Platforms can empower groups that have previously been silenced. However, platforms also host hateful and illegal content, often targeted at minorities, and content is prone to being unfairly censored by algorithmically biased moderation systems. This report analyzes the current environment of content moderation, particularly bringing to light negative effects for the LGBTIQA+ community, and provides policy recommendations for the forthcoming negotiations on the EU Digital Services Act.
Existing content moderation practices, both algorithmically-driven and people-determined, are rooted in white colonialist culture. Black women’s opinions, experiences, and expertise are suppressed and their online communication streams are removed abruptly, silently, and quickly. This paper explores algorithmic misogynoir in content moderation and makes the case for the regular examination of the impact of content moderation tactics on Black women and other minoritized communities.
Current EU migration policies' increased focus on returns raises concerns on the adequacy of such measures with EU standards and fundamental rights. This publication highlights the problems and difficulties returnees face in Afghanistan, Syria, Tunisia, Senegal and Kosovo.
It is of vital importance that rescuees are brought to a “Place of Safety”. The study analysis to which extend third countries can be considered "safe" and NGO rescue vessels can be obliged to disembark rescued migrants and refugees in places which are unsafe.
The EU-Africa migration summit in Valletta in November 2015 gave birth to a new European funding instrument: the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF). This study comes to the conclusion that the implementation of migration policy projects supported by EUTF funding primarily benefits the (wealthier) member states of the EU.
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has been part of the “Balkan route” for smuggling people, arms and drugs for decades, but also a migrant route for people who have been trying to reach Western Europe and the countries of the EU in order to save their lives and secure a future for themselves. This report offers insight into the situation on the field: is there a system responsible for protection, security, and upholding fundamental human rights? What has the state response been like? What is the role of the international community?
Democracy is not an automatic success - it must be fought for, revitalized, and renewed. Learn more about what the Heinrich Böll Foundation and our partners are doing to support democratic engagement worldwide.
Scenes of migrants stranded at the southern borders of the European Union and the United States have become increasingly regular news items, causing debates on immigration policies to intensify. Meanwhile, child migrants face dangerous conditions, detention, and deportation. How are these policies enacted in the EU and US and in comparison to the standards set by international law? By Nicole Johnson, intern at the HBS North America Office.
In the run-up to the 2013 German federal elections, this publication considers three decades of a changing political landscape with the emergence of the Green Party. The authors discuss how the Green Party built its “brand” and, in so doing, ushered in a fundamental change in German politics and society.
Relationships between democracy and more particularly democratization on the one side and climate change and responses to that on the other are underexplored in the two literatures on democratization and climate change. A special issue of the journal DEMOCRATIZATION, with contributions by several Heinrich Böll Foundation authors, explores a variety of facets of this complex and interdependent relationship.
