Community Voices: Don’t miss these Access Now grantees at RightsCon Toronto

If you are joining us at RightsCon in Toronto, hopefully you have already started exploring the program and curating your personal schedule. This is quite a challenging task this year with nearly 20 sessions happening simultaneously, every one of which will tackle a critical aspect of human rights in the digital age.

With so many amazing sessions to choose from, we wanted to take a moment to recognize the contribution that Access Now grantees are making to the program and to the RightsCon community, and encourage you to check out some of the sessions they are speaking on and organizing. Please note that, due to concerns for their security, we can’t publicly disclose all Access Now grantees.

Access Now Grants’ mission is to defend and extend the digital rights of users, especially those most at risk. Civil society around the globe is working under increasingly difficult circumstances, against targeted censorship, restrictions on operations, and threats to their physical safety. And for human rights defenders, women, LGBTQI people, journalists, and others, the very act of posting something on social media is often an act of defiance and extraordinary courage. As the digital space becomes central to human rights battles, it is also a space where marginalization, societal discrimination, and violence can be reproduced and even amplified. Access Now recognizes that we need more activists around the world, better resourced to fight alongside us for human rights in the digital age. We are proud to support the critical work of the following organizations and groups, and many others that we cannot list here:

Wednesday May 16th

• Turkey Blocks — Combating shutdowns with COST: A data driven policy tool for internet freedom
• Internet Sans Frontières — Shedding light on internet blackouts
• Coding Rights — Challenging our own digital security training communication and didactics
• SurSiendo, iFreedom Uganda — Innovation on the frontlines: how grassroots activists are utilizing technology to enhance their work
• Visualizing Impact — Documenting ICT companies’ impact on civic freedoms & human rights defenders

Thursday May 17th

• KICTANet, Rudi International — Digital security for civil societies in Africa
• Fundación Karisma — Women’s voices co-create the internet
• Internet Sans Frontières — Lightning Talk – Fact checking: fake news and the roles of the press in Africa
• Fundación Acceso — Changes and Challenges, scary but necessary: Facing challenges in digital security training models and how change could become a fantastic tool to achieve creative solutions
• Coding Rights — Offline doesn’t exist anymore
• Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice — Digital landscapes of trans-activism in Central Asia and Eastern Europe: Threats, opportunities and resistance
• Paradigm Initiative — Electoral choices and Artificial Intelligence: The need for transnational collaboration in Africa
• 7amleh, Visualizing Impact — Defending minority voices on a censored internet
• Social Media Exchange — Tech Demo Block #4 – CASEDATA – A collaborative, intersectional database of Global South digital rights legislation & case law
• KICTANet, Turkey Blocks — When repressive authorities #KeepItOn
• Syrian Archive — Building an open source tech stack for open source investigation
• 7amleh — Countering hate or suppressing speech? The case of Israel/Palestine

Friday May 18

• Acoso.Online, Fundación Karisma — Don’t say you don’t know. Learn concrete tools to provide meaningful help to victims of non-consensual pornography on the internet from the Global South
• KICTANet — Observing tech in elections
• Paradigm Initiative — Litigating internet shutdowns in Africa: identifying blurred lines and roadmaps
• Open Culture Foundation — Trainers Unite: experience exchange of digital security trainers
• Fundación Karisma — Lawbitrage: developments in cross-border search engine regulation
• Paradigm Initiative — A technologist, a policy wonk, and an Internet freedom advocate walk into a bar: Assessing how internet communities build bridges for human rights
• Internet Sans Frontières — Tactics for advancing digital rights in developing economies and challenging political contexts: an RDR perspective
• Coding Rights — Frontiers of feminist issues online: understanding the tensions and opportunities at the intersection of innovation, digital rights and security
• ASCAMTA — Community infrastructure for activists: Security and shutdown circumvention
• Open Culture Foundation — Another brick in the firewall: China’s growing threat to local, regional, and global civil society
• Bahrain Watch, Paradigm Initiative — Global perspectives on fighting social media censorship
• Fundación Karisma — Quién Defiende Tus Datos: The latest on holding telecoms accountable with rating report throughout Latin America and Spain
• Bahrain Watch — Freedoms constrained: How Western-made surveillance technology is used for rights abuses in the Middle East and North Africa
• Fundación Karisma — Information controls in Latin America: censorship in different layers and nuances