Internet Freedom Festival

The Internet Freedom Festival (IFF) is one of the biggest gatherings in the world that brings together activists, journalists, developers, humanitarian workers and others working on freedom of expression, privacy and security. 775 participants from 101 countries attended the 2019 IFF. More than 54% of participants are from the Global South and other communities not well represented in the Internet Freedom community. However, Community assessments are showing the deterioration of community ties and health of Internet Freedom networks and never seen before sustainability challenges during the pandemic, impacting the effectiveness of at-risk, emerging groups to protect themselves and stifling Internet Freedom by making it more unsafe and less accessible.

TeamCommUNITY at ARTICLE 19 is enhancing internet freedom through more resilient internet freedom networks and frontline communities. The objectives include:

1. Create and maintain trusted spaces for IF groups to pool resources, share knowledge, and networks. Rationale: IF communities tend to work in silos and there is a lack of mutual trust.
2. Ensure that emerging, at-risk voices are included, elevated and inform key Internet Freedom conversations;
3. Assess and preempt post-covid challenges, to ensure that the IF community can successfully come out of COVID-19 by establishing new practices and formats to build community and heighten resiliency.