A Ford-backed network is helping civil society resist online threats

A newly launched philanthropy-backed initiative is aiming to help civil society groups in the global south deal with a surge of online attacks and surveillance that has coincided with rising authoritarianism and growing mistrust of institutions worldwide. The Global Network for Social Justice and Digital Resilience, which launched Tuesday during the United Nations Internet Governance Forum in Kyoto, Japan, will distribute grants to at least 10 organizations that provide technical support to civil society groups in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa “where the harms and uneven benefits of technology are most pronounced,” according to a press release. The Ford Foundation is providing $15 million in seed funding to help launch the network. The New Venture Fund is the fiscal sponsor, which means it manages donor funds. An independent board also has been set up to oversee activities. The initial list of grantees includes Brazil’s Núcleo de Pesquisas, Estudios y Formación, or Nupef; Canada’s the Citizen Lab; Chile’s Derechos Digitales; Costa Rica’s Fundación Acceso; international organization The Engine Room; India’s Centre for Internet & Society; Lebanon’s Social Media Exchange; Mexico’s SocialTIC; Nigeria’s Co-Creation Hub; and Uganda’s Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa, or CIPESA. Among the network’s aims is to increase collaborations between technology organizations and social justice groups being targeted by spyware, misinformation campaigns and internet shutdowns by state and nonstate players. The network also will push for more equity, inclusion and gender diversity within the social justice and technology fields. The network has been in the works for several months, and grantee organizations have already convened, a Ford Foundation spokesperson told Devex. In addition to funds, the network will provide grantees opportunities to exchange tips about how to develop best practices and governance models for Internet use in the global south. The initiative’s launch reflects the growing need to assist civil society groups confronted with an increasingly hazardous internet culture where extremism and divisive political rhetoric are becoming normalized, according to Alberto Cerda Silva, a program officer at Ford Foundation’s technology and society international program. “Even 10 years ago, there was a romanticized perspective that the Internet would bring freedom, democracy and good things for everybody worldwide,” he said. “Over the course of the years, it has become clear that you cannot take that for granted. The internet is not only granting us access to information but also a lot of challenges,” Cerda told Devex in an interview. Ford Foundation’s technology and society program focuses on “building bridges” between technologists and civil society groups and has a $25 million annual budget to distribute grants globally. Among the goals is to reduce inequalities, disinformation and “dangerous speech” promoted online, according to the foundation’s website. Internationally, NGOs and civil society groups have increasingly been targeted by those seeking to spread false information intended to sow division and create confusion about them and the communities they support, according to InterAction, a U.S.-based coalition of international NGOs. Many of the network grantees have experienced “the whole continuum” of attacks from emotional to physical attacks, Cerda said. The issue has grown worse as disinformation campaigns by politicians become common. Former U.S. President Donald Trump was infamous for dispelling critical reports about him as “fake news,” even if they were accurate. And in 2019, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro “rode a campaign of divisive rhetoric and social media-driven disinformation to the Brazilian Presidency,” InterAction notes in its most recent report on disinformation. The tense political atmosphere during the Bolsonaro administration, which coincided with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, exacerbated existing internet access challenges for Indigenous and other vulnerable communities, said Oona Castro, director of institutional development at Brazil’s Instituto Nupef, one of the network’s initial grantees. Nupef is an information and communications technology research and advocacy group that works with Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities in remote areas of the Amazon and other regions of Brazil. Civil rights threats against these groups increased under Bolsonaro, whose administration loosened protections for Indigenous-held lands to allow for more commercial uses. When the pandemic started, Indigenous groups and environmental activists in remote areas with limited access to the Internet became “more isolated than usual and they were really vulnerable under a government that wasn’t in favor of Indigenous land protection,” Castro said. It was harder for them to spread their messages to the public or notify advocacy groups or authorities when they saw threats to their lands such as illegal logging or mining, she added. Nupef is now pushing Brazilian internet providers to expand their infrastructure so that it reaches remote territories. That process “sometimes takes too long, or never happens,” Castro said. In many parts of Africa, activists and nonprofit organizations face similar internet access challenges and tend to lack appropriate cybersecurity infrastructure to protect themselves from those who might want to undermine their work, said Ashnah Kalemera, program manager at CIPESA. To help address this, CIPESA organizes an annual roadshow ahead of its Internet Freedom in Africa Forum to reach those who can’t trek to the event and share information about how the internet can be used to promote human rights, democracy and transparency, among other things. The roadshow targets “frontline human rights defenders and social justice actors” as well as feminist groups that might face unique “challenges around cultural biases” in rural communities, Kalemera said. This year, CIPESA’s team traveled across Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda to talk to groups about internet use and safety and security resources that might be available to them, according to Kalemera. One of the values of the Digital Resilience Network is that it can expand opportunities for global south-led organizations to share their experiences with initiatives such as the roadshow and discuss how internet technologies are used in their local contexts, she said. “It’s impossible to overstate the need for a digital resilience network focused on the Global South,” Kalemera said in a statement. “The opportunity to share knowledge about opportunities and challenges excites us the most. We are grateful to have the chance to learn, reflect, and adapt with sister organizations.” It’s very beneficial that all of these organizations are not only based in the global south, where more tech expertise is needed, but also that they work on the local level, Cerda said. They have a better chance to build trust with communities than organizations based in a different country that may be dealing with different technology challenges, he said. Update, Oct. 11, 2023: This article has been updated with the Ford Foundation’s latest budget figures for its technology and society program.