 and who since August 2020 has held the position of United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression. Irene Kahn has had a long and a very distinguished career in promoting human rights in respect for humanitarian law. Among other achievements, she was Secretary General of Amnesty International and head of the International Development Law Organization, IDLO, which is the only intergovernmental organization exclusively devoted to the rule of law and sustainable development. She is also the recipient of a number of human rights awards. We really look forward to hearing you, Irene, and I give you the floor. Thank you very much, Mary, for your kind words. It's an honor and pleasure to address the European Institute of International Affairs, and particularly as it is based in Dublin, where I have spent many fine summers as a young teenager. Freedom of Opinion and Expression is essential for democracy, development, and human dignity. It's an enabling right, and it's equally relevant to political, civil, economic, social, or cultural rights, as important for the right to education, for instance, as for environmental protection, democratic elections, or media freedom. Now, the core of Freedom of Opinion and Expression is the right to produce, access, share, and discuss information and ideas of all kinds. In recent times, digital technology has brought a paradigm shift to the way in which we create, search, and share information. The internet and digital platforms have amplified opportunities to communicate, to organize, to empower people, but along with those opportunities have also come new threats of misinformation, disinformation, violent and hate speech that have consequences, not just in the online world, but often in the offline world. And today I would like to focus on one aspect of that challenge, the manipulation of information during armed conflicts and its impact on human rights and human lives. By information manipulation, I mean propaganda, hate speech, and disinformation. And by disinformation, I mean false or manipulated information intended to cause harm. I'm just mentioning these definitions because there is a lot of confusion around it, and I'm sure in the questions some of comments that will come out as well. Now, my starting point is the information environment has become a dangerous theater of war in the digital age. I'm not talking about cyber war, but I'm talking about the use of content, propaganda, disinformation, hate speech to attack civilians, endanger humanitarian assistance, instigate violence and prolong conflicts. During and in the lead up to crisis conflicts and wars, states and armed groups, as well as their agents are weaponizing information to sow confusion, feed hate, incite violence, discredit human rights defenders, journalists, and humanitarian workers, and often obstruct peace processes. Of course, we all know that information has long been manipulated to instigate violence or to deceive and demoralize the enemy during war. Ethnic rivalries, grievances, political tensions have always provided the perfect breeding ground for disinformation, hatred, and violence. So what is different and significant today? I'm going to make four points in that regard. Firstly, digital technology has been a game changer, making it possible to distort reality with ease, for example, with deep fakes. And the business model and techniques of social media platforms, which amplify and spread manipulated and harmful information at a scale and speed never known before. Of course, radio, print and television are still the most common source of news for most people in conflict areas and traditional media, especially state-controlled media, and be super spreaders of propaganda, disinformation, and hate speech too. We all remember the role played by the local radio station, Milko Lin, in 1994 in promoting genocide in Rwanda, and that was long before the advent of social media. However, today, social media is a significant vector of manipulated information. In Ethiopia, for instance, 70% of disinformation and hate speech have been spread by social media. Secondly, the victims are often civilians, particularly vulnerable and marginalized groups, religious or ethnic minorities, refugees, internally displaced persons, migrants. For example, in Central African Republic, online hate has fueled cycles of violence against Muslims and Christians. In Iraq, armed groups have used Telegram, Facebook, and YouTube to propagate hate speech along sectarian lines. In Myanmar, Facebook was the vector used to incite genocide of Rohingyas. Information is also being manipulated to discredit humanitarian actors and disrupt humanitarian operations. In Ukraine, we remember last summer, this summer, the emblem of the Red Cross was distorted. In Syria and Palestine, online smear campaigns have sought to destroy the reputation of human rights and humanitarian organization. While it may be heard often to identify who gains from these actions, it is clear that innocent civilians are always the losers. During armed conflict, people are at their most vulnerable and in great need of accurate, trustworthy information to ensure their own safety and well-being. And yet that is precisely when they're being hit with false or manipulated information. And not only that, they often face internet shutdowns or slowdowns by the government, information blackouts, and other restrictions on information. When families cannot communicate, when people cannot access reliable information about the security situation or how to access essential services, they can't ensure their own safety. Furthermore, disinformation and false propaganda have a broader impact by creating public distrust in the integrity of information. And that hinders the trust and confidence that is needed to build support for peace processes. And we see that, for example, in protracted and frozen conflicts like Palestine. We can also see from Russia's invasion of Ukraine how internal security and global stability can be jeopardized by manipulating information to justify aggression as indeed Russia did. And this brings me to my third point and that is about the role of states. Under international law, states are the primary duty bearers of human rights. They have the ultimate responsibility to respect, protect and promote all human rights, including the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Unfortunately, state practice varies across a spectrum. From those that respect media freedom and proactively promote access to accurate verifiable information, to those that see the tackle disinformation in ways that undermine human rights, to those where the state itself is implicated in producing, sponsoring and spreading disinformation, false propaganda and hate speech. State-led manipulation of information has the most potent toxic impact on human rights because of the power, resources and reach of the state. And because of the ability of the state at the same time to suppress independent and critical voices in the country so that others cannot challenge the official narrative. Again, take the example of Russia, which has not only spread disinformation and false propaganda to justify its invasion and continued aggression in Ukraine, but it has simultaneously imposed an information blackout inside the country, shutting down, locking up or driving out all independent media outlets and journalists including notable figures like Dmitry Muratov, the Nobel Peace Laureate last year. Now digital technology has made it easier for some states and their agents as well as some non-state actors to spread disinformation and interfere in conflicts across borders. For example, cross-border influence operations and information operations in internal conflicts in Libya, Mali, Syria and Yemen, for instance, where many third states, including some Western governments have been implicated in disinformation campaigns. Now how do we hold states and non-state entities accountable for human rights violations caused from a distance? Now that brings me to my fourth and final point, legal ambiguities and gaps that allow perpetrators to operate with impunity. Manipulation of information in the digital age has brought about new challenges for international law. For example, international humanitarian law is primarily focused on the protection of civilians and not on the integrity of information or freedom of expression. It protects, for example, journalists as civilians but not journalism, not the information that they produce. Indeed, international law, international humanitarian law actually permits the manipulation of information by parties to the conflict. There's no expectation that one party to the conflict is going to reveal truth about its troops or soldiers or the way it's fighting the war to the other. And there are only some limited restrictions under international humanitarian law relating to information such as false information to instigate war crimes or crimes against humanity. But digital technology and the way in which disinformation and propaganda and hate speech are used today, I think that situation is no longer tenable. There is also considerable confusion and disagreement about what is disinformation? What is propaganda? What is false? What is true? And this confusion is not only legal but it's also highly political. The concepts are being turned on their heads, for instance, when some governments seek to delegitimize independent media as fake news or discredit human rights reports, for example, by UN special rapporteurs or reputable NGOs as disinformation. And they put forward their own patently false state propaganda as facts in official meetings of the United Nations. Now the international community cannot ignore the growing problem of information manipulation during armed conflicts. The stakes are too high for human rights, for the safety of civilians and for international peace and security. I believe our responses must be rooted in human rights. And this year, last month in fact, to the third committee of the General Assembly, I presented my report on armed conflicts and manipulation of information. And I made a few recommendations there. I want to just repeat them here and end my statement with that. My first point is, here are just four points. First, the right to information is not a legitimate target of war. It should not be seen as a legitimate target of war. It is actually a survivor right on which people's lives, health, safety and security depend. Freedom of expression encompasses the right to seek, receive and disseminate diverse sources of information. It's extremely important in times of war, as much as in times of peace, that governments uphold this right. Secondly, countering disinformation is important for safeguarding human rights and restoring public trust. But to be effective, these measures, whatever measures governments take must be grounded in human rights. Using national security and counterterrorism laws to restrict speech, censoring critical voices, attacking independent media, disrupting the internet, do nothing to combat disinformation and actually experience shows much to erode freedom of opinion and expression as well as public trust in the integrity of information. Freedom of expression is not the reason why disinformation flourishes. On the contrary, freedom of expression is the means by which to combat disinformation. The best antidote to disinformation is trustworthy public information from governments, access to diverse and verifiable sources of information such as independent, free, pluralistic and diverse media and investment in media, information and digital literacy of the population of the public, empowering people to understand the information that they receive. My third point is social media platforms play a dual role in modern conflicts. On the one hand, they actually provide a vital means of communication and access to critical lifesaving information. On the other hand, they enable the amplification of disinformation propaganda and hate speech. And many of the problems with social media platforms in conflict situations are very similar to those in other settings except that they're significantly more dangerous during war because of the higher risks to the users. And companies need to do much more to ensure that they carry out timely human rights due diligence in line with UN guidelines on business and human rights, adopt effective human rights compliant policies, processes and business practices to ensure user security and invest in understanding the local context and of course improve their own transparency and accountability including the transparency of their algorithms. Now it's interesting if you look at the situation in Ukraine, most large Western companies have taken steps to improve the crisis response and content moderation. And they have done a reasonable job. I would urge them to respond with the same commitment to human rights and adequate resources in all conflict situations around the world where they operate. Well, of course, we also have to look at international humanitarian law and strengthen it and the relationship between human rights and humanitarian law needs to be better protected, understood and protected during armed conflict. Finally, I would say threats to freedom of opinion and expression during armed conflicts as well as in peace times are very complex, multifaceted and need to be tackled with multi-stakeholder collaboration that fully engage civil society and media alongside states, international organizations and digital companies. It's through a multi-stakeholder multifaceted approach that we will find answers. There is no easy answer to the problems but the urgency requires us to come together to find solutions. So let me end by saying that it is through respect for human rights and humanitarian principles that the integrity of information as well as the safety of civilians during armed conflict can be assured. Thank you. Thank you very much, Irene. And that was very thought provoking. And could I urge anyone who has not read your report that was recently discussed, I think in New York and also in Geneva on this topic to do so. It's really very comprehensive and it doesn't take too long to read. It's about 26 pages but the same clarity that you had there is very much in it. And I love the way you take these concepts and you work them out and you get rid of the lexicon that has grown up almost making it respectable to have fake news, et cetera. I took four things from what you said there. One, and from the report one was how often misinformation campaigns are a precursor to armed conflict. And in fact, are the means by which the domestic audience is prepared to do what they normally don't want to do that is engaged in armed conflict. The second thing was how misinformation is not the prerogative of any one side. I think that was very clear although those who are aggressors seem to reach particular heights or depths. And the third and something I think we'll come back to is how much social media can exacerbate what is bad but how much the media can deal with misinformation and expose it for what it is and educate people. So to get the ball rolling, the first question I want to ask you is very specifically to do with the role of responsible governments because it's so easy for governments to use misinformation campaigns as an excuse but what if Annie should be the role of responsible government in balancing the obligation to promote freedom of expression against the efforts of foreign governments to undermine respect for democracy and build support for acts of armed aggression against its neighbors. Where is the balance there? Well, I think the first step of all governments should be not to produce disinformation themselves. I think trustworthy, reliable public information is extremely important and indeed there is a right under international law for people to have access to such information and governments should proactively provide it. It's about building, at the end of the day it's about building public trust in what you say as a government. And that comes when the public can judge whether your information is verifiable or not. The second thing is media freedom allowing media to act as the fact checkers in most cases, independent media. I think that is extremely important. And the third part I would say is empowering the users themselves and that is digital media literacy allow giving people access to the net. We need to be very careful that we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and in trying to restrict or manage of disinformation, misinformation, online violence we must not come to the point where we are actually cutting off people's access to information to the internet which has been so important in empowering people and helping activists organize and developing civil society. So I think there's a lot of good practice actually out there for example, on digital literacy if you look at the some of the Nordic countries if you look at the Baltic States they've done a lot of good work there. Media freedom of course in the European Union as you know, there's a media freedom act that is now being considered in Brussels that seeks to promote best practice in media. There has also been the Digital Services Act which the European Union has adopted and I believe that it's taking the right step towards the way of, it promotes more accountability and transparency of the social media platforms. That's important. Of course there should be some regulation of social media but it should be smart to regulation. It should not be regulation of content but much more regulation of the standards that these companies are applying their business practices whether that is in line with human rights standards and other laws of international law standards. So that is where I think the focus should be. And of course in the context of conflict there is a lot that governments can do to protect journalists for example, in the conflict zone to ensure good practice there also among companies but also among the warring parties themselves. I mean, my report does not focus on armed conflict, groups armed groups, armed groups are of course another matter but the state itself which is the duty bearer of human rights should not play an active role in undermining human rights. There's a question here from Keelan O. Sullivan a development researcher at the IIEA who asks in recent years, UN peacekeeping operations have been targeted by disinformation including false allegations that UN peacekeepers are trafficking weapons to armed groups supporting terrorists and exploiting natural resources. This disinformation makes it harder for peacekeeping operations to implement their mandates and has put the safety of peacekeepers at risks. How can missions better monitor and analyze disinformation both online and offline? Well, actually the UN is beginning to look into this much more deeply and there is a study being carried out of how disinformation has occurred in various parts of West Africa in particular number of countries there. It's something to be aware of and it's very important to make sure that there is factual verifiable information available to the community so that they know what the role of the UN is. And when I say factual verifiable information the source of the information is very important. You know, people believe information depending on who it's coming from whether they believe the person or the source of the information. And I think the UN has to do much more to promote the free flow of verifiable trustworthy information. And that means investing for example in developing the capacity of states to produce public and good public information for the UN itself to be much more proactive in reaching out to communities and building the relationships with the communities so that they actually believe the information when it comes from the UN. So I think at the end of the day I go back to the point about building public trust and confidence in information. Thank you, this is a question here from Seamus Allen, Digital Policy Researcher and he asked if you can comment specifically on the European Union spanning access to Russian media for European citizens. Yes, that's an interesting point. Both in my report on media freedom in June and again in my report on Comtice in October I have differed from the European Union's position. I believe that the European Union has been a, you know, I can go back and say the European Union has been a champion of media freedom. And when it is confronted with the problem its first reaction is to shut down a media outlet. Now shutting down a media outlet is a very severe step. And I would have argued for the European Union to have trusted its media environment and information environment within the European Union where there is free media where it is possible to challenge and disprove false information that it was not necessary to ban RT entirely. Yes, RT produces disinformation but the European audience is an educated aware audience. Europe has free and independent pluralistic diverse media that can challenge RT and Europe also has national regulators that regulate broadcast channels and that would have been able to use the tools, the policies, tools that it has at its disposal to address RT, disinformation by RT without shutting it down. Switzerland, for instance, has not banned RT. And the Swiss, I don't see the Swiss audience, Swiss people, listeners all believing the Russian media, not at all. So I think it's important not to set an example that goes on the side of the Russians where Russia immediately turns around and says, well, if Europe will ban RT, we will ban European outlets. So that, in fact, was the effect of banning RT. Didn't make much of a difference for European audiences but made a huge difference for Russian audiences who no longer have access to many Western outlets. Here's a difficult one. Is it not idealistic to think that armed competence aiming to kill each other could feel compelled to uphold truth or accuracy when it is inconvenient for their side? And on the other hand, is it reasonable to condemn victims of genuine state oppression from exaggerating their sufferings? Well, you know, international humanitarian law was born in that idealistic framework to make war bearable for civilians. The idea was not to abolish war. We realized that would not be possible but you can make war bearable for civilians. You can protect their rights and their dignity. And it is in that context that I'm arguing that parties to the conflict should respect some rules about information. Information has been sidelined. It is not seen as an essential right, like water or access to food or medical care during war but in an information age, information has become so vital for our survival that I believe some lines have to be drawn there about manipulation of information but also about the responsibility of protecting sources of accurate information for civilians. So yes, idealistic, but well, sometimes idealism pays off and we should not reduce our standards simply because something is idealistic. In terms of the suffering, well, you know, I lived through a war here in my own country in the 70s. I was a child at that time. And I remember, you know, what it felt to be cut off from information, to be lying at night under the bed in order to avoid any snipers bullets flying into our bedroom windows and listening with my parents to BBC as a reliable source of information about what was happening about the war. And the suffering, I think about people exaggerating their suffering, maybe some do, but most do not. I don't think any of us would want to exchange places for them. I think that's a good test. Colin Rafter, who is the retired diplomat, asks, who decides what is disinformation? Is there a need for an international convention on the right to information? There is international law that sets out the right to information. There is nothing that defines disinformation. And that is why actually international law does not, it's interesting, international law does not forbid false information. It does not prohibit information just because it's false. International law prohibits information that is harmful, such as, in fact, advocacy of hatred and violence is prohibited under international law. And international law allows restrictions, for example, to protect the rights of others, for example, through defamation laws or to protect national security or to protect public health. Governments can restrict certain information, but they have to be proportionate. They have to be necessary. They have to be legitimate, linked to the legitimate objectives very clearly. And the reason why international law does not prohibit false information is because what is false and what is true is very often a matter of perception or point of view. And yes, there are certain facts that can be proven scientifically, but that's very limited. Most information is about points of view, my opinion as opposed to yours. So what I consider disinformation, you may consider to be true. And if disinformation is forbidden as such, then what usually happens is that information I don't like, information that makes me uncomfortable is the information that I would forbid as a government. And I think that that's a very slippery stop. That's the problem with disinformation. And therefore, with disinformation, it is much more important to empower the listeners. It's much more important to challenge the disinformation with factual trustworthy, sorry, trustworthy information rather than to ban it. Usually banning it just drives it underground. And that's where we see conspiracy theories emerging and so on. It's very hard to fight disinformation through censorship. Here's another question. And it's on the same lines. It's from Alex Conway, Global Europe Researcher. He asked, goodness can comment on how the UN would balance freedom of expression in armed conflicts by not supporting propagandist media outlets. What criteria will it adhere to for this? Sorry, I didn't understand the second part of it. By not. What criteria will it adhere to for this? What criteria it would adhere to? In balancing freedom of expression in armed conflicts against the possibility of supporting propagandist media outlets. I don't think it's a question of supporting propaganda media outlets. It's a question of ensuring that there is a free flow of verifiable information alongside other sources of information and empowering people to be able to distinguish between the false and the true information or developing a shared understanding of what is truth, I should put it that way. If you, I was very interested in listening to a Baltic, a diplomat from one of the Baltic states who said that in their country, they had inoculated their population against Russian propaganda by promoting digital literacy and media literacy even in schools, elementary schools and for young children. And they felt that that was a better protection for them than trying to stop the information coming from across borders. I mean, technology being what it is. For example, right now in Russia, people can still access Western outlets. Very difficult, but they do it through VPN and so on. And in the same way, this information will also reach us. So there's no guarantee, there's no way that you can actually block it. If you try to ban it, it goes underground. If you try to block it, people can still access it if they want to. So it's much better to empower the users so that they can distinguish it properly. So I think the UN would not necessarily, freedom of expression is not an absolute right. So there are certain reasons for which you can restrict, lawfully restrict freedom of expression. But beyond that, I don't think freedom of expression should be restricted because it is only counterproductive. This is a question from me myself. In your report, you outlined the many reports from various sources, reputable reports, which identify companies you mentioned, Meta, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Weibo, Telegram, as having been used for disinformation purposes in conflict situations. But you have also outlined what some of these firms have been trying to do and especially since the war in Ukraine. And you would like to see more of that. You would like to see them more active in this area. What is the problem? Okay, Ukraine seems to be resetting this whole debate and making people more aware, and companies more aware of what they can do and should do. What is the problem outside of the Ukrainian conflict? Is it too expensive? Is it that there isn't sufficient market power there to ensure that these companies are held to account by their users even? Well, I think it's, first of all, it's lack of attention. There was, I think, one leaked report or a whistleblower's report some time ago where the employee was almost in tears because they could not get the attention of the senior management of Twitter at that time. It was just not important enough. Some African country was just not important enough. And most of these big media companies are driven by their big markets, which happens to be in North America and Western Europe. So they don't pay attention. They don't invest enough. This means investing in knowledge about the local context. Very often what is information or disinformation depends on understanding the context. So they don't get investing in human capital there to find out what's happening, human capital in the continent moderation. So they're not spending enough money. They're not giving enough attention to those issues and not developing policies that are appropriate for that particular conflict. They did that in Ukraine because internationally Ukraine was so high on the agenda and the market, you know, the Western Europe, North American market was so heavily engaged that I think they had to do it. But having done it, they've proven to the rest of us that they can do it. So it's now up to us to put pressure on them to make sure that they apply the same and that they are operating. I mean, why can't they do it in Ethiopia? Why can't they do it in Mali? You know, Myanmar, for example, Facebook learned, but learned way too late. So what international law of course also has, as you know, criminal liability. Companies have to be very careful and that they don't become liable for instigating or initiating or colluding with war crimes and crimes against humanity in some cases because where information is being manipulated to promote genocide, for example, or attack civilians, then that amounts to instigating war crime and companies that turn a blind eye to false information circulating on their platforms, hate speech circulating on their platform that then leads to killing of civilians could be held liable. So they need to be careful too. And I think that is creating a certain pressure on them now to try to do better. Here's an interesting question. Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, there is a clear information shortage, increased campaigns of misinformation and disinformation, and ever shrinking access to independent, incredible reporting of the situation on the ground. Journalists and human rights defenders have faced threats and many have fled the country. However, many still remain there. What is the UN doing to support Afghan journalists and human rights defenders, especially women, remain in Afghanistan while protecting their anonymity and safety to ensure that there is verified reporting on the situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban? It's very, very difficult to do much inside Afghanistan right now. I don't know exactly what the UN programs are doing because as an independent expert, I'm not up to date on all the information of the UN agencies that are working on the ground. But I do know from my previous hat, as head of IDLO, when I worked very closely in building the capacity of women lawyers and judges, how difficult it is for them now to operate. And it's no different. And also from my own mandate, I know that women journalists are, most of them are in hiding. Very few of them are able to work at all, not just independently. And it's extremely dangerous situation. What's happening there is that some European countries have provided visas to evacuate the journalists. Some are providing assistance overseas to create overseas outlets. Some are trying to provide assistance from abroad to them inside the country. But it's extremely dangerous for them to operate. And in the case of Iran, actually, I just saw today that some people have been arrested. A couple of activists have been arrested in Iran. Individuals have been arrested for providing information to the BBC. So it's very, very dangerous. And in those circumstances, it is actually, in some circumstances, actually advisable to support diaspora journalists and allow them to feed the information back into Russia. And now I know the question was about Afghanistan, but if I can turn to Russia again, something interesting is happening there where assistance is being provided to outlets abroad, to independent journalists who are out of Russia to continue the work and then try to get that information back into the country. Now, I would like to see more of what is being done for Russians and Ukrainians to also be done by donor states and others for Afghans and those in Myanmar, for example, in those kinds of closed states. What I see here is I kind of see a difference in standards and support to different conflicts. And that is where the injustice takes place. You mentioned a few times there, and in your presentation, you mentioned this need for resilience to enable people to understand, to access, to evaluate the sources of information. At what age do you think that children need to start looking at these issues? Is primary school too young or is it too late? In Finland, they are teaching, I read an article in The Guardian actually, that they are doing it in elementary school, in primary school. Six years old, eight years old, can tell the difference between a real elephant and a deep-fake elephant, for example. Things like that. So it seems that I suppose at a young age there's probably more acute digital technology than I would say at my age. So starting young seems to work. One of the things that has certainly struck me with the war in Ukraine is how one automatically turns to certain sources. And for me, it's always the sources that start with, such and such has been reported. We haven't been able to verify this yet. And they're the ones that I always check out now. Has this war really helped people to understand the difference between fake news and real journalism? I think we are constantly learning. On the one side, you see technology evolving and innovating and sometimes getting more and more complex in terms of the way in which false information is produced and spread. On the other side, I think journalists and journalism is also evolving. And more and more I find, particularly the outlets, well resourced outlets like New York Times and others are actually getting quite sophisticated in the way in which they collect the news check and do their fact checking. The BBC, for example, has a very elaborate program there. And so that's also happening side by side. And there are also some civil society initiatives, for example, of some forms of self-certification or kind of an iOS-type certification of sources. And also, if you notice, social media platforms are also now flagging or marking, labeling certain information or referring you to other information. They did that very successfully during COVID-19 crisis. If there was some false or semi-false information, they would also provide you with links to WHO and other sources. So I think on both sides, things are moving. So there is more awareness. The problem is how much investment is being made and how long-term are we getting? You know, digital literacy, when I mentioned that, that's a long-term engagement. And are we ready to do that until it costs a lot? Yes, but it'll pay back a lot too, perhaps. A question again on where information doesn't get to us at all. And one could say that Syria is, to some extent, a forgotten conflict. Yes. Now, that's not necessarily disinformation or whatever. It's simply no information currently. How does one deal with issues like that, where certain conflicts fall off the agenda? They're not covered any longer? Well, I think it's by keeping the issue alive. Just today I saw a report being issued, or yes, this week, a report being issued by one of my peers. I think the special rapporteur who's responsible for unilateral measures for sanctions, she had visited Syria and she brought out the whole issue of how the impact of the sanctions on the population there and how harmful it is for the population, even with the humanitarian exceptions. I myself and my report have also pointed out the impact of sanctions. The sanctions sometimes can be counterproductive when it comes to the information area, because by cutting off the population, the very population that you need to help. So you're right about these forgotten conflicts and we've just got to keep them alive. And in some cases, these forgotten conflicts are the conflicts that drag on for a very long time. And the prolongation, one of the factors, not the only, but one of the factors of prolongation is the production of false information that Nagorno-Karabakh, for example, in Syria is one, Nagorno-Karabakh is another. Even Afghanistan has slipped off the agenda to some extent, thinking that it was only a year ago, a little over a year ago that we were talking about that terrible evacuation out of Kabul and it's already off the agenda, Ukraine has taken its place. So it's extremely important and here I would put a lot of emphasis in civil society and the role of human rights organizations and others to keep these issues on the agenda of the governments and of the UN Security Council. Turning to the UN Security Council, I have a question here. You have a long career in multilateralism. But given the state of fragmentation of the global architecture and the disregard of major powers, some major powers are concepts such as non-aggression, respect for ethnic minority rights and widespread disregard for other human rights norms. What gives you hope today that things can improve? Well, I agree with the situation at the level of multilateralism. I've seen it in the Human Rights Council myself. I saw it in the Third Committee in the way in which governments just divided themselves up, took us back to the Soviet times. So that is disheartening. But what gives me courage and inspiration is I think civil society and ordinary people today, thanks to the same social media and internet that's creating so much problem for us, people are getting information. They are learning about the other side and therefore the ability to reach out is more. And secondly, young people. I think young people, look at Iran, look at all these young girls who are out on the streets and standing up for their rights. Look at the climate justice issues where youth have taken a very important front seat there. So I think youth and our ability today to reach out to others and to organize and to connect. I think those are the two, I would say, hopeful signs that I see and that give me encouragement that I think in the end humanity will win. Can I go back? And this might be our last question today. Can I go back to the social media? And in response to an earlier question, you said that the role of governments should be to set norm standards, not to get involved in the actual story as it were. But could that be construed as to some extent allowing social media to please itself? And is it, hasn't that proved not really to work? And I know it's a very fine balance between that and interfering in freedom of expression. But governments do it a bit more. Well, you know, I would say it's social media, what we have to do, given the way things are. And normally I would say, yes, of course, social media should follow the laws of the land, should follow the international standards and so on. And governments should enforce that. Unfortunately, many governments in the world today, their own laws violate international human rights. And therefore I'm very hesitant to allow to agree that governments should sort of moderate social media. They are likely to impose their own laws in many countries. I'm not only talking about China or Vietnam, I'm also talking about countries like India where you can see freedom of expression now under pressure. Under those circumstances, it's very dangerous to let governments restrict free speech. Companies, however, should be held accountable as to what rules are they applying? Are they applying international human rights standards? And usually it's easy to find out what is criminal and should be unlawful and should be banned. That's a simple thing like child pornography, for example. The challenge comes with the kind of law that is now, I think in the UK in Parliament, which is lawful but harmful information. What is lawful but harmful? What is lawful but I don't like it or we don't like it or the company doesn't like it and the government wants to ban it. That is, I think, a very tricky one. What is unlawful in the offline world should be unlawful in the online world by and large within the limits of international human rights law, I would say. But what is lawful but offensive is a tricky one. Freedom of expression actually recognizes offensive speech and that is why it is allowed under international law to insult a monarch in Thailand but not under Thai law to insult the monarch because you're offending the monarch. You get all those kinds of dilemmas coming and that is why it's very dangerous to allow governments to interfere with content. At the same time, companies, of course, should follow international rules but in Thailand, they are forced to follow national rules. So ultimately, the answer is to create an international understanding of how these companies should behave. And there is a project in the UN right now, the global digital compact that the Secretary General has proposed on which consultations are taking place with various stakeholders, civil society, within the UN system, with member states and so on. And eventually, I hope we will be able to agree on international rules, cross borders, social media platforms operate across borders. The rules should be across borders. For me, they are of course human rights rules and get agreement on that. I think that's the way forward eventually through this multi-stakeholder, multi-lateral arrangements that I mentioned in my talk earlier. I think we have... Sorry, no, I have one more question here from Seamus Allen. Can you comment on, I think you might have mentioned this already, European Digital Services Act empowers governments to ensure that social media platforms take down illegal content but many European countries already have laws that threaten freedom of expression, such as Hungary and Poland, for example. Would you care to comment on that? Yes, I actually carried out a official visit to Hungary last year and I was very disturbed by what I saw in terms of the restrictions on independent media. There is no independent media traditionally in print or broadcast in Hungary right now. They are online under huge pressure. What the Digital Services Act will do is it will allow Brussels to oversee what is happening. So yes, national regulators will be in place, but they will have to follow some rules from Brussels. So I hope that will help to provide some form of control. At the moment, there is very little control of the media from Brussels, social media or otherwise. A Digital Services Act, because social media is across borders, allows Brussels to intervene. I think it's a good thing. The important thing will be to make sure that Brussels does it. On Hungary, I think the European Union has been far too lenient when it comes to freedom of expression. And I have actually called in my report for Brussels to be much more active in ensuring that freedom of expression is respected within the European Union, as well as outside the European Union. I think that that final question and your response is a clear illustration that we can't be complacent about this, that this is a problem that faces all parts of the world, including our own part of the world. Thank you very, very much, Irene. That was an absolutely fantastic presentation. I think it was very thought-provoking. It certainly has opened up a lot of areas I hadn't thought of before. And thank you and wish you all the best with your work. Thank you very much.