The Right to Communicate: UNESCO and the politics of global communication, 1969–1987

Abstract

Abstract

Abstract The Right to Communicate (RtC) is the idea that individuals possess not only the freedom to ‘seek, receive and impart information’, as laid down in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), but also the right to communicate horizontally with their peers, using technologies new and old. The brainchild of Jean d’Arcy, a French broadcaster and official who argued in 1969 that Article 19 should be updated to reflect the new technological possibilities, the concept inspired an international effort to write the RtC into human rights law. This article examines the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) campaign to define this new human right, showing how initial enthusiasm was undermined by a widespread conviction that collective rights were a threat to individual rights; the difficulty of squaring the Global South’s state-led vision of communication with d’Arcy’s anti-statist ideals; and the vocal opposition of Western governments and NGOs, who increasingly saw the concept as a threat to freedom of information.