633 Results
Quotes
Quotes based on international documents, law, and treaties- "In countries where the service has a cost to those who decide to file a lawsuit, care should be taken to ensure that this can be done for a reasonable and accessible sum and that it does not constitute an impediment."
- "The principle of equality between the parties should apply at all times."
- "In this context, efficacy means that the formal requirements to lodge an appeal are minimal and do not constitute an obstacle to access justice, nor impede the resolution of the legal dispute in any way."
- "An optimal design for an EDR system demands clarity and simplicity. The constitutional, statutory and regulatory provisions for challenges that guarantee compliance with the electoral legal framework and the defence of electoral rights must be drafted in simple and clear language in order to meet the requirements of access to justice and legal certainty. Their content must be broadly disseminated in the language of the community where the election is to be held to ensure that they are transparent and easily understood by all interested persons and consistently followed – especially by the EDRBs."
- "It is also important to minimize the formalities required for a challenge to be deemed to have been properly filed."
- "Where a specific charge or cost is made to users of the electoral justice system, this should be at a reasonable price that takes account of criteria such as necessity and proportionality. It should not become an obstacle to access to electoral justice."
- "Internet intermediaries should uphold the principle that human rights are protected online, and voluntary accept and apply all core international human rights and women’s rights instruments with a view to contributing to universal human rights protection and achieving the empowerment of women, and the elimination of discrimination and violence against them in digital space."
- "Intermediaries should publish clear and a comprehensive contents moderation policy and human rights safeguards against arbitrary censorship, and transparent reviews and appeal processes."
- "Intermediaries should ensure data security and privacy, and ensure that the use of data is in compliance with international human rights law and has the fully informed consent of data providers."
- "In line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework, intermediaries should respect the human rights of their users and affected parties in all their actions. This includes the responsibility to act in compliance with applicable laws and regulatory frameworks."
- "Internet intermediaries should make available – online and offline – effective remedies and dispute resolution systems that provide prompt and direct redress in cases of user, content provider and affected party grievances."
- "Intermediaries should ensure that all users and other parties affected by their actions have full and easy access to transparent information in clear and easily understandable language about applicable complaint mechanisms, the various stages of the procedure, indicative time frames and expected outcomes."
- "Internet service providers should put in place appropriate, clear, open and efficient procedures to respond within reasonable time limits to complaints from Internet users alleging breaches of the principles included in the foregoing provisions. Internet users should have the possibility to refer the matter directly to competent authorities within each member State and be entitled to timely redress."
- "The Human Rights Council, (…) 7. Encourages all States to take appropriate measures to promote, with the participation of persons with disabilities, the design, development, production and distribution of information and communications technology and systems, including assistive and adaptive technologies, that are accessible to persons with disabilities."
- "Political campaigning undertaken by political parties, candidates and other individuals online entails responsibilities not only for governments but also for platforms and intermediaries, which should develop codes of conduct that make explicit their respect for such fundamental rights and put in place strategies for their effective enforcement in line with the respective national rules on political campaigning."
- "Governments, electoral management bodies and relevant oversight agencies must act swiftly to bring legal definitions of political advertising up to date, thereby grounding in law essential responsibilities on content, financing and placement of online political ads that correspond to online platforms, political activists, sponsors and other intermediaries."
- "Online platforms must conduct identity verification protocols to ensure that only legally authorised advertisers place ads and should be responsible for removing inauthentic online communications. Regulations should ban inauthentic production and dissemination of online political advertisement, such as machine-generated ads and targeting."
- "Online platforms should, in light of their central role and capabilities and their associated responsibilities, adopt effective proactive measures to detect and remove illegal content online and not only limit themselves to reacting to notices which they receive."
- "Online platforms should disclose their detailed content policies in their terms of service and clearly communicate this to their users. These terms should not only define the policy for removing or disabling access to content, but also spell out the safeguards that ensure that content-related measures do not lead to over-removal. In particular, online platforms' terms of service should clearly spell out any possibility for the users to contest removal decisions as part of an enhanced transparency of the platforms' general removal policies."
- "Signatories commit to keep complying with the requirement set by EU and national laws, and outlined in self-regulatory Codes, that all advertisements should be clearly distinguishable from editorial content, including news, whatever their form and whatever the medium used. When an advertisement appears in a medium containing news or editorial matter, it should be presented in such a way as to be readily recognisable as a paid-for communication or labelled as such."
- "These [paid] ads should be clearly and effectively labelled and distinguishable as paid-for content, and users should be able to understand that the content displayed contains advertising related to political or societal issues."
- "Accordingly, the Assembly calls on member States to review, where necessary, their regulatory frameworks governing media coverage of election campaigns, in order to bring them into line with Council of Europe standards, ensuring in particular that they: (...) 8.3. oblige, where this is not already the case, public and private broadcast media to cover election campaigns fairly and impartially, making sure that opposition parties benefit from balanced media coverage in current affairs and information programmes, and introduce, along with this obligation, appropriate penalties by setting up the necessary monitoring and rectification mechanisms to ensure implementation in practice."
- "Accordingly, the Assembly calls on member States to review, where necessary, their regulatory frameworks governing media coverage of election campaigns, in order to bring them into line with Council of Europe standards, ensuring in particular that they: (...) 8.6. clearly distinguish between the campaign activities and information activities of public and private media to ensure equity among political competitors, as well as a conscious and free choice for voters."
- "Accordingly, the Assembly calls on member States to review, where necessary, their regulatory frameworks governing media coverage of election campaigns, in order to bring them into line with Council of Europe standards, ensuring in particular that they: (...) 8.7. adopt strict rules on media coverage of government activities to avoid media coverage of ceremonies attended or organised by the government resulting in preferential treatment and undue advantages for the parties in power and their candidates during elections."
- "Accordingly, the Assembly calls on member States to review, where necessary, their regulatory frameworks governing media coverage of election campaigns, in order to bring them into line with Council of Europe standards, ensuring in particular that they: (...) 8.8. guarantee, where political parties and candidates have the right to purchase advertising space for election purposes, equal treatment in terms of conditions and rates charged; in this context, there should be a requirement for paid political advertising to be readily recognisable as such."
- "The Committee of Ministers therefore, under the terms of Article 15.b of the Statute of the Council of Europe, recommends that member States, in consultation with private sector actors and civil society, develop and promote coherent strategies to protect freedom of expression, access to information and other human rights and fundamental freedoms in relation to search engines in line with the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (...), in particular by engaging with search engine providers to carry out the following actions: (...) – ensure accessibility to their services to people with disabilities, thereby enhancing their integration and full participation in society."
- "The Assembly considers that social media companies should rethink and enhance their internal policies to uphold more firmly the rights to freedom of expression and information, promoting the diversity of sources, topics and views, as well as better quality information, while fighting effectively against the dissemination of unlawful material through their users’ profiles and countering disinformation more effectively."
- "The Assembly calls on social media companies to: (...) 11.2. take an active part not only in identifying inaccurate or false content circulating through their venues but also in warning their users about such content, even when it does not qualify as illegal or harmful and is not taken down; the warning should be accompanied in the most serious cases by the blocking of the interactive functions, such as “like” or “share”; 11.3. make systematic use of a network analysis approach to identify fake accounts and bots, and develop procedures and mechanisms to exclude bot-generated messages from their “trending” content or at least flag their accounts and the messages they repost."
- "Nondiscriminatory access to media should also be guaranteed to all political parties and candidates in compliance with Article 2(1) of the ICCPR, which guarantees the rights established in the Covenant “without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status”. Restrictions imposed on media access should also comply with the requirements of legality, necessity and proportionality under Article 19(3)."
- "Beyond providing equal access to the media, States should encourage a fair system of paid political advertising and allow parties to generate funds to afford doing so."
- "Companies that hold large amounts of users’ data should develop robust and meaningfully transparent privacy policies and processes in consultation with civil society and other stakeholders, consistent with their responsibilities to respect human rights."
- "All publicly-owned media should, during election periods, ensure that the public is informed about election matters, respect strict rules of fairness, impartiality and balance, and grant all parties and candidates equitable opportunities to communicate directly with the public, either for free or at subsidised rates."
- "Any rules on election spending which are designed to create a level electoral playing field should be applicable to legacy and digital media, taking into account their differences, including rules about transparency of political advertising."
- "Online intermediaries and digital media should implement the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and conduct due diligence to ensure that their products, policies and practices, including in the areas of collection of private data and microtargeting of messages, do not interfere with human rights."
- "Media outlets and online platforms, as (often) powerful corporate actors, should take seriously their responsibility to respect human rights."
- "The Committee reaffirms that a person’s status as a person with a disability or the existence of an impairment (including a physical or sensory impairment) must never be grounds for denying legal capacity or any of the rights provided for in article 12. All practices that in purpose or effect violate article 12 must be abolished in order to ensure that full legal capacity is restored to persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others."
- "States parties must refrain from denying persons with disabilities their legal capacity and must, rather, provide persons with disabilities access to the support necessary to enable them to make decisions that have legal effect."
- "In its concluding observations on States parties’ initial reports, in relation to article 12, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has repeatedly stated that States parties must “review the laws allowing for guardianship and trusteeship, and take action to develop laws and policies to replace regimes of substitute decision-making by supported decision-making, which respects the person’s autonomy, will and preferences”."
- "In order to fully realize the equal recognition of legal capacity in all aspects of life, it is important to recognize the legal capacity of persons with disabilities in public and political life (art. 29). This means that a person’s decision-making ability cannot be a justification for any exclusion of persons with disabilities from exercising their political rights, including the right to vote, the right to stand for election and the right to serve as a member of a jury."
- "The Committee further recommends that States parties guarantee the right of persons with disabilities to stand for election, to hold office effectively and to perform all public functions at all levels of government, with reasonable accommodation and support, where desired, in the exercise of their legal capacity."
- "Providing support, whether of a financial or regulatory nature, for media outlets or media content, for example in certain formats or languages, that serve the information and voice needs of different individuals and groups."
- "Generally putting in place a legal and regulatory framework that promotes the rights of different individuals and groups to access and use media and digital technologies to disseminate their own content as well as to receive relevant content produced by others."
- "By Governments: (…) (d) Review the differential impact of electoral systems on the political representation of women in elected bodies and consider, where appropriate, the adjustment or reform of those systems."
- "The state shall not only (passively) respect the exercise of the freedom of association, but shall also actively protect and facilitate this exercise. The state shall protect political parties and individuals in their freedom of association from interference by non-state actors, inter alia by legislative means. "
- "Parties and their supporters shall be able to assemble freely and communicate the party views, and their opinions shall not be summarily blocked from receiving balanced media coverage, especially by state-run media."
- "It is of paramount importance that political parties and their members have the right to participate in political and public debate, regardless of whether the position taken by them is in line with government policy or advocates for legal or societal change or is unpopular or offensive to some groups."
- "The rights of opposition parties have to be effectively protected in parliament."
- "Generally, while it is up to the State to ensure that persons with disabilities are able to exercise their rights in full, they may require, or, through financial and other incentives, encourage political parties to take further measures to facilitate public participation for this category of persons."
- "Measures to help promote adequate national minority representation might include reserving a set number of parliamentary seats for specific minorities, waiving the threshold for the number of votes received so that parties representing national minorities may be represented in parliament and the provision of electoral material, including ballot papers, as well as voter education and campaign materials in minority languages."
- "The system for the verification of signatures should be clearly defined in law and not overly technical, so as to avoid the possibility of abuse. In particular, a requirement that a citizen be allowed to sign in support of only one party should be avoided, as such a regulation would affect his/her right to freedom of association and could easily disqualify parties despite their attempts in good faith to fulfil this requirement."