This article is written by Mithila Ravinutala, OP Jindal Global University, an intern under Legal Vidhya
ABSTRACT
Internet shutdowns present a critical tension in contemporary democratic governance: the collision between state security imperatives and fundamental human rights. This article examines how the global legal framework from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to emerging regional jurisprudence confronts this challenge through the lens of necessity and proportionality doctrines. Rather than treating shutdowns as a settled question, this analysis acknowledges genuine security dilemmas while demonstrating why blanket internet disruptions remain extraordinarily difficult to justify under international human rights law. Through landmark judicial decisions from India’s Supreme Court (Anuradha Bhasin), West Africa’s ECOWAS Court (Senegal case), and European jurisprudence, this work explores how courts navigate competing interests: state sovereignty, public order, counterterrorism efforts against expansive rights to digital expression and assembly. The article identifies critical enforcement gaps demonstrating that while legal consensus has crystallized, compliance mechanisms remain fragmented across jurisdictions with divergent enforcement capacities. With documented economic costs exceeding $7.69 billion globally in 2024 and severe consequences for vulnerable populations, the paper concludes that the challenge is not legal clarity but implementation: transforming aspirational international norms into enforceable national frameworks with genuine teeth.
KEYWORDS
Internet shutdowns, Digital rights governance, Necessity and proportionality doctrine, State security vs. human rights, Judicial enforcement mechanisms, Global South digital justice, Telecommunications regulation, Right to access, Regulatory compliance, Democratic accountability
INTRODUCTION
The framing of internet access as a “basic necessity” has become almost clichéd in digital rights discourse. Yet this rhetorical move obscures a more complex reality: internet shutdowns emerge at the intersection of genuine state security concerns, institutional limitations, and deliberate suppression of dissent and disentangling these requires more nuanced analysis than simple rights claims allow.
Consider the empirical baseline: India, the world’s largest democracy and a self-proclaimed “Digital India,” has imposed more shutdowns than any other nation. Between 2016 and 2024, India implemented over 600 shutdowns, predominantly in conflict zones such as Jammu and Kashmir and during election cycles. Governments across 94 countries have imposed shutdowns affecting roughly 1.5 billion people globally. Yet these raw statistics mask deeper questions about governmental motivation and proportionality that deserve careful examination. Are governments deploying shutdowns as last resort security measures facing genuine threats to life and infrastructure? Or have shutdowns become default administrative responses divorced from legitimate necessity and constrained only by narrow procedural requirements? The answer is neither uniformly clear nor uniformly troubling which is precisely why legal analysis must move beyond binary frameworks that treat all shutdowns as either fully justified or completely indefensible.
The Kashmir case exemplifies this complexity with particular force. Following India’s August 2019 constitutional reorganization of Jammu and Kashmir, authorities imposed what became a 213day blackout on mobile 4G services, with broader internet restrictions extending far longer. The government articulated specific security rationales for this extraordinary measure: preventing terrorist coordination during the reorganization period, protecting against incitement to violence during heightened communal tensions, and maintaining operational security during a major constitutional transition affecting hundreds of millions of people. Were these rationales pretexts for suppressing legitimate political opposition to the government’s policies? Almost certainly, at least in significant part. The timing during political opposition to the reorganization itself, the indefinite nature of the shutdown, and the lack of evidence that internet access actually caused the violence cited all suggest that political suppression played a major role. But dismissing the security claims entirely as purely invented would represent an equally problematic misunderstanding of how authoritarian actors genuinely perceive security threat seven when those perceptions are demonstrably disproportionate, self-serving, or fundamentally distorted by confirmation bias and institutional incentives. The legal question becomes more subtle than simple denunciation allows: How do we meaningfully evaluate whether stated justifications satisfy international standards of necessity and proportionality, even when we suspect significant bad faith and political motivation?
The critical legal question is not whether such threats exist, but rather whether blanket internet shutdowns represent proportionate, necessary, or even remotely appropriate responses to those threats. Implementation challenges facing states are also substantial and real: targeted content removal at scale requires significant technical sophistication, institutional capacity, human expertise, and multinational coordination that many states simply lack. Shutdowns are administratively simpler because they delegate responsibility to telecommunications companies and require no sophisticated targeting or judgment about which content to remove. This does not make shutdowns legally defensible far from it but it does explain why they persist as governmental tools even when courts condemn them. Finally, compliance gaps persist despite emerging legal clarity precisely because international consensus against shutdowns, while increasingly solid, operates without meaningful enforcement mechanisms. Powerful nations resist the creation of international accountability frameworks that might constrain their own security practices, and the international community demonstrates limited will to impose significant costs on shutdown practicing governments.
THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK: TREATY LANGUAGE AND INTERPRETIVE BOUNDARIES
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR, 1948) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, 1966) protect freedom of expression in language deliberately abstract and future oriented. These foundational human rights documents establish that everyone has the right to “seek, receive, and impart information…through any media and regardless of frontiers.” This formulation was intentionally broad designed by mid20th century diplomats and human rights advocates to accommodate technologies that had not yet been conceived and to prevent the language from becoming obsolete as communication methods evolved. This foresight was remarkable and enabled these documents to remain relevant decades later when digital communication transformed human interaction globally.
However, this same abstraction that provides durability also creates significant interpretive flexibility that state governments have systematically exploited. When a foundational right is articulated in such general terms, governments have substantial room to argue about what it means in specific contexts, what qualifications might apply, and how to balance it against competing interests. The ICCPR’s Article 19(3) recognizes this tension by explicitly permitting restrictions on freedom of expression when they meet three distinct conditions that operate together as a tripartite test.
First, any restriction must be provided by law meaning it must have a genuine legal basis in national legislation. Second, the restriction must pursue one of several enumerated legitimate aims: national security, public order, public health, morals, or the rights and reputations of others. A government cannot invoke undefined or unenumerated goals to justify suppressing speech. Third, and most critically, the restriction must be necessary and proportionate to achieve its legitimate admit must be suitable to achieving the objective, there must be no less restrictive alternative that would work equally well, and the impact on the restricted right cannot be disproportionate to the benefit achieved.
Here lies a critical and persistent tension: these standards are substantive legal requirements with real teeth, not merely procedural formalities that governments can satisfy through paperwork. Yet they are also notoriously difficult to operationalize consistently, particularly when evaluating government claims about security necessities and threat severity. When India asserts that Kashmir required emergency internet disruption to prevent terrorist attacks and communal violence that might have escalated dramatically, how much deference should courts owe to executive judgment about threat severity? Courts traditionally grant executives considerable latitude in security matters, recognizing that judges lack Realtime intelligence, security expertise, and responsibility for public safety. But unlimited deference would render the legal standards meaningless governments could invoke any security concern and automatically satisfy the legal test. The challenge for courts is to develop meaningful scrutiny that respects legitimate security expertise while preventing abuse.
In 2011, seeking to clarify and strengthen protections in the digital age, the UN Human Rights Committee issued General Comment No. 34, which provides authoritative interpretation of how countries should comply with Article 19 of the ICCPR. This General Comment specifically clarifies that governments cannot impose “blanket restrictions on access to information of public interest, including on Internet platforms.” This language appears to be direct and prohibitive the Committee seems to be stating unambiguously that blanket shutdowns violate international law. But the apparent clarity obscures deeper questions about implementation and scope.
What precisely distinguishes a “blanket restriction” from a justified temporary limitation? The Committee’s text does not specify whether temporal duration is the determining factor does a 48hour shutdown count as blanket, or only indefinite closures? Are geographic limitations sufficient if a government shuts down internet access to one region while maintaining it elsewhere, does that satisfy the requirement to be narrowly tailored rather than blanket? Whether the necessity threshold changes during genuine emergencies remains unclear: if a government faces an actual terrorist attack or imminent communal violence with significant loss of life expected, does the standard shift? The Committee’s language creates a presumption against shutdowns, but whether it establishes an absolute prohibition or merely a strong presumption remains interpretively contestable. The vagueness in the Committee’s language persists intentionally, reflecting a deliberate strategic choice by international human rights bodies. International human rights bodies typically resist overspecification in their guidance because being overly precise would narrow the scope of rights protection and create loopholes that governments could exploit. If the Committee specified “shutdowns lasting more than 72 hours are blanket restrictions,” governments could argue that 72hour shutdowns are legally defensible. But this strategic caution also means that governments retaining some plausible argument for necessity can argue they have complied with General Comment No. 34 by claiming their shutdown served a legitimate aim, was temporary, and addressed a genuine threat. The Committee’s language creates a presumption against shutdowns meaningful protection but not an absolute prohibition that forecloses government action entirely.
Across different regional human rights systems worldwide, courts have adopted varying stringency levels in reviewing internet shutdowns, reflecting different legal traditions and geopolitical contexts. These divergences are instructive because they show the range of interpretations that different legal systems have developed when confronting the same fundamental question.
The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and particularly the ECOWAS Court of West Africa have adopted more aggressive ant shutdown positions, most visibly after the May 2025 Senegal decision. When West African civil society organizations challenged shutdowns that Senegal imposed in 2023, the ECOWAS Court issued what may be the strongest judicial condemnation of shutdowns to date. The ECOWAS judgment declared Senegal’s 2023 shutdowns entirely unlawful and incompatible with human rights protections, citing lack of clear legal authorization and grossly disproportionate impact. However, this represents the most aggressive judicial stance globally, and it faces significant implementation challenges in a region with relatively weak enforcement mechanisms for international court judgments and where governments retain substantial autonomy in defying unfavourable decisions.
India’s Supreme Court has taken a middle position that has proven influential. In Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020), the Court established a framework of procedural safeguards and substantive requirements but did not declare shutdowns categorically unconstitutional or order immediate restoration of the Kashmir shutdown that the case challenged. The Court recognized that while internet access is not itself a freestanding fundamental right explicitly mentioned in India’s Constitution, it is increasingly essential for exercising protected rights including freedom of speech and expression, freedom of assembly and association, and right to information. Therefore, shutdowns infringe these derivative protected rights and require strict justification meeting specified standards. But the Court preserved space for government shutdown authority if proper procedures were followed and substantive requirements were satisfied.
The divergence between these regional courts matters profoundly. Courts can establish presumptions against shutdowns of varying strength without eliminating government authority entirely. International law has not crystallized into an absolute categorical prohibitionist has crystallized into a procedural and substantive framework that shutdowns rarely survive when genuinely scrutinized by independent courts. But this framework leaves room for narrow, emergency justified restrictions that meet stringent tests.
GOVERNMENT JUSTIFICATIONS
Governments universally justify shutdowns by invoking security concerns. India cited security rationales for the Kashmir shutdown. Senegal invoked security (falsely, as courts found) during political unrest. Myanmar cited security after the 2021 coup. The security claim carries genuine weight in policy discussions because sometimes the underlying concerns are authentic: organized terrorist groups do in fact use internet infrastructure and digital networks for operational coordination, logistical planning, recruitment, and fundraising. This reality creates a genuine policy challenge for governments seeking to prevent violence and terrorist attacks.
The critical legal question is not whether security concerns ever exist in the world they clearly doubt rather whether blanket internet shutdowns represent a proportionate, necessary, or even remotely appropriate response to genuine security threats. When this question is examined carefully, the argument for shutdowns as a security measure breaks down through multiple layers of analysis.
Alternative mechanisms to achieve security objectives clearly exist and governments could pursue them with greater care and narrower targeting. Rather than shutting down the entire internet, governments can work with service providers to remove specific content or accounts identified as directly inciting violence or facilitating terrorist coordination. They can implement content filtering technologies that block websites and accounts engaged in terrorist activity or incitement while preserving internet access for the hundreds of millions of people engaged in legitimate uses. They can deploy police and security forces to prevent physical violence rather than presuming that digital communication causes violence in some direct mechanical way. They can implement temporal limitations that restrict access during specific hours of elevated threat rather than imposing indefinite shutdowns covering all hours. They can limit disruptions to geographic areas where threats are genuinely credible rather than shutting down entire regions or nations indiscriminately.
When governments consistently choose the most restrictive option blanket shutdown affecting entire populations rather than attempting any of these less restrictive alternatives, the necessity claim becomes highly suspect. Courts struggle to hold governments accountable here because evaluating security threats requires independent assessment of classified intelligence, security expertise, and knowledge of operational details that judges do not possess. Courts traditionally defer to executives in security matters, recognizing the institutional limitations of judicial review. But this deference creates obvious moral hazard: governments can invoke security without evidence, and courts lack the tools to verify claims.
In recent years, governments have developed a newer and increasingly popular justification for shutdowns: the need to combat “fake news,” misinformation, and disinformation. This rationale has gained substantial traction in policy discussions as concern about false online information has risen globally. The argument appeals to democratic publics who worry about election interference, health misinformation, and erosion of shared facts. Yet this justification encounters multiple serious legal and practical problems when examined carefully.
First, misinformation does not appear on the enumerated list of legitimate aims under Article 19(3) of the ICCPR that can justify restrictions on freedom of expression. The legitimate grounds explicitly listed are national security, public order, public health, morals, and rights and reputations of others. Could misinformation be squeezed into existing categories? Potentially false medical information might endanger public health, and deliberately false information designed to provoke violence might fall within public order protections. But the UN Human Rights Committee has explicitly warned against using such broad categories to justify sweeping restrictions, cautioning that vague concepts can become covers for censoring inconvenient speech. Moreover, most shutdowns invoked for “misinformation” do not target health or safety misinformation at all; they target political speech, conspiracy theories, social commentary, and criticism of government policies speech that does not plausibly create direct harm.
Second, and perhaps most damningly, empirical evidence demonstrates that shutdowns actually worsen misinformation environments rather than improving them. When internet access is cut off entirely, people lose access to reliable, verified information from news organizations, official sources, expert institutions, and factchecking organizations. This information void does not disappear it is filled instead by rumour, speculation, hearsay, and person-to-person communication of unverified claims. A 2022 UN report examining shutdowns found that “shutdowns provide an enabling environment for misinformation and disinformation” precisely because they eliminate access to credible information sources and force reliance on informal networks where falsehoods spread unchecked. If a government is genuinely concerned about public misinformation and wants to protect citizens from false information, internet shutdown is one of the worst possible policy responses. The government would do better to stay online, provide accurate information through official channels, work with platforms to label and remove demonstrably false claims, and conduct public education.
Yet governments continue making the misinformation argument. Why does this justification persist despite its fragility? Because it is politically effective, particularly in democracies where genuine misinformation concerns resonate strongly with the voting public. Misinformation has become a real problem in many societies, and many citizens worry about false information affecting elections and public health. Governments can therefore invoke this concern with political legitimacy, knowing that publics will partially sympathize. The legal response that misinformation does not justify blanket shutdowns and that shutdowns worsen misinformation has not visibly changed state behaviour because courts have limited enforcement power against determined governments.
Perhaps the most absurd justifications for shutdowns involve using them for routine administrative purposes divorced from any security context. India has imposed internet shutdowns to prevent students from cheating on high school examinations and civil service competitive exams. When this practice is first encountered, it might seem to reflect some reasonable administrative concern about exam integrity schools clearly have legitimate interests in preventing cheating and ensuring that exams accurately measure student knowledge. But when the practice is examined in detail, the disproportion becomes starkly apparent and reveals something important about how normalized shutdowns have become as governmental tools.
If governments genuinely treated shutdowns as grave measures of last resort that should be deployed only when all other options have been exhausted, they would categorically never use them to prevent exam cheating. That governments do use them for this mundane administrative purpose reveals that shutdowns have become routine responses to any problem government wants to address, divorced from genuine necessity or proportionality analysis. This suggests one of two distressing possibilities: either governments have entirely lost perspective on proportionality and how to think about rights restrictions, treating shutdowns as just another administrative tool like temporary road closures or office shutdowns; or shutdowns are politically useful for governments in ways that extend beyond their surface justification. The fact that governments reach for shutdowns even for exam cheating implies that the tools serve purposes beyond the stated justification they disrupt opposition communication, suppress organizing, isolate information about government policies.
Colleges and educational institutions could prevent exam cheating through numerous less restrictive mechanisms. Schools could employ enhanced proctoring techniques including live remote monitoring of students taking online exams. They could require student verification before exams through ID checks and biometric technology. They could conduct statistical analysis of exam results afterward to identify suspicious patterns indicating coordinated cheating. They could randomize exam locations and times so that would-be cheaters cannot coordinate. They could search students before exams to confiscate phones and other devices. They could administer exams on secure servers with question randomization making coordination pointless. None of these measures require shutting down internet access for millions of people across entire regions for hours or days.
JUDICIAL RESPONSES: ESTABLISHING FRAMEWORKS WITHOUT ENFORCEMENT
The landmark 2020 decision in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India established what has become an influential framework for reviewing shutdowns. Critically, the decision established procedural safeguards and substantive requirements for shutdowns, but it did not declare shutdowns categorically unconstitutional or order immediate restoration of the challenged Kashmir shutdown. This middle ground approach has both strengths and limitations that merit careful analysis.
The Supreme Court recognized a crucial foundation for digital rights: while internet access is not itself a freestanding fundamental right explicitly protected in India’s Constitution in the way that freedom of speech or freedom of assembly are protected, it has become essential for exercising recognized fundamental rights. People depend on internet access to express themselves, to access information, to assemble and organize, to participate in democratic processes, and to exercise numerous other protected freedoms. Therefore, government restrictions on internet access effectively restrict these derivative fundamental rights, triggering the need for strict justification.
The Court then established specific requirements that any shutdown must satisfy. First, there must be legality with clear authorization shutdown orders must rely on specific law (not vague administrative authority) and must be in writing so that citizens can understand the legal basis. Second, there must be publication and transparency orders must be published and reasoned so the public understands the government’s justification, creating accountability. Third, shutdowns must be temporal limited with automatic review they cannot be indefinite, and they must be subject to review every seven working days with the burden on the government to justify continuing the restriction. Fourth, there must be proportionality assessment using a framework established in an earlier privacy case: is the restriction suitable to achieving a legitimate objective, are there no less restrictive alternatives that would work equally well, and is the impact proportionate to the benefit achieved?
What the Court did not do is equally important: it did not declare the Kashmir shutdown itself unconstitutional or order immediate restoration of internet access. Instead, it directed the government to apply these standards in future cases and to review existing shutdowns against the framework. This opened interpretive space for governments to argue that they had complied with the procedural framework while maintaining restrictions. If a government publishes a reasoned shutdown order, reviews it every seven days, and claims proportionality, it might argue that the Anuradha Bhasin standards have been satisfied.
In practice, the decision has been surprisingly effective in India’s state level high courts, where judges have begun striking down shutdowns that lack published orders, fail proportionality review, or exceed rational time limits. The West Bengal High Court cancelled an exam cheating shutdown, finding the government had not published a reasoned order demonstrating necessity. But the framework also creates space to legitimize shutdowns that technically satisfy procedural requirements even if they remain unjust as policy matters. A government that follows the procedural checklist might maintain a shutdown that violates the spirit of proportionality even while satisfying its procedural letter.
THE ENFORCEMENT VOID
The fundamental problem confronting internet shutdown regulation is not legal it is enforcement. International and national law has become increasingly clear that blanket internet shutdowns are extraordinarily difficult to justify under human rights standards. Courts across multiple jurisdictions have issued powerful decisions against shutdowns. The legal consensus that blanket shutdowns violate human rights is genuinely becoming unequivocal among legal scholars and human rights bodies worldwide. Yet shutdowns continue, suggesting that law operates on one plane while actual state behaviour operates on another.
India experienced over 100 shutdowns in 2024 despite the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision establishing stringent requirements. Myanmar’s military junta continues shutdowns with virtual impunity. Senegal has not changed practice despite the ECOWAS decision. Venezuela continues sporadic shutdowns. Bangladesh imposed shutdowns during political unrest. The pattern reveals that legal clarity has not translated into behavioural change at the level of state government practice. The reasons for this enforcement gap are systematic. International courts and regional human rights bodies lack direct enforcement power they cannot deploy military forces, impose automatic sanctions, or directly punish governments for noncompliance. The International Court of Justice operates through persuasion and reputational pressure, which affect some states but not those determined to suppress information. Regional courts like the ECOWAS Court depend on national governments within their jurisdictions to implement decisions, but governments facing shutdown requests from security forces can resist implementing unfavourable court rulings. National courts are often controlled or heavily influenced by executives ordering shutdowns, creating conflicts of interest and institutional dependence.
Geopolitical self-interest further complicates enforcement. Powerful nations resist the creation of international accountability mechanisms that might constrain their own security practices. If the United Nations were to develop enforcement mechanisms for digital rights violations, for example, the United States, China, Russia, and other powerful nations might worry about facing pressure over their own surveillance and content moderation practices. This creates a tragedy of the commons: all nations would benefit from universal enforcement of human rights standards, but each individual nation benefits from ensuring those standards don’t apply to itself.
Limited costs to defiance explain governmental behaviour at the individual level. Governments that shut down the internet face diplomatic criticism, unfavourable international court decisions, and condemnation from human rights organizations. But they do not face military intervention, comprehensive sanctions, suspension from trade organizations, or other serious consequences that would make shutdowns politically costly at the highest levels. The reputational harm is bearable, particularly for governments that have already accepted international isolation or that have strong domestic political support despite international criticism.
Finally, institutional interests perpetuate the shutdown practice. Telecommunications companies benefit from shutdowns because shutdowns relieve them of responsibility for difficult content moderation decisions if the internet is simply shut down, they don’t have to choose which content to remove. Security forces benefit because shutdowns provide control and eliminate information flows the government wants to suppress. Government bureaucrats benefit because shutdowns reduce accountability by preventing information dissemination about government actions. No institution with power to prevent shutdowns has strong interest in doing so.
This enforcement gap explains why the legal position on shutdowns and actual governmental practice have diverged. Courts have made strong statements. International human rights bodies have issued clear guidance. Legal scholars have reached consensus. But none of this has prevented shutdowns because preventing them requires not just legal rules, but mechanisms to enforce rules against powerful state actors with monopoly control over territory and communications infrastructure.
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES
Recent reports cite $7.69 billion in global economic losses from internet shutdowns in 2024, with some estimates from different research organizations exceeding $10 billion annually.⁵ These figures appear definitive when cited in policy discussions, but they require substantial interrogation: What is actually being counted in these estimates? How are they calculated? What kinds of economic costs remain invisible or unmeasured? Direct measurable costs that most economic analyses capture include ecommerce transaction losses during shutdown periods when online sales cannot be completed, wage losses for gig workers in ridesharing, delivery, and online services unable to work without internet access, financial transaction delays when banking systems are offline, and business communication disruptions when companies cannot coordinate internally or with suppliers. These direct losses can be calculated with reasonable precision by economists examining transaction records and business reports. Harder to quantify costs that most analyses attempt to estimate but with less precision include supply chain disruptions with delayed visibility into inventory and customer demand, loss of remote work capacity when workers cannot perform their jobs from home, healthcare access interruptions when telemedicine becomes unavailable and patients cannot schedule appointments, educational losses from closed online learning systems that disrupt instruction, and psychological and mental health costs from information isolation and inability to contact support networks. These costs are real but require statistical modelling and are subject to significant uncertainty. Virtually unmeasured costs that economic analyses typically omit entirely include lost innovation and entrepreneurship from startups unable to operate without internet access, erosion of democratic institutions when internet shutdowns reduce political participation and reduce the public’s ability to hold government accountable, human rights documentation failures when journalists cannot report on government abuses, and the cost of restricted information flow on educational outcomes and social mobility. These systemic costs may be larger than the direct economic losses but are difficult to quantify.
Economic estimates tend to focus heavily on direct business losses that can be measured from transaction data, making global aggregate figures likely to be conservative underestimates of actual economic harm. But even conservative estimates show massive costs: India alone lost approximately $1 billion in 2015-2016 from shutdowns according to Brookings Institution analysis in a year when India’s per capita GDP was roughly $1,500. For populations living near the poverty line, these losses can create economic devastation.
STRENGTHENING ACCOUNTABILITY: BEYOND LEGAL STANDARDS
The legal framework governing internet shutdowns is largely adequate. International human rights law provides clear guidance. Regional courts have issued powerful decisions. National courts have established frameworks. What is missing are enforcement mechanisms that would translate legal standards into actual behavioural change by governments. Recommendations for strengthening accountability must therefore address different levels of governance and acknowledge the constraints different actors face.
International Level
At the international level, the United Nations could establish a UN Special Rapporteur specifically dedicated to internet shutdowns, separate from the broader mandate of the existing Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression. This specialized position would have investigative power and resources to examine shutdowns across countries, issue urgent appeals to governments, prepare detailed reports examining trends and legal issues, and publicly identify governments violating standards. The Rapporteur could leverage international attention and reputational pressure more effectively than scattered complaints to general human rights bodies.
More fundamentally, the international community needs to create actual accountability mechanisms through which governments that violate shutdown standards face meaningful consequences. This goes beyond UN statements and regional court decisions, which carry moral force but no enforcement power. Meaningful consequences might include targeted sanctions against governments that persistently practice shutdowns, suspension from regional organizations like the African Union or ASEAN, or international prosecution of government officials responsible for violations. These consequences would make shutdowns politically costly rather than merely subject to criticism.
Finally, the international community could develop shared technical standards for content removal as an alternative to shutdowns, working with telecommunications companies to enable governments to address specific threats without blanket disruptions. This would reduce the administrative simplicity argument for shutdowns by providing a technically feasible alternative.
Regional Level
Regional human rights courts in Africa, Asia, and Latin America need strengthened jurisdiction with enforcement mechanisms and compliance monitoring. The ECOWAS Court and African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights have issued powerful decisions against shutdowns, but their decisions lack enforcement. These courts need authority to issue emergency orders temporarily blocking shutdown implementations while cases proceed, and need support for compliance monitoring and enforcement of decisions.
Specialized digital rights tribunals could be established with rapid adjudication capacity, enabling courts to issue emergency orders during shutdown attempts within hours. The normal pace of litigation is too slow for digital rights emergencies by the time a case is decided, monthslong shutdowns have already occurred. Rapid adjudication mechanisms could preserve rights while cases proceed through regular channels.
Regional funds for litigation support would enable civil society organizations to challenge shutdowns in court. Most civil society groups lack resources to support expensive litigation, particularly in developing countries where legal resources are scarce. Regional funding mechanisms could democratize access to litigation as a tool for protecting digital rights
National Level
Within their own legal systems, nations should repeal or radically reform colonial era laws that authorize shutdowns without meaningful safeguards. India’s 1885 Telegraph Act, relied upon to justify shutdowns, was written before modern telecommunications existed and contains language so vague that it authorizes nearly anything. These anachronistic laws should be replaced with clear, limiting legislation that establishes strict preconditions for shutdown authority. New legislation should require judicial preauthorization before any shutdown can be implemented, requiring governments to convince a judge that shutdown meets international legal standards. It should limit duration to 72 hours without formal renewal through a judicial process, preventing indefinite shutdowns. It should mandate published and reasoned orders explaining the government’s justification, creating transparency and accountability. It should require demonstrable evidence of imminent harm not speculative fears but concrete, specific threats. Nations should establish independent review bodies with power to order restoration and award damages for unlawful shutdowns. These bodies would provide institutional checks on executive power and create incentives for careful decision-making. Transparency requirements should force publication of all shutdown orders and government justifications, enabling civil society and courts to assess compliance with legal standards.
CONCLUSION
The legal debate on internet shutdowns has substantially crystallized over the past decade. International human rights law, interpreted through General Comment No. 34 and other guidance, clearly establishes that blanket shutdowns violate fundamental freedoms. Regional jurisprudence from the ECOWAS Court, African courts, and European courts has elaborated powerful principles against shutdowns. Emerging national frameworks, exemplified by India’s Anuradha Bhasin decision, have established procedural safeguards and substantive requirements. The three-part test established in international law legality, legitimacy, necessity and proportionality is well-developed, clearly articulated, and consistently rejects shutdowns when genuinely applied by courts with independence and expertise.
Yet this legal clarity has not ended shutdowns. Governments continue implementing shutdowns despite contrary court decisions, international condemnation, and demonstrated legal standards. This gap between legal principle and governmental practice reveals something profound about the limits of law as a tool for constraining state power. The question now is not legal courts and legal scholars have answered that question and established clear principles. The question is fundamentally political: Will governments be held accountable for violating clearly established law? Will regional and international organizations enforce standards against determined governments? Will civil society mobilization create sufficient political pressure to make shutdowns costly at the electoral and diplomatic level?
The direction of change appears favourable, though progress is frustratingly slow. Courts are increasingly striking down shutdowns when they examine them carefully. Transparency requirements are expanding and civil society documentation of shutdowns is improving. Governments that shut down the internet face legal challenges in their own courts, condemnation from international bodies, and in some cases damages claims from harmed parties. The age of impunity for internet shutdowns is ending, however slowly.
However, significant barriers to progress remain and should not be minimized. Myanmar’s junta continues shutdowns with virtual impunity because it has withdrawn from international accountability systems. Senegal shows no signs of changing practice despite losing the ECOWAS case, suggesting that court decisions do not automatically translate to behavioural change. India’s Supreme Court procedures satisfy judicial review while maintaining substantial restrictions, demonstrating that procedural compliance can legitimize substantively problematic shutdowns. The practice persists at scale because the political incentives for governments to suppress dissent through shutdowns outweigh the legal and reputational costs.
Genuine transformation of governmental behaviour will require what law alone cannot provide. Shutdowns will not end through legal argument alone. Instead, change will require political consequences for shutdown practicing governments electoral pressure if the public views shutdowns as unacceptable, withdrawal of international investment if companies decide shutdowns are too risky, diplomatic isolation if powerful nations make this a priority. It will require corporate willingness to resist orders even at substantial cost. It will require sustained international pressure combining legal accountability with diplomatic and economic cost, making shutdowns politically and economically damaging for the governments that employ them. Only when shutdowns become genuinely costly will law translate into behavioural change. Until then, courts can establish powerful legal principles, but those principles will remain aspirational rather than determinative of actual governmental conduct.
REFERENCES
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- U.N. Human Rights Committee. (2011). General Comment No. 34 on Article 19: Freedoms of Opinion and Expression. U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/GC/34.
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- Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India, (2020) 3 SCC 637 (India).
- ECOWAS Court of Justice. (2025). Decision on Senegal Internet Shutdowns. Case reference available at: https://www.courtecowas.org/
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