The APC booth at RightsCon 2025 Taipei was alive with energy, conversations and movements. In our small corner of the venue, we did our best to draw in passersby to introduce who we are and what we do. At times, we even had a line forming. It was a curious, bustling and inviting space.
Hosted in East Asia for the first time, RightsCon 2025 took place in Taipei, Taiwan from 24 to 27 February. This year, we had only one day to engage with the community at our booth. We rethought the traditional booth displays and created an interactive and open space that encouraged reflection and connection.
We set up the booth strategically. Every corner of our 180 cm x 60 cm table was filled, leaving little to no room for half-drunk coffee mugs.
On one side of the table, vibrant stickers advocating for gender rights, digital inclusion, human rights online and offline, inclusive internet governance and environmental justice bombarded the space. They behaved as magnets, attracting people of all kinds.
We are sticker connoisseurs.
RightsCon attracts diverse participants – leaders, policy makers, government representatives, techies, academics, journalists and human rights defenders – all coming together to explore the intersection of human rights and technology. On the other side of the stickers, we laid out a world map titled: "What was the last thing that gave you hope in your work?".
Such a simple question, yet it puzzled many. Some questioned it. Some stared at it as if recalling a long-lost memory. For many, hope felt like a concept that hadn’t been visited in a while. Many found it an extremely difficult question to answer at this moment in time.
Mapping hopes
Our first hopes
We mocked up the booth before the actual booth day. The map quietly began its work. A few curious attendees walked by. We took the chance to practise the engagement, just for fun.
“Martial law protest” from South Korea.
“My awesome colleagues” from Belgium.
Hope to be recalled
A Taiwanese man, after understanding the exercise, frowned. He stood in front of the booth for a few minutes and after a long pause, he said quietly, “The last time I felt hope was too long ago.” I said to him, "That still counts."
"青鳥行動", he wrote. (A protest against unjust legislative procedures.)
Hope in missing places
Russia remained empty. I walked around the convention and found a Russian participant. She looked at me and said, "How can that be?" She came back to the booth with me, wrote down the first hope and pinned it to that country.
"Seeing people change for better."
Decisive hope
One man scribbled his hope with no hesitation and said, "We should have hope."
These anonymous notes carried fragments of reflection and moments of realisation. How does hope manifest when the world has fumbled into chaos? What does hope feel like?
Sessions with hope
In one RightsCon session, a group spoke about their struggles with their government's transnational repression. Yet, amidst their hardships, they found hope in the sheer number of people attending, many of whom tried to grasp a deeper understanding of their prolonged struggles and ways to provide support.
At another session, "Resisting Digital Authoritarianism: Global Strategies for Platform Accountability", APC director Chat Garcia Ramilo said:
What is the ethos of that technology? It's building our commons and hope and humanity around resources. It is important to be part of the advocacy because it's part of what inspired us.
We need a collective sense-making and world-building. The world we’re living in is hard so we need sense-making to have that hope and the notion of the commons can be again inspiring for us.
And during the closing ceremony, Jac sm Kee reminded us:
"It takes the power of movement to drive change. When things are burned to the ground, there's a creative energy that accompanies destruction. It is the time to try to share generously. All of us have resources in some ways, share generously, creatively and as widely as possible."
Hope in sound bites
Throughout the three-day event, we interviewed activists and human rights defenders on the intersection of technology and human rights in East Asia. Their insights brought more dimensions of hope.
Working closely with gender and technology, Mallie, the operative director of FLAME, adapts Taiwanese culture into the Feminist Principles of the Internet. Her hopes stem from the diverse collaborations and support across fields –social workers and civil society representatives who work in the digital technology field.
Open Culture Foundation (OCF) promotes open technology through human rights advocacy. They shared that hope comes from embracing openness in how we envision future technology – through active thinking, imaginative approaches, and building the capacity to raise awareness and deepen understanding of what open technology can potentially mean.
In another interview, You-Hao Lai, a practicing lawyer with Taiwan’s Judical Reform Foundation, expressed, “I am doing something, I'm taking action. This helps me to reclaim my agency, individually and collectively.”
Design for hope: The bandana
Everyone who pinned a sticky note with a “hope” on the world map was gifted with a bandana. "Thank you for your hope," I said as I handed them the dark turquoise blue fabric.
The bandana’s design exhibited shapes of diverse communities – each weaving their own goals and purposes while fostering connection and support with one another. Together, we create ripples, we find resonance in each others' struggles, challenges and successes. We hope for meaningful change.
In one storytelling session with only a few participants, I introduced myself as an APC staff member. After hearing this, a participant hugged me and thanked APC for all the colours, the joy and the vibrancy.
Remember to hope
All these voices echoed shapes of hope. Hope is something we can hold on to, even when it feels out of reach. When the news each day overwhelms our thoughts, when the impulse to withdraw feels inevitable. The little glimpses of hope are stored deeply in our intertwining memories. They are there, waiting to be recalled. We must remember that hope exists because we persist.
One woman read the question on the map at our booth, pondered and pondered. She said with little energy, "I cannot think of anything," and walked away. Later she returned. I jokingly asked, "Did you find hope?"
“Yes.” She smiled, took a sticky note and wrote:
"This poster gives me hope."
What gives you hope?
How does your hope manifest?
cathy, APC's publications and multimedia coordinator, channels her interests in creative design thinking and storytelling. Outside of work, she is a devoted dog lover, drawing fun, joy and inspiration from her four-legged friends.