Baroness Beeban Kidron

Crossbench Peer in the UK House of Lords and Chair of 5Rights Foundation

Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE is a Crossbench Peer in the UK House of Lords and Chair of 5Rights Foundation.

After 30 years as a film director, making TV and film dramas and documentaries in the UK and Hollywood, Kidron was appointed to the House of Lords, where she takes a particular interest in all things digital. She sat on the Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee Inquiry, the Communications Select Committee and is Co-Founder and Deputy Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Digital Regulation and Responsibility. Kidron introduced a ground-breaking piece of data protection legislation, ‘the Age Appropriate Design Code’, which gives under 18’s a high bar of data protection. 

Kidron is the Founder and Chair of 5Rights Foundation, whose mission is to build the digital world children and young people deserve. 5Rights has pioneered a range of international policies and programmes, such as; developing a Child Online Protection Policy for the Government of Rwanda; creating a Global Handbook for Child Online Protection; and working in partnership with IEEE to create Universal Standards for Children and for Digital Services and Products. 5Rights also supported the UNCRC in drafting a general comment (no. 25) on the relevance of children’s rights to the digital world. This is anticipated to have global significance on the expectations and duties of States and business to children. 

Kidron is a member of the Global Council on Extended Intelligence;  the Advisory Council for the University of Oxford’s Institute of Ethics in AI; Founding Executive Board member of the Data Protection Foundation; and member of the Executive Steering Group for the Born in Bradford Digital Makers Programme and Chairs 5Rights Foundation’s Digital Futures Commission.

The digital world is no longer a ‘nice to have’, but rather a necessity for the advancement of individuals, communities and entire regions. If it is no longer optional, then it follows that it must also be rights respecting, fair, inclusive and available to people in ways that are meaningful and affordable. The Broadband Commission has a unique role in ensuring that connectivity happens, and that when it happens it brings equity and human flourishing in its wake.

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