Strengthening digital security, increasing citizen participation, advancing respect for human rights online,…

AfricTivistes’ Programmes Coordinator, Aisha Dabo, took part in the second engagement of the Greater Internet Freedom (GIF) Ecosystem Research Advisory Board Engagement Research Advisory Board this month in Kampala-Entebbe, Uganda. The Research Advisory Board provided feedback on early research findings and future research proposals. The Advisory Board includes a dozen digital stakeholders from around the world.

Journalists, activists, academics, and marginalised groups around the world face substantial risks online, often from governments imposing authoritarian digital policies that violate basic freedoms, including the right to assembly, association, and expression online.

The three-year Greater Internet Freedom (GIF) project (2020-2023), implemented by a consortium led by Internews and funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), aims to enhance digital security for civil society and media organisations, engage citizens in internet governance debates, and advance human rights online in order to respond to global digital threats and proactively promote an open Internet. GIF covers about forty countries around the world.

The Uganda-based organisation Pollicy was contracted to undertake participatory research on behalf of the GIF consortium to strengthen the digital rights and digital security ecosystem. The Advisory Board has been set up to support this initiative.

Pollicy will conduct an inventory of the digital rights and safety ecosystem, including organisations, actors and stakeholders. Among other things, the organisation will help identify examples of digital rights and safety actors, policy and advocacy programmes, lessons learned from successful and unsuccessful digital rights interventions, develop practitioner stories and profiles identifying career paths and skills, etc.