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According to a 2022 United States Agency for International Development (USAID) report, the “roughly 1.1 billion people” lacking official identity are in many ways “invisible, discounted, and left behind.” Without a national identity, these individuals face barriers to accessing public services, exercising voting rights, and, in some cases, utilizing services offered by the private sector, like bank accounts and SIM cards. Indeed, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call on UN member states to provide legal identity for all, including free registration at birth, as one means to bridge socio-economic divides.

Over the past years, one of the topics we see taking over the agenda of the civic space security field is the creation of organizational security policies that will help NGOs, media outlets, collectives, and other groups to design and institutionalize their security controls and protocols, as well as help sustain these efforts in a better way. Given challenges like high staff turnaround that is usual globally, the security interventions and their quality can be better justified, and their effects can be longer-lasting, maximizing the impact of the activities we conduct in projects like our very GIF project.

As Indonesia’s general election draws closer, the spread of hate speech targeting political figures is expected to intensify, similar to what happened in the 2019 election.

Cybersecurity experts say Serbian state bodies and public enterprises are failing to act on indications that the email credentials of their employees are being sold on the dark net.

Обзор нового закона по вопросам инфобеза, информатизации и цифровых активов в части изменения законодательства в сфере персональных данных.

In recent years, the civil society community witnessed very positive changes in the way digital emergencies are addressed for NGOs, small media outlets, and other social groups: Better processes to grab information about incidents, the creation of helpdesks, and resources to make the Incident Response process more accessible, are some of the strategies we have nowadays to improve the effectiveness of digital security reactive processes. However, those advances are helpful after incidents occur. When looking for more comprehensive security strategies, we should also consider proactive measures to help avoid and reduce the impact, as well as quickly detect and react to the many threats our communities are vulnerable to.

The overall goal of this approach is to support civil society globally, and especially digital security practitioners from the global majority to own more digital security processes and knowledge within their communities, incorporating specialized knowledge and skills that until now has resided mainly with international organizations, usually far away (geographically and situationally) from the local context.