As a network of organizations working on digital resilience in the global majority, we realize we are navigating a dynamic landscape, and it is evident that significant shifts are taking place in our sector. One of the streams that the DRN is working on is focused on forecasting and identifying future trends, challenges and opportunities in the digital rights and digital resilience ecosystem affecting the global majority.
To share our work with the larger ecosystem, we are pleased to release our first report, “Scanning the Horizon: The Future of Digital Rights & Resilience in the Global Majority.” Commissioned by members of this network and written by Juan Ortiz Freuler in March 2024, this brief is meant to spark discussions around a central question: what are the key political, economic and technological trends impacting our ecosystem?
“The future is not only unpredictable, but malleable.”
The report serves as an entry point to this ‘forecasting’ stream of work that organizations working in the digital rights ecosystem often overlook, especially when resources are scarce, and they are focused on current challenges and ongoing projects.
The brief builds on interviews with around 20 human rights and digital rights practitioners, as well as desk research and data analysis, to provide a horizon scoping of three key areas: geopolitics, technology, and activism. While the report was researched and written last year, we think many of its main findings are very relevant in the ongoing context:
- On geopolitics and trends in global and local governance, the report highlights competition between China and the US. This will shape the way in which global majority countries access technology. Also, the increasingly difficult economic environments will likely continue to undermine the trust in governments and generate further polarization. In this context, collaboration and coordination across the global majority is becoming crucial.
- In terms of technological trends, a few companies are consolidating a huge amount of power, limiting the capacity of activists, governments and the international governance system to effectively monitor and make sure that technology serves the interest of the public.
- And as the broader context changes, so will the funding agendas – in fact we have seen this already with the most recent shuttering of USAID. The overlap of digital rights and human rights represents both a challenge but also a big opportunity for organizations in the ecosystem, to develop shared agendas and collaborative projects.
“A key transformation reflected in the trends is that of breadth: breadth of the issues, as reflected by convergence with the human rights agenda, and breadth of the impacts, as reflected by the global footprint of some of the key technology providers.”
The various trends highlighted in this report underline the pressing need for more collaboration, strategic coordination and networked action. One of our purposes is to examine the power distribution, and shifts in power dynamics, so that as a network, we can better anticipate and prepare for different scenarios. By sharing this report, we hope to launch this space as a platform to catalyze more public discussions with like-minded people and organizations, and influence agendas from a global majority perspective.
If you want to take a step back from your day-to-day priorities and zoom out to examine external forces that are at play affecting work in digital rights and digital resilience, then we invite you to join us in a webinar discussion on Thursday, March 20, 2025. In this webinar, we will be reflecting on the key trends identified in the report and inviting you to share your perspectives and priorities.
Stay tuned for more information about the webinar and registration very soon!