The Growing Threat of Cybercrime Law Abuse: LGBTQ+ Rights in MENA and the UN Cybercrime Draft Convention

This is Part II  of a series examining the proposed UN Cybercrime Treaty in the context of LGBTQ+ communities. Part I looks at the draft Convention’s potential implications for LGBTQ+ rights. Part II provides a closer look at how cybercrime laws might specifically impact the LGBTQ+ community and activists in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. In the digital age, the rights of the LGBTQ+ community in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are gravely threatened by expansive cybercrime and surveillance legislation. This reality leads to systemic suppression of LGBTQ+ identities, compelling individuals to censor themselves for fear of severe reprisal. This looming threat becomes even more pronounced in countries like Iran, where same-sex conduct is punishable by death, and Egypt, where merely raising a rainbow flag can lead to arrest.

Enter the proposed UN Cybercrime Convention. If ratified in its current form, it could not only reinforce countries' domestic surveillance powers for investigating actions wrongly labeled as crimes, but also legitimize and enhance international cooperation based on these powers. This UN endorsement could set a dangerous precedent, normalizing surveillance practices for acts that starkly contradict international human rights law. More worryingly, it may act as an incentive for countries to introduce or expand on their own restrictive criminal laws, eager to tap into the broader pool of cross-border surveillance cooperation that the proposed convention would provide. The draft convention grants each country the authority to determine and define their own crimes. These definitions, alarmingly, become the foundation for assisting another country in gathering evidence for acts they controversially label as crimes—often based on subjective moral judgments rather than universally accepted standards.  Under Article 35 of the proposed UN Cybercrime Convention, international cooperation is permissible for these so-called serious crimes as long as they carry a penalty of at least four years of imprisonment or more; there's a concerning move afoot to suggest reducing this threshold to merely three years. And the draft convention does not distinguish between crimes that blatantly violate international human rights standards and those that don't, allowing cooperation irrespective of this distinction. This is applicable whether the alleged offense took place online or offline.  In essence, the proposed treaty allows one nation to assist another in surveillance over seemingly innocuous acts, such as sharing LGBTQ+ supportive content online, placing the community in a vulnerable position. But it also empowers authorities to identify, locate, or intercept the communications of LGBTQ+ individuals for offline and/or online expressions of their identity. This places the LGBTQ+ community in a perilous situation where their personal data and identity might be easily disclosed and shared. The repercussions of such surveillance can be severe, leading to grievous human rights violations, and in extreme cases, even to capital punishment. One of the more recently introduced pieces of legislation that exemplifies these issues is the Cybercrime Law of 2023 in Jordan. Introduced as part of King Abdullah II’s modernization reforms to increase political participation across Jordan, this law was issued hastily and without sufficient examination of its legal aspects, social implications, and impact on human rights. This law, with its overly broad and vaguely defined terms, will severely restrict individual human rights across that country and will become a tool for prosecuting innocent individuals for their online speech.  Article 13 of the law expansively criminalizes a wide set of actions tied to online content branded as “pornographic,” from its creation to distribution. The ambiguity in defining what is pornographic could inadvertently suppress content that merely expresses various sexualities, mistakenly deeming them as inappropriate. This goes beyond regulating explicit material; it can suppress genuine expressions of identity. The penalty for such actions entails a period of no less than six months of imprisonment.  Meanwhile, Article 14’s nebulous phrasing—terms like “expose public morals,” “debauchery,” and “seduction”—is equally concerning. Such vague language is ripe for misuse, potentially curbing LGBTQ+ content by erroneously associ