RightsCon 2022

In 2011, Access Now hosted the first-ever RightsCon (then the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference). We met with the intention to create something different: a civil society-led space where all stakeholders – from tech companies to government representatives to human rights defenders – could come together to build a rights-respecting digital future. Since then, RightsCon has rotated between five continents and grown, both in size and in scope to meet the evolving needs of a movement.

RightsCon 2022 will be held online from Monday, June 6 to Friday, June 10, 2022.

REGISTRATION

In an effort to ensure a safe and productive summit environment, registration for RightsCon will close on June 3, 2022. If you are unable to register before the deadline, we’ll share details on how to engage with us in other ways during the week of RightsCon 2022.

PANEL: USING THE POWER OF TECHNOLOGY TO RESIST THE WAR ON DRUGS

For decades, communities and civil society from across the world have organised at local, national, and global levels to resist the harms brought about by the war on drugs, which include a worldwide mass incarceration crisis, thousands of extrajudicial killings, the global stigmatisation and criminalisation of people who use drugs, and countless acts of police and military violence, often targeting marginalized people. From drug checking to digital activism, new technologies have been critical in connecting the global movement against prohibition, holding governments accountable, and providing health and harm reduction to people neglected and marginalized by the state. However, this linkage has been little explored, and there have been almost no conversations between the drug reform movement, and people engaged in technology and digital rights activism. To remedy this gap, this session at RightsCon 2022 will bring together voices from across the world that will seek to take stock of the ways in which the drug reform movement uses technology to resist the war on drugs, and explore spaces for cooperation between the movement and a broader audience engaged in digital activism and technology.

A conversation with:

• Ernesto Cortés, Asociación Costarricense para el Estudio e Intervención en Drogas (ACEID)

• Gloria Lai, International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC)

• Isaac Olushola, Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP)

• Mireia Ventura, Energy Control