Oxfam Ireland CEO Jim Clarken on digital rights in an age of rampant inequality

The digital divide – or the gap between those who benefit from digital technologies and those who don’t – has become a key focal point in Oxfam Ireland’s Rights in a Digital Age programme, which we began rolling three years ago using a multi-year grant from the European Union. 

This grant allowed us to partner with civil society organisations from 10 countries in the Global Majority. The group of partners is diverse and the issues they face vary by context, but the uniting theme is our commitment to cultivate a rights-respecting digital ecosystem for all.

Our work stems from the understanding that new technologies themselves do not automatically increase or reduce inequality; it is about who owns these technologies and to what use they are put – as organisations who have been part of the digital rights movement far longer than we have been saying and demonstrating for decades. Oxfam supports technological progress and innovation.

In our more than 60 years of direct experience working with communities in over 70 countries, we have celebrated some truly revolutionary changes. They include the ability to respond rapidly to sudden-onset emergencies and other crises with life-saving aid, to communicate in real time about conditions on the ground across languages and hold governments and companies accountable through online movement building.

We have likewise witnessed disheartening setbacks, as the same tools and systems are also used to violate rights, especially those of people who are already vulnerable or marginalised. It is clearer than ever that digital technologies, particularly in the absence of proper oversight or regulation, have aided in the rise and re-entrenchment of authoritarianism, fundamentalisms, and other anti-democratic political forces. These actors exploit deepening inequality, geopolitical destabilisation, and the climate crisis for short-term gain and profit; in some ways undermining decades of progress.

When we speak of the digital divide, importantly, we are speaking about the more than two billion people around the world who remain offline. Life in countries as disparate as El Salvador, Palestine, Tunisia, and Vietnam practically requires some form of access to the internet or social media networks to conduct one’s daily business. That includes communicating, remaining informed, working, learning, and accessing essential services. 

In many countries, women, girls and marginalised groups like LGBTQIA+ people, people with disability, and racial, ethnic and religious minorities face greater barriers to digital inclusion. This is mainly due to affordability issues, lack of digital skills, concerns about online safety and security, lack of relevant content and tools, and limited access to fundamental enablers like electricity, formal ID as well as restrictive social norms. 

The gender digital divide is one of the starkest: about 280 million fewer women than men use the internet worldwide. This puts them at an acute disadvantage. As advancements in technologies such as AI accelerate the pace of digitalisation, it is more critical than ever to ensure no one is left behind.

But the digital divide is also about the people who are online and for whom the inequalities and harms experienced in their physical lives are sometimes replicated – or made worse – in online spaces, as well as through the various other ways digital technologies have become commonplace in today’s world. 

For example, the increasing use of data-driven systems like AI to digitise government functions has been widely reported to exclude people from access to public services and replicate inequities along racial, gender, migration status, disability and socio-economic lines. 

The critical importance of access to digital technologies can further be illustrated through the prism of internet shutdowns, blockages to certain sites or applications, and other forms of online violence against activists and human rights defenders but also ordinary people. When people are intentionally disconnected, it impacts all aspects of life while also restricting free expression and community organising. During conflict and crisis, it stops people from accessing life-saving information and humanitarian aid while also preventing documentation of human rights abuses.

In a kind of self-perpetuating cycle, a failure to address participation in one area often leads to a lack of representation in another. A small group of technology companies, largely concentrated in the Global North, administers, deploys and profits from technological systems that increasingly shape our digital lives and have climate implications. 

These companies dominate key sectors of the technology industry: from search and social media to cloud computing, e-commerce, mobile operating systems and now generative AI. Their outsized corporate power enables them to set the terms of digital engagement for billions of people worldwide with little to no transparency or accountability. 

These companies also have disproportionate access to decision-makers and huge means to shape dominant narratives about the benefits from digital technologies based on weak forms of evidence and external scrutiny in the public interest. 

While there have been strides in digital regulation during recent years – such as the Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act and the AI Act in the EU – legislation that fully addresses the problematic practices of tech giants is still wanting. This concentration of power and influence is not only a matter of market fairness but a human rights issue, especially for the Global Majority communities who most need their equal access to the digital world ensured and protected. 

It is also a direct threat to political freedom and the quality of public debate as decisions about how to govern new and emerging technologies are being made in private meetings that are closed to everyone but the people who called them.

Despite these considerable obstacles and setbacks, civil society continues to demonstrate that dismantling harmful concentration of power and building a more rights-respecting and sustainable digital ecosystem is possible. For example, in Kenya, our partner Mzalendo Trust developed a localised civic tech tool to help Kenyans track government and opposition promises enhancing democratic participation and accountability. In Bolivia, our partner InternetBolivia.org Foundation was part of a multisectoral advocacy process to push for a landmark bill to tackle digital violence that is currently being discussed in parliament. 

Another partner, the Cooperation Committee for Cambodia, has involved activists and community members in trainings on digital rights and literacy skills - helping them engage online safely and confidently and contributing to mitigating the local effects of online scams. At the international level, Oxfam and our partners were involved in the UN Global Digital Compact process, which identifies closing all digital divides and delivering an inclusive digital economy as key objectives. 

The recipe is simple but necessary: people for whom the risks – as well as the opportunities – of the digital age are greater must have meaningful agency in governing it. 

We need to prioritise the perspectives, needs, and rights of the people already experiencing poverty and injustice to make sound governance choices. In times of a global AI arms race, we do not need more hype for digital technologies. Rather, we need evidence-based policy debates that address power centralisation and consider the real-world harms associated with digital technologies – while enabling diverse stakeholders to engage at eye level. 

The window to meaningfully address those challenges before they further entrench patterns of inequality is closing quickly. The choices we make now and in the next few years will have enormous implications for our shared digital future, and Oxfam remains committed to amplifying the voices and perspectives of those who have the most to gain – and the most at stake – and will continue to speak truth to power as we navigate the path ahead together.

Originally delivered at Oxfam Ireland’s Digital Rights & Equality Symposium in O’Reilly Hall, UCD on October 20th 2026.