Q1/2020 - UN Human Rights Council (HRC)

43rd HRC Session, Geneva, 24 February - 13 March 2020

At the 43rd session of the UN Human Rights Council, Internet- related issues were only marginal topics. In a report on the Right to Privacy in the Digital Age[1] submitted to the Council, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy, Joe Cannataci, mainly addressed the issues of health-related data and gender discrimination in relation with data privacy. However, Cannataci also refers in the report to the idea he has been pursuing for years of drafting a new legal instrument to establish an oversight of state surveillance on the Internet. He reported about the results of the “4th International Intelligence Oversight Forum” (IIOF), which took place in October 2019. Cannataci expects the Forum to support his idea. So far, the UN member states have not taken up the idea of a new legal instrument on surveillance. A 5th IIOF is planned for October 2020.

The 43rd session of the Human Rights Council was suspended on 12 March 2020 because of the COVID-19 crisis. Agenda items that were not discussed and the adoption of resolutions have been postponed to the 44th session, which is scheduled for June 2020 in Geneva.

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Q1/2020
  1. [1] Human Rights Council, Forty-third session, Geneva, 12 February 2020, UN-Doc/A/HRC/43/52, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy, in: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Privacy/SR/Pages/AnnualReports.aspx