Results from the DDI Programme
Access Now
During this reporting period, Access Now has had a special focus on spyware surveillance. They published a report calling out the use of Pegasus to hack and spy on civil society in Jordan.
Access Now’s commitment to challenge overreaching surveillance laws, policies, and practices and the use of spyware is demonstrated by their involvement in a landmark case against the cyber-intelligence company NSO Group. Access Now’s work on the case began in 2020, when they collaborated with multiple partners to submit an amicus brief and compile in-depth testimonies from Pegasus victims in India, Morocco, Rwanda, and Togo. In May 2025, a California jury found that NSO Group should pay $167,254,000 in punitive damages and $445,000 in compensatory damages for targeting WhatsApp’s infrastructure with its Pegasus spyware. This is the first time the company is to pay damages for its hacking operations, and marks the first major court victory against the spyware firm. Access Now coordinated with partners in the Global South — who are working on the frontlines — to help amplify their voices and experiences in this case.
CIVICUS
Civics Public Foundation from Kyrgyzstan was a part of the first Digital Action Lab (DAL) run by CIVICUS. Through their participation in the DAL, Civics Public Foundation developed the first-ever online human rights course in the Kyrgyz language. Already reaching hundreds of young people, the course will remain a long-term educational resource, expanding access to civic education, especially for youth in remote regions. The DAL program fostered partnerships with independent media and enabled them to host their course on a gamified platform, ensuring broader reach. Civics Public Foundation state:
“Overall, DAL has made us more agile, resilient, and innovative, equipping us to navigate shrinking civic space while advancing democratic values.”
CIVICUS has issued new grants for their election work. One of the supported organisations is Democracy Works Foundation from Malawi. Democracy Works Foundation’s project seeks to strengthen electoral integrity and civic participation in Malawi ahead of the September 2025 general elections. It addresses low voter turnout, limited civic awareness, and rising mis/disinformation that threatens trust in electoral institutions. With Malawi’s predominantly youthful population, the initiative will equip young people and youth-focused CSOs with digital civic knowledge and tools to engage more meaningfully in the electoral process, monitor elections, and promote transparency. By enhancing digital capacity and fostering inclusive participation, the project aims to build public trust and ensure credible, peaceful elections.
Digital Defenders Partnership
DDP has made significant progress with the Tech Care Guide, which is developed as a step-by-step resource for civil society to deliver digital support in emergencies. This tool offers guidance for identifying risks, responding to incidents, and fostering care practices around digital security and well-being. In May 2025, DDP launched the French translation of the Tech Care Guide, ensuring maintenance and adaptation of the content to enhance usability. It was shared widely with French-speaking audiences through conferences and events in Francophone Africa and among regional networks.
The Digital Defenders Partnership (DDP) has been working since the beginning of the project to define how best to support southern partners in strengthening their safety and security capacity. After a process of consultation and planning, this effort has now taken shape through a year-long holistic protection accompaniment with Fondo de Mujeres del Sur (FMS), running from June 2025 to May 2026. Building on FMS’s earlier digital security assessments and protocols, the accompaniment focusses on strengthening internal capacities for incident response, risk prevention, and sustainable protection practices. In parallel, DDP has also been invited by FMS to join the Gender and Technology Advisory Committee, a regional space that convenes feminist and civil society organisations to address the intersection of gender and technology. Together, these engagements mark an important step in operationalising this DDI activity, after a long period of collective reflection and design.
Danish Institute for Human Rights
DIHR has established an expert group consisting of 18 members, acting in their individual capacities and drawn from diverse disciplines and geographic regions. The group is tasked with elaborating a set of global legal principles and guidelines on how international law and standards should be interpreted, applied, and enforced in the digital context. The group is chaired by Mikiko Otani, ICJ Commissioner and former Chair of the Committee on the Rights of the Child.
The ICJ and DIHR co-hosted a workshop on ‘Applying International Law Principles in the Digital Space’ at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) on 24 June 2025 in Lillestrøm, Norway. The workshop was attended by approximately 100 people (80 in person, 20 online). The session aimed to raise awareness of both existing international legal and governance frameworks and challenges in relation to the protection of human rights in the digital space and convey the need to apply the whole spectrum of international law to obtain accountability for digital rights harms. It also provided participants with an opportunity to learn more about the envisaged Global Principles initiative and to engage in discussion through a Q&A. The official outcome messages reflect a number of key messages from the workshop – in particular when it comes to state obligations as per international law in the digital space.
European Partnership for Democracy
Consortium partner The World Organisation of the Scout Movements (WOSM) mobilised 40 young scout members from 10 different countries during the training of trainers (ToT) in Togo in April 2025. They were trained on digital technologies and advocacy for digital rights. The participants then mobilised their own national movements, becoming trainers of their community in Niger, Cameroon, Chad, Senegal, Mali, and Ethiopia, training a total of 311 young scout members during the month of June. The ToT campaign will continue, with the objective of training 500 young people across the Sahel region.
Consortium partner CFI is working with local partner Digital Rights Frontlines, to train a total of 70 youth civic actors in South Sudan. The first training involved 10 journalists and focused on media and information literacy, fact-checking, and digital safety. The second training engaged 60 CSO representatives on hate speech prevention.
Empowering Civil Society
in the Digital Age
Fondo de Mujeres del Sur
The Latin American Alliance of Women’s and Feminist Funds, with Fondo de Mujeres del Sur (FMS) as the leading partner, have succeeded in kick-starting their sub-granting mechanisms across their consortium. 132 organisations have been supported distributed between 14 countries. The target for the entire project period is 100 – which has already been exceeded. The grants are distributed across three levels:
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Macro level: 21% of the initiatives supported are setting up lobby and advocacy strategies aiming to promote changes in the frameworks that govern digital rights and the protection of citizens and their organisations against Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV).
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Meso level: 69% of the initiatives resourced are directing their efforts to reinforce their organisational preparedness for prevention and response, in order to minimize the likelihood of experiencing TFGBV.
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Micro level: 10% of the initiatives are focusing on promoting resilience and protection, safeguarding individuals and communities navigating increasingly hostile digital environments.
One of the organisations receiving funding from the consortium is Fundación Familia Migrante in Chile. They are fostering dialogue through the creation of digital platforms and community spaces for migrants. Additionally, the initiative is implementing social media campaigns focused on preventing TFGBV towards migrant communities in a context of increasing attacks, by informing and sensitizing about the new Chilean law that penalizes digital violence.
Global Focus
Global Focus have conducted 3 Knowledge Hub Community Calls in June with simultaneous interpretation between English, Spanish and French. One of the webinars was titled: ‘How do we deal with AI being used as misinformation?’ Richard Ngamita from Thraets, and Member of the DDI Advisory Board presented: ‘The AI Election that Wasn’t: Lessons from 2024 Global South Elections’ and Nkem Agunwa, Program Manager, Africa, from WITNESS presented the recently released guide on ‘Community-based Approaches to Verification’ published by WITNESS.
The Advisory Board (AB) has drafted a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis of the current digital democracy context as a contribution to an exchange with the Steering Committee on trends of digital civic space, and how the development impacts the implementation of the programme. The analysis identifies major strengths to civil society in the Global South as “resilience and adaptability, especially of smaller organisations, as well as their significant social capital, their potentials for alternative technological innovation, and their high degree of global connectedness”. It points to weaknesses as the lack of financial stability and long-term outlooks. Opportunities lie among others in the “pulling together of civil society and the global digital rights community… in response to the massive funding cuts”. Regulatory overreach and new forms of attacks on civic spaces increasingly powered by emerging technologies are pointed to as threats.
IWGIA
IWGIA and their consortium have been busy carrying out trainings and digital security audits of their partners. Bootcamps have been conducted in the Philippines for 25 journalists. They were introduced to AI tools for climate data analysis and fact-checking methodologies. In May, a Constructive Journalism Lab took place in Indonesia for 20 journalists from nine women-led media outlets. It focused on countering disinformation for Indigenous women.
In Bolivia, the project is updating a geo-viewer with an interactive dashboard. As a result, information will be more easily accessible for Indigenous leaders, allowing them to improve territorial management. Three early warning bulletins were issued though the geo-viewer in response to flooding in the region. These bulletins played a crucial role in supporting the declaration of a disaster emergency by the Indigenous communities, enabling them to mobilise external aid effectively. Through this experience, the Indigenous communities demonstrated how digital technology can be harnessed to confront challenges that they face, including by strengthening Indigenous-led disaster preparedness and response strategies.
WITNESS
In June, WITNESS wrapped up the first iteration of the Fortify Community Truth cohort model. This pilot brought together 17 dynamic cohort members from across West and Central Africa. The cohort members were trained in digital verification and Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) skills – which are used by investigative reporters to transform how evidence is gathered, verified, and presented, making their stories more rigorous, transparent, and impactful.
The project led to a significant shift in capacity among the cohort. With most participators having no prior proficiency, 80% of participants reported medium to high proficiency in OSINT after the trainings. One participant has emerged as Nigeria’s first OSINT-focused investigative journalist. Reflecting on her experience she shared:
“I have worked my entire career as an investigative journalist. I’ve come to expect that when I report on violations by state security forces, the first response is denial. But when I began integrating OSINT methodologies into my reporting, that response turned to silence. And to me, that silence is a form of justice.”
WITNESS introduced the Truly Innovative and Effective AI Detection (TRIED) Benchmark, a new framework for evaluating detection tools based on their real-world impact and capacity for innovation. Drawing on frontline experiences, deceptive AI cases, and global consultations, the report outlined how detection tools must evolve to become truly innovative and relevant by meeting diverse linguistic, cultural, and technological contexts. It offers practical guidance for developers, policy actors, and standards bodies to design accountable, transparent, and user-centered detection solutions, and incorporate socio technical considerations into future AI standards, procedures and evaluation frameworks. WITNESS received positive feedback on an early draft of the Benchmark from fact-checkers and AI tools developers. The report was praised for its comprehensive approach to accounting for different aspects limiting the usability of the detection tools.
