International and Regional Framework for Governing Foreign Digital Surveillance in Africa

Tesfu, Nati (2017) International and Regional Framework for Governing Foreign Digital Surveillance in Africa. Masters thesis, Addis Ababa University.

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Abstract

In today’s modernized world the use of vast technological innovations have made it easier for individual to conduct their day to day lives. These advances, although necessary, do bring with them a rise in the surveillance capabilities of states. This combined with the threats posed by transnational crimes and the growing phenomenon of terrorism have put greater pressure on states to insure national security interests through electronic surveillance techniques once seen as unimaginable. The emergence of these privacy intrusive capabilities have also made it easier to conduct surveillance on national and foreigners alike, putting in to question of how states can regulate the right to privacy of foreign nationals. Due to the extraterritorial nature of this form of digital surveillance, international and regional human rights laws have struggled to find a lasting solution to deal with the issue. However, recently significant advancements have been made both in the international and European human rights jurisprudence dealing with this issue of foreign digital surveillance (FDS). In 2014, African also had its own landmark agreement on data protection possibly having progressive impacts on the regulation of FDS. However, it continues to be debatable as to whether this agreement alone can govern foreign digital surveillance programs in Africa. With this in mind the paper assesses the potential of governing FDS in Africa by exploiting the existing African, international and other regional frameworks of human rights and data protection within the context of the right to privacy. The analysis will start by identifying how the concept of privacy is viewed and its relation with foreign digital surveillance programs. Then, the paper will examine the extraterritorial application of human right treaties by studying models, approaches and case law in international and regional human rights law. This investigation will highlight how international human law is currently being applied to foreign digital surveillance programs. The research will also describe the adequacy and gaps of the existing African regional human rights and data protection framework in dealing with foreign digital surveillance. Based on this analysis this paper concludes that a lasting framework for governing foreign digital surveillance in African is to be found by utilizing the existing data and human rights protection frameworks in the continent while also drawing lessons and inspirations from other more advanced international and regional human right legal frameworks.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
Divisions:	Africana
Depositing User:	Kabiru Wallace Ndung'u
Date Deposited:	03 Jul 2019 12:10
Last Modified:	03 Jul 2019 12:10
URI:	http://thesisbank.jhia.ac.ke/id/eprint/9337

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