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CDT Launches ITU Resource Center for Advocates

In Dubai this December, the world’s governments will decide whether the International Telecommunication Union – a UN agency – should expand its authority to cover Internet policy and technical standards, a move that could pose grave risks to the exercise of human rights online.

But that path is not a given. Today CDT is announcing the launch of its ITU Resource Center aimed at providing a set of key resources for advocates, activists, and anyone interested in learning about and taking action on the ITU’s upcoming conference. These resources were developed by CDT’s international team in partnership with several of our civil society peers.

Open Internet advocates around the world can play a key role in the debate leading up to the conference by urging their governments to support proposals that will protect the open Internet. However, many of the issues at stake are technically complex, and the ITU process itself is non-transparent and difficult for individuals to follow and participate in.

The goal of the ITU Resource Center is to help open Internet advocates learn about the process, the proposals on the table, and ways that they can make their voices heard. The Resource Center includes all of CDT’s analyses of treaty proposals and the ITU process; a toolkit with key messages, an ITU timeline, and other resources for advocates; and an ever-growing list of op-eds and expert commentary on the ITU.

Materials developed by CDT are under a Creative Commons license. We encourage advocates to reuse, remix, and distribute (non-commercially) these materials in their work on the issue.

We also encourage our readers to spread the word about our new resources on social media. We’ll be tweeting about it @CenDemTech using the #OpenITU hashtag.