Association for Progressive Communications

EU Legislative Interests

The Policy and Regulatory Initiative for Digital Africa (PRIDA) [1] included a component on the strengthened ability of African stakeholders to actively participate in the global IG debates. Cyber Resilience for Development (Cyber4Dev), a European Union project designed to promote cyber-resilience and cybersecurity, participated in the 2022 African school on IG which APC hosts and in 2023 APC personnel contributed to Cyber4Dev capacity development processes. D4D Hub [2] is a strategic multi-stakeholder platform for cooperation in digital development matters. APC has collaborated with them on the topic of digital equality, community networks, and local access and we are a member of the CSO Advisory Group. APC spoke at and moderated the only session on digital related issues during the EU Policy Forum, which was well attended and generated much interest. Our staff present in the meeting also highlighted the digital agenda as a crosscutting issue relating to all other sessions, including the green transition and the shrinking civic space ones, highlighting the importance of thematic areas such as surveillance and tech facilitated violence against human and environmental defenders, mis- and disinformation, among others. APC participated in the EU-Africa Partnership, with the most recent Summit being held a year ago in Brussels. APC also contributed a report on Open Internet partnership opportunities for the two regions [3]. APC has been following key legislation proposals concerning digital issues in priority countries such as India and Brazil. In these and other Global Majority countries, as well as at the global level, with have highlighted the challenge of simply importing EU regulations (such as the GDPR and GSA) to other jurisdictions. Although these are golden standards for the contexts similar to the EU, they may need deep adaptation and consideration for contexts with a different institutional and civic space architecture. APC has also engaged in discussions concerning the EU social and environmental responsibility standards and proposed AI norms. We have also been a partner under the EU’s programme European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) in promoting and protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms since 2014. Under this programme we have supported freedom of information, expression, and association in Asia (2014-2017)[4], and the freedom of religion and expression online in the context of South and Southeast Asia (2019-2022)[5]. These initiatives are aligned with EU’s Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy 2015-2019 and specific human rights guidelines adopted by the EU. ________________________________________ [1] https://international-partnerships.ec.europa.eu/policies/programming/programmes/policy-and-regulation-initiative-digital-africa-prida_en [2] https://d4dhub.eu/ [3] https://fpi.ec.europa.eu/news-1/new-report-released-open-internet-opportunities-eu-africa-partnership-2022-10-24_en [4] https://www.apc.org/en/project/advocacy-change-through-technology-india-malaysia-and-pakistan [5] https://www.apc.org/en/project/challenge

Communication Activities

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Interests Represented

Promotes their own interests or the collective interests of their members

Member Of

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14cprpMnqqxjYoCDwyj6TEO-MAE-Kt4L5e6tcWTYJM5w/edit

Organisation Members

https://www.apc.org/en/members