persons – including those with marginal sexualities - use the internet for sexual expression and realisation of their human rights. Hence, this project concerns broader democracy and governance issues at multiple levels:

1)It seeks to promote and encourage rights-based policy formulation that integrates sexual and women's rights perspectives in the broader communication rights discourse, and within the context of emerging – and contested - rules and regulations to govern citizens' use of the internet, in short the “internet governance” arena.

2)Informed by APC's experience in the arena of ICT policy advocacy in both global and national ICT policy-making spaces, the project seeks to advance women's participation in public policy and ICT policy-making at the national and global level with the view to rendering these spaces both more representative of diverse (and specifically women's) experiences and interests.

3)It aims to raise - and open - the debate about content regulation and its possible negative consequences for rights to freedom of expression, privacy and choice, and access to information, with a view to increasing transparency, accountability and responsiveness of content regulatory mechanisms for end users, especially for women.

Although the universality of human rights principles implies application to everyone equally, the human rights of women are usually hidden within the broader human rights framework. This is demonstrated through the well-documented, decades-long struggle of women's rights movements for the formal recognition of violence against women as a human rights violation. As such, the protection and attainment of human rights have different implications for different sections of society.

This can also be seen through the heated debate on the creation of a specific top level domain - .xxx - for sexually explicit content on the internet at ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – the body responsible to assign the internet's naming system) that arose three years ago. The stakeholders privy to this debate – including civil society actors such as human rights and communication rights advocates – focussed primarily on the issue of undue intervention by the USgovernmentin a supposedly independent body which governs the internet’s logical infrastructure. Critically, the debate was silent on women's rights and the potential consequences of creating a dedicated space for the marketing of girls and women's bodies and sexuality, and grossly lacked the participation and perspectives of those directly impacted by such a policy decision – namely women and girls themselves.
Increasingly, communication rights are seen as critical for people's capacity to exercise their democratic rights, including the right to form and express an opinion and by extension, to inform and affect policy and legislative changes. However, when it comes to content regulation of the internet, several key stakeholders and their perspectives are notably absent in the debates and decision-making processes. First, there is a gap between policy makers and intended beneficiaries, namely civil society. Second, there is a gap between different sections of civil society – and especially the groups in whose interests content regulations systems and processes are being implemented – i.e. women and youth broadly - and those contesting the boundaries of those spaces on their behalf. In other words, there is differential access to power and decision making spaces depending on how, where and the extent to which a particular community is disadvantaged in a particular area.

In the application of the research findings for rights-based advocacy, APC WNSP’s participation in both the communication rights and feminist/women's rights movements places it in the unique position to facilitate a more nuanced – if not common - advocacy agenda around the intersections between issues regarding internet content, freedom of expression, privacy and sexual rights. APC WNSP is able to bridge the gap between the two rights movements to facilitate the participation of women's rights advocates in communication rights movements and ICT policy-making spaces, and to facilitate the consideration and integration of communication rights policy issues into women's rights movements through information sharing, capacity building and knowledge development. For example, APC WNSP is so far the only group that has focussed on bringing women's rights perspectives and facilitating the participation of feminists and women's rights advocates in workshops on content regulation issues in the IGF. Other actors who shape the dialogue and the policy agenda on this issue include internet service providers, child protection groups, communication rights advocates, international agencies and multilateral bodies like the European Union.

The research findings will be used to build on these efforts, and support current efforts to build understanding and common ground between the concerns of sexual rights groups and the communication rights movement - whether through direct interaction of representatives from the two groups or indirectly through sharing knowledge insights and priorities - in policy spaces debating content regulation.

Our plan is not only to bring new groups and perspectives to content regulation debates, but to create spaces and opportunities for the exchange of views, expansion of discussion and formulation of common policy recommendations between sexual rights activists and communications rights groups who engage with key issues that emerge from the research at national, regional and/or global levels. In our facilitation of exchange and engagement between both movements – sexual rights and communication rights – we want to go beyond awareness raising and implement concrete actions based upon the research findings. We will build coalitions and engage in advocacy at global policy processes and in the countries selected for the research, to raise awareness of the impacts of content regulation in sexuality, sexual health and sexual rights.

Partners will be selected based on how closely their work intersects with the research goals. We will seek to engage groups and networks who work on women’s sexuality and sexual health and rights issues; those who work on sexual rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersexed and queer (LGBTIQ) persons; and those who work on sexual rights and the health issues of people living with HIV/AIDS. Examples of these groups are the Asia Pacific Rainbow (aprainbow.wordpress.com), FEIM (Fundación para Estudio e Investigación de la Mujer / Foundation for Women's Studies and Research) based in Argentina, the Treatment Action Campaign [ from South Africa and SOS CORPO [ from Brazil and others.

How does this proposal link with other groups working on gender within the IGF?

APC WNSP is part of the gender and ICT advocacy network that was formed during the WSIS process and continued in the follow-up phase after the 2005 Summit. The core of this network is made up of ItforChange, Isis International-Manila, International Women's Tribune Center (New York) and APC WNSP. Other individual advocates from the academe, international agencies and other civil society organisations have also been actively involved in this network. After the Tunis Summit, the organisations in this network focussed on various follow-up processes and international bodies that were formed to oversee implementation of the WSIS Statement of Principles and the Plan of Action.

APC WNSP decided to focus its attention on the IGF process to build on its advocacy on issues related to violence against women and its connection to issues of freedom of expression and content regulation on the internet. Other colleagues in the network are focusing on gender concerns at the UNGAID and also at the UNCSTD. As a network we have continued to collaborate and share the load of gender advocacy in these various ICT policy spaces. At the past two IGFs, we convened a dynamic coalition on gender to strengthen gender advocacy. We have also brought new members (such as Alternative Law Forum) to this coalition through workshops that we organised on content regulation. At the last IGF, the “dynamic coalition on gender” made plans to increase women's participation at the IGF 2008 and convene a meeting of the “dynamic coalition on gender” prior to the IGF in Hyderabad. For the research, we will work with this coalition in positioning the next workshop on content regulation at the next IGF and in amplifying women's rights perspectives on content regulation, access to information, privacy and freedom of expression.

How does this proposal feed into greater APC strategies around IGF particularly in relation to issues priorities and planned activities?

In relation to the IGF, APC is also planning to implement a project to bring better coordination of emerging transnational networks – including issue/advocacy networks focussed on “access to knowledge” (or A2K) - within the IGF policy arena.

The APC WNSP's sexuality and the internet proposal and APC CIPP's on transnational networks and public policy are being developed independently and as standalone projects. While we are conscious of not forcing an artificial integration between the two, we will explore points of convergence and collaboration between activities of the two projects, as they emerge.

The first order of business for this project is to conduct the research and develop the nuanced understanding of how our study population use the internet for exercising and expressing their sexual freedoms/rights . It is in the application of the research findings that we will more actively explore intersections with the greater APC advocacy strategies for the IGF.

The research findings will inform our advocacy plan and we will identify key advocacy partners within communications rights groups, who engage within key issues that emerges from the research. Many of these groups are already known and have links with APC. What we will determine in the course of the research are the groups that are most interested and relevant. WNSP will also participate in network meetings that will be organised as part of the transnational network and public policy project to to explore the synergies between the projects.

What potential linkages will be explored that takes advantage of the symmetry with other privacy rights and content issues to build new coalitions and strengthen advocacy for rights in this field?

According to data collected by OpenNet Initiative (ONI), sexuality related materials are increasingly cited as one of the most common types of content subjected to internet filtering and censorship. In recent years, rhetoric around sexually sensitive content has shifted from notions of “obscenity” to practices that are “harmful” to vulnerable groups. This framing may be more publicly compelling but not less vague. Its effect however, is to signal what may be acceptable or non-acceptable content and provides the underlying rational for regulation of online content or - in short, online censorship.

By exploring how the study population uses the internet, the research findings will bring new and deeper understanding on policy and user definitions of harmful online content. The findings will be used in advocacy efforts to effect more responsive, appropriate and accountable decision-making in this area. By collecting evidence from internet users on what constitutes harmful online content and practices, what are the types of harmful content and practices, who are affected by them and how are they harmful, we want to challenge a notable lack of transparency and accountability of content regulation of harmful content on the internet and identify alternatives totop-down content regulatory regimes enforced by law.
We will explore the influence of content regulation measures on online behaviour and related content and communication related issues and rights. For example, a common content regulation measure is the requirement to register personal data (e.g. age, physical address, sex) in order to access particular online spaces, upload content, or see content. Since sexual expression is directly affected by an individual's sense of privacy and anonymity, this may be seen as a threat to privacy and anonymity and therefore may limit sexual expression. It is possible that such threats to privacy are identified by respondents in this research as harmful practices.

We will explore linkages with privacy rights groups to strengthen advocacy for rights in in this field. In the past, WNSP has sought advice and input from Privacy International in relation to privacy issues that relate to harmful content. They have also participated in the workshops on content regulation that we have organised at the IGF.

We further anticipate that our IGF-related advocacy efforts will also involve an exploration of linkages with groups like EPIC, EDRi, Article 19 or The Danish Institute for Human Rights to balance the influence of child protection groups whose interventions at the last IGF successfully shifted the discussion in the openness, freedom of expression and right to privacy themes towards a push for content regulation.

Research Partners

APC will identify research partners through its network and through sexuality resource centres and networks that are Ford's partners. Further, Ford country offices and programme officers will be asked to assist and ensure we are able to tap the most appropriate expertise on both internet rights and sexuality issues. This is particularly critical in phase 1 of the research when we will be selecting countries, partners and finalising the research methodology. Partners will be identified through the mapping exercise in phase 1 (from July –November, 2008) of this project. [Barbara Klugman has already suggested centres, organisations and key individuals who can potentially who can provide advice and identify expertise and resources for the research project.]

Additional Note: Sexuality and the internetpage 1 of 5