When the Zambian government canceled RightsCon, the world’s leading summit on human rights in the digital age, one week before its opening, the decision landed like a stone in still water. The ripples are still spreading. For those outside the digital rights and internet freedom field, RightsCon might sound like just another international conference, but for most folks in the digital rights arena it is much more. Convened by Access Now for years across multiple cities and continents, it is one of the few spaces where civil society actors, technologists, policymakers, and activists from across the global majority actually meet, not as recipients of an agenda set elsewhere, but as participants in a shared conversation. When Zambia’s government demanded “full alignment with national values” as a condition for the gathering to proceed, it wasn’t targeting a venue, but rather an entire conversation surrounding human rights.
