Access Now confirmed on 29 April that the 14th edition of the world’s largest digital human rights conference would not proceed — in Zambia or online — after the Zambian government pulled its support just days before the opening session.
RightsCon 2026 was scheduled to run in Lusaka from 5 to 8 May, drawing over 5,000 delegates including advocates, technologists, academics, and policymakers working at the intersection of human rights and technology. Many participants were already airborne or on the ground in Lusaka when the announcement landed.
Access Now wrote to registered attendees: “It is with heavy hearts that we share: RightsCon will not proceed in Zambia or online. We understand this news is deeply upsetting for our community and while we know everyone has questions, our goal right now is to notify you of the event’s status because many of you have imminent travel plans. We do not recommend registered participants travel to Lusaka for RightsCon.”
It is with heavy hearts that we share: RightsCon will not proceed in Zambia or online. pic.twitter.com/Ut9Y7ohytT
— RightsCon (@rightscon) April 29, 2026
The fallout extended well beyond the conference itself. The Net Rights Coalition (NRC), joined by 132 other digital rights organisations spanning every region of the world, issued a joint condemnation describing the decision as “appalling” and calling it a blow to global human rights processes. The signatories include KICTANet, Amnesty International, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the International Commission of Jurists, the Association for Progressive Communications, and dozens of African civil society groups from Zambia, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Malawi, and South Sudan, among others.
A Government That Reversed Course
As recently as 3 March 2026, Zambia’s Ministry of Technology and Science officially announced itself as the primary government partner for RightsCon 2026, assuring the global community the event would proceed with full state support. Photos from that period showed RightsCon Director Nikki Gladstone briefing government officials alongside Richard Mulonga, Chief Executive Officer of Bloggers of Zambia, the local civil society partner.
The reversal came without warning. Minister of Technology and Science Felix Mutati announced a postponement on 28 April, citing incomplete security clearances. “In particular, certain invited speakers and participants remain subject to pending administrative and security clearances, which have not yet been concluded,” Mutati said. Zambia’s Ministry of Information and Media issued a separate statement, saying the move was necessary to “ensure full alignment with Zambia’s national values, policy priorities, and broader public interest considerations” — without specifying what those considerations were or disclosing them publicly.
The NRC statement noted precisely this gap, saying the government “cited the need for comprehensive disclosures to align with national values, policy priorities, and broader public-interest considerations, but did not disclose them to the public to ease understanding of such a drastic action.”
After attempting to negotiate with the government, Access Now confirmed the event would not go ahead.
The financial damage is significant on multiple fronts. Access Now, its partners, and thousands of stakeholders absorbed major financial and logistical losses. Zambia also forfeited the economic gains it would have drawn from thousands of international visitors — revenue that would have reached hotels, restaurants, transport operators, and the small businesses engaged specifically to support the event. The NRC noted that this outcome hits hardest the local enterprises that were contracted to provide services that now stand cancelled.
Elections, Surveillance Laws, and Contested Timing
This cancellation did not happen in a political vacuum. RightsCon was set to open just over three months before Zambia’s general election on 13 August. President Hakainde Hichilema, elected in 2021, seeks reelection amid controversy over a constitutional amendment that expanded parliament — a move critics describe as election engineering.
Zambia’s digital rights record had drawn scrutiny well before this week. Legal and human rights experts say cybersecurity laws enacted last year raise serious concerns over government surveillance and the suppression of online speech. Bloggers of Zambia, which served as the local civil society partner for RightsCon, is among the organisations that have publicly criticised those laws.
The NRC statement flagged the timing directly, saying the cancellation “raises concerns about closing civic space and fostering a culture of self-censorship ahead of the August 2026 elections, and is a major setback for Zambia’s digital rights trajectory regionally and globally, signalling a departure from the gains it has secured in leading global processes.”
The irony cuts deep. Zambia served as Co-Chair of the intergovernmental process that produced the Global Digital Compact, adopted at the United Nations in 2024 — a framework that explicitly promotes multistakeholder governance and digital rights. The President of the General Assembly appointed Zambia and Sweden to lead that process on 10 October 2023. Having championed global digital governance at that level, the government’s decision to block an event built on those same principles represents a direct contradiction of its own international commitments.
As the NRC put it, “the government of Zambia missed an opportunity to demonstrate a strong commitment to preserving the multistakeholder model, a key feature of global digital governance.” The coalition added that a direct channel for resolving outstanding issues with Access Now would have been the appropriate path forward, consistent with Zambia’s obligations as a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
The Human Cost
For many who travelled to Lusaka, RightsCon represents far more than a professional event. Sabhanaz Rashid Diya, Executive Director at Tech Global Institute — one of the 133 organisations that signed the NRC condemnation — captured what the cancellation means for communities that depend on the conference most.
“For many, especially those of us in the Global South, RightsCon isn’t just another conference,” she wrote. “It is the penultimate space to sustain our voices, movements, and communities, particularly in an increasingly fragmented world.”
The financial toll falls hardest on those with the least room to absorb it. “At a time when organisations and human rights defenders are already stretched thin by funding cuts and limited resources, being here reflects a significant tradeoff,” Diya said. “Many have invested scarce funds, secured visas, and spent months planning sessions and meetings to make the journey to Lusaka.”
“More troublingly, it sends a signal that Global South governments constantly advocating for more visibility, more voice and more autonomy are unable to provide a trustworthy and reliable platform, and in doing so, are reinforcing the very concentration of power they seek to challenge.”
Diya called for a fundamental rethink of how the digital rights movement organises itself. “Our movements need a serious recalibration. We need to unlearn and explore new strategies about building, safely scaling and sustaining critical digital rights work and communities. We need to ask who has privileged access to rooms, whose voices are being censored, and who ultimately makes decisions. Our solidarity needs a re-imagination.”
Global Condemnation
The response from civil society and international bodies was swift and unambiguous.
Paradigm Initiative, a pan-African digital rights organisation and one of the NRC statement signatories, stated it “condemns, in the strongest terms, the actions of the Government of Zambia that have now led to the cancellation of RightsCon 2026,” expressing solidarity with the thousands of colleagues “who are either already in Lusaka, are in-flight at this time, or were set to arrive over the next few days.”
Gina Romero, UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association, went further:
“Requiring disclosure of topics for an ‘alignment with national values’ is a clear violation of the rights to freedom of assembly, association, and expression, and a deliberate attack on civic space. The postponement of the event works as a de facto cancellation given its vast logistical complexity and the proximity to the scheduled dates. This measure is a strategic obstruction of one of the most vital assemblies for the global digital rights community.”
Romero also raised a separate concern running alongside the RightsCon fallout: that UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day events in Zambia required compulsory government accreditation for delegates, sharing private information held by the UN. She called it “a clear breach of the right to privacy. The right to assemble must not be conditioned upon the disclosure of sensitive information or the surveillance of those convening.”
Access Now acknowledged the outpouring of support: “Over the last 48 hours we have experienced an overwhelming surge of support from civil society, government representatives, sponsors, and our community as a whole.”
What This Means for Digital Rights Across Africa
RightsCon 2026 was intended to centre African perspectives on digital rights — a milestone, as it would have been the first edition held in Sub-Saharan Africa. The NRC described it as “an incredible opportunity for local and global exchange, and to create new initiatives to realise human rights in the digital age.” That opportunity is now lost.
A government that demands topic disclosure before permitting an assembly on digital rights sends a message that reaches well beyond this one event. The NRC statement warned that the last-minute reversal “raises questions about trust and commitment to civil society engagement and international agreements” — trust that Zambia had previously worked to build across years of active participation in global governance processes.
For organisations already navigating geopolitical unpredictability, a cancellation of this scale makes it harder to justify holding future global gatherings across the Global South — at precisely the moment when those communities most need a seat at the table.
Diya named the structural problem plainly: “This ‘postponement’ by the Government of Zambia without any real justification sends an alarming signal to the human rights community. It underscores how already scarce civic spaces are shrinking and becoming less secure, how difficult it is to sustain communities and movements, and how years of work can be disrupted at any moment.”
Yet her closing words held. “It is perhaps important to remind ourselves that we are not alone and the human rights community stands together to back and build this movement.”
