Paradigm Initiative trains advocates on digital rights

As parts of its capacity building project, the pan-African digital rights group, Paradigm Initiative, held a digital rights workshop for rights advocates in Kano, Nigeria.

The workshop, which held on March 19 and 20, 2019, with support from Macarthur Foundation and Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD), under its social and accountability project in Nigeria, had 50 participants in attendance.

The workshop looked at many important subjects around digital rights. Participants were introduced to topical issues around digital rights such as gender perspective to digital rights and the challenges women face online, tackling hate speech and fake news; navigating the grey areas while respecting rights to free Speech, digital rights and media advocacy as well as basic digital security tools and practices.

The digital rights workshop is part of Paradigm Initiative strategy to employ a proactive approach to ensure that organisations and individuals whose work depend largely on the openness of the internet, as well as those who engage the government through online activism, understand the human rights dynamics on the internet.

Paradigm Initiative has hosted more than 10 editions of the workshop in diverse locations across Nigeria and many African countries such as The Gambia, Uganda, Cameroon and Zambia. The workshop has now held two times in North-West Nigeria. In March 2015, an edition was hosted in Kaduna, Nigeria.

Participants at the workshop were tasked to continue to engage on topical issues around digital rights in Nigeria in order to support ongoing work in safeguarding human rights online