Columbia World Freedom of Expression seeks to contribute to the event of an built-in and progressive jurisprudence and understanding on freedom of expression and data world wide. It maintains an in depth database of worldwide case legislation. That is its publication coping with latest developments within the discipline.
Again in 2021, El Veinte, an NGO advancing freedom of expression and digital rights, challenged a provision of a internet neutrality legislation that allowed for zero-rating – a telecom pricing follow the place information from sure pre-selected apps or web sites doesn’t rely in opposition to a consumer’s plan – in Colombia.
Earlier than the Constitutional Court docket, El Veinte argued that the supply violated pluralism, enabled monopolies, and breached privateness by permitting telecom firms to profile and phase customers primarily based on their web exercise. This previous Could, the Constitutional Court docket sided with El Veinte, declaring zero-rating unconstitutional.
The choice, nonetheless, provoked a wave of on-line harassment concentrating on El Veinte’s total crew, who had been blamed for the perceived function they performed in chopping off “free” entry to WhatsApp. In a matter of days, the net assaults amassed 350,000 messages. Some threatened bodily violence. “These assaults had been very intense and went past insults,” El Veinte’s Co-Director Emmanuel Vargas Penagos advised Marija Šajkaš, CGFoE’s Senior Communications Supervisor, in a latest interview.
For September’s version of Portraits of FoE Defenders, Vargas Penagos spoke on the state of freedom of expression in Colombia and broader Latin America, El Veinte’s latest constitutional court docket victory, the toll of on-line harassment, and what provides him energy to proceed the work of human rights protection.
Under is an abridged excerpt. You’ll find the complete interview on our web site.
Portraits of FOE Defenders
Emmanuel Vargas Penagos is the co-founder and co-director of El Veinte, a freedom of expression NGO in Colombia, and a PhD researcher in AI and Regulation at Örebro College, Sweden. Picture: Courtesy of Emmanuel Vargas Penagos.
Marija Šajkaš: I used to be questioning how your work, in addition to the work of El Veinte, has modified within the present political local weather.
Emmanuel Vargas Penagos: Nicely, I will provide you with an instance. El Veinte filed a constitutional problem in 2021 in opposition to an article of a legislation that regulates internet neutrality in Colombia. […] In follow, this [article] allowed zero-rating plans within the nation. Zero-rating is a really divisive subject inside telecommunication discussions, as a result of some individuals take into account that it helps enhance connectivity. However on the identical time, there are others who suppose that it doesn’t enable significant connectiveness, and I agree with them. So it’s a plan that perhaps provides you cellular web entry for a brief interval or a brief quantity of knowledge. However after that, the one web entry that you’ve got is thru these pre-selected purposes like WhatsApp, Fb, Instagram, and many others. And that is normally performed with a industrial curiosity, and that’s what occurred in Colombia.
We challenged that provision of the legislation for violating pluralism, constitutional protections in opposition to monopolies in using the electromagnetic spectrum, and the appropriate to privateness by permitting firms to profile and phase customers primarily based on their web exercise. The case lasted practically 4 years earlier than the Constitutional Court docket – for much longer than different high-profile circumstances.
On Could 29, 2025, the Court docket dominated in our favor, declaring zero-rating unconstitutional and granting one yr for the judgment to take impact. The Court docket issued solely a temporary assertion shared by way of WhatsApp, after which we introduced the choice on social media. This triggered a wave of assaults in opposition to Ana Bejarano, El Veinte’s co-director, in opposition to our crew and me, accusing us of harming Colombians by chopping off “free” entry to platforms like WhatsApp and Fb, though these zero-rating plans had been the very difficulty beneath problem.
As an alternative of being offered as one thing that will increase the associated fee for web entry and for significant web entry, they’re offered as plans that present free entry to WhatsApp. That is one thing that causes a variety of worry, and it’s a story that may be very dangerous for the only understanding of individuals’s rights.
To learn the complete interview, go to our web site.
ArgentinaKarina Milei’s Request for Prior Restraints (No. 1)Resolution Date: September 1, 2025The Nationwide Civil and Industrial Federal Court docket No. 5 of the Metropolis of Buenos Aires, Argentina, granted the precautionary measure requested by Karina Elizabeth Milei, Secretary Basic of the Presidency and sister of President Javier Milei, ordering the cessation of the dissemination of audio recordings attributed to her that had been allegedly obtained unlawfully on the Presidential Workplace. Milei argued that the publication of these audios – introduced by a streaming channel and amplified by varied journalists – may trigger irreparable hurt to her honor, status, and private security, in addition to compromise authorities exercise. Nevertheless, the content material of the recordings had not but been verified. The Court docket acknowledged that the Structure of Argentina and worldwide treaties robustly protected freedom of expression and prohibited prior restraints, save in completely distinctive circumstances. After analyzing the necessities of “probability of success on the deserves of the case” (fumus bonis iuris) and hazard in delay (periculum in mora), it concluded that, on this case, dissemination of the recordings may trigger hurt that might be troublesome to treatment later and have an effect on constitutionally protected pursuits reminiscent of privateness, honor, and institutional safety. Accordingly, it imposed a short lived and distinctive restriction restricted solely to the contested recordings and ordered the Nationwide Communications Authority to inform the measure to all media retailers.
Karina Milei’s Request for Prior Restraints (No. 2)Resolution: September 16, 2025The Nationwide Civil and Industrial Federal Court docket No. 5 of Buenos Aires, Argentina, lifted a precautionary measure that prohibited the dissemination of audio recordings allegedly involving Karina Elizabeth Milei, Secretary Basic of the Presidency and sister of President Javier Milei. On September 1, 2025, the Court docket granted Milei’s request for a precautionary measure to stop the dissemination of recordings by the streaming channel “Carnaval,” which she claimed had been obtained illegally from the Presidential Workplace and will hurt her honor and compromise nationwide safety. The precise content material of the recordings had not been verified on the time the ban was granted. Journalist Jorge Fontevecchia, represented by a crew of constitutional legal professionals (together with Roberto Gargarella), appealed the order, arguing that it amounted to an unconstitutional prior restraint in violation of each the Structure of Argentina and the American Conference on Human Rights. On September 15, 2025, Karina Milei herself requested the Court docket to raise the measure, stating that the dissemination of the information didn’t have an effect on her privateness or nationwide safety, contemplating they had been already circulated by international media retailers. The next day, Decide Alejandro Patricio Maraniello accepted the withdrawal and dominated that the unique circumstances justifying the injunction had ended. He emphasised that precautionary measures beneath nationwide procedural legislation can solely stay in impact whereas their underlying circumstances persist. Consequently, the enchantment filed by Fontevecchia was declared moot.
United KingdomHXZ v. NMXDecision Date: March 21, 2025The England and Wales Excessive Court docket (King’s Bench Division) granted interim injunctive aid in favour of a businessman, prohibiting his former companion from publishing or threatening to publish his non-public pictures and different confidential data. The Court docket discovered that the businessman had an affordable expectation of privateness and that his rights beneath Article 8 (proper to non-public and household life) of European Conference of Human Rights outweighed his former companion’s proper to freedom of expression beneath Article 10 of that very same conference. The Court docket discovered that the stability struck closely within the businessman’s favour at this stage and that his former companion may inform her life story with out “blackmail fashion threats” and with out disclosing his “non-public and confidential data.”
European Court docket of Human RightsThe Case of M.Ș.D. v. RomaniaDecision Date: December 4, 2024The European Court docket of Human Rights (ECtHR) held that Romania violated the appropriate to non-public life beneath Article 8 of the European Conference on Human Rights (the Conference) by failing to supply an enough authorized framework and an efficient investigation to guard the Applicant’s proper to non-public life. The case involved an 18-year-old scholar whose former boyfriend, out of jealousy, non-consensually disseminated her intimate pictures on-line and to her household and friends, inflicting her severe psychological hurt. The Court docket discovered that Romanian authorities had been inactive for lengthy durations regardless of her immediate criticism and submission of proof, misinterpreted the legislation by dismissing legal responsibility as a result of she had initially shared the pictures voluntarily, and allowed key fees to grow to be time-barred. It emphasised that the prosecutors’ reasoning, portraying the acts as “infantile revenge,” suggesting the Applicant contributed to her personal victimization, and avoiding prosecution to spare the perpetrator, trivialized the severity of on-line abuse and bolstered dangerous gender stereotypes. The ECtHR underscored that non-consensual sharing of intimate pictures constitutes a severe type of cyber-violence linked to gender-based violence, requiring clear legal provisions and immediate, diligent investigations; civil cures alone are inadequate. By failing to behave successfully and promptly, Romania created a local weather of impunity, thereby breaching its constructive obligations beneath Article 8. Consequently, the Applicant was awarded EUR 700 in pecuniary damages, EUR 7,500 in non-pecuniary damages, and EUR 215 in prices.
● OCT 2: Journalism Beneath Surveillance in Latin America – Instances, Challenges, and Responses From a Human-Rights Perspective. Extra on these championing the rights to know and entry data in Latin America: CGFoE will host an on-line dialogue about surveillance practices directed at journalists and the related protections granted by nationwide and regional courts. The panelists will embrace Juan Manuel Ospina Sánchez, Senior Authorized Editor, CGFoE; Mauricio Weibel Barahona, Journalist, Chile; and Claudia Duque, Journalist, Colombia. CGFoE’s Prize Supervisor Alejandra Negrete Morayta and Program Coordinator Estefanía Mullally will reasonable the dialog. October 2, 2025. 1:00-2:30 PM ET / 12:00-1:30 PM COT / 2:00- 3:30 PM CLT. Register by way of Zoom. The occasion can be in Spanish with simultaneous translation into English.
● OCT 6: Ebook Launch – Hate Speech and the European Court docket of Human Rights. Are you primarily based in NYC? Cease by the Davis Wright Tremaine (DWT) workplaces for an insightful dialog on hate speech, co-hosted by CGFoE, on the launch of Hate Speech and the European Court docket of Human Rights by Natalie Alkiviadou, Senior Analysis Fellow, Way forward for Free Speech, Vanderbilt College. The guide traces the Court docket’s case legislation, highlights inconsistencies within the safety of speech, and explores the challenges of on-line regulation in Europe at this time. Aryeh Neier, President Emeritus, Open Society Foundations, will be a part of the panel, together with CGFoE’s Affiliate Director Hawley Johnson and different main worldwide specialists. October 6, 2025. 4:00-5:30 PM ET. 1251 sixth Ave, twenty first Ground, New York Metropolis. RSVP is required.
● Joint Declaration: Defending Rights to Freedom of Peaceable Meeting, of Affiliation From Criminalization Amid Intensified Existential Threats. In a joint enchantment to States and their authorities, human rights specialists of the UN, the Inter-American Fee on Human Rights (IACHR), and the African Fee on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), condemn the escalating repression of the rights to freedom of peaceable meeting and affiliation globally. Urging the safety and facilitation of those freedoms, the specialists name on States to cease criminalizing and stigmatizing – by way of labels reminiscent of “enemies,” “traitors,” “spies,” “terrorists,” or “criminals” – the non-violent actions of those that criticize the authorities. In related information from the UN Basic Meeting this week, the African Union, the EU, and the UN issued an announcement decrying “the rising variety of situations of lack of respect for worldwide legislation, worldwide humanitarian legislation, and human rights legislation.”
● Brazil: Landmark Regulation to Defend Youngsters On-line. Human Rights Watch (HRW) welcomes Brazil’s newly handed legislation on the safety of kids’s digital rights and underscores the influence of advocacy work. The legislation’s most sturdy provisions handle the issues uncovered by HRW’s investigations and embrace 1) prohibiting on-line providers from utilizing youngsters’s private information in breach of their privateness or different rights (see HRW’s 2024 report on Brazilian youngsters’s pictures misused to coach AI instruments); 2) banning on-line providers from profiling youngsters for on-line behavior-based promoting (see HRW’s 2022 and 2023 stories on the key surveillance of kids). “Brazil has stepped ahead as the primary nation in Latin America to cross a devoted legislation to guard youngsters’s on-line privateness and security,” mentioned Hye Jung Han, youngsters’s rights and know-how researcher at HRW, urging different international locations to comply with swimsuit.
● Europe/US: Open Letters by Lecturers on DSA and Censorship. In mild of the US Home of Representatives’ listening to on “Europe’s Menace to American Speech and Innovation,” held earlier this month, greater than 30 students signed two letters correcting the enduring false impression that the EU Digital Providers Act (DSA) is a censorship software. “The DSA each advances and limits the liberty of expression,” one letter admitted, addressing Rep. Jim Jordan, however pressured that the legislation “provides the Fee and EU member state regulators no energy to reasonable lawful content material or its amplification in a content-specific manner.” The students clarified issues regarding the DSA’s danger administration framework, lawful content material regulation, trusted flaggers, out-of-court dispute decision our bodies, codes of follow, US and EU variations in speech protections, and the difficulty of extraterritorial utility.
● West Africa: 4 States Defy ECOWAS Court docket Over Blasphemy Legal guidelines. Citing Media Basis for West Africa, IFEX stories that 4 West African States proceed to criminalize blasphemy in defiance of their regional authorized obligations. This previous April, in ENHRI v. Nigeria, the Group Court docket of Justice of the Financial Group of West African States (ECOWAS) held that blasphemy legal guidelines violated the elemental proper to freedom of expression assured beneath Article 9(2) of the African Constitution on Human and Peoples’ Rights and Article 19 of the Worldwide Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Regardless of the ruling, Nigeria, Gambia, Cape Verde, and Mauritania nonetheless take into account blasphemy a legal offense, with punishments starting from fines to prolonged jail sentences and the dying penalty. For extra on blasphemy circumstances from West Africa, together with State v. Muhhammad Mubarak Bala, seek the advice of the CGFoE Database.
This part of the publication options instructing supplies targeted on world freedom of expression that are newly uploaded on Freedom of Expression With out Frontiers
Limiting the Use of Felony Regulation to Limit Freedom of Expression: A Information to CoE Requirements. Launched by the Council of Europe (CoE) Division for Cooperation on Freedom of Expression, this information outlines the dangers of imposing legal sanctions on explicit types of expression. The useful resource opinions related human rights requirements, specifically the European Court docket of Human Rights’ case legislation, coverage steerage of the CoE our bodies, and the European Fee for Democracy by way of Regulation. It then zooms in on the criminalization of hate speech, defamation and insult, the dissemination of confidential data, speech that threatens nationwide safety and public order, and disinformation. CoE Guide Peter Noorlander ready the information as a part of the Mission Enhancing Institutional Capacities on Freedom of Expression and Data in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
● Blurred Traces: Dying Threats, Hate Speech, and the European Court docket of Human Rights, by Natalie Alkiviadou. Writing for The Bedrock Precept, Natalie Alkiviadou, Senior Analysis Fellow at The Way forward for Free Speech, analyzes the European Court docket of Human Rights’ latest ruling in Ilareva and Others v. Bulgaria, specializing in the “narrative of hate speech by affiliation.” Alkiviadou argues that the Court docket has dramatically prolonged the attain of the hate speech doctrine and dangers “eroding the excellence between threats directed at people and hate speech directed to the teams themselves.”
● Afghanistan and Iran: Boundaries of Expression Podcast – Gender Apartheid. On this new podcast episode, ARTICLE 19 speaks to Karima Bennoune, Lewis M. Simes Professor of Regulation on the College of Michigan and former UN Particular Rapporteur on Cultural Rights, concerning the systematic institutionalized oppression of girls and women in Afghanistan and Iran. Professor Bennoune sheds mild on the marketing campaign she is main: for gender apartheid to be acknowledged as a world crime.
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