Westminster Declaration

The Westminster Declaration was a publicly stated warning about an increasing censorship in many countries around the world, that is facilitated by the ongoing digital transformation. The declaration was published on October 18th 2023, after some of the signatories had convened in Westminster, London at the end of June 2023.[1] The declaration was signed by 138 renowned intellectuals and academics from various backgrounds, such as whistleblower Edward Snowden, activist Julian Assange, psychologists Jordan Peterson and Steven Pinker, biologist Richard Dawkins, economist Jeffrey Sachs, and journalists Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Bari Weiss.[2][3]

The declaration begins with a statement of concern about current threats to the freedom of speech:

We write as journalists, artists, authors, activists, technologists, and academics to warn of increasing international censorship that threatens to erode centuries-old democratic norms.
Coming from the left, right, and centre, we are united by our commitment to universal human rights and freedom of speech, and we are all deeply concerned about attempts to label protected speech as ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and other ill-defined terms.[2]

It continues by naming “government actors, social media companies, universities, and NGOs” as participants in a so-called “Censorship-Industrial Complex” that cooperate to restrict the freedom of expression by means of online filtering, deplatforming, and direct laws. Legitimate opinions would be censored by labeling them as fake news.[4] Specifically named examples of such processes are the Twitter Files, the European Union's Digital Services Act and recent government attempts to abolish private encrypted communication.

The declaration concludes with three calls to action: For governments, to uphold Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which grants freedom of opinion and expression. For tech corporations to refrain from digital censorship. And for the general public to build an atmosphere of free speech and reject a climate of intolerance.

Considering the high profile of the signatories, media coverage on the declaration was noticeably low. It was covered in the U.S. in the New York Post[5], in the U.K. by The Daily Telegraph[6] and in Germany by Die Welt[7].