The Growing Threat of Cybercrime Law Abuse: LGBTQ+ Rights in MENA and the UN Cybercrime Draft Convention

<

div class=”field field–name-body field–type-text-with-summary field–label-hidden”>

<

div class=”field__items”>

<

div class=”field__item even”>

This is Part II  of a series examining the proposed UN Cybercrime Treaty in the context of LGBTQ+ communities. Part I looks at the draft Convention’s potential implications for LGBTQ+ rights. Part II provides a closer look at how cybercrime laws might specifically impact the LGBTQ+ community and activists in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

In the digital age, the rights of the LGBTQ+ community in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are gravely threatened by expansive cybercrime and surveillance legislation. This reality leads to systemic suppression of LGBTQ+ identities, compelling individuals to censor themselves for fear of severe reprisal. This looming threat becomes even more pronounced in countries like Iran, where same-sex conduct is punishable by death, and Egypt, where merely raising a rainbow flag can lead to arrest.

Enter the proposed UN Cybercrime Convention. If ratified in its current form, it could not only reinforce countries’ domestic surveillance powers for investigating actions wrongly labeled as crimes, but also legitimize and enhance international cooperation based on these powers. This UN endorsement could set a dangerous precedent, normalizing surveillance practices for acts that starkly contradict international human rights law. More worryingly, it may act as an incentive for countries to introduce or expand on their own restrictive criminal laws, eager to tap into the broader pool of cross-border surveillance cooperation that the proposed convention would provide.

The draft convention grants each country the authority to determine and define their own crimes. These definitions, alarmingly, become the foundation for assisting another country in gathering evidence for acts they controversially label as crimes—often based on subjective moral judgments rather than universally accepted standards. 

Under Article 35 of the proposed UN Cybercrime Convention, international cooperation is permissible for these so-called serious crimes as long as they carry a penalty of

[…]
Content was cut in order to protect the source.Please visit the source for the rest of the article.