The global and the local

by Sanjana Hattotuwa-September 30, 2017, 7:22 pm 

My work outside of Sri Lanka is influenced deeply by what I do in the country, and reciprocally, what I do beyond our borders informs how I respond to challenges within it. Over the past three weeks, the intensity of travel and work prevented me from submitting a column. In part, it was because of how far away I was the country. To a larger degree though, it was because I was involved in shaping projects that responded to the same kind of socio-political dynamics we endure, and fight against, in Sri Lanka.

In Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia in Herzegovina, Kosovo and Serbia, a region to which I’ve travelled twice this year, the socio-political dynamics are uncannily similar to Sri Lanka. The transitional justice agenda, post-genocide and post-war, is at varying stages. In some countries, memorialisation – both as a political construct and resulting urban architectural features - forgets the manner in which atrocities were committed by troops and state sponsored militia, and instead focuses on the loss of life as a consequence of enemy offensives and actions. In other countries, there is no memorialisation – a conscious decision to forget, and move on.

The economic disparity, coupled with enduring effects of war – youth under-employment, unemployment, urban poverty – results in society that is on edge, unable to move forward, unwilling to face the past, splintering from within. On the other hand, every country in this region sees a high use of smartphones and the relatively cheap availability of broadband. So, while unemployment is sky rocketing, youth reload data (with money taken or borrowed from parents and grandparents) to engage with each other, and what they understand as politics, mediated through thumb and palm, in parks, alleyways, sofas, souks, beds, buses and other places. You can see the disconnect from public and family life, and the immersion in an alternative reality governed by the algorithms of a news feed, the narcissism of likes, and the on-demand anonymity of online engagement.

Youth here feel connected, but almost exclusively inhabit, online and over social media, bubbles – peers, friends, colleagues and others who are echo chambers, reinforcing group-think, focussing on gossip and entertainment, and through these vectors, mainstream politics. This is fertile terrain for the subversion and corruption of impressionable minds by everyone from populist politicians, right-wing Christian clergy, conspiracy theorists and mullahs who are in fact thinly veiled militants. Unsurprisingly then, one finds rumour, misinformation, disinformation (essentially, propaganda and gossip to varying degrees wrapped as serious news and content) colouring the worldview, engagement and emotions of a young demographic.

As a counterpoint, a conference organised by the Junior Chamber International in Kuching, Malaysia offered a chance to interact with several hundred participants– all working in private industry - from over 100 countries, and under the age of 40. Speaking at and facilitating two workshops, several leitmotifs emerged. Those with economic means are worried about the unresponsive nature of mainstream politics in their respective countries. Counter-intuitively, this critique goes deeper than the nature of government. It wasn’t just the participants from countries with a known democratic deficit who complained that, as they saw it, mainstream politics didn’t reflect to any meaningful degree or sustained manner, their hopes and aspirations. Young professionals from the West – from mature democracies - also complained that government was increasingly alienating them.

This manifested itself through a very low interest in franchise ("nothing really changes") to anger ("we bring in the money, they waste it with corruption and bureaucracy"). Participants from around the world found in common that the language they spoke – of innovation, an interest in changing the status quo, new ways of working, new kinds of jobs and value creation, an interest in migrant and mobile working, travel, a low interest in savings when young, but a healthy interest in financial independence – where opportunities and challenges governments, and business as usual, simply didn’t embrace.

In Myanmar, I was working with several civil society organisations from across the country when the violence that has now gripped global headlines first broke out. Snippets, competing narratives and the first images of the violence in the Rakhine came by way of WhatsApp messages and Facebook Messenger, followed by email. This was several days before serious mainstream media coverage of the issue in the country. It took much longer for the world to react to what was going on. This information ecosystem is ripe for disinformation and rumour, which when engineered and disseminated broadly, serves to do two things primarily – get people to react to information that is clearly intended to incite hatred and violence against another religion or community, or devalue the veracity of information over these channels in general.

The first is what most choose to focus on. The second is more pernicious, because very often, those who suffer the brunt of violence only have the phones they carry around with them to document the violence. When this valuable footage that bears witness to atrocities on the ground is also mistrusted, it serves to undermine the urgency of a political and whole of government response to quell the violence, and empathy. Similar tactics were employed in Sri Lanka three years ago, when interestingly, old images of Rohingya from the Rakhine were distributed over instant messaging platforms and Twitter purporting to be from Aluthgama, taken during the anti-Muslim riots.

Most recently in San Francisco, I led some conversations around opportunities and challenges around the use of technology in humanitarian aid, and more generally, in the strengthening of human rights. Leitmotifs that emerged were interesting. The existing world order – including international humanitarian law which governs war – currently has no clue, capacity or competency to deal with threats that are the result of targeted offensives launched against critical infrastructure and vulnerable populations over the Internet. These are not embryonic or emergent. The field of offensive cyber-operations, and reciprocally, cyber-defence, is already mature even though governing norms, legal frameworks and definitions simply haven’t kept up with the heady pace of technological change.

It’s now possible for a just a few dollars to slow down or crash a friend’s PC whilst playing a tournament online; or for a very different order of strategic advantage, disrupt or seriously harm an entire country’s banking, medical services or power grid. In Sri Lanka, the very same authorities who can’t even secure the President’s website from successful hacking attempts of a teenager are those that promise us benefits of an electronic national identity card system, where biometric and personal data, to a very invasive degree, will be stored online. It is a ticking time-bomb that, entirely independent of the known malevolence of our government, can hold entire swathes of the population hostage and render them, almost instantaneously, destitute, through identity theft of an order we haven’t seen, aren’t prepared for and simply won’t know what to do when it happens.

All this suggest a couple of things, globally evident and locally relevant. The aspirations of the young need to be reflected in government. Government itself needs to be younger, more responsive and more innovative. Propaganda is pervasive, and it is often more effective than verified news at shaping the public narrative and official responses. Vital witness testimony, despite the promise of the internet to give everyone a voice, remains hidden, especially from mainstream media. Extremism online is a problem, and use the same platforms to spread fear, violence and harm as hundreds of millions use to document and discuss their cappuccino’s perfect froth. This makes technology companies in Silicon Valley – often more powerful than individual governments - important intermediaries in every country their products and services are present in, when combating propaganda, disinformation and the rapid spread of hate. The primary vectors of news and information for youth is now social media, over a smartphone. Refugees and IDPs need and go in search of information and Internet access as much as water and food. Existing international covenants around the rules of war need to be revised to embrace cyber-terrorism.

Sri Lanka is no stranger to any of these challenges. Whereas warts and all, conversations across multiple continents and countries on these issues is anchored to strategic engagement, reform and planning, government officials, politicians and policymakers in Sri Lanka remain set in their ways, largely unwilling and seemingly unable to change. We all stand to lose.