Community networks as enablers of human rights

Abstract

The authors of this book are (in alphabetical order): Carlos Baca, Luca Belli, Senka Hadzic, Erik Huerta, Lee W.McKnight, Ronaldo Neves de Moura Filho, Niels ten Oever, Raquel Rennó, and Karla Velasco. This book is the Official 2022 Outcome of the Dynamic Coalition on Community Connectivity (DC3) of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF). DC3 is a multistakeholder group, fostering a collaborative analysis of community networks (CNs), exploring how such initiatives can improve and expand connectivity while empowering Internet users. As the DC3 has demonstrated over the past seven years, community networks represent an important complementary strategy that can foster not only connectivity but also sustainability and the full enjoyment of human rights. CNs are crowd-sourced collaborative networks, developed in a bottom-up fashion by groups of individuals – i.e., communities – that design, develop and manage the network infrastructure as a common resource. Hence, CNs are connectivity initiatives managed according to the governance models established by their community members, in a democratic fashion, and may be operated by groups of self-organised individuals or entities such as non-governmental organisations (NGOs), local businesses or public administrations. CNs should not be considered as a competing or antagonistic model either to the state or to the market. On the contrary, they should be seen as a particularly interesting complementary solution to fill the existing connectivity gaps. All previous DC3 publications can be found at www.comconnectivity.org.