Why the digital divide is a threat to social justice

Every year, Feb. 20 is celebrated as the World Day of Social Justice. This year the theme is “Social justice in the digital economy,” fitting for a year when much of our social, let alone economic, activity has moved to cyberspace.

Since the coronavirus outbreak began more than a year ago, digital technology has felt like our savior, keeping societies and economies functioning. However, the uneven diffusion of  digital technology and knowhow has created a modern divide between the haves and have-nots, widening income inequalities and harming the chances of reaching many of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and in so doing turning the notion of universal social justice into little more than an abstract aspiration.

The digital economy has in fact quickly increased inequalities, among companies and among individuals. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased and enhanced our digital interactions, but has also accelerated the inequalities that come with them, even though the writing was on the wall long before its outbreak. Not that long ago, advances in Information and Communications and Technology (ICT) were perceived as advancing equality and justice, if not for all, at least for growing numbers of people across the world. However, although the digital revolution has shifted the nature of how we conduct our lives, the basic tenets of our global societies and economies have not changed at all, and if anything the accumulation of wealth and the level of its disparities have grown exponentially with the spread of the online economy.

The world’s three wealthiest individuals are Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, the founders of Tesla, Amazon and Microsoft respectively, while not far behind in fifth place is Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. These four have an accumulated wealth of more than $600 billion, when the average wage of an Amazon warehouse operative in the UK is under £16 per hour, and in India just above $4 per hour; and when content moderators for some of the social media giants, who work long hours and are often exposed to disturbing images, can earn as little as $18 per hour in the US and $5 in India or the Philippines.

When the UN General Assembly passed the resolution in 2007 creating the World Day of Social Justice, it was to address exactly these kinds of injustices, affirming a commitment to promote national and global economic systems based on the “principles of justice, equity, democracy, participation, transparency, accountability and inclusion.” There was a recognition, to a large extent a prophetic one, that social development and social justice are indispensable for achieving and maintaining peace and security among nations, and that, equally, there can be no social justice without peace and security.

If we are to fully harness the economic potential of the digital revolution to benefit the many and not the few, there is a need for global cooperation and a readiness from the leading digital powers to share the spoils of this technological bonanza.

Yossi Mekelberg

Two of the most powerful and concerning phenomena of our times are intensifying societal and political malaise, and continuing increases in income inequality. Together they have given rise to nationalist and populist sentiments that are destabilizing both domestic and international politics. The nexus of these two major trends has been the basis for a discourse that advocates social justice, not only for obvious moral considerations, but also as a practical and utilitarian measure of ensuring social and political stability, something the world’s elites seem unable to understand as serving their own interests.

The digital economy offered new income-generating opportunities, and created more flexible working arrangements. It allowed for a more inclusive labor market, helping more women, people with disabilities, young people and migrant workers to join the global workforce, something they found much more challenging in pre-digital times. However, large parts of the world are still not part of the digital economy due to lack of investment in infrastructure, equipment, and vocational training. And it is also far from true that being employed necessarily equates to escaping the poverty trap —for that, national and international regulations are required, otherwise it is too easy for companies to set up their digital businesses in locations where there is no legislation protecting the rights of workers, with the result that jobs migrate from countries where there is such protection, creating unemployment in the process, to places where they create employment but for low wages, in difficult conditions and with few social benefits.

The digital economy was expected to produce a more level playing field, but numbers of internet users even in OECD countries range from over 95 percent of the population to less than 70 percent, while there is a significant correlation between age, ethnicity and socio-economic background and access to ICT. Outside the OECD countries the situation is more worrying and many are being left behind, or as the UN has described it: “The world is characterised by a yawning gap between the under-connected and the hyper-digitalized countries.” In the least developed countries only one in five people use the internet, compared with four out of five in developed countries. However, although access and connectivity are necessary conditions for a digital economy to evolve, they are not sufficient. The US and China account for three-quarters of all patents related to blockchain technologies and cloud computing, and half of all global spending on the Internet of Things.

If we are to fully harness the economic potential of the digital revolution to benefit the many and not the few, there is a need for global cooperation and a readiness from the leading digital powers to share the spoils of this technological bonanza. This year’s World Day of Social Justice gives us the opportunity to discuss the unjust imbalances created by the digital economy, and the ways in which it can be transformed into a powerful tool for reducing inequalities and helping to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals that the international community has scheduled to be achieved in less than 10 years’ time. There is no time to lose.

• Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations at Regent’s University London, where he is head of the International Relations and Social Sciences Program. He is also an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. Twitter: @YMekelberg