The UN Report of the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, Alexandra Xanthaki: Artificial intelligence and creativity, (A/80/278) identifies challenges to artistic freedom in the digital age, emphasizing the need for accurate data, transparency, and advocacy to protect cultural rights. It highlights how digitalization and AI both enable and threaten artistic expression—by either amplifying censorship or, if designed responsibly, supporting free speech and accountability. The report calls for better documentation of violations, empowered local actors, and policy advocacy rooted in reliable data.
Filling the Data Gap
Civsy was created by Mimeta to address the lack of reliable, comprehensive data on violations of artistic freedom, especially in regions like SWANA and, by extension, globally. Without such data, advocacy, policy-making, and protective measures remain ineffective. Civsy’s platform directly tackles this gap by systematically collecting, categorizing, and making visible incidents of censorship and suppression.
Empowering Local Networks
Civsy’s approach centres on training and equipping local researchers and reporters to document cases in their communities. This regionally sensitive, collaborative model ensures that data collection is accurate, culturally informed, and owned by those most affected. The UN report stresses the importance of local agency and participatory monitoring—Civsy operationalizes this principle by partnering with organizations like Ettijahat for regional coordination and ArtsEquator for methodological expertise.
Leveraging Digital and AI Technologies
Civsy is building an AI-powered platform hosted in Norway, designed to retrieve, synthesize, and present data in real time. This hybrid AI approach—combining dynamic data retrieval with advanced language models—offers a transparent, adaptable, and trustworthy system for monitoring civic and artistic rights. The UN report’s focus on the dual potential of AI (both as a risk and a tool for safeguarding rights) is directly addressed by Civsy’s commitment to ethical, precision-focused AI that amplifies—rather than suppresses—local voices.
Advocacy and Policy Impact
Civsy’s data feeds into advocacy campaigns, policy recommendations, and global awareness efforts. The UN report emphasizes that evidence-based advocacy is critical for holding states and private actors accountable. Civsy’s platform is designed not just to expose violations, but to drive systemic change by making data actionable for civil society, governments, and international bodies.
A Model Response
Civsy is a concrete, innovative response to the challenges and recommendations set forth in A/80/278 . It directly addresses the data deficit in artistic freedom monitoring, empowers local stakeholders, embraces responsible AI for human rights, and channels evidence into advocacy and policy reform. If the UN report is a call to action for the protection of cultural rights in the digital era, Civsy is a leading example of how such action can be implemented—regionally rooted, technologically advanced, and globally connected.
Fulfilling recommendations
Civsy’s monitoring and reporting project is not only consistent with the UN report’s analysis, but actively fulfils its recommendations for transparent, data-driven, and locally empowered protection of artistic freedom. This makes Civsy highly relevant for anyone—governments,
The UN’s latest report (A/80/278) highlights urgent challenges to artistic freedom in the digital age—especially the lack of reliable data on violations. Civsy, developed by Mimeta, tackles this gap head-on. By training local researchers and deploying an AI-powered platform, Civsy documents censorship and suppression in real time, transforming evidence into advocacy and policy change.
This regionally rooted, technologically advanced approach embodies the UN’s recommendations for protecting cultural rights in a digital era.
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