Our latest annual report is out, highlighting the impact of APC’s community throughout 2024, which marked our first year of implementing a new strategic plan guiding our work through to 2027. The report shows our community taking action towards our vision of a future in which all people, particularly the marginalised, are able to use and shape the internet and digital technologies to create a just and sustainable world.
But how does all this translate into practice? This is the second in a series of news pieces where we are sharing some concrete examples, organised according to the four outcome areas of our strategic plan, which focus on creating impact on ourselves and the world. Here, we invite you to continue reading about how we are amplifying rights and justice perspectives in digital tech and rights discourses.
Ten Global South research organisations transformed the Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN) into a movement-building process for community power. In 2024-2025, APC’s facilitation and cross-regional methodology exchange supported 10 Global South research organisations in reconceptualising the Feminist Internet Research Network from a knowledge project into a movement-building process that reclaims community power and agency, centring marginalised voices in resisting tech-facilitated gender-based violence. Listen to some of the researchers discussing their work in the Feminist Sound Bites 2024.
We amplified the voices of environmental defenders by creating a feminist and Indigenous research framework through a participatory process in four Global South countries. As part of the “Resistance and Resilience: Collaborative Responses to Online Attacks on Environmental Defenders” project, APC co-created the framework in partnership with Indigenous Peoples Rights International, the Manila Observatory through the KLIMA Centre in the Philippines, Intervozes in Brazil and the Ogiek Peoples’ Development Program in Kenya. The framework, which draws on the work of the Feminist Internet Research Network, has become the foundation for generating knowledge and building alliances with environmental defenders in the Global South.
We helped Rohingya refugees reclaim their narratives in the face of disinformation and hate speech in Myanmar. APC worked with its partners the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network and the Rohingya Maìyafuìnor Collaborative Network to develop an advocacy video aimed at countering the digital repression of the Rohingya people who face internet blackouts, shutdowns, surveillance and the weaponisation of social media through disinformation and hate speech.
We gained valuable insights and exposure to the realities of open source spaces in Europe. APC is one of the members of the Next Generation Internet Zero (NGI0) initiative, a consortium led by the NLnet Foundation, composed by several not-for-profit organisations with an aim to make the digital commons more robust. In July 2024, APC launched the monthly column “Building a Free Internet of the Future”, which features interviews with NGI0 grantees implementing open source, open data, open hardware and open standards projects, among them CryptPad, BrailleRAP, Librecast, Accessibility Foundation, PeerTube, and Decidim Association. This space enables greater visibility for projects advancing free and open source software in Europe and has sparked conversations with those doing the same in the Global South.
Read more about how our community amplified rights and justice perspectives in digital tech and rights discourses in APC’s Annual Report 2024.