G07: I&S Why do we Fight: 5. Internet Access

The seven months since have seen serious hardship here in Europe and around the world. The cost of the pandemic has been unprecedented.

And yet, as bad as it has been, imagine a crisis like this but without the web. With having access to the web, employees can work from home and keep economies afloat; governments and others are able to disseminate vital health information; families can keep in touch; students, if they are lucky, are able to keep their education intact and their dreams alive by learning online.
In this crisis, for those who have it, the web is not a luxury. It’s a lifeline.

Now, pressure is rising for the recognition of a new right, unimagined a few decades ago: the right to internet access. “Internet access should be recognised as a human right because, in our digital age, there are many other human rights that can no longer be adequately realised without access to the internet,” Merten Reglitz, lecturer in Global Ethics at the University of Birmingham and author of a paper on the subject, tells Equal Times.