Yahoo!’s Second Annual Business & Human Rights Summit

Posted May 4th, 2010 at 9:20 am by Yahoo!, Blog Editors

 3 Comments / Filed in: human rights

Today, Yahoo! will be hosting our second annual Business & Human Rights Summit. We will be hearing from experts and visionaries in technology, government, academia, journalism, and human rights, and learning about how we can all work together to address the complex threats to free expression and user privacy. At Yahoo!, we know that the Internet and technology increasingly serve as platforms for motivated people to create positive change in the world, and for individuals from around the world to communicate, connect and inform. Because we know how important the Internet and technology to supporting a free and open exchange of ideas, we believe that we must all to work together to understand the potential barriers, and create solutions collectively. Today is another chapter of an ongoing conversation.

We’ll start the day by learning about the important role that governments play in protecting privacy and free expression. Panelists including Sarah Labowitz of the U.S. State Department and Christine Bader, Advisor to the UN Special Representative for Business & Human Rights, and Kum Hong Siew, former member of parliament, Singapore will discuss various government approaches to addressing free expression and privacy rights in the Internet, Technology and Communications (ICT) sector.

Another panel, featuring Evgeny Morozov, Yahoo!’s 2010 Georgetown Fellow and contributing editor to Foreign Policy; Andrew Lewman of the Tor Project; Kathleen Reen of Internews and Alan Huang of UltraReach Internet, will discuss the innovative solutions they have created and discovered, all targeted at evading government restrictions on free expression and privacy.

We will also have a fascinating discussion about unconventional threats to online privacy and free expression, during which we will learn about how issues like account deactivation and terms of service violations can have unintended chilling effects on privacy and free expression. Panelists for that discussion include Dr. Mehdi Yahyanejad, founder and editor of Balatarin.com (a site for news and opinions about Iran), Scott Rubin of Google, Kim Pham of AccessNow (an advocacy group that uses technology to keep activists in press and Internet restrictive countries connected), and Danny O’Brien of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Our final panel will feature journalists, bloggers, social entrepreneurs and film-makers, who will share stories about how they are using the Internet and technology to drive social change.  We’ll hear from Abbas Gassem, the founder and editor of Inside Somalia (an online news and opinion platform focused on Somalian political and social issues;) from Sameer Padania, the former manager of the human rights video sharing platform at Witness.org; from Nadia Trinidad, Yahoo!’s Stanford Fellow and senior correspondent from the ABS-CBN Broadcasting Company in Manila, Philippines; from Elia Serra, the co-founder and director of Maneno (a blogging platform created for and by bloggers and journalists in sub-Saharan Africa) and Omid Memarian, noted UC Berkeley Rotary Peace Fellow and Iranian journalist and blogger.

For more information about the Summit, please see here.

For those of you  who will not be joining us in Sunnyvale, we will be posting video shortly after the event, so please stay tuned!

Ebele Okobi-Harris, Director of Yahoo’s Business & Human Rights Program

Tagged: Abbas Gassem, abs-cbn, AccessNow, Africa, Alan Huang, Andrew Lewman, Balatarin.com, Berkeley, Christine Bader, Committee to Protect Journalists, Danny O'Brien, Ebi Okobi-Harris, Elia Serra, Evgeny Morozov, Foreign Policy, Georgetown, google, government, human rights, ICT, Internews, Iran, journalism, Kathleen Reen, Kim Pham, Kum Hong Siew, Maneno, manilla, Mehdi Yahyanejad, Nadia Trinidad, Omid Memarian, phillipines, Sameer Padania, Sarah Labowitz, Scott Rubin, Singapore, Somalia, stanford, State Department, Tor Project, Ultrareach, UN, United Nations, Witness.org, yahoo

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3 Comments Add your own

Home Design | May 5th, 2010 at 4:30 am

I appreciate the concern which is been rose. The things need to be sorted out because it is about the individual but it can be with everyone.
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mathews

Facebook Developer | May 15th, 2010 at 10:39 am

Yahoo is really doing a great thing to get engaged with these type of summit. I really appreciate their effort. Thanks for info

Facebook Application Development | August 8th, 2010 at 7:02 am

Thank you for good knowledge .