Afef Abrougui

Nov 29, 2023 | carnegieendowment.org | Steven Feldstein |Mahsa Alimardani |Afef Abrougui |Janjira Sombatpoonsiri

Across the globe, the struggle between rights and repression persists. Digital technology remains at the center of these contests. Governments continue to use censorship strategies, mass surveillance measures, disinformation campaigns, and internet shutdowns to counter political protests, rig elections, and consolidate military coups. The 2023 Freedom on the Net report reflected this, indicating thirteen consecutive years of global internet freedom declines.

Nov 29, 2023 | carnegieendowment.org | Arindrajit Basu |Mahsa Alimardani |Afef Abrougui |Janjira Sombatpoonsiri

In 1999, noted U.S. human rights scholar Louis Henkin delivered an emphatic (and now famous) lecture at Fordham School of Law calling for the erasure of “sovereignty,” or “that S word,” from international political and legal discourse. He argued that sovereignty had been used illegitimately to protect state control at the expense of human rights protection and enforcement.

Jul 28, 2023 | genderit.org | Afef Abrougui |Rawand Issa

The development and adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in the MENA region may not be accelerating as much as other parts of the world. However, given the dire human rights situation, rising oppression, and lack of independent, democratic, and robust institutions (data protection authorities, parliaments, judiciary) that protect people from the harms of these technologies, a wider scale adoption of AI would only further erode human rights.

Jul 28, 2023 | genderit.org | Afef Abrougui |Nour Naim |Raya Sharbain |Yara El Murr

This edition of GenderIT came together at a time of daily breaking news around artificial intelligence (AI) and the serious risks of bias, misalignment, governance challenges, job loss, and human extinction. We are not the first generation to panic about the social implications and governance of new tech.