Pakistan ICT Policy Monitors Network

Lahore – 30 January 2010 – With the goal to create awareness about Information and Communication Technologies and Violence Against Women in cyber space, and the implications of various government policies on women, a seminar titled “ICTs and Violence Against Women - Policy Implications” was jointly organized by Bytes for All (B4A) and the Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT & ITES (P@SHA) on 30 January 2010 in Lahore.

The world has watched as South Korea has moved from dictatorship toward democracy, over the last half a century at great cost. However, democracy, including incredible advances made in the culture and media sectors, has suffered serious damage in South Korea under the Lee Myung-bak regime.

January 28 is International Privacy Day, the day that the first international convention for privacy was signed. Many groups around the world are celebrating this day. As supporters of the Madrid Declaration, we are calling on national governments to ratify the Privacy Convention 108.

As supporters of the Madrid Declaration, we are calling on national governments to suspend the deployment of body scanners until a full evaluation of the technology is completed. As the Declaration states, we:

Call for a moratorium on the development or implementation of new systems of mass surveillance, including facial recognition, whole body imaging, biometric identifiers, and embedded RFID tags, subject to a full and transparent evaluation by independent authorities and democratic debate;

From 25 November to 10 December, get ready to click your mouse, flex your SMS fingers and engage full energy to take control of technology to end violence against women.

APC's Women's Programme calls on users of the radio, television, internet, emails and mobile phones to Take Back the Tech!

CRULP (www.crulp.org) announces successful deployment of open source Pango rendering engine onto Symbian mobile development platform.

This engine allows rendering of complex Asian writing systems through Open Type fonts. Please visit http://www.crulp.org/research/Project-Details/ALSMP.htm for some details.

Affirming that privacy is a fundamental human right set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other human rights instruments and national constitutions;