Launch of DFF’s Digital Democracy Hub: Human Rights Defenders Strategise For Strategic Litigation
For two days in February, human rights activists, journalists, legal experts, and litigators from Europe, Africa and the Americas defied the freezing temperatures of Berlin and were brought together by the Digital Freedom Fund (DFF) to reflect, brainstorm, and strategize on the state of digital democracy. Together, we explored how to counter human rights violations using legal pathways that hold platforms and governments accountable.
Launch of the Digital Democracy Strategic Litigation Hub
DFF used this Digital Democracy Workshop to launch its second Strategic Litigation Hub focusing on the topic of digital democracy, which it defines as the use of digital technologies to influence democratic conditions, institutions, practices and processes. The premise of the Digital Democracy Strategic Litigation Hub (Hub) is that digital platforms have come to embody new forms of power over our societies — regulating speech, shaping political participation, and enabling governments to categorise, discriminate against, and monitor individuals and communities. These platforms enable and oftentimes promote counter-democratic practices, and deepening threats to democratic institutions and processes across the world.
The objective of the Hub is to foster collaboration on strategic litigation that holds Big Tech, governments, and others accountable for technology-driven harms to democracy and human rights. Although DFF’s primary focus is on the Council of Europe, the Hub was also opened to participants working on these issues in Africa and Latin America. More than thirty organisations were selected to work on their strategic litigation cases throughout a two-year period.
Digital Democracy Workshop Content
Through a process of co-creation and interactive facilitation, the Workshop enabled participants to reflect on common threats and specific ways to counter tech-facilitated harms to democracies across different jurisdictions. Human rights defenders, activists, journalists, technologists and legal experts all in the frontline of human rights strategic litigation and advocacy dedicated two full days in jointly reflecting how to respond to the shrinking of civic space globally.
During the peer-facilitated sessions, we unpacked many threats to digital democracy such as spyware and surveillance of activists and human rights defenders, surveillance of people on the move, hate speech and content moderation practices which lead to misinformation and technology-facilitated gender-based violence. We took deep dives in how spyware and surveillance unfold across different jurisdictions, political systems and realities. Participants took the opportunity to learn from each other’s experiences, whether as litigators, journalists, or as people victimised by spyware and surveillance and to explore best practices for supporting each other and those most affected. There was consensus that human rights violations such as the ones discussed during the Workshop, have significant global ramifications.
The Workshop brought together diverse perspectives and experiences, creating valuable opportunities to discuss litigation projects and explore shared challenges across multiple jurisdictions worldwide. For example, under the skilled facilitation of Paloma Lara-Castro from Derechos Digitales, we examined the first judgment of the Inter-American Human Rights System addressing technology-facilitated gender-based violence. Similarly, tèmítópé lasade-anderson from Glitch invited participants to explore alternative forms of redress beyond the criminal justice system for tech-facilitated harms. In one of the final sessions, using the excellent framework provided by Fembloc, participants mapped out best practices and strategies for the preservation and handling of digital evidence.
Against the backdrop of democracy in peril, participants used the Workshop as an opportunity for peer learning and knowledge-sharing, particularly around the lived experiences of human rights defenders in diverse political contexts. This proved crucial for implementing strategic plans for future action.
The Workshop concluded with a hopeful session imagining how the Digital Democracy Hub could contribute to the intentions, goals, and strategies identified by participants. In small groups, we discussed and learned about each other’s strategic litigation projects. Hub participants explored possibilities for collaboration and joint action based on shared issues of interest. In this way, the Workshop ended with a sense of hopeful anticipation about jointly developing the strategies needed to counter the destructive influence of Big Tech on our democracies.
Following the insightful discussions at the Hub’s first event, we are excited to host the first online call of the Digital Democracy Hub soon.
Armsfree Ajanaku
Grassroots Center For Rights & Civic Orientation (GRACO
Alexandra Giannopoulou
Digital Freedom Fund (DFF)