UN Agency Meddles in Domestic Elections

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NEW YORK, October 25 (C-Fam) The UN Development Fund is working with an agency in Guyana to monitor “harmful messages” on social media and counter online “misinformation” that could impact Guyana’s 2025 general election. While the UN says this partnership aims at “strengthening democracy” in Guyana, critics worry that such behavior is no less than meddling and interfering in domestics elections.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), “the largest United Nations provider of electoral assistance,” works with the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) of Guyana to counter “disinformation and hate speech” and identify “information pollution” on social media.

Information pollution is an ambiguous term, loosely defined by UNDP as referring to “the spread of false, misleading, manipulated and otherwise harmful information.” There is no internationally recognized standard of what constitutes “harmful” and “manipulated” information online.

UNDP claims that “information pollution” was most evident during the pandemic and that it is a dangerous phenomenon hindering people’s “ability to make informed decisions.”

To combat pandemic-related “information pollution” and “disinformation”, social media platforms partnered with governments around the world to silence voices that went against the mainstream narrative on the origin of the virus or the efficacy of lockdowns and vaccines.

Critics say that it is precisely these online censorship tactics and the weaponization and overuse of the term “misinformation” that deprived people of access to information about how to best respond to the pandemic.

UN agencies and the UN Secretariat are increasingly using terms such as “misinformation”, “harmful messages”, and “anti-rights content” to refer to conservative speech on human sexuality and abortion.

In 2023, the number one activity of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Guyana was “fighting misinformation”, a key priority laid out in its 2024 Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance Policy. The USAID definition for misinformation is vague enough to allow for the silencing of valid speech under the larger umbrella of “combatting falsehood.”

The Ethnic Relations Committee of Guyana works to combat racial and ethnic discrimination, but it is unclear whether, in the context of their partnership with UNDP, the Committee will fight against “information pollution” and “misinformation” as broadly defined by UNDP.

The committee is also expected to implement the UNDP eMonitor+  technology. This tool uses AI to track and analyze “harmful content” across social media including “misinformation…[and] political polarization,” while also fact-checking information. Some countries that have already implemented this social media tool include Venezuela, Peru, Chile, and Ecuador.

Earlier this fall, ahead of Ghana’s 2024 general elections, UNDP supported several workshops in Ghana to train young people and community leaders on identifying and combating hate speech and “misinformation”. The meetings “brought together youth and women leaders, community leaders including Assembly members, chiefs, opinion leaders, among others.”

Using the same rhetoric on the impact of misinformation on elections, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued an order to discontinue the social media platform X in Brazil.

Moraes said the platform is “negatively influencing the electorate in 2024, with massive misinformation, with the aim of unbalancing the electoral result, based on hate campaigns in the digital age.” This decision sparked international outrage and tens of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets to protest the order and militate for free speech. As of now, X is still banned in Brazil.

 

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