This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

90 per cent of adolescent girls in low-income countries are offline

Around 90 per cent of adolescent girls and young women do not use the internet in low-income countries, while their male peers are twice as likely to be online, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Thursday.

To mark International Girls in Information and Communication Technologies Day, UNICEF stressed that closing the digital divide between girls and boys was about more than just having access to the internet and technology; “it's about empowering girls to become innovators, creators, and leaders”, said UNICEF Director of Education, Robert Jenkins.

On average across 32 countries and territories, girls are also 35 per cent less likely than boys to have basic digital skills such as being able to send emails or transfer files.

To bridge the digital gender gap, UNICEF said that girls need early exposure and access to technology, digital and life skills training, equal access to mentoring and internships in the digital sector, and policies to better protect girls’ safety online.

China: Risk of forced labour in Tibet ‘vocational training’ programmes

So-called “labour transfer” and “vocational training” programmes in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, could lead to forced labour conditions, UN-appointed independent human rights experts warned on Thursday.

The experts, including Tomoya Obokata, Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, said that hundreds of thousands of Tibetans have been reportedly “transferred” from their traditional rural lives to low-skilled and low-paid employment since 2015.

“In practice, their participation has reportedly been coerced,” the experts said. They also noted the labour transfer programme’s focus on “cultural and political indoctrination in a militarized environment”, with participants reportedly prevented from using their minority language and discouraged from expressing their religious identity.

The experts called on the Chinese authorities to clarify the conditions for opting out of the programmes, to monitor working conditions and to “ensure respect for Tibetan religious, linguistic and cultural identity”. They are in contact with the Chinese Government on the issue.

New UK law curtails key civil and political rights: UN rights chief

A new law in the United Kingdom is “incompatible” with the country’s international obligations on people’s rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association.

That’s the message from UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, who on Thursday called the UK’s recently passed Public Order Act “deeply troubling”.

The UN rights chief maintained that it imposes disproportionate restrictions on the exercise of key rights, notably by expanding the powers of the police and imposing criminal sanctions on people involved in peaceful protests.

“As the world faces the triple planetary crises of climate change, loss of biodiversity and pollution, governments should be protecting and facilitating peaceful protests on such existential topics, not hindering and blocking them,” he said.

The UN rights chief stressed that the law’s apparent targeting of “those protesting about human rights and environmental issues” is particularly concerning.

Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer, UN News.