Curtailing Free Expression, Opinion and Information Online in Southeast Asia II. International law and standards The international human rights framework governing the rights to freedom of expression, opinion and information anchors the analysis in this report of an existing and emerging generation of laws regulating information and communications technologies (ICT). As will be evident in this paper, the underlying human rights concerns presented by these laws are not fundamentally different from those implicated by previous efforts to suppress offline speech, and in fact merely extend old patterns of violation to the online sphere. This section begins by providing a brief overview of those human rights laws and principles, expressed in article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and, as a legal treaty obligation, in article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and customary international law. It then considers developments at the international level to address issues that arise in the context of online expression, including their impacts on the rights to freedom of association and assembly, political participation and privacy. This report does not contain a targeted analysis of impacts on the right to privacy by ICT-regulating laws. Nonetheless, the right to privacy is crucially engaged and must be considered within this context. This section thus also provides a summary of the right to privacy as defined under international law and standards. 15