APC Annual Report 2016

There is now a growing awareness of the limitations of the national mobile broadband model and increasing interest in exploring alternative, more decentralised models for reaching the unconnected. A number of APC member organisations are active in supporting the development of community-built communications infrastructure. To raise awareness and discuss the potential for communities to build their own infrastructure, APC joined with ISOC to organise a series of events around local access and community networking during the 2016 IGF, starting with a half-day pre-event which set the scene for a standing room-only main session of the Dynamic Coalition on Community Connectivity (known as the DC3). Another highlight was the “Disco-tech” hosted by APC, IFEX, and ISOC which offered lightning talks on the theme “Community Networks: Civil society’s efforts to improve connectivity in local communities”, including talks from APC members Rhizomatica (Mexico), DEF (India) and Zenzeleni Networks (South Africa). This was followed up with a full-day post-IGF workshop where future strategy on improving the regulatory environment and capacity building for supporting local connectivity initiatives was discussed with a group of about 30 NGOs, activists and researchers.

To watch out for: In 2017, we will focus on creating an enabling environment for communities and local entrepreneurs to solve their own connectivity challenges. In particular, we will work to ensure local connectivity initiatives are able to reach long-term sustainability, support development opportunities, and contribute to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals.

APC’s Jac sm Kee coordinated the Best Practice Forum (BPF) on Gender and Access for the 2016 Internet Governance Forum (IGF), together with Renata Aquino Ribeiro, an individual member of APC. This BPF focused specifically on barriers to meaningful access for women, such as cultural norms, online threats, affordability, decision-making power, capacity and content. It also identified initiatives in different parts of the world that respond to specific barriers. Findings and recommendations were gathered in a final output resource that was published in December and was shared and discussed at the global IGF in Guadalajara.

Several APC members and partners that work on access, including Point of View, Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF), Foundation for Media Alternatives (FMA), Rhizomatica and EMPOWER, participated actively in the BPF. DEF, FMA and EMPOWER convened a workshop on access and gender at the Asia-Pacific Regional IGF, and submitted recommendations from the discussion to both the BPF and the IGF Connecting and Enabling the Next Billion document. The outcomes of this work include a formal data partnership with the joint International Telecommunication Union (ITU)-UN Women initiative EQUALS: The Global Partnership for Gender Equality in the Digital Age, and APC’s continued engagement with ITU’s Broadband Working Group on Gender in aggregating research work and indicators. APC also partnered with the Internet Society (ISOC) to explore gender and access by co-convening the “Workshop on Mainstreaming Gender in Internet and Development in the Asia Pacific Region” in Bangkok in October 2016. Participants agreed to convene a working group on gender and the internet for the Asia-Pacific to explore and identify innovative ways to accelerate the access to and use of the internet for women, men and persons with non-binary identities.

To watch out for: The 2017 IGF Best Practice Forum on Gender will undertake case studies on gender and meaningful access for five groups of women facing specific challenges in different parts of the world, including migrant and refugee women, queer women, young women, indigenous women and women with disabilities, and will also produce recommendations based on best practices. Also, watch out for an APC issue paper on gender and access to be published in 2017.

Affordable and reliable internet access has become a vital means to exercise fundamental human rights and to support economic, social and human development. However, as the internet becomes more ubiquitous, less is being heard from those who are unconnected – the less wealthy and more marginalised – who are unable to exercise their rights on the same footing as those who are connected.

In April, APC published a position paper, Ending digital exclusion: Why the access divide persists and how to close it, that lays out concrete steps towards not only connecting more people, but also moving the billions who are “barely connected” into a fully pervasive and affordable connectivity environment. In this paper, APC proposes a rights-based approach to access and raise the importance of community-based approaches to access initiatives.

To watch out for: Building on this position paper, in 2017 APC plans to input into the upcoming report of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on bridging the gender digital divide from a human rights-based perspective.

Among the highlights of Asociación Trinidad’s work in 2016 were the activities undertaken as part of its ongoing project Mirá: Observatorio Ciudadano, a citizens’ observatory to ensure the effective implementation of Law 5.282/14 on access to public information and government transparency in the Municipality of Asunción, Paraguay.In particular, they have focused on providing training and capacity building around the law and its implementation for young people, women and neighbourhood organisations.

Their efforts have mainly centred on raising awareness of the existence of this new law, while continuing to work on building skills in the use of new technologies and overcoming the barriers posed by the scarce access to internet connectivity in the outlying neighbourhoods of Asunción.

While the neighbourhood organisations that Asociación Trinidad works with have recognised the importance of access to public information, and the existence of a municipal government website that makes this access possible, they have pointed to deficiencies in the system. In particular, they stressed a lack of information on the conditions for access to funds for special projects.

“On its website, the municipal government only shows what it wants to show. Progress has been made, but it isn’t enough,” they say. Asociación Trinidad will continue to work to ensure that communities have access to the information they consider relevant to their needs.

Zenzeleni Networks in Mankosi has finally managed to connect its networks to a cheaper, faster and more reliable internet option.

Due to its remoteness, the options for internet connectivity in Mankosi, as in many other rural – and not-so-rural – areas in South Africa, are very limited. There is mobile data coverage, but its costs, speeds and reliability do not allow for making any productive use of it.

After having engaged to no avail with all the providers that could offer an alternative, they decided to do it themselves, i.e. finding a way to connect their network to the fibre in Mthatha, the closest town, 60 km away as the bird flies. The process entailed using digital elevation maps to plan the most efficient way to do so. They found out that if was feasible by “just” building a 12-metre antenna on an intermediary hill.

With the support of a Beyond the Net grant from ISOC, and after several conversations with the owners of the houses on that hill and the tribal authority in the village, the tower was built in February.

This was followed by an agreement with Walter Sisulu University (WSU), which is allowing them to use one of its tallest buildings in Mthatha as a high site, and, for now, to piggyback on its own internet connection. This tower will not only allow Zenzeleni to provide affordable internet access in Mankosi, but to start working with other communities so they can provide it to themselves.

With the support of an APC member project grant, Colnodo developed a new app, PiensaEnTIC, which uses interactive learning activities to raise young women’s awareness of digital security and their internet rights. The app has been downloaded over 600 times.

Colnodo has also continued to develop systems that specifically respond to the growing needs of organisations for simple, accessible and secure information management.

In 2016, this included the development of an information management system for the Urgent Action Fund, which caters to the needs of women’s rights organisations and activists in terms of protecting their digital security and responding to situations requiring urgent support.

The system developed has strengthened the Fund’s work by reducing response times, allowing for more efficient information management, and guaranteeing the security and privacy of data. In addition, the statistics generated by the system can be used for planning future actions.

Colnodo also initiated a new project, “Ella Aprende, Ella Emprende”, aimed at capacity building for women in the use of Facebook to promote their businesses and small enterprises in the city of Bogotá, Colombia. A total of 2,000 women participated in face-to-face training sessions on subjects like creating and managing fan pages for their businesses, content creation, advertising, and generally giving greater visibility to their products and services.

Sometimes, a tweak to technology can open your eyes. To what you never saw. So in October 2016, when the Mumbai International Film Festival invited Point of View to collaborate, we suggested a special screening: for those without sight.

Globally, there are more than 285 million people with visual impairment, 90% of whom live in low-income settings. Most of them rarely see movies – simply because most films are not audio-described, that is, they don’t come with an audio narrative throughout the film, especially in the silent bits, where there is no dialogue but some action takes place. Imagine yourself in their place. You’re seated at your laptop, caught in the middle of a romantic comedy, when suddenly, there’s silence. You hear scraping sounds and an occasional rustle or moan. But how do you, without vision, know what’s happening on screen? You don’t know.

Audio-description is the technology that fills this gap. It’s a simple technology that copyright complicates, because the film’s legal owner – the producer – has to permit the addition of this audio-described track to streamed versions, theatrical screenings, etc.

When the producer of Tu Hai Mera Sunday, a Hindi film about five football players, gave Point of View permission to add an audio track, we were ecstatic.

And so it came to pass that for the first time in its history, the Mumbai International Film Festival was able to show a film to those who can’t see. And to those who can see, who wore eyemasks and experienced it as if they couldn’t.

As much as 67% of India’s population lives in rural India. This population is largely dependent on government services for some of their most basic needs and livelihoods. Realising the need to serve India’s rural, remote and marginalised population with relevant information about governments services, schemes and entitlements in a timely manner, Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) began beta testing a mobile application called MeraApp (meaning “my app”) under its project Soochna Seva (Information Service) in 2016.

Developed using cutting-edge technology, the Android-based app provides rural India’s vulnerable population with a catalogue of social service schemes, with comprehensive information on entitlements, in an effort to empower them with access to rights and benefits.

Users, assisted by “Soochnapreneurs” (Info-preneurs), can either view the information categorised by provinces and social service areas or enter their socioeconomic details to allow the app to display a list of schemes that suit the information fed into it. A bilingual app that runs on online and offline modes, MeraApp has been envisioned as a platform to empower rural and remote populations with access to information and bring them closer to their rightful entitlements, thus bridging the digital divide and encouraging social and financial inclusion.

Furthermore, the app also allows users to submit grievances to various government portals and track the status of the complaint. In its second phase in 2017, the app will be made available in a third, regional language and a larger group of rural entrepreneurs will be trained in using the app.

AlterMundi‘s most significant achievement in 2016 was obtaining a scale-up grant from the Regional Fund for Digital Innovation in Latin America and the Caribbean (FRIDA) for the LibreRouter project.

The project was proposed for consideration in Latin America, Africa and Asia, and won grants in both Latin America, through FRIDA, and Africa, through the Fund for Internet Research and Development (FIRE).

The LibreRouter is currently in development and is expected to be available by December 2017. There are more than 20 people from around the globe involved in the development of the router and related technologies.

This device will allow community networks worldwide to access an affordable, high-performance multi-radio router that is ideal for mesh network deployments. Its design has taken into consideration the needs of communities in every aspect. Both the software and the hardware will be available as free/libre developments.

Human rights advocacy in the digital sphere has historically focused on civil and political rights like freedom of opinion and expression. APC’s groundbreaking Connecting Your Rights project expanded the range of rights contemplated in internet rights advocacy and research to include economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs), exploring the critical role that the internet can play in enabling, for example, the right to education, the right to an adequate standard of living, and the right to health.

The three-year project culminated in 2016 with the publication of research reports on the internet domain name system and the right to culture, linkages between ESCRs and intellectual property rights advocacy, and the role of the internet in the provision and accessibility of educational resources.

In addition, a special edition of the Global Information Society Watch report focused on ESCRs and the internet.

APC also contributed to shaping the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) main session on internet rights which, for the first time, specifically addressed ESCRs. We also began engaging in policy advocacy in regional and international human rights mechanisms around ESCRs. For example, APC testified at a hearing at the Inter-American Committee on Human Rights on the right to culture and the internet.

APC worked with member organisation Jinbonet and partner organisation OpenNet Korea on a joint submission to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights focusing on copyright as a barrier to the exercise of cultural rights online. And a special edition of the GenderIT.org newsletter provided a feminist take on ESCRs and the internet.

To watch out for: A training module on ESCRs and the internet will be finalised along with various analytical advocacy tools to expand our work in collaboration with other actors, such as national human rights institutions in Africa and Asia. We will also support our partners to specifically engage with the UN Committee on ESCRs.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) adopted a landmark resolution in November on the Right to Freedom of Expression on the Internet in Africa. The first of its kind passed by the Commission, the resolution recognises the role of the internet in advancing human and peoples’ rights in Africa and specifically acknowledges the value of the African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms as a document that “elaborates on the principles which are necessary to uphold human and people’s rights on the Internet, and to cultivate an Internet environment that can best meet Africa’s social and economic development needs and goals.” The African Declaration initiative, of which APC was a founding member, set passing this resolution as a goal, and this achievement is indicative of the influence of the coalition and Declaration in a relatively short period of time.

In July, APC launched a new platform for the African Declaration, Engage.AfricanInternetRights.org. This interactive platform, initially launched in English and French, serves as a space where human rights defenders, activists, lawyers, journalists, policy makers, service providers and anyone interested in internet rights, particularly on the African continent, can view the Declaration and supplementary content related to each principle, read an FAQ about the Declaration, and also add their own research, publications, events, videos and images.

To watch out for: In 2017, APC will conduct a training on internet rights for national human rights institutions in Africa. As well, the Engage.AfricanInternetRights.org platform will be translated into Portuguese and Arabic to reach an even wider audience in Africa.

APC worked with members Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) and Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) to engage in Uganda’s review during the Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process. Our joint report focused on women’s rights and the internet. The review resulted in the government of Uganda accepting a recommendation to prevent obstruction of the media and the internet during election periods, a significant commitment, given the fact that the internet was shut down during the elections that took place earlier in the year.

We also supported the work of a coalition of Sudanese human rights defenders who raised violations of freedom of expression, including online, protection of journalists, and violence against women journalists for Sudan’s UPR.

APC, together with Right2Know and Privacy International, raised concerns around South Africa’s surveillance practices and privacy protections when the country went under review at the Human Rights Committee in March. The Committee issued hard-hitting recommendations reflecting our concerns, specifically calling on the government of South Africa to increase the transparency of the law governing surveillance, establish independent oversight mechanisms, ensure that people who are targeted for surveillance have access to effective remedies, stop engaging in mass surveillance without the express authorisation of a judge, and consider revoking or limiting the requirement for mandatory retention of data by telecommunications and internet service providers.

To facilitate further engagement with international human rights mechanisms, APC also published an issue paper that explores how local groups in the Middle East and North Africa are engaged in internet-related rights advocacy at the national and regional levels, and how that reflects upon the inclusion of these issues in the UPR process. We also contributed to a guide on how to use UPR to advance internet rights.

To watch out for: In 2017, APC will be working with members and partners to bring national concerns regarding internet rights to international human rights mechanisms in a number of countries, including India, Lebanon, Pakistan, South Africa and South Korea.

In 2015, the South Korean government and ruling party introduced the Anti-Terror Bill and the Anti-Cyberterror Bill to the National Assembly. These bills had the potential to threaten civil liberties and human rights by giving excessive powers to the Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) in the name of preventing terrorism. The NIS has often caused controversy through surveillance of civilians and political intervention. Civil society groups and opposition parties fervently opposed the bills.

On 23 February 2016, the chairperson of the South Korea National Assembly tabled the bills ex officio, on the pretext of a state of national emergency – with which many people did not agree – bypassing proper procedure and the hearing of public opinion. Opposition lawmakers conducted a filibuster lasting over 192 hours, which was the first time this tactic had been used in South Korea.

Civil society activists, including Jinbonet, also conducted a “civil filibuster” on the street in front of the National Assembly, despite the cold winter wind. The Anti-Terror Bill was finally passed by the National Assembly on 3 March, but the Anti-Cyberterror Bill was fortunately not passed.

The filibuster was broadcast live and provided an opportunity to vividly communicate the problems posed by the Anti-Terror Bill to the people, and although it did not stop it from being adopted, it helped to raise public awareness.

During 2016, and with the support of an APC small grant, Nodo TAU carried out the multi-stage project “Internet Rights in Argentina”, aimed at raising awareness of these rights and violations against them, researching local concern about the issue, and establishing a network of organisations and individuals interested in working on this issue for future capacity building and advocacy.

The project began with a survey among civil society organisations to obtain an accurate description of local concern about internet rights, but also to learn more about the local situation in terms of use, risks and interests.

The second stage consisted of the coordination of a workshop held in October and attended by analysts and activists working from a rights-based perspective on issues like gender, security, big data, free/libre software, public policies and governance. We proposed a methodology in which each of them offered presentations on specific issues, to share views and exchange information, but also to agree on a local agenda for internet rights work.

The project concluded in December with a meeting of participants from the workshop and members of organisations in the communications field, in order to initiate the building of a local space to bring these different actors together in order to follow policy processes and debates, to propose capacity building for local actors, and to carry out advocacy work in relevant spaces.

As is the case with all of Nodo TAU’s initiatives, we emphasised meeting with other organisations to share knowledge, question our own practices, and review the inclusion of ICT in our work, always with the aim of strengthening local communities. The project served the valuable purpose of coordinating various actors for future work in the internet rights field.

Amidst troubling trends in relation to digital rights and internet freedoms in Myanmar in 2016, EngageMedia partnered with Phandeeyar, MIDO and the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business to host the first Myanmar Digital Rights Forum (MDRF).

With over 90 participants, the MDRF provided a platform for long-time advocates for digital rights (working both locally and internationally) to discuss issues with different stakeholders. The topics tackled in the forum reflect the current and emerging trends in and threats to digital rights in Myanmar: surveillance, content restrictions and lawful interception standards; freedom of expression and hate speech; harassment of journalists; policy reform; the right to information; national identification; and privacy issues in the current laws.

The MDRF was also an opportunity for digital rights movements from across the region to learn from each other – and to encourage the growth of the Myanmar digital rights movement – with sessions that shared experiences around building social movements on policy reform, and looking back on the digital rights movements in India, the Philippines and Myanmar.

The two-day event resulted in a range of concrete actions and plans. Among these, a statement against Myanmar’s Privacy and Protection Law was signed by the Forum participants and sent to Parliament. EngageMedia is fortunate and thankful to have been able to be part of this milestone event, and to witness the continued growth of the digital rights movement in Myanmar – one that we will continue to proudly support.

In 2007, APC member Women’sNet hosted a digital storytelling workshop with survivors of gender-based violence to process and produce digital stories. It was a powerful experience for trainers and participants alike, and inspired the African network of the APC Women’s Rights Programme (WRP) to host a similar workshop for the region in 2007, and One World Platform and Women’sNet to take advantage of the APC Member Exchange and Travel Fund to carry out a regional workshop in Bosnia in 2008.

Since then, APC has trained many people in the use of digital stories for activism, whether it is used by women to combat violence against women, or by people living with disabilities and their families or transgendered people to tell their stories.

In December 2016, APC launched a new digital storytelling platform, which features a collection of stories from workshops we have been involved with over the years, as well as resources and information on digital storytelling methodology.

To watch out for: Given the power and popularity of storytelling in the feminist movement, APC WRP will keep using elements of storytelling in various workshop spaces. We will be capturing the methodologies and making these available on the stories.apc.org platform.

GenderIT.org produced the “Three issues for a feminist internet: Access, agency and movements” edition in close collaboration with the Feminist Principles of the Internet (FPI) network.

In 2016, GenderIT.org published 17 columns on gender, ICTs and climate change; digital technologies and trans* people; women’s rights and internet access; and young women and technology.

GenderIT.org editions have also seen very high reads, with 8,500 for the FPI edition, and more than 6,000 each for the Take Back the Tech! and AWID Forum editions, with one article exploring movement building by Dalit women and Kurdish women gettiing more than 14,000 reads. We were also able to develop a policy database on women’s rights, human rights and the internet.

Two issue papers were commissioned and produced to explore the increasingly critical area of big data and its impact on sexuality and gender. One focused on its impact on groups and people who are vulnerable because of gender or sexuality, while the other addressed how big data links to efforts around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) require a critical feminist framework on development.

To watch out for: In 2017, APC will undertake research that maps trends and key issues on feminism, gender and ICTs to support the building of a research network for the International Development Research Centre (IDRC); and a South Asia-focused GenderIT.org edition will bring together work from the IMPACT and EROTICS South Asia projects.

The APC Women’s Rights Programme (WRP) put together a team of over 25 staff and members to participate in the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID)’s “Feminist Futures: Building Collective Power for Rights and Justice” international forum held in Costa do Sauípe, Brazil in September.

APC held a one-day pre-event to “Imagine a Feminist Internet”, where the Feminist Principles of the Internet framed discussions on feminism and technology. The day ended with a speed-geeking session where the more than 70 participants from 33 countries connected with emerging initiatives that interconnected feminist politics and the internet. During the Forum, APC hosted the Feminist Internet eXchange Hub to put feminism – in all of its diversity and creativity – at the heart of engagement with technology, bringing together activists, researchers and techies working on advancing a feminist internet attending the AWID Forum.

Twenty-five sessions were hosted in the Hub during the three-day Forum. Wikimedia launched Whose Knowledge, mapped women’s initiatives on the internet and hosted an ongoing editathon. The Ideas Adapt space for testing and sharing ideas featured initiatives like SKIRTS (Socially Keen Individuals Redefining Tech Spaces) from Kenya and the launch of feminist petition site Manifesta. The Femhack Lab offered hands-on tech interaction, including how to make videos via mobile phone with Sandía Digital and Witness, and how to produce audio podcasts with Radio Concha, who also provided a live audio stream of Hub activities (and of Forum plenaries) and organised the Take Back the Tech!-inspired “Public Autonomous Anonymous Group Sexting” session.

On Day 3 of the Forum, APC WRP manager Jac sm Kee was one of the provocative storytellers on stage to help “Imagine a feminist future”, captivating more than 2,000 Forum participants: “This is the story about the present, told as the past, from the gaze of the future.”

To watch out for: APC’s movement building towards a feminist internet will continue, with a third gathering of feminists in 2017.

The collaboratively developed Feminist Principles of the Internet (FPIs) emerged from “Imagine a Feminist Internet” meetings that took place in Malaysia in 2014 and 2015 with diverse activists and advocates working in sexual rights, women’s rights, gender-based violence, and internet rights.

Version 2.0 of the FPIs was launched in August 2016 on a new interactive web platform. The platform allows for the creation of a user account that can be used to add new resources, case studies, suggested readings, etc., linked to the different Principles. It also features an events section and FAQ section. Throughout the year, the FPIs were featured and used to frame conversations regarding gender and technology in a variety of events and scenarios, such as hacker spaces in Brazil, Take Back the Tech! events, the 2016 Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) Forum, digital security workshops, and more.

The FPIs provide entry points and a framing to question and understand the politics of the internet from a feminist lens.

In Montevideo, Uruguay, members of the APC Women’s Rights Programme network in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC WRP) used the FPIs to frame the “Women in the digital economy: Challenges to inclusion and equity” panel, held during the 13th LAC Regional Conference on Women. In South Africa, sex workers examined internet access and economy via the FPIs.

In India, EROTICS South Asia project partner and APC member Point of View held an “Imagine a Feminist Internet” meeting on gender, sex and technology and explored questions such as: “Is internet access for women being increasingly binarised into ‘good access’ and ‘bad access’? How is micro-targeted digital porn changing human sexuality? And are the consequences of tech surveillance gendered?” FPI City Conversations emerged as a methodology for partners to create encounters for exploring the FPIs and how they relate to specific contexts, and a first one took place in Beirut.

To watch out for: Explore the FPIs using different methodologies from the new FTX: Safety Reboot curriculum, to open up a conversation on the feminist politics of the internet in your community, and through FPI City Conversations in different locations organised by APC as well as partners.

2016 was an outstanding year for the Take Back the Tech! campaign. TBTT celebrated its 10th anniversary with a 2016 campaign theme of “Our collective story: Women who shaped technology”. Participants in at least 25 countries reached more than four million people through online and offline actions for the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence (25 November-10 December).

Among other initiatives, campaigners made playing cards of women pioneers in tech from their communities; a blog call with AWID for young women to express how they have connected to online feminist activism resulted in seven posts in multiple formats (essays, comics, videos) from six countries; a 10-woman discussion group on online visibility and digital security in the Philippines led to the creation of a network to document and provide support to women experiencing online harassment; and the PiensaEnTIC app was created by APC member Colnodo to support young women in digital security practices in Colombia.

The anniversary was also marked with a video, a timeline representing 10 years of Take Back the Tech! activities, a special TBTT edition of GenderIT.org, and a celebration party in Brazil that took advantage of over 70 campaigners and allies attending the AWID Forum!

Another major event took place in May, when the 2016 Womanity Award for the Prevention of Violence Against Women was presented to Take Back the Tech! and Mexican feminist media collectives Luchadoras and Sandía Digital.

The Womanity Award aims to strengthen creative and positive responses to addressing online gender-based violence, as well as movement building through institutional and network strengthening, documenting learnings, facilitating conversations, and collective action.

The shared vision for implementing Take Back the Tech! in Mexico can be seen through the “Women Shape the Web!” video prepared for the Award. The campaign’s key approach grounds actions in contextual realities, strength and analysis, and the power of networks to organise for change. There are six collectives who have come together for the three-year Mexico TBTT project, organised under the banner of “Siemprevivas: Acción y Tecnologia”.

To watch out for: The Take Back the Tech! game is being piloted and will be released in 2017.

On 11 to 15 October, APC and the NEPAD Planning and Coordination Agency (of the African Union) convened the fourth African School on Internet Governance (AfriSIG), where participants from different stakeholder groups throughout Africa gain the knowledge and confidence they need to actively participate in internet governance discussions and processes.

AfriSIG 2016 was held in Durban, South Africa, and involved a class of 44 participants and 20 faculty and resource people. A linked Gender and Internet Governance eXchange (gigX) event (organised by APC members Women’sNet and WOUGNET) integrated women’s rights, internet rights and sexual rights activists and issues into AfriSIG and built awareness and understanding of the relationship between gender, women’s rights and internet governance. Participants in both events were able to immediately put the knowledge and skills they had acquired into practice at the the fifth African Internet Governance Forum (AfIGF), also in Durban, on 16-18 October.

The gigX is part of a two-year project, “Increasing women’s decision making and influence in internet governance and ICT policy for the realisation of women’s rights in Africa”,  funded by the UN Women Fund for Gender Equality and implemented by Women’sNet and WOUGNET in South Africa and Uganda with support from APC staff. The project includes city conversations around the Feminist Principles of the Internet and digital security training.

To watch out for: The AfriSIG website will be revamped to better reflect how this initiative is positively changing the internet governance landscape in Africa year after year.

APC has played an active role in the global IGF since the inaugural Forum in 2006, and the 11th IGF held in Guadalajara in December was no exception. As in previous years, this intensive engagement included organising and co-organising workshops and sessions, hosting pre-events, attending side meetings with partners and donors, and speaking in main sessions to bring APC’s perspectives.

APC’s participation as IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group members contributed to a main session on human rights, linking economic, social and cultural rights with civil and political rights, foregrounding and making connections between issues such as the right to information and economic empowerment, access and good governance, and more – all with a solid gender focus.

There was strong participation by sexual rights and feminist activists at the IGF, with many first timers familiarising themselves with the space, at the pre-IGF crash course on gender and internet governance organised by APC. EROTICS South Asia project partner and APC member Point of View organised a workshop on “Sex and Freedom of Expression” that shared initial findings from the EROTICS South Asia country research. Point of View and fellow APC member Foundation for Media Alternatives continued to co-coordinate the Dynamic Coalition on Gender, and there were notably more sessions that explored multiple dimensions of gender and women’s rights at the IGF, with active participation by APC members and allies, such as Media Matters for Democracy from Pakistan.

These sessions were also taken out of the IGF and shared in Mexican community events such as FEMHACK, where many gender and internet collectives, APC members and allies attending the IGF talked about their initiatives. The Gender Report Card was also carried out at the global IGF, with replication in regional IGFs led by APC members and partners, namely the LAC IGF and APrIGF.

Earlier in the year, APC participated in the Retreat on Advancing the 10-Year Mandate of the Internet Governance Forum in July, contributing written input to the process.

To watch out for: APC will continue engaging in this multistakeholder space, at the 2017 IGF scheduled to take place in Geneva in December.

An APC issue paper published in English, Arabic and French unpacked the challenges facing civil society participation in internet governance in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The paper focused on Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, countries that have a substantial engagement in internet policy both on a global and regional level, as well as local specificities that provide interesting insight on the variety of challenges facing civil society in the region.

APC also advocated for civil society engagement in internet governance in the region by hosting a session on the subject at the IGMENA Summit in Tunis, where it also participated in a session on the role of civil society in strengthening citizen engagement.

In addition, a guide for participants from the MENA region was developed for the global IGF in December, identifying sessions on themes relevant in the region, such as human rights, security, trade and the internet economy.

To watch out for: APC plans to work with our new member in the MENA region, SMEX, to support multistakeholder and transparent internet governance initiatives, inclusive of diverse and independent civil society voices.

APC supported and facilitated the participation of several civil society actors in regional and national IGFs. One of these was the Asia and Pacific IGF: 30 people attended the APrIGF with APC support and a women’s human rights consulation was held before the event. APC also co-organised six workshops during this regional forum.

Latin America and the Caribean held its regional IGF in July in Costa Rica, where APC supported the participation of 20 civil society activists to influence regional discussions.

In Africa, 38 graduates and 18 faculty members from the African School on Internet Governance (AfriSIG) participated with APC support in the African IGF, several of them being nominated as panellists and rapporteurs in different sessions. A highlight of this regional forum is that AfriSIG presented a statement on internet shutdowns to the plenary of the African IGF.

On the national level, APC member One World Platform organised the second Bosnia and Herzegovina IGF in Sarajevo, in October 2016, with more than 150 participants from government, business, civil society, the technical community, academia and the media.

The forum covered topics such as universal access to the internet, violent extremism, terrorism, and the right to report, as well as business and human rights in the BiH internet economy. The forum provided sign language translation to enable the participation of people with hearing disabilities.

To watch out for: In 2017, APC will produce publications gathering civil society experiences and perspectives in national and regional IGFs.

“Participation for Nature: Representation of environmental civil society organisations in councils and other state bodies and local authorities”, a research report by BlueLink.net’s executive editor Pavel Antonov and environmental expert Toma Belev, was released in February 2016.

The report examined 181 mechanisms for civil society participation in Bulgaria, focusing on 24 state institutions responsible for environmental issues.

According to the report’s conclusions, the Bulgarian authorities are still frightened by civil society participation in councils and other bodies and try to keep it under control. As a result, changes in mechanisms for civil society participation are needed in order to make these bodies more effective. For example, there is no civil society representation in some councils, while in others, voting rights are limited, and civil society is thus unable to participate in decision making.

The expert report includes recommendations for more effective civil society participation, such as the clear definition of functions and responsibilities of councils including civil society representatives, harmonisation of quotas in advisory councils, avoidance of seniority as a voting method, and establishment of equal voting rights for NGO representatives. The report was released as a part of the project “Participation for Nature”, implemented by the Bulgarian Biodiversity Foundation partnering with the BlueLink Foundation and supported by the NGO Programme in Bulgaria under the European Economic Area Financial Mechanism.

Explosive growth in the use of ICTs promises greater availability of information and potential for freedom of expression. However, the technological changes that are leading to the convergence of broadcast and broadband media are also resulting in massive industry consolidation and cross-ownership of electronic media platforms.

Combined with the imminent analogue-to-digital broadcasting switchover in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), there are growing concerns that these dynamics threaten to constrain the potential for media diversity and greater access to information.

To discuss these issues and identify the policy and regulatory strategies needed to strengthen media plurality in this new environment, some 30 civil society experts from eight Latin American countries gathered in February in Montevideo, Uruguay.

The two-day workshop was hosted by the Latin American media observatory, OBSERVACOM, with financial support from APC’s Latin American Digital Migration project.

To watch out for: APC members in the LAC region who are engaged in this advocacy will continue to work on this this theme as part of the network’s regional exchange agenda.

APC’s work against online gender-based violence has resulted in a growing number of requests for digital security trainings from a feminist perspective. For the Exploratory Research on Sexuality and ICTs (EROTICS) South Asia project, Nadine Moawad offered training on digital security and also feminist politics of the internet in Nepal and Sri Lanka, as well as digital security training for journalists in Istanbul for Internews and sexual and reproductive health activists for the Asia Safe Abortion Partnership.

Erika Smith has been steadily training a loose coalition of feminist youth activists and communicators in Morelos and Mexico City since April and participated as a resource person for the Gender and Tech Institute on digital security and against online violence held by the Tactical Tech Collective in Ecuador in June, where colleagues from APC members FUNREDES and Colnodo also participated.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Mexico cited APC’s rights-based approach to online gender-based violence when they hired Erika to train teachers, police and human rights officials in the State of Durango in order to address the increasing vulnerability of adolescents online.

Access Now engaged the APC Women’s Rights Programme (WRP) to run a webinar on online gender-based violence and sexuality awareness/sensitivity for its helpline staff. WRP was also asked to accompany consultations with other partners around gender, LGBTQI communities and digital security by IFEX, the global network defending and promoting free expression, and the Institute for War and Peace.

EROTICS South Asia project partners also held digital security workshops during the year. In Mumbai, organisations working in gender and sexuality rights from across India attended “The Safety Net Workshop” run by Point of View with APC, using a holistic stance that enabled people to think of security as a way of life.

To watch out for: The FTX: Safety Reboot will become a key tool in facilitating communities to share knowledge and values around representation and expression, and to build confidence and skills to be safe and effective in online spaces.

After years of information and knowledge exchange, the Arid Lands Information Network (ALIN) embarked on the incubation of enterprises that show potential for social impact. ALIN believes that young entrepreneurs need good organisational systems to grow to their full potential.

In the last three years, with the support of ALIN, Sokopepe Ltd has grown from an idea to a start-up currently supporting over 16,000 farmers to develop complete documentation of their farming activities and outcomes.

During the 2016 Connected Kenya Summit, Sokopepe won the Microsoft ICT Innovation Award under the Agriculture category. The award recognised Sokopepe as a start-up that meets Kenya’s blueprint vision to build a vibrant middle-income economy by the year 2030.

Sokopepe’s innovative Farm Records Management Information System (FARMIS) has enabled the development of a comprehensive digital record pathway among Meru County farmers.

The farmers are using the record-keeping data to know which crops are more profitable, and have improved their decision making on the basis of profit and loss statements. They are also able to track all their agribusiness enterprises, schedule different farm events, and track all their expenses, as well as gaining better access to markets. “The beauty of FARMIS is that financial institutions can review our records over a period of time to determine whether we are capable of managing credit,” said Mrs. Emery Kawira, a farmer in Meru County.

In September 2016, Alternatives launched a new digital security school, l’École de sécurité numérique (ESN514): the first digital security initiative geared specifically to the social movement in the province of Québec.

Developed in association with the Canada Research Chair in Media Education and Human Rights and the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, ENS514 aims to provide trainings on the use of encryption tools and online resources adapted to the realities and needs of community-based groups, civil society organisations, university researchers and independent media.

The launch of the school proved to be very timely when it was revealed in November 2016 that the private communications of investigative journalists were being surveilled by the Montreal police service. This sparked a great deal of interest in ESN514 from civil society members, leading to a wider range of activities than those originally planned.

In addition to providing training for activist groups, the school has conducted security audits at public events, organised a training session for adolescents at the National Library and Archives of Quebec, and established a partnership with a theatre troupe performing at the celebration of the 375th anniversary of the City of Montreal, all of which have garnered significant media coverage for ESN514.

For the last few years Pangea has been involved in the eReuse.org project, dedicated to promoting and facilitating the reuse of computers and other electronic devices. The project’s main goal is to extend the lifetime of these products through repair, refurbishment and reuse, to ensure final recycling.

In 2016, one of the activities undertaken within the project was a pilot involving a real experience of reuse of computer devices. Focused on Barcelona, and in collaboration with other organisations that are members of the eReuse.org community, we established a network of potential donors and beneficiaries. More than 100 devices were collected, revised and prepared for reuse. All these devices were distributed to associations and non-profit programmes here in Barcelona.

It was a successful experience that contributed to improving the software and processes that eReuse.org is developing to facilitate, support and automate the preparation and traceability of these devices. It also helped to increase the interest of civil society associations and circular economy organisations, and even the general public, in the reuse of electronic devices and its benefits.

Now this pilot is being replicated in other places, incorporating all the improvements derived from the pilot experience, with more donors, beneficiaries and social enterprises involved, and with very good initial results and expectations.

In June 2016, IT Girls, a UN-sponsored project, approached the One World Platform team with a proposal to become partners along with Microsoft BH and contribute to the project by providing training.

IT Girls organised two days of training in five smaller cities across Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the focus was on teaching 15-year-old girls about HTML, CSS and Java Script. The One World Platform team had the amazing opportunity to teach them about digital security and privacy basics. It was a great privilege to introduce them to Ada Lovelace, Hedy Lamarr, Erna Hoover and other remarkable women whose contributions to STEM are not visible enough. We are very proud that we showed them a whole new world, and hopefully some of them will continue to nurture their love for technology. Each city and each group of girls proved to us that our work is meaningful.

The highlight of this experience was the training in the city of Srebrenica and the girls that we met there. The city itself, even 22 years after the war, is still associated with the genocide that took place in 1990, but now, for us, it has a beautiful connotation.

It is a place where girls from different ethnic groups were able to gather around technology, the place where we heard the most inspirational quote of the year, from a 12-year-old girl: “I wish for all women to disappear from the planet for one day, so men would realise how important, amazing and great women are.”

Sulá Batsú’s TIC-as programme organised its second Women’s Hackathon in 2016 – this time on the subject of Greening ICT. The event was supported, in part, by an APC member project grant for local implementation of APC’s strategic plan.

TIC-as seeks to position women in the ICT sector through the creation of education, employment and entrepreneurship opportunities. Among our strategies, the Women’s Hackathon definitely stands out. It is a 36-hour programming contest that takes place in rural areas of Costa Rica. The participants must develop a technological prototype in accordance with the event’s themes and requirements.

The second Women’s Hackathon took place in San Carlos, Alajuela in October, and brought together 44 women from different parts of Costa Rica. They formed 11 teams, which developed 11 technological prototypes that addressed real environmental issues in the region and the whole country. Before, during and after the Hackathon, the contestants were also provided with workshops and mentorships that helped enrich their participation and vocational training. They acquired skills in idea development, prototyping and pitching. Moreover, they were accompanied during the whole process by mentors who are experts and role models from related academic and professional fields, who support the participants with their expertise.

Finally, an awards ceremony was held during the San Carlos Technology Summit 2016, where the participants presented their projects to the public and a panel of high-level judges chose four winners. These prototypes offered solutions to problems such as pollution, waste and protection of national parks.

This was a year of significant growth for our network. Five new organisational members and five new individual members joined APC in 2016. The new member organisations are AlterMundi, Argentina; Rhizomatica, Mexico; Point of View, India; Social Media Exchange (SMEX), Lebanon; and Zenzeleni Networks, South Africa. Our new individual members are Renata Aquino, Brazil; Andrew Garton, Australia; Lisa Gye, Australia; Japleen Pasricha, India; and Gayathry Venkiteswaran, Malaysia.

APC ended 2016 with a larger membership base than ever before, and our new members have brought valuable new experience and enthusiasm to the network. This was also the year that APC was joined by its first member in the Middle East: SMEX in Lebanon. Up until now, APC was not represented in this region. Although we have collaborated on numerous projects in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the past, APC had no official representation in the region. SMEX’s joining APC opened new networking and collaborative opportunities for the network.

To watch out for: Recent interest in being part of APC means that we are likely to further grow in 2017, both in number of members, as well as in regional distribution and diversity of knowledge in our network. We expect to have new organisations from Europe and North America joining, as well as more than one member in the MENA region by the end of 2017. With these new organisations joining APC in the near future, our capacity in the areas of digital security, autonomous infrastructures, policy advocacy, research, human rights work, and others will further grow. We will also increase our individual membership by having excellent colleagues with whom we have worked in the past joining the network.

APC awarded a total of USD 267,918 to its members through its grants programme. Eighteen member organisations received 20 grants, 12 of which were project grants of up to USD 20,000 each, while the other eight were research and campaign grants of up to USD 5,000 each.

In addition to these, in 2016 APC supported travel by 18 members with a total of USD 28,584 from the APC Member Exchange and Travel Fund (METF), which supports collaboration among members and participation in events.

METF grants supported four members to attend a RightsCon meeting in San Francisco, two members to attend the Digital Alliance Summit in Bogotá, one member to attend the World Forum on Free Media and World Social Forum in Montreal, one member to attend a training of Francophone trainers in internet governance organised in Burkina Faso, one member to attend the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa in Kampala, Uganda, and 10 members to attend the Internet Governance Forum 2016, which took place in Guadalajara, Mexico.

To watch out for: A new call for member grants will take place in 2017, and more members will receive financial support to carry on activities that will bring us a step closer to achieving APC’s strategic plan.

A total of five regional member meetings were organised throughout the year.

The Africa member meeting took place in Yaoundé, Cameroon, on 12-14 August; the Asia meeting in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on 5-7 October; the meeting for European members was held in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on 19-20 October; members from Latin America and the Caribbean met in San José, Costa Rica, on 24-25 July; and the North America member meeting took place in Guadalajara, Mexico, on 10-11 December.

The meetings were attended by most of the members in the respective regions. Three of the meetings were co-located with Internet Governance Forums (IGFs), in which APC members played an important role: the global IGF (North America meeting), the LAC regional IGF (LAC meeting), and the Bosnia and Herzegovina national IGF (Europe meeting).

These face-to-face gatherings provided members with the chance to explore opportunities for collaboration, as well as to contribute regional perspectives to the APC network as a whole.

To watch out for: In 2017, APC network members from around the world will gather in South Africa for the triennial face-to-face APC Members Meeting.

In May 2016, David Souter, a longstanding associate of APC who has worked for more than 20 years on the relationship between ICTs and public policy, began writing a weekly blog column for APC called “Inside the Information Society“, looking at different aspects of the information society, development and rights.

David’s pieces take a fresh look at many of the issues that concern APC and its members, with the aim of provoking discussion and debate.

Issues covered include internet governance and sustainable development, human rights and the environment, policy, practice and the use of ICTs by individuals and communities.

A total of 27 posts in 2016 addressed diverse aspects of the information society such as climate change, privacy, governance, work, internet intermediaries, the digital divide, rights, enhanced cooperation, and events such as the WSIS Forum and the Internet Governance Forum.

More about David Souter here. Follow him on Twitter.

To watch out for: In 2017, the Inside the Information Society column will continue raising issues that concern APC and its members, and provoking debate.

Six APC member organisations – Colnodo, GreenNet, Pangea, Jinbonet, May First/People Link and eQualit.ie – participated in the World Social Forum held in Montreal, Canada, which our individual member Stéphane Couture helped to organise.

At the regional level, African member organisations Fantsuam Foundation, KICTANet and PROTEGE QV took part in the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa, an event organised by fellow African member CIPESA in September, in Kampala, Uganda.

And our European members BlueLink.net, StrawberryNet and GreenNet took part in the Bosnia and Herzegovina Internet Governance Forum (BHIGF), organised in Sarajevo in October by our member One World Platform.

To watch out for: In 2017, APC will collaborate with members around a number of key internet-related policy spaces, including the Human Rights Council, the 2017 World Summit on the Information Society Forum, RightsCon Brussels, and the Stockholm Internet Forum.

In 2016, APC significantly engaged in community access to infrastructure. Three of the new members who joined APC in 2016 – AlterMundi, Rhizomatica and Zenzeleni Networks – share a strong focus on community Wi-Fi and GSM networking, which has led to exciting new collaborations and opened up new directions for achieving APC’s vision.

One of these new members, AlterMundi, collaborated with fellow APC members Digital Empowerment Foundation and Pangea within the Dynamic Coalition on Community Connectivity (DC3), which they helped to establish, and which has already made a significant impact in promoting community-operated infrastructures.

A workshop on community networks co-organised by APC and the Internet Society (ISOC) prior to the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance Global Summit in Bogota on 26-28 April brought together APC members involved in building community-owned networks to discuss spectrum and other issues related to creating an enabling environment for community networks to flourish.

The workshop was attended by AlterMundi, Colnodo and Nupef, as well as Rhizomatica, which subsequently became an APC member organisation.

To watch out for: In 2017, APC will significantly focus on creating an enabling environment for communities and local entrepreneurs to solve their own connectivity challenges, and member organisations devoted to promoting community-owned infrastructures will play a major role in these efforts.

APC.org, our main site, ended 2016 with an annual total of 866,560 visits and 4,936,430 pages read.

In social media, APC reached 5,200 followers on Facebook, with a monthly average of 100 new followers, 2,000 interactions and 10.000 users reached.

On Twitter, APC got its official accounts verified as accounts of public interest. As of 31 December, @apc_news had 6,120 followers in English, an average of 150 new followers monthly, and an average of 300 mentions/interactions per month.

APC’s work had more than 160 mentions by the media (35 being international, 85 local and 40 regional media), in a diversity of regions and languages, including English, French, German, Malaysian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish, and mostly featuring our work on rights and a feminist internet, as well as publications such as statements and research outputs. APC was also quoted in over 20 academic publications from all over the world.

To watch out for: Look out for a completely renovated www.apc.org and many positive changes in our publications.