For civil society in the Asia-Pacific, the internet has increasingly become a crucial space for human rights, democracy, and dissent. But this space is now under pressure – in many places, shrinking – due to government intervention and corporate misconduct. Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened concerns regarding government surveillance and the price of digital privacy. It has also unleashed a disturbing rise in disinformation.
Coconet is an Asia-Pacific regional initiative supporting changemakers to build the digital rights movement. In October 2019, Coconet II expanded the space for new changemakers: activists, journalists, artists, technologists, filmmakers, lawyers, and researchers, who represent a wide variety of social and environmental movements. Over 120 changemakers from 22 countries converged in Antipolo, Philippines, to discuss and share their knowledge on digital rights, exchange tactics and skills, and plan joint campaigns and collaborations to strengthen their respective movements as well as support broader ones.
We’re now releasing our official report documenting the five-day digital rights camp. In it, we describe how we ran the camp using an open-space format, detail ten collaborations spearheaded by participants, and outline our plans for the Coconet community, including Coconet.social and Coconet III.
Click on the image to the left to view and download the full document. You can also click here.
Aside from this report, we’ve also published over the past months a number of short videos and blog posts featuring select participants and their views on a wide array of digital rights issues.
- Coconet II: Firing up digital rights collaborations across asia (and beyond)
- Solidarity is what makes the movement go on
- Why do we need a digital rights movement in Southeast Asia?
- Community and collaboration at Coconet II
- Security and well-being of activists
- Stories of resistance and resilience at Coconet II
- Artificial intelligence and human rights: Notes from Coconet II
The year 2020 is also set to bring new projects by and for the growing Coconet community. Among them are an upcoming podcast with interviews with key digital rights actors, a regional digital rights events calendar, and live online events where the community can share progress about collaborations, encourage new ones, and participate in activities that build solidarity.
In 2021, EngageMedia, APC, and our partners are planning to host Coconet III, a city-based festival that aims to take the regional digital rights movement to the next level. This is of course very dependent on how the world responds to the COVID-19 pandemic.
We hope to see you, along with more changemakers, at Coconet III!
The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the Coconet community, EngageMedia, APC, or their funders. Copyright of the article is held by the author(s) of each article. Check out our Contribution Guidelines for more information. Want to translate this piece to a different language? Contact us via this form. This publication is licensed with Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International.
