The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has developed a Digital Rights Dashboard (DRD) to help provide a more targeted understanding of how countries are progressing in the protection of human rights online.
The DRD, a new addition to UNDP’s Digital Development Compass, is described as a starting point for key elements of digital rights, which serves as a platform for dialogue on how national contexts can better support rights-based digital transformation.
According to the UNDP, the Dashboard is not intended to be a conclusive assessment of digital rights protection. However, together with the insights gleaned through applying the DRD data to country contexts, it can support policymakers, practitioners, and other stakeholders in understanding and interpreting digital rights challenges and opportunities.
The UNDP explained that although its Digital Development Compass and Digital Readiness Assessment already help countries understand where they stand in their digital journey, a critical dimension which needed sharper focus was how countries are set up to protect human rights in the digital space.
It said the DRD is designed to fill this gap by examining four essential rights online, namely freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of assembly and association, equality and non-discrimination, and privacy.
The DRD also explores cross-cutting factors like connectivity and rule of law, the foundations that make all online rights possible, and provides a structured framework for assessing the policies, regulations, and enabling environments that shape digital rights across over 140 countries.
The Dashboard does not rank or evaluate countries but is instead designed to serve as a catalyst for dialogue among governments, civil society, international organisations, and development partners to identify gaps and work together on solutions.
The UNDP said the DRD follows the methodology of the Digital Development Compass, which requires data coverage of at least 135 countries, which it described as the most challenging constraint.
As comprehensive data on digital rights remains limited, which makes it difficult to fully capture how well environments are structured to protect rights in practice, the UNDP has developed the Digital Rights Foundations database as an additional data source for the DRD to address the fragmentation of data.
The UNDP also noted that a major challenge in the use of the DRD is the fact that legal and policy frameworks do not always reflect realities on the ground and illustrates this by noting that the existence of a data protection law or hate speech regulation does not guarantee enforcement as laws may be unevenly applied, and important processes, such as public consultations and participatory policy design often fall outside what indicators can capture.
For these reasons, it recommended to use the DRD merely as an entry point. A tool that highlights where deeper national analysis and dialogue are needed, rather than a definitive assessment of digital rights protections.
To test its practical application and assess how well it could guide rights-based digital development conversations in diverse contexts, UNDP piloted the DRD in Colombia, Lebanon, Mauritania, North Macedonia, and Samoa.
The UNDP said a clear lesson across all five pilot countries was that rights-based digital development strengthens institutions, empowers communities, and builds trust in digital systems.
It acknowledged that the DRD has limitations and that more robust data will be needed as the field evolves, but insisted that it creates a shared understanding of where protections are strong and where gaps persist.
The UNDP noted that the pilots also show that countries and stakeholders do not need perfect metrics before taking action, and that by combining the DRD’s insights with national expertise, human rights reporting, and civil society perspectives, governments can begin shaping digital development that respects and protects human rights both online and offline.
Key insights and recommendations from its countries’ pilots are:
• The DRD is not a definitive assessment or ranking of a country’s performance but a starting point for deeper exploration, reflection, and dialogue among a broad range of stakeholders to collectively enhance understanding and advance rights-based digital development.
• Countries should ensure that laws and policies enabling rights-based digital development adhere to international human rights standards and processes and that outcomes are effectively monitored.
• Structures that foster multi-stakeholder participation and consultation in cultivating meaningful rights-based digital development are more sustainable.
• Gender-sensitive approaches need to be adopted to protect and fulfil digital rights, to create safe and secure online spaces, and to address the dispro¬portionate impact of online abuse affecting women.
• Digital infrastructure remains critical in crisis contexts and, therefore, focus is needed on structures and processes related to digital rights to shore up resilience to prevent, respond, and recover in crisis settings.
• National human rights institutions (NHRIs) can play a critical role in safeguarding digital human rights.
