Disinformation is a serious hazard to peace. As a matter of fact, many conflicts where innocents have suffered were driven by propaganda, intentionally falsified information, disguised hate speech. Disinformation disrupts the proper functioning of democracy as researchers noticed during the last presidential elections in the US. Disinformation is also a tool used by violators of human rights to get away with their crimes. According to the sociologist Stanley Cohen, these criminals can fabricate anytime a different story so that the audience would get confused about what happened “really”.

While people consume Media and information at a very frequent pace, people lose trust in the credibility of the Media (statistics by Chris Jackson of Ipsos Public affairs show that 75% of Americans are fooled by news).

 

Under these circumstances, one can deduce that any of our sustainable development goals can’t be achieved if :

-Human rights are violated and compromised;

-Conflicts exist;

-Young people and women are not aware of their rights and how to protect themselves;

-Laws are not protecting the human dignity and the freedom in the Media;

 

Therefore we believe that our efforts should focus on three levels that work all together in

synergy as proposed in the following project :

 

Disinformation Law Clinic (DLC) - an online organisation that will (1) offer counsel and advocacy in courts to help victims of human rights violations caused by disinformation to navigate through their local legal systems; (2) engage in lobbying of reforming the laws in cases where Local Laws come short to protect the citizens’ rights.

In addition to the DLC, we are going to raise awareness through workshops and similar activities as well as develop online educational materials around disinformation and human rights protection in media.

 

When Young people are aware that there is an organization that can support them if they fall victims of Disinformation, that will encourage them to come forward and express themselves so they get the help they need and make use of our services.

Our educational materials will help people become more literate about the Disinformation danger in Media and information, therefore they will suffer less from breaches to their human rights.

​

From our research, we are not aware of any organization working to legally advise, advocate and lobby to protect human rights compromised by Disinformation. It is a new approach to promote Media and Information Literacy through the legal systems around the world.