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28Oct

Kenya’s 2027 Elections Will Test Its Commitment to Digital and Media Rights

Author CIPESA Posted on

By Raylenne Kambua |

As Kenya approaches its August 2027 general elections, there are growing concerns about how the country’s digital and media laws and practices could affect citizens’ ability to meaningfully participate in the electoral process.

Over the last few years, Kenya has passed or amended several laws, such as the Kenya Information and Communications Act (KICA) and the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act (CMCA), which directly impact citizens’ online participation in civic and democratic processes. The Media Council of Kenya (MCK) has flagged more than 20 pieces of legislation that contain retrogressive provisions that threaten journalists’ right to report, their privacy, and citizens’ access to information.

As in many other African countries, digital technologies, including social media platforms and Artificial Intelligence (AI), have become central to citizens’ social, economic and political participation, particularly during periods of contestation, such as elections and protests.

During the 2024 Gen Z protests, young Kenyans used AI and other digital tools to simplify legislation and produce mobilisation materials, and used social media platforms to coordinate protests. The state responded with digital repression, including online threats, unwarranted arrests, abductions, internet disruptions, and unlawful surveillance. The 2027 campaigns will run on the same digital infrastructure, with more AI capabilities and with human rights at stake.

Digital Threats as Electoral Threats

On October 6, 2026, the Collaboration of International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) attended a stakeholder engagement hosted by the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) in Nairobi, where the Roadmap to a Violence-Free 2027 General Election report was launched.

The report identified the weaponisation of AI and technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) as key threats to peaceful elections. It also found that social media is where election violence is seeded, incubated, and mobilised, and called for digital hygiene and responsible use of digital media.

In an earlier engagement with the commission, CIPESA asserted that no single institution can address digital threats alone. Clear inter-institutional protocols can, however, enable timely, coordinated and rights-respecting responses, while strengthening the accountability of digital platforms.

Digital tools and AI were used in the 2022 general elections, and their use has since grown. As these tools become more sophisticated, real and fabricated content becomes harder to distinguish, increasing the risk of harm during elections.

CIPESA’s report, Navigating the Implications of AI on Digital Democracy in Kenya, finds that AI is reshaping digital participation and access to information in the country. However, the report warns that the existing AI governance gaps, rise of AI-powered political advertising, deepfakes, and microtargeting threaten to distort democratic processes and the information ecosystem in profound ways.

Internet and platform shutdowns also contribute to the information disorder and threaten electoral integrity. Election periods carry a heightened risk of internet shutdowns, which can limit voters’ access to information, silence observers and journalists, and leave rumours unchallenged.

There is the fear that Kenya could borrow the shutdown script from neighbours such as Uganda and Tanzania during next year’s elections. The country has already seen the warning signs. Telegram is often blocked during national examinations, and internet disruptions were reported during the 2024 Gen Z protests. In response, stakeholders secured interim orders restraining the government and mobile operators from shutting down internet access. Although the orders are temporary, the final ruling and the commitment of regulators and telecom operators will determine whether Kenyans stay connected during the August 2027 elections.

Press Freedom Under Threat

Private media houses lead in listenership and viewership, and mainstream media remains more trusted than social media as a source of information. Yet these outlets face threats to press freedom and state interference, while journalists encounter harassment. Media stakeholders have condemned these trends ahead of the elections.

Defamation is also a growing concern, and courts have been faulted for awarding serious damages against bloggers and the media, even though international standards hold that public officials should be open to greater scrutiny. Fear of legal consequences can force investigative journalists to slow down, undermining the public’s right to know.

Law as the Main Instrument of Control

Participants at a multi-stakeholder dialogue on ‘Advocacy Strategies for Better Tech and Media Policies’, hosted by KICTANet and the Bloggers Association of Kenya on October 8, 2026, in Nairobi, named vague legislation as one of the most persistent threats to online expression.

Laws such as the CMCA illustrate this pattern. Enacted in 2018, the Act criminalises certain forms of online expression, including false publications. In March 2026, the Court of Appeal struck down two sections of the 2025 Amendment Act for failing the test of constitutional clarity. The ruling prompted Parliament to appeal. The court left the Act’s investigative powers largely intact, while cautioning that courts must act as gatekeepers because those powers can be abused.

Following the court ruling, further amendments to the CMCA introduced new powers for the National Computer and Cybercrimes Coordination Committee (NC4), including the authority to order the blocking or removal of websites, pages and applications without a court order. In July 2026, the High Court declared two of the new provisions unconstitutional, as the amendments could risk criminalising legitimate speech.

The pattern is consistent: Parliament passes broad provisions, civil society challenges them in court, and courts later narrow their scope or strike them down. Some earlier cases followed a similar course. In 2014, a court rejected an attempt to restrict journalists and bloggers from publishing terror-related content without permission from the national police, holding that laws limiting fundamental rights do not enjoy the usual presumption of constitutionality. In another case, the High Court found the KICA offence of “misusing a telecommunication device” unconstitutionally vague. The court held that any limit on expression must be clear, pursue a legitimate aim, and be necessary and proportionate.

The laws used to restrict expression also evolve. The Prevention of Terrorism Act has been used against protesters, and authorities have invoked the CMCA to arrest online critics, some of whom were first abducted. During the 2027 electoral cycle, advocates should watch for existing legal provisions being used in new ways.

Civil society has also shown that early engagement can influence legislation. For instance, it persuaded Parliament to withdraw a proposed KICA amendment on the liability of social media administrators. This calls for proactiveness in policy development processes, ensuring bills are monitored throughout the stages rather than waiting until they have been passed.

Recommendations

  1. Parliament should publish bills early, allow meaningful public participation, and ensure that restrictions on online expression and access to information are clearly defined and consistent with constitutional rights.
  2. The Director of Public Prosecutions and the police should refrain from pursuing arbitrary and politically motivated prosecutions, and from misusing or selectively enforcing laws to prosecute protesters, social media users, bloggers and journalists.
  3. Courts should apply strict scrutiny to search, seizure and surveillance orders, and keep interim protections against internet disruption.
  4. The Communications Authority and telecom operators should commit publicly not to shut down or throttle the internet and publish transparency reports on government takedown requests.
  5. The NCIC, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), the judiciary, and the MCK should agree on protocols for responding to digital threats during the elections, with clear roles for each.
  6. Media houses should adopt the MCK election guideline and AI code of conduct, invest in verification and deepfake detection, and strengthen legal support for their journalists.
  7. Digital platforms should expand election integrity and moderation capacity for Kenya, respond promptly to TFGBV and hate speech reports, clearly label AI-generated or manipulated political content, and publish transparency reports on government requests to remove or restrict content.
  8. Civil society should track bills at the policy stage through a shared system and pool legal analysis.
  9. Development partners should fund legal defence for bloggers and journalists, and support strategic litigation, because cases like the CMCA challenge take years to resolve.
22Dec

Three Years After Al-Bashir Ouster, Sudan’s Internet Freedom Landscape Remains Precarious

Author CIPESA Writer Posted on

By Khattab Hamad |

Over three years since the ouster of long-term authoritarian president Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s ongoing political crisis continues to present challenges for internet freedom in the country. Initial positive reforms initiated by the transitional government led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok have been clawed back since a  military coup in October 2021. The new military government has weaponised laws, continues to institute network disruptions, and is clamping down on civil society organisations so as to consolidate its grip on power and silence critics.

The political situation in the country has had a marked correlation with the state of internet freedom in the north African state, whose record was largely poor even before the crisis deepened. According to the Freedom On The Net 2022 report, Sudan scored 29 out of 100 on internet freedom, thus continuing its classification on the index as “Not Free”. Developments in 2022 signalled a rapid decline from the progress recorded in 2021 and 2020, when the country scored 33 and 30 respectively on the index, up from a lower score of 25 in 2019.

The Cybercrime Law Continues to Repress

One of the measures adopted by Sudanese authorities has been the use of internet-related laws as a weapon for repression. The cybercrimes law, which first came into force in the final days of al-Bashir’s regime in 2018, and its amendments in subsequent years, appear to be aimed at thwarting mass protests and restricting critical opinion of the government and its officials. The most recent amendment to the law, which contains vague provisions, was first announced in April 2022, with some reports stating that it was intended to criminalise acts such as insulting the leaders of the state and undermining the prestige of the state.

On November 2, 2022, the government spokesperson announced that the cabinet had adopted the amendments. The announcement stated that the law was necessary to address the proliferation of information-related crimes and the concealment of their perpetrators through the use of modern computer applications. Also, it claimed that it was necessary to address the shortcomings of the application of court fines that had failed to achieve complete deterrence. The amendment obliges courts to imprison offenders where the victim of defamation or fake news is a governmental public figure.  As of December 2022, the amendment law is yet to be published and is awaiting the final approval of the President of the Sovereign Council.

Article 21 of the cybercrime law provides that: “Whoever prepares or uses the information or communications network or any information means or any applications to publish or promote ideas, programs, words or actions contrary to public order or morals, shall be punished with imprisonment for a period not exceeding six years”. Under article 24, “Anyone who publishes lies or fake news in cyberspace will be punished [with imprisonment of] four years, fined or both”.

Meanwhile, article 25 states that “Whoever prepares or uses the information or communications network, or any information means or applications to defame any person shall be punished with imprisonment for a term not exceeding six years.” The law also imposes a penalty of up to seven years imprisonment for anyone who obtains data or information that affects the “economy or the national security” of the country, which terms are not defined.

These articles limit access to information and freedom of expression as they fail to provide a clear definition of the acts constituting the offence, are excessive, and use undefined terms such as “public order” and “morals”, which can be interpreted subjectively by security and prosecutorial agencies and applied to punish legitimate expression.

Censorship

The contentious provisions of the cybercrime law have been used to limit press freedom through the blockage of access to online news websites. In September 2022, the public prosecutor ordered the blockage of the website of the Al-Sudani newspaper, one of the most respected dailies in Sudan, without even notifying the newspaper’s management. The Sudanese Electronic Press Association condemned the order, stating: “We reject prior trials and convictions from any party except the judiciary”. Ultimately, the website was not blocked after the leakage of the prosecutor’s order.

In the same month, Abdalrahman Al-Aqib, a journalist, was arrested by police after publishing an investigative article on corruption at the Ministry of Minerals in a local daily and on his Facebook account. Al-Aqib was charged under articles 24 and 25 of the cybercrimes law for publishing lies and fake news. Following his arrest, the Sudanese Journalists Syndicate condemned the actions of the police. It stated: “Al-Aqib was treated in a humiliating manner, and they did not respect his most fundamental rights, amid delays from the police’s duty officer, so as not to obtain his legal right to the guarantee”.

In both cases, the government’s response was primarily reprisal as opposed to offering counter-responses to the allegations raised in the stories. Notably, authorities did not use the press law against the journalist, perhaps because it prescribes less penalties in comparison to the harsh penalties under the cybercrimes law. The press law does not provide for imprisonment of journalists; rather, it stipulates disciplinary sanctions, such as fines and suspending a journalist from publishing for a specific period.

Network Disruptions

Disruptions to internet access and blockage of social media continues unabated, with authorities justifying them as necessary to ensure “national security and emergency state”. Five have been recorded during the past 15 months.

During the October 2021 coup, the army imposed a nationwide internet shutdown to isolate the protestors from mobilisation to resist the coup. The shutdown lasted 25 days, and after access was restored, some social media platforms remained blocked for two more days. On the one year anniversary of the coup, the authorities shut down the internet for eight hours during a public march organised by pro-democracy groups against the coup. Earlier the same month on October 18, 2022, a regional internet shutdown was imposed in Wad Al-Mahi, a governorate in the Blue Nile region. The shutdown was in response to tribal conflict in several villages in the area. It could not be independently verified when access was restored.

Also, on June 11, 2022, the public prosecutor ordered the shutdown of the internet for three hours on a daily basis, over a 12-day period. The reason given was that it was necessary to prevent cheating during the national secondary school exams. Following the 12-day period, the internet was again disrupted for 25 hours on June 30, 2022, during the “Million Man March” to mark the anniversary of the 2019 massacre of protestors by the military.

Catalogue of Internet Disruptions in Sudan Since October 2021

Start dateEnd dateReasonGeo-scaleShutdown typeDuration
October 25, 202118 November 2021CoupNationwideMobile data25 days
June 11, 2022June 22, 2022ExamsNationwideMobile data12 days (3 hours daily internet-curfew)
June 30, 2022July 1, 2022ProtestsNationwideBlackout25 hours
October 18, 2022Could not verifyLocal conflictRegional: Wad Al-mahi (Blue Nile State)Mobile dataCould not verify
October 25, 2022October 25, 2022ProtestsNationwideBlackout8 hours

These recent incidents mirror Sudan’s long history of instituting network disruptions, rivalled only by neighbouring Ethiopia. Crucially, the disruptions are indicative of the current regime’s bias and disregard for freedom of association and assembly. Three of the internet disruptions (October 2021, June 2022 and October 2022) were in response to protests against military rule. In contrast, the military did not implement any disruptions on October 29, 2022, when the Sudan People’s Appeal Initiative held protests. The initiative comprises supporters of former president Al-Bashir’s ousted regime, who protested in Khartoum demanding that the United Nations not interfere in Sudanese affairs.

Crackdown on Civil Society

The government has also led an onslaught against civil society organisations. For example, on October 23, 2022, the Human Aid Commission (HAC), which is the regulator of non-governmental organisations in Sudan, notified the director of the Sudanese Consumers Protection Society (SCPS) of its decision to cancel SCPS’s registration, seize its assets and properties and freeze its bank accounts inside and outside Sudan. The SCPS has been at the forefront of advocating against network disruptions by pushing for the enforcement of contractual obligations of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide services to their customers.

Looking Ahead

The affronts by the Sudanese government on internet freedom and civic space go against its obligations under international human rights law. The design and deployment of punitive laws by authorities to target and silence activists, government critics, journalists, human rights defenders (HRDs), and the political opposition create an environment of fear and self-censorship. Equally, responses such as the deregistration of civil society organisations only serve as a threat to other civil society organisations, of possible sanctions. Lastly, these actions together with internet shutdowns and the repression of digital rights through the cybercrime laws constitute unjustifiable limitations of freedom of expression, assembly, association, access to information, rights of the media, and rights to political participation.

In order to chart a democratic path in the coming years, the Sudanese government must show commitment to uphold media and internet freedom. Policy reforms should repeal regressive provisions such as the cybercrimes law. Sudan should also desist from interrupting access to the internet and social media.

+ Khattab Hamad is a journalist and digital rights researcher who has recently co-founded the Digital Rights Lab Sudan.

22Mar

African Countries Engage in Regional Dialogue Over Internet Universality Indicators Study

Author CIPESA Posted on

By UNESCO |

On 16 March 2022, UNESCO, jointly with the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) convened a regional dialogue on implementing Internet Universality ROAM-X Indicators (IUI) in Africa.

The event, supported by the  International Program for Development of Communication (IPDC) of UNESCO,  gathered a number of leading  national actors and experts who shared best practice and lessons learned from implementing national assessments of ROAM-X indicators in Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Niger and Senegal.

Juliet Nanfuka representing CIPESA opened the session by recalling that the event builds on CIPESA’s joint efforts and long-term partnership  with UNESCO to raise awareness on the intersection of access to information and application of the ROAM-X indicators  initiated at World Press Freedom Day celebrations in 2018 and the same year’s Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa as part of the International Day for Universal Access to Information (IDUAI).

Xianhong Hu, UNESCO’s focal point of the ROAM-X project, presented the global progress of assessing ROAM-X indicators in 45 countries and highlighted Africa as the leading continent with 17 countries having undertaken the assessment. Ms Hu stressed the urgent need to scale up the ROAM-X indicators’ assessments in more African countries to promote meaningful connectivity and humanistic digital transformation for advancing human rights and sustainable development.

“Africa needs to adjust its digital policy to be more inclusive and the ROAM-X indicators assessment would make a huge difference to support African countries’ inclusive digital transformation and build evidence-based policies.” Dorothy GordonChair of UNESCO’s Information For All Programme (IFAP)

Giving perspectives from West Africa, Professor Alain Kiyindou, Lead researcher of the assessment in Benin and Niger, pointed out the gender inequalities in access to Internet and in the workplace and called for more inclusion of African actors and vulnerable groups in the digital space as well as in the composition of national Multi-stakeholder Advisory Boards and research teams.

Also giving a West African perspective, Dr. Gideon Anapey, researcher for the assessment in Ghana, stressed that, “For African Member States to engage with UNESCO and initiate the ROAM-X project in the region, there is a strong need for capacity building that consists in deepening awareness on ROAM-X, fostering various stakeholders’ engagement, covering ICT integration and inclusion”.

Aderaw Tassew, Mr Asrat Mulatu (Ph.D), both representing Ethiopia and Ms Grace Githaiga from the Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) presented on how they approached the assessment in their respective countries alongside highlighting the potential opportunities held by the indicators. Despite vast dissimilarities between the two countries in Internet access, they noted shared challenges unveiled by the assessment including on data collection, funding, political instability, weak legal frameworks and political will, digital literacy gaps, and various levels of the abuse of digital rights.

UNESCO and CIPESA jointly call for more African countries to take up the national assessment of ROAM-X indicators to promote Internet reforms for advancing media freedom and digital rights in Africa.  Following the webinar, in-country training sessions on the indicators will be conducted by CIPESA in Cameroon, Malawi, Namibia, Somalia and Uganda. Member States that are interested in  getting involved are invited to reach out to CIPESA: [email protected].

In 2015, the 38th General Conference of UNESCO endorsed a new definition on the Universality of the Internet based upon four principles – Rights, Openness, Accessibility to all and Multi-stakeholder participation- the ROAM principles. The four pillars outline a comprehensive framework for the assessment of national digital landscapes towards focusing on multiple dimensions of human rights, open Internet, quality of access and inclusive multi-stakeholder governance, promoting the growth and evolution of the Internet, and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

This article was first published by UNESCO on March 22, 2022

23Dec

Sudan’s Bad Laws, Internet Censorship and Repressed Civil Liberties

Author CIPESA Posted on

By Khattab Hamad and CIPESA Writer | 

On December 19, 2021, the third anniversary of the start of the uprising that overthrew former Sudanese strongman Omar al-Bashir, protests against the current military rulers rocked the capital Khartoum. Yet these demonstrations are only a small part of the north African country’s challenges, as it remains saddled with a slew of repressive laws that undermine civil liberties, with the digital civic space particularly under attack.

Sudan’s 2019 constitution grants citizens the right to privacy (article 55) and to free expression (article 57) and “the right to access the internet” (article 57(2)). As of December 2020, Sudan had 34.2 million mobile subscriptions while internet subscriptions stood at 13.7 million, representing a penetration of 31%. Sudan has the most affordable mobile internet in Africa and is ranked among the five least expensive countries for mobile internet globally.

Despite the constitutional guarantees and proliferation of technology, a new briefing paper by the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) shows that the state of digital rights remains precarious, with the cybercrimes law enabling the military rulers to harass dissenters and critics under the guise of fighting false information online. 

Frequent internet shutdowns remain a constant reminder that the government will go to great lengths to control access to and use of digital technologies for mobilisation. In the last three years, six internet disruptions have been recorded, mostly ordered to thwart public protests against bad governance. The disruptions have had significant economic implications and only ended following the intervention of the courts. 

The brief explores the repressive elements of media and technology-related laws and how they have been used to undermine freedom of expression, access to information and press freedom in the aftermath of al-Bashir’s overthrow. Overall, while there have been some improvements since al-Bashir’s ouster, the current government continues to institute regressive measures such as news website blockages and censorship. The latest power machinations that saw the military stage a coup on October 25, 2021 are making matters worse. 

The Sudanese Professionals’ Association (SPA), which spearheaded the uprising that overthrew al-Bashir, extensively used digital technologies to disseminate news about the uprising and to mobilise citizens to attend protests. The military rulers that succeeded Bashir seem to have realised the power of technology in mobilisation and embarked on continuous disruption of the internet, in addition to instituting other measures to curtail online organising, freedom of expression, and the free flow of information online.

Bashir’s dictatorship initiated internet disruptions in view of public protests calling for his overthrow, but the government that succeeded him has been more prolific in utilising shutdowns to try and shut off criticism and protests. 

The longest internet disruption in Sudan’s history was recorded in 2019 and lasted 37 days. During protests around the time the shutdown was initiated, more than 100 protesters were killed. The latest shutdown started on October 25, 2021 and lasted 25 days. It was instituted after Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan seized control of the government. The shutdown was ended by a court order on November 11.

In July 2021, Sudanese authorities blocked more than 30 local news websites in the run up to protests demanding the resignation of the government, a move that severely undermined the right to expression and access to information.

Meanwhile, the cybercrime law of 2020 punishes publishing “lies” and “fake news” online with a heavy penalty of four years imprisonment, or flogging, or both. This law has been used by the military to silence activists and critical state officials. Even Lt. Gen. Burhan has this year invoked it to bring a suit against a prominent critic. The Press and Publications Law of 2009 equally has repressive provisions and was last August controversially invoked to suspendAlitibaha and Alsayha newspapers.

In 2020, Sudan issued the National security law amendment of 2020, article 25 of which leaves latitude for staff of intelligence agencies to violate citizens’ privacy by giving the Sudanese General Intelligence Service “the right to request information, data, documents or things from anyone to check it or take it” without a court order. Last October, military forces that staged a coup appeared to use this provision to search people’s phones in the streets to delete documentation of human rights violations perpetuated by security forces.

See the policy brief for further details on Sudan’s Bad Laws, Internet Censorship and Repressed Civil Liberties.

02Nov

Stalking the Messenger: Ending Impunity for Illegal Surveillance

Author CIPESA Writer Posted on

Opinion |

We know that the issues around digital surveillance are complicated. The tech side of the tools used and the means to circumvent them are complicated. Drawing a hard line between what may be acceptable to help ensure our personal security and what pushes our societies into Orwellian territory is also complicated.

As the revelations of the Pegasus Project show us, illegal surveillance is the latest weapon in the ever-growing arsenal used against journalists and human rights defenders. In effect, surveillance in this context is equivalent to stalking. A pernicious activity that can easily cross from online harassment to physical attacks. It’s illegal. It disproportionately affects those who are among the most vulnerable, whether because of their gender, sexual orientation, race, or ethnicity. And if people are permitted to stalk with impunity, the problem will not stop.

Increasingly used as a laser-focused tactic, a weapon to intimidate, instil fear, and paralyse the work of journalists, this kind of surveillance puts sources at risk and impedes journalists from providing us with information to expose crime and corruption, and to speak the truth about power.

“I don’t think it’s journalists as individuals that the government has a problem with. The government has a problem with the people […] It wants to continue committing crimes in the shadows so that no one will uncover those facts or ask questions about it. And journalists are the ones who spoil this plan.” — Azerbaijani journalist Sevinj Vaqifqizi.

On this International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, a day advocated for by IFEX, we need to bring surveillance to the fore as a tactic that is threatening journalists’ safety, and draw attention to how impunity creates the conditions under which it will continue to thrive.

IFEX members have long warned of the dangers of malware like Pegasus. A product of the Israeli NSO Group, it infects targets’ phones, exposes data, and even gains access to cameras and microphones. Despite the company’s claim that it vets clients based on their human rights records, it sold Pegasus to authoritarian regimes – as well as to countries like Mexico, where targets included media figures, a government scientist, and international human rights investigators – united by having publicly posed challenging questions to the government.

The personal impact of such surveillance can be devastating.

“When you are speaking, watching, or doing something with someone in your house or in a cafe or wherever you may be, they are there listening to you, watching everything that you do. Everything that you do in your bedroom, the shower, in your kitchen, in your office with your friends, or whoever.” — Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui: profiled here

“My family members are also victimized. The sources are victimized, people I’ve been working with, people who told me their private secrets are victimized.” — Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova: profiled here

Globally, at least 180 journalists were selected as Pegasus targets.

The decades our network has put into promoting journalists’ safety confirm that it cannot be fully achieved in a climate where individuals – or states – can intimidate, threaten, and harm them, and not be held accountable. Year-round, IFEX members work to bring perpetrators to justice, and to establish conditions that will make it harder for them to commit such crimes in the first place.

We know that it is a massive undertaking. In spite of being illegal under international human rights law, actors involved in illegal surveillance are almost never held accountable.

The challenge is to identify where to intervene, where to spend our energy, where we can have the biggest impact in stemming this predatory practice – including, but not limited to, confronting corporations and governments that enable and participate in the illegal surveillance of journalists.

It’s a many-headed beast, surveillance. There are multiple entry points to effect change, from policy work to set boundaries on what is considered ‘necessary and proportionate’ surveillance, to pressuring states to adopt international standards, to controls on the exports of spyware, to supporting preventive measures like strengthening and normalizing encryption.

Ending impunity for illegal surveillance has to be part of this work. It’s a long game, not for the weak-of-heart, and this is even more true when the perpetrators of the crimes are states. But we know from our experience seeking accountability for physical attacks on journalists that this type of sustained work does pay off. Just over a week ago, two decades of advocacy – by IFEX member FLIP, by Jineth Bedoya Lima herself, and by so many others – led to the groundbreaking Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling in her case that there was “serious, precise and consistent evidence of State involvement in the acts of physical, sexual and psychological torture against the journalist.” This ruling sets an important precedent for the entire region.

The other good news is that we have a lot to draw on, on our side. There is a massive, global network of people – working in different fields, perhaps, or focusing on different issues – but with the combined skills, expertise, and clout needed to ensure that illegal surveillance does not go unchallenged, that those found culpable pay a price, and that this price effectively deters others.

As long as we keep leveraging opportunities like IDEI to come together, collaborate, learn from and support each other, raise our voices and find strategic pressure points where we can have a real impact, we can, and will, counter the scourge of illegal surveillance of journalists.

Annie Game is the Executive Director of IFEX, the global network that promotes and defends freedom of expression and information as a fundamental human right.

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