Welcome to the Official Schedule for RightsCon 2019, the world’s leading summit on human rights in the digital age.
Together at RightsCon Tunis, our first summit hosted in the Middle East and North Africa, more than 2500 expert practitioners will come together across over 400 sessions to shape, contribute to, and drive forward the global agenda for the future of our human rights.
Important note: Whether you’re a session organizer, speaker, or participant, you’ll need to login to Sched or create an account in order to get the most out of the program (including creating a profile and building your own customized RightsCon schedule).
Technology and politics are now connected more than ever. Elections around the world, from Bangladesh, Nigeria, India, to Ukraine, have revealed a status quo of information control and attempts to manipulate the online environment. Governments, politicians, and foreign actors are increasingly violating digital rights ahead of elections in order to control the media narrative, censor critics, and deny citizens access to information.
In this session, we will bring together research groups, activists, and human rights organizations who seek to understand and address the ways internet restrictions negatively affect electoral integrity. We will explore some of these mechanisms, including internet shutdowns, information controls and blocks, and misinformation and propaganda, while evaluating the economic and political cost of undermining the transparency, fairness, and legitimacy of elections.
In addition, we will consider how to develop advocacy strategies that raise the profile of internet freedom concerns ahead of elections and respond to specific needs in diverse countries and regions. The goal of such advocacy is to prevent the normalization of connectivity disruptions and digital rights violations during elections.
