Children’s access to beneficial information in Arab states: Implementation of Article 17 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates

In theory, the multiple platforms and transnational nature of digital media, along with a related proliferation of diverse forms of content, make it easier for children’s right to access socially and culturally beneficial information and material to be realised, as required by Article 17 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Drawing on data collected during research on children’s screen content in the Arab world, combined with scrutiny of documents collated by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which monitors compliance with the CRC, this paper explores how three Arab countries, Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, presented their efforts to implement Article 17 as part of their periodic reporting on their overall performance in putting the CRC into effect. It uncovers tensions over the relationship between provision, participation and protection in relation to media, reveals that Article 17 is liable to get less attention than it deserves in contexts where governments keep a tight grip on media, and that, by appearing to give it a lower priority, all parties neglect the intersection between human rights in relation to media and children’s rights.

Digital evidence as a means of proof before the International Court of Justice

This article discusses the use of digital evidence as a means of proof before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The absence of specific Court rules and procedures for digital evidence (with the exception of Practice Direction IX bis) is not necessarily an obstacle to its production and evaluation before the ICJ, as the general evidentiary rules can also be applied to digital evidence. The article first looks at the rules on the production of documentary evidence and then examines the specific issues related to audiovisual evidence. Finally, it examines the admissibility of digital evidence unlawfully obtained by a litigant through unilateral transborder access to data. The article concludes that, even if specific regulation may be needed as to the specific way in which authenticity and accuracy of digital evidence are to be established, the particular facts of the case and the grounds of challenge can vary widely, and it is doubtful that any regulation could be sufficiently flexible to deal with this in advance.