Access Now is a growing international human rights organization dedicated to defending and extending the digital rights of users at risk around the world, including issues of privacy, security, freedom of expression, and transparency. Our policy, advocacy, technology, and operations teams have staff presences in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East/North Africa (MENA), North America, and South/Southeast Asia, to provide global support to our mission.
Hosted by Access Now, RightsCon is the leading global summit on human rights in the digital age. It’s where the world’s human rights experts, business leaders, technologists, engineers, investors, activists, and government representatives come together to share ideas, build strategies, showcase new technologies, and create tomorrow’s internet. It is an energizing reminder of the existence of a powerful global digital rights community that is determined to defend human rights and keep the internet open and free.
Convened in locations that are power centers for the internet, for nine years RightsCon rotated annually around the world to various global cities. Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, in July 2020 the Access Now team made the bold decision to pivot our operational model and host the conference entirely virtually for the first time. After a resounding success, the decision was made to host the conference virtually again in June 2021 to celebrate the 10th anniversary series, and again in June 2022 given the inequitable availability of vaccine distribution and travel access among the global community.
Over the past several years, the RightsCon community has grown notably. RightsCon Tunis (2019) convened nearly 3,000 participants from 120 countries and 700+ organizations. RightsCon Online (2020) boasted a total of 7,696 registrations and RightsCon: The 10th Anniversary Series (2021) grew even larger to an audience of 9,304. The community represents a variety of target stakeholder groups including representation across all sectors from civil society to the private sector.
