Social justice is an underlying principle for peaceful and prosperous coexistence within and among nations. We uphold the principles of social justice when we promote gender equality, or the rights of indigenous peoples and migrants. We advance social justice when we remove barriers that people face because of gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, culture or disability.

The pursuit of social justice for all is at the core of our global mission to promote development and human dignity.

 

World Day of Social Justice – 20 February 2021

The theme of the World Social Justice this year is “A Call for Social Justice in the Digital Economy”.
The exponential rate of technological change in the past decade was already posing certain challenges and threats to vulnerable communities, supporting a largely unequal Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). Compounding on this, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the existing, deep-rooted inequalities in societies across the world and further exacerbated it.

 

The digital divide:

 
Digital divide is a term that refers to the gap between demographics and regions that have access to modern information and communications technology, and those that don't or have restricted access. This technology can include the telephone, television, personal computers and the Internet.

Solving for our digital divides is one of the great challenges of our time. Universal access requires alternative infrastructure providers, new types of financing and business models, changes in policy, digital skill-building at scale, and an increase in locally relevant content. It is doable and we must rally together now to build the communities and investment vehicles necessary to deliver meaningful access to all. Stable, just, digital economies depend on it.

 

Internet that reflects the multiplicities of being human:

Social justice goes beyond equality. It requires equity and a fundamental recognition in the value of human diversity. And with our everyday lives intertwined with the internet, equity and human rights must be embedded within it as we strive for social justice.

Users must be involved in decision-making processes at every level so their realities and rights are accounted for.

—Wafa Ben Hassine

This will only happen when users are empowered to decide how they want to build their online lives. Right now, those decisions are made by a select set of large companies. This must change. To ensure fairness, inclusivity, and indeed – justice – users must be involved in decision-making processes at every level so their realities and rights are accounted for.

 

Fighting disinformation and harmful content:

The rapid expansion of social media in recent years overall has strengthened social justice movements by providing free, easily accessible information and promoting its wide distribution. Yet at the same time, the deliberate misuse of these same platforms has contributed in many cases to an erosion of social justice and poses a growing threat.

Disinformation distorts the truth and accelerates racial, ethnic and political polarization.

—Michael Posner

In order to ensure social justice, the major social media platforms need to assume much greater responsibility for moderating the content on their sites. They have immediate access to what appears on their platforms. The algorithms they have built determine how content is ranked and recommended. They also have the unique capacity to identify harmful content and label, demote or remove it.

 

Increasing civic participation:

Design digital systems that are inclusive by design, feminist by default and publicly funded.

—Renata Avila

To ensure social justice in the digital world, we need to involve those we want to serve. Invite them to the design room to contribute with ideas to better shape their digital futures, using the power of well-designed digital systems to reverse economic, gender and race inequalities rapidly and at scale.

 

Digital Economy in India: