As we approach the 2026 edition of the Bread&Net digital rights convening from 14 to 16 October, the APC community is preparing to engage with other civil society organisations, researchers, journalists, technologists, policy makers and community leaders to share experiences, develop strategies and explore collective responses to the region’s evolving digital challenges in West Asia and North Africa (WANA).
Organised annually since 2018 by SMEX in Beirut, Lebanon, Bread&Net reconvenes in 2026 under the theme “Realities Reimagined”, offering a space for collective re-imagination, experimentation and strategic implementation about a more just, sovereign and community-centred digital future in the region. In addition to SMEX, APC member 7amleh is also among the organisations coming together to discuss these issues. This year, the Safety for Voices initiative, led by APC, also established a partnership with SMEX to support this convening and will host two sessions focusing on collective action in support of women human rights defenders resisting on the ground.
The hybrid session “The evidence we need: Understanding tech-facilitated harms against WHRDs in SWANA”, co-organised by APC and SMEX, takes place on 14 October and will apply a feminist holistic security and defender-centred approach to understanding tech-facilitated harms against them. Rather than treating online abuse as separate from its consequences in defenders’ everyday lives, it will examine how digital attacks can translate into psychosocial, professional, economic, physical and other offline harms for defenders. In a region consistently marked by conflicts and alarming human rights violations by powerful actors, this session will be an opportunity to collective address key dimensions impacting lived realities, such as who has the power or responsibility to prevent, mitigate or remedy the harm, what responses and gaps currently exist, and what evidence or knowledge is needed to support stronger action and accountability.
On 16 October the workshop by APC entitled “Who defines protection in feminist movements?” will be held online, inviting participants to critically examine the politics of how violence, safety and protection are understood. WHRDs navigate surveillance, online harassment, judicial persecution, militarisation, censorship, displacement, economic precarity and attacks on their communities. These harms rarely occur separately, yet the language used to respond to them often detaches these experiences into categories like digital security, physical security, legal security or psychosocial support. As a result, many WHRDs are unable to name the violence they experience as violence, normalising it as an inevitable part of being a defender. Aiming to offer a space for Global South conversations, this session also examines how authoritarianism, patriarchy, militarisation, occupation, anti-rights movements and corporate technological power intersect to produce a continuum of violence that moves between online and offline spaces.
In the face of rising conflicts and in increasingly violent contexts, convenings such as Bread&Net are more necessary than ever. They are not merely events that bring together digital rights advocates; they are a call to collective action and an opportunity to reimagine better realities together. You can check the full event programme here.
Who can support women on the ground and how?
Immediate and systematic support of WHRDs is an urgent area of focus that is echoed by advocacy groups and organisations across the digital rights spectrum. As the mobilisation continues during Bread&Net, the need for a holistic feminist approach in support of WHRDs is part of an ongoing conversation and the focus of multiple efforts.
The Unyielding Anthology showed that “across contexts and geographies, worsening inequalities have fuelled terrible violence, both online and offline, leaving women human rights defenders exposed to unprecedented abuse that is intimate, targeted and deeply harmful to their personal and professional lives.”
The publication “Online challenges, offline realities: A feminist analysis of women human rights defenders’ digital experiences” added that “for WHRDs, the internet is both a vital space for resistance and a site of profound risk. It enables mobilisation, facilitates community building and allows for the articulation of feminist, environmental and human rights struggles across borders.” The inevitable challenge, however, is that “it also exposes them to relentless attacks: ranging from coordinated defamation and harassment campaigns to doxxing, stalking and threats of physical violence.”
The editorial of the GenderIT.org special edition “Weaponised technologies and human rights under digital siege” defined how across conflict zones and fragile democracies, technologies once imagined as tools of empowerment and exploration, now serve as instruments of surveillance, repression and even killing.
“Responding to this requires more than technical regulation. It demands a feminist and post-colonial approach to technological design and governance, that insists on centring the voices of those most affected, challenges the dominance of Western models in global governance, and recognises that justice must extend across borders.”
To avoid placing undue labour on vulnerable populations, however, it also explains that “accountability must be grounded in care, equity and collective protection rather than in frameworks that privilege state security or corporate profit. Without such shifts, the global governance of technology will remain inadequate, and its harms will continue to fall most heavily on those who defend rights from already precarious positions.”
According to Feminist holistic protection for WHRDs, a forthcoming position paper, digital safety cannot be reduced to technical fixes or individual practices. It requires structural change, collective protection and accountability from states, corporations, donors, civil society and technology communities. Recent UN Human Rights Council discussions further underline this need for holistic approaches to protect defenders, with APC presenting concrete recommendations moving forward.
Looking ahead, we will soon be launching a special edition of Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) in partnership with the Safety for Voices Consortium, exploring the experiences and recommendations of WHRDs, aiming to shift conversations from individual “digital safety” towards systemic feminist holistic protection.
As the APC network continues to push for accountability and demand protection for WHRDs, we see gatherings like Bread&Net as integral spaces for key conversations. We invite everyone to register for the event and review the full programme of sessions.