Digital technologies and human rights: the era of interdependence or the crisis of the international human rights system?

The current state of the international legal governance of the virtual space in terms of ensuring and protecting human rights is analyzed in the article. With the development of computer technology, an increasing number of users are joining the World Wide Web. The number of crossborder connections is increasing every year. This actualizes the question of how to protect human rights and freedoms in a virtual environment. The ratio of international legal regulation of the digital sphere and ensuring human rights is a new and urgent problem of international law, which has not yet been given due attention in legal science. The author analyzes the doctrinal views of scientists in the field of international law and the approaches implemented in international legal documents related to the international legal governance of the Internet and the protection of human rights in the virtual space. The method of system analysis made it possible to identify gaps in the international legal system that impede the creation of an effective mechanism for the protection of human rights in the digital space. The author shows the lack of adequate mechanisms for the general regulation of the digital sphere in modern international law and for a separate issue — the protection of human rights in cyberspace. Given the global and multi-jurisdictional nature of the Internet, this creates conditions for jurisdictional fragmentation and for international legal “gaps” in the universal system of human rights protection. According to the author, it is still too early to talk about the mutual influence and interaction of the real and virtual worlds. We are witnessing the stage of formation of ways of interaction and attempts to determine the contours of a common existence. The existing international legal mechanism for managing the digital environment is characterized as multidisciplinary, fragmented, inefficient, and does not provide for really working tools, including in the field of monitoring and control over the provision and protection of human rights. It is human rights that can become a litmus test, “a unifying target perspective” of the digital space in terms of its development and management.