Click here to fill out the application form (Deadline for applications: 9 October 2025).
With the digital landscape changing rapidly with the emergence of new technologies, governments across South and Southeast Asia are increasingly introducing new laws and policies to regulate the internet and emerging technologies. While these laws are often framed as necessary for security or economic growth, many of these measures have led to increasing restrictions on human rights. There is a sharp increase in worrying trends such as censorship, internet shutdowns and mass surveillance on the one hand, and on the other, the rise of online harms such as hate speech, technology-facilitated gender-based violence and the spread of misinformation and disinformation.
Too often, policies around information and communication technologies (ICTs) prioritise state control over creating an internet that is open, safe, inclusive and centred on people’s rights. Such policies not only have especially severe consequences for communities that are already marginalised, whether on the basis of gender, sexuality, religion or ethnicity, but they also deeply affect young people.
As both the largest group of internet users and those facing the longest-term impact of today’s policy choices, young people are directly affected by rights-restricting digital laws. It is therefore critical for them to understand how these policies shape their rights and freedoms online, and why advocating for rights-based approaches to ICT governance matters for their future.
The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) has for a number of years organised capacity building workshops on digital rights and policies for a wide variety of stakeholders to enable better understanding of a rights-based approach to ICT policy making. This year, APC is planning to organise a virtual workshop designed specifically for young digital rights defenders to enhance their skills for understanding and analysing digital rights and laws governing online spaces and technology.
We seek to provide this platform for university students, individuals from civil society organisations, young lawyers, journalists and others who are new to digital rights from the regions of South and Southeast Asia who are interested in strengthening their knowledge and advocacy skills for rights-based digital laws.
The workshop creates an opportunity for participants to engage with experts and practitioners currently working to improve digital laws through a rights-based approach and to network with fellow digital rights defenders while building their capacity to impact change at the national, regional and international level.
Objectives
The three-day virtual workshop will allow participants to:
- Deepen their understanding of digital rights and a human rights-based approach to ICT policy making, with a focus on current regional challenges and opportunities.
- Connect their work more effectively to digital rights and related policy processes.
- Have more opportunities for dialogue and collaboration among digital rights actors across South and Southeast Asia to support collective strategies and advocacies on digital rights.
Workshop dates
- South Asian cohort (Mondays): 24 November, 1 December, 8 December
- Southeast Asian cohort (Thursdays): 27 November, 4 December, 11 December
