RightsCon 2026

Each year, RightsCon convenes thousands of participants from across the world to address the growing impact of digital technologies on human rights. Through panels, workshops, roundtables and closed-door meetings, the summit provides a space for collective strategy-building across sectors and regions.

Over more than a decade, RightsCon has grown into the world’s leading global forum on digital rights, rotating across regions and adapting to the evolving political, technological and regulatory landscape. Its programme reflects the complexity of today’s digital environment, from surveillance and censorship to platform accountability and emerging technologies.

The 2026 edition will take place in Lusaka, Zambia, marking a return to the African continent and the first RightsCon hosted in South-Central Africa. The summit will be held in person and online from 5 to 8 May 2026, building on discussions and outcomes from RightsCon 2025 in Taipei.

RightsCon 2026 aims to strengthen global solidarity, amplify regional perspectives, and support coordinated action to defend human rights in an increasingly digitised world.

Drugs, Data & Justice: Resisting Algorithmic Policing, Building Community Safety

Wednesday, 6 May · 15:15–16:15 (CET)

The International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), Conectas Direitos Humanos, Statewatch, European Digital Rights (EDRi), and the Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network (SWAN) convene this interactive roundtable to examine how artificial intelligence and other digital technologies are reshaping drug policy, with harmful consequences for marginalised communities.

This participatory session will explore how punitive drug policies are actively driving the expansion of systems that intensify racialised surveillance, exclusion and institutional violence — from algorithmic policing, to biometric surveillance, and welfare profiling. Drawing on concrete case studies from Europe, Latin America and beyond, speakers will highlight both the harms generated by these technologies and ongoing efforts to challenge them.

The discussion will be facilitated by:

• Carla Vreche (Conectas Direitos Humanos)
• Chloé Berthélémy (European Digital Rights - EDRi)
• Juan Fernández Ochoa (International Drug Policy Consortium - IDPC)
• Romain Lanneau (Statewatch)
• Trajche Janushev (Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network - SWAN)

Through facilitated discussion and breakout groups, participants will identify current digital implementations, assess existing advocacy and accountability approaches and explore community-driven alternatives that advance harm reduction and community safety.

Bringing together drug policy reform, harm reduction, digital rights and sex workers’ rights perspectives, the session aims to distil actionable strategies and lay the groundwork for sustained cross-movement collaboration to respond to the growing securitisation and surveillance justified in the name of drug control.