RightsCon 2025’s Shareback Session

Kuala Lumpur, 25 March 2025 – As a follow-up to the summit, INITIATE.MY participated in a shareback session hosted by the event sponsor, Luminate Foundation. The session brought together Malaysian participants of RightsCon 2025, including Architects of Diversity (AoD), Freedom Film Network, Sinar Project, and the Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ). During the session, participants reflected on key learnings from the summit, identified overlapping areas of interest, and explored possibilities for future collaboration.

Before, INITIATE.MY participated in RightsCon 2025, held from 24 to 27 February 2025 in Taipei, Taiwan, and organised by Access Now. As the world’s leading summit on human rights in the digital age, RightsCon brings together business leaders, policymakers, legal experts, government officials, technologists, academics, journalists, and human rights advocates to tackle urgent challenges at the intersection of human rights and technology.

This year’s summit featured a dynamic mix of fireside chats, workshops, strategic roundtables, private meetings, and an interactive exhibition space. Key focus areas included artificial intelligence, freedom of expression, surveillance, content moderation, and data protection. INITIATE.MY joined the event remotely and attended selected online sessions, focusing on issues related to Southeast Asia, civic space, and grassroots digital security.

Hisham Muhaimi, representing INITIATE.MY during the shareback session, highlighted the value of exploring the wide range of digital security practices and tools showcased at RightsCon. These included the Secure Drop Workstation, a secure platform enabling whistleblowers and journalists to exchange sensitive documents safely; the digisec.wiki, a living resource that compiles practical digital safety guides for activists and civil society groups; and Pari AI, a tool designed to detect and monitor online hate speech, particularly on social media platforms.

Learning how other groups have integrated these technologies into their work inspired INITIATE.MY to consider how similar efforts could be piloted or adapted locally, especially to monitor election-related digital abuse, hate speech, and extremism.

These tools are directly relevant to INITIATE.MY’s work in countering online harassment, disinformation, and digital hate speech—issues that disproportionately affect marginalised communities, women, and human rights defenders in Malaysia. Tools like Pari AI provide practical solutions for organisations to track and respond to harmful narratives in real time, enabling more strategic and data-driven advocacy.

Localising these tools and frameworks within INITIATE.MY’s digital safety and literacy programmes could significantly strengthen the capacity of activists, journalists, and community organisations to detect risks early, respond effectively, and advocate for platform accountability in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Moving forward, INITIATE.MY aims to apply these RightsCon insights to develop impactful local programming, push for community-informed policy frameworks, and contribute to broader regional discussions on human rights in the digital age.