Global

Meet Laila.

She could be anyone’s child.

Every school day, Laila opens her school’s online learning app, and logs in for class.

Instantly, the app may begin to collect personal data about Laila,

which may include who she is, where she is, what she does, and even who her family and friends are

and may send this data to advertising tech companies.

Their sophisticated algorithms can analyze Laila’s data to guess at her personal characteristics and interests, and predict her future behavior.

Advertising tech companies may sell or share these insights about Laila with advertisers, law enforcement, or governments.

How did this happen?

Covid-19 school closures turned bedrooms and kitchens into classrooms overnight. Governments around the world endorsed the use of education technologies, or EdTech, for kids to continue learning.

But in the rush to connect kids to virtual classrooms, many governments failed to check that their recommended EdTech products  were safe for kids to use.  Without adequate protections in place, children were compelled to give up their privacy in order to learn.

Governments should urgently protect our children by passing modern child data protection laws.

Human Rights Watch investigated more than 150  EdTech products and found that more than 140 of them monitored or could monitor children, most secretly and without consent.

Many installed trackers that followed children across the internet even after they left their virtual classrooms, outside of school hours and deep into their private lives.

Others invisibly tagged children in ways that were impossible to get rid of, without throwing the device away in the trash.

Laila should be safe in school, whether she’s there in person or online.

Governments can protect Laila by passing modern child data protection laws.

By doing so, they can defend Laila, and all children, from being surveilled online by actors who don’t have their best interests at heart.

Students are priceless, not products.

Annet Negesa, UGANDAN RUNNER

South Korea was my first World Championship. I was very, very happy to go on with the sport and going to another level.

Preparing for London Olympics // me, plus my coach, // we were working very hard // so that our dreams come true. Because our dream was to reach the finals. As long as we reached to the finals, anything can happen then.

Some few weeks to the departure for the London Olympics that’s the time when I received a call from my international manager telling me // my blood sample, they're having some problem, technical problem and you can't go for the competition.

Annet’s natural testosterone level was higher than the regulated range for women athletes.

My local officials from my federation told me me that // you have to stay at home, not moving. And if anyone asks you tell them that you have an injury, whereby I was a person who was injury free, I was very normal, I wasn't sick.

One official from the IAAF [International Association of Athletics Federations] // he tried to reach me and after some few weeks I think, they had me travel to Nice for a body checkup. Like measuring my whole body and putting me to a machine, just like scanning my whole body and getting more other blood samples from me.

I was something which was really confused. // Like as if there were people who were not talking straight to you telling you that this and this is like this, but just telling you do this, do this, do this.

Later in Kampala, Annet underwent a procedure that she thought would mean she could run again.

Going to the doctor with an executive from the [national] federation because she was with me, escorting me, going to the hospital, they took me to the operation room. // And they said that they are going to use the injection thing, whereby by waking up // I'm finding myself I'm having cuts. //

I said, whoa! They have done something which we didn't agree on. And really, I was so scared.

Annet’s internal sex organs had been removed.

The procedure is irreversible and causes sterilization.

The people who are there with me, taking me to the hospital, who wanted me to do such. After the operation, no one come back to me to see what really... No one came in to do a follow-up.

No one explained to me what's really the truth. It something which was just… Making me to go in their trap. I call it trap because it was a trap.

Took me seven years without nothing. As in, they didn't give me straight information that after the surgery, you have to go for hormone therapy throughout the whole of your life. // Really that was so hard on me. // For seven years no one's coming to look for you, for seven new years no one is minding to know where you are. It was really a strange life.

As soon as you pass here, you start slowing down the pace.

Sort of focus on the stride length.

Okay.

Keep the body moving, you know what I mean? That you feel that the body is moving at the same pace.

Testosterone regulations in sport cause significant harm and disproportionately impact women from the Global South.

Why are they focusing too much to people of the Southern continent? That shows that [there’s] discriminating and racism in the sport. Because all of us we are human beings, and we are females. What I can say, let them stop taking people's or playing on people's bodies. Making people to be guinea pigs and doing their research on human beings and violating human rights.

My dream at first was taken away from me. But with God, I trust that it will come back to me. And now I came back for training and I’m already in the process. I’m working for it again.

I have to fight for my dream. I have to fight for it. That's my future now. I'm focusing on my dream, which was taken away [by] the IAAF regulations.