The Zambian government shut the room: the conversation must continue

At the end of April, I was supposed to board a plane to Zambia. The itinerary was full: a strategy meeting of the Freedom Online Coalition, the World Press Freedom Day conference, and (the event that in many ways anchored everything else) RightsCon, the world's largest summit on human rights in the digital environment.

I did not go. And neither did the roughly 2,600 people who had planned to be in Lusaka in person, alongside over 1,100 joining online, representing more than 150 countries and 750 institutions; for what would have been a historic moment: the first time RightsCon had ever been held in sub-Saharan Africa.

Days before the conference was set to open, the Zambian government announced a “postponement”. The stated reasons were incomplete security clearances and the need for further consultations. Time was needed, officials said, to ensure that all preparatory processes “fully align with national procedures, diplomatic protocols, and the broader objective of fostering a balanced and consensus-driven platform for dialogue”.

A further letter, delivered to Access Now over WhatsApp (the first official written communication they had received) cited the need for “comprehensive disclosure of critical information relating to key thematic issues proposed for discussion”, to ensure “full alignment with Zambia's national values”.

Let me be direct: the language barely conceals what was actually happening. Requiring disclosure of topics and alignment with national values before permitting a conference to proceed is not a procedural formality. It is a condition placed on the right to free assembly; and that condition is itself the violation.

What RightsCon actually is

For those unfamiliar, RightsCon is not a typical tech conference. Organised by Access Now, it is the rare space where civil society organisations, technologists, academics, journalists, policy advocates, and governments come together to grapple with the hardest questions about the internet: who governs it, who it excludes, how it is weaponised, and how it can be defended as a space for human dignity. Over a decade and a half, it has built the kind of cross-sector, cross-regional network that takes years to construct and can be disrupted in a matter of days.

Holding it in Lusaka this year was not merely symbolic. Access Now made the commitment to bring RightsCon back to the African continent in 2023, recognising the strength and global significance of Africa's digital rights community. It was a deliberate choice to centre perspectives from the Global Majority/Global South: from activists, researchers, and advocates who face steep barriers to attending events in Europe or North America. The loss is not abstract. It is the loss of a room that would have included voices rarely heard at these tables.

“It is simply impossible to postpone an event the size and scale of RightsCon a week before it is set to start. The summit requires more than a year of planning to host thousands of people and curate a programme of more than 500 sessions”. That is Access Now's own assessment, and they are right. A last-minute “postponement” at this proximity is a de facto cancellation. Access Now has made clear it will not return under these conditions, and it should not have to. That clarity deserves full solidarity.

What the government did (and what it reveals)

Access Now has now been transparent about the sequence of events, and it is worth setting out clearly. Their team arrived in Lusaka on 27 April, having coordinated closely with the Zambian government for years; signing a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Technology and Science, receiving a signed invitation for visa-requiring participants, and continuously briefing officials on the scope of the programme and the diversity of its participants.

On 27 April, one day after a government press release endorsed RightsCon, Access Now received a phone call from the Ministry informing them that diplomats from the People's Republic of China were putting pressure on the Zambian government because Taiwanese civil society participants were planning to attend in person.

What followed was a process of deliberate opacity. Immigration officers began telling arriving participants the conference had been cancelled; before any official announcement. Calls went unanswered over a public holiday in Zambia. When the Ministry finally communicated informally, it was to request the programme and participant list once more, information that had already been shared. The formal “postponement” was announced at 9:33pm Lusaka time on 28 April, via state-owned media, without consultation or prior notice to Access Now.

The conditions subsequently conveyed informally were unambiguous: for RightsCon to proceed, Access Now would have to moderate specific topics and exclude communities at risk (including Taiwanese participants) from both in-person and online participation. Access Now rightly refused. As they put it, this was their red line: not because they were unwilling to engage, but because the conditions were counter to everything RightsCon stands for.

Chinese diplomatic pressure over Taiwanese participation is the clearest proximate cause, but it is unlikely to be the only one. The programme also included sessions on LGBTQ+ rights and reproductive freedoms; topics that are politically sensitive in Zambia and across the region. Any one of these pressures may have been sufficient. Their convergence, in a single event, appears to have been more than the government was willing to accommodate.

Access Now is direct about their conclusion: they believe foreign interference is the reason RightsCon 2026 will not proceed. That assessment, from an organisation that spent years building relationships with this government in good faith, should be taken seriously.

A troubling parallel at the press freedom conference

The World Press Freedom Day conference, led by UNESCO and themed “Shaping a Future of Peace”, went ahead in Lusaka, on 4 May. I am glad it took place. World Press Freedom Day matters; as a reminder to governments of their commitments, as a day of reflection for media professionals, and as a moment of remembrance for journalists who lost their lives in the pursuit of a story. These things are worth marking.

But I cannot set aside a discomfort about the conditions under which it occurred. I received an email from UNESCO informing me that, despite already holding accreditation through Indico (the UN's own platform), delegates were required to undergo an additional, compulsory government accreditation process administered by the Zambian authorities. That means that to attend a conference about press freedom, journalists and civil society representatives had to submit their personal information to the very government whose conduct toward civic space is, in many cases, a matter of legitimate scrutiny.

This is not a neutral registration requirement. It is surveillance as a condition of entry; and it sits uneasily alongside the forced exclusion of RightsCon participants happening at the same time, in the same city. UNESCO's presence and the Lusaka Call to Action is expected to produce carry real weight. But that weight is undermined if the independence of those in the room cannot be guaranteed. WPFD must be about more than convening discussions on press freedom. It must be about whether independent spaces for those discussions are permitted to exist in the first place.

What this moment demands

This cancellation lands at a particularly difficult moment. Over the past eighteen months, significant reductions in foreign assistance (particularly from the United States) have reshaped the operating environment for civil society. The stabilising function that funding once served, enabling long-term planning and global coordination, has receded.

Organisations are adapting in real time. Into that context comes the collapse of one of the community's most important annual gatherings, driven by the far reach of transnational repression; Access Now's own phrase, and a precise one.

What does this moment demand? First, unequivocal support for Access Now and the RightsCon community. The work of building a convening of that scale is immense; having it dismantled days before it was due to open is a serious blow. Financial support, public solidarity, and the amplification of what happened here all matter.

Second, democratic governments that claim to support internet freedom now have an opportunity to demonstrate that commitment in tangible ways; not only in statements, but in offering alternative spaces, political backing, and a reaffirmation that open discussion of human rights is not subject to foreign diplomatic veto.

Third, the community has an opportunity to think hard about resilience: diversifying funding, strengthening regional networks, and building hybrid and decentralised models less vulnerable to this kind of disruption. These are not new ideas, but the pace and scale of change now demand they move from aspiration to architecture.

The deeper question

The internet is not a neutral space. It is shaped by policies, power dynamics, and values. RightsCon exists because without forums where those forces can be openly examined and contested, the future of the internet gets decided without the people most affected by it. That is not an abstract concern. It is a description of what is already happening.

The question this week raises is blunt: who gets to be in the room, and who decides? A government, under pressure from a foreign power, chose to answer that question by shutting the room entirely. The response cannot only be disappointment. It must be a renewed commitment to building, defending, and sustaining the spaces where these conversations can happen – regardless of which government, or which diplomat, would prefer they did not.

The Zambian government shut the room. The conversation must continue anyway.

Dr Sebastian Smart, Senior Research Fellow, School of Economics, Finance and Law