UN hopes to have revised ‘cyber violence’ report available by year’s end

On September 24, the United Nations Broadband Commission released a controversial report about online harassment of women and girls. Not only did the report offer poor citation of its sources, it included sources that have been widely discredited, such as an old Lyndon LaRouche argument that video games like Pokémon teach children to become murderers. 

As originally noted in my October article on Motherboard, the United Nations International Telecommunication Union (ITU) apologized for several errors in its report on cyber violence against women and girls. Sarah Parkes, media and public information chief at ITU said she expected the revised report in a couple of weeks.

With a month gone by and still no report, I contacted Parkes again for an update, and it appears a more definitive plan is underway, with the team working on the revised report hoping to finish it before 2016.

“It is full steam ahead on the revision,” Parkes told me in an email. “We have broadened the group to include interested parties who contacted us as a result of the launch.”

Some of these parties include Akamai Technologies, a content delivery network which, “delivers between 15-30 percent of all Web traffic,” according to Reuters, as well as the Cambridge Centre for Gender Policy (UK) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) freedom of expression team. She also noted that they would be including US-based university research in their revision.

“It’s quite a big project to get everyone’s input included,” said Parkes. They have already received the first round of revisions from the two lead agencies, the United Nations Development Programme and UN Women, plus the lead author’s team as well as ITU proof-readers and referencing reviewers.

According to Parkes, “It has been reframed as a ‘Discussion Paper’ as it was felt this better reflected the purpose and content.”

There will be a meeting this week at the United Nations Internet Governance Forum in Brazil to discuss the topic after which they have set a window for revisions until November 20.

“We already have the revised Executive Summary and the Highlights back up,” Parkes noted. “If we can possibly do so we will get [the full discussion paper] back up before year’s end.”

About the author: Brad Glasgow is just killing time until the new Star Wars movie comes out. Until then you can find him on Twitter @brad_glasgow.

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