Since early 2015, the Local Action to Secure Internet Rights (LASIR) project has focused on empowering national and local actors in their defence of human rights on the internet, in countries as diverse as South Korea, Brazil, the Philippines, India, Jordan, Uganda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bangladesh, Kenya and Tunisia. All LASIR partners are strong local organisations, with ongoing work on internet rights. They are developing, together with APC, integrated strategies of policy research, context analysis, coalition building, media outreach and popular engagement.
Now that the project has reached its final stage, APC is sharing a series of interviews to highlight the participants’ experiences and conclusions. Today, we want you to meet One World Platform for South East Europe), a Bosnia-Herzegovina based, multilingual and multimedia platform for civil society organisations in Southeast Europe.
What was your goal when you decided to be part of the LASIR project?
Our main goal was to facilitate the search for local and global internet rights work and materials through the One World Platform (OWP). We want citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as from neighbouring countries, to have a nice online space to come to for information and ideas on securing and protecting their internet rights.
And where are you now?
So far, we have revamped the OWP, which now looks like this, and we have concentrated on a specific section on internet rights.
After revamping the page, it was key to fill it with relevant content, and we had a special interest in developing infographics, to make internet rights issues more visual and accessible.
In addition to that, we created a working group and we are working on an issue paper, written by Valentina Pellizzer, our executive director and a board member of APC.
We also collaborated with the Web We Want campaign, raising awareness and bringing new collaborators from the region, and participated in several events, such as the Serbian Domain Name Day and Regional Internet Forum, under the slogan Which internet film are you in?, and the Global Conference on CyberSpace.
What would you highlight from the process?
Through our work and reaching out to different stakeholders, we were able to engage in regional collaboration, and managed to incorporate large parts of civil society into the internet governance discussions in the region. On the other hand, we confirmed the fact that the private sector, the registry, and the Bosnia and Herzegovina government are still not showing interest in actively engaging in these spaces.
Where can we follow your work and activities?
Website: http://www.oneworldsee.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/owpsee