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Thursday, April 30, 2026: We, the Net Rights Coalition (NRC), a network of digital rights actors, and all other signatories listed below, are appalled by the Government of Zambia’s unilateral announcement of the postponement of RightsCon on 29 April 2026, a move that has resulted in the cancellation of the global event with over 5000 participants that was going to be hosted in Sub-Saharan Africa for the first time. Access Now, partners, and thousands of stakeholders have incurred huge financial and logistical losses as plans were underway for the event to start in 3 days. Zambia will also record significant economic losses that would have come from thousands of visitors to a nation that prides itself as a tourist destination, anchored on the popular Zambia KuChalo (Zambia to the World) slogan. This will have a huge impact on Zambian small businesses that were engaged to provide services that will now be cancelled.
The need for international consensus-building remains critical, and the government of Zambia missed an opportunity to demonstrate a strong commitment to preserving the multistakeholder model, a key feature of global digital governance, across its country's digital rights engagements. Rather, 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.
The position comes after the Ministry of Technology and Science, on 3 March 2026, officially announced that they were the primary Government partner for RightsCon 2026, with the event meant to be held in Lusaka, Zambia and online from 5 to 8 May 2026. This government statement assured the global community that the event would proceed with the host government's appropriate support. The backtracking, at the last minute, on this commitment raises questions about trust and commitment to civil society engagement and international agreements, to which Zambia has in the past demonstrated a strong pledge. This action, when travel itineraries are set, accommodation is booked, and venue costs are incurred, constitutes a setback to global human and digital rights processes and derails the participation of diverse stakeholders, including civil society, government, investors, and the private sector engaged in these conversations.
The suspended event agenda presents areas of discourse on key digital economy topics, promotes digital rights and embeds multistakeholderism, as outlined in the Global Digital Compact (GDC), adopted in 2024, to which Zambia contributed as Co-Chair, having been appointed on 10 October 2023 by the President of the General Assembly, together with Sweden, to lead the intergovernmental process on the Global Digital Compact.
RightsCon in Lusaka would have been an incredible opportunity for local and global exchange, and to create new initiatives to realise human rights in the digital age. A clear channel of resolving any outstanding issues with the event convenor to save the multistakeholder approach would have been a fair course of action, aligned with international human rights standards to which Zambia subscribes as a State party, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
We condemn the government's actions that led to the cancellation of RightsCon in Zambia. This 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.
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