APCNews: The news service on social justice and sustainable development

	APCNews A newsletter on using the internet and ICTs for social justice and sustainable development

#422 — 5 June 2025
Can we find sustainability in a precarious funding climate? The role of Big Tech in deepening the funding crisis places organisations defending digital rights, such as those within the APC network, under growing pressure. In this issue, we feature an article reflecting on how we might assess and respond to these challenges, while outlining some potential pathways for collective action. To mark World Environment Day, we also share pieces that explore both the problems and the alternatives posed by digital technologies with regard to environmental justice.

Global aid in crisis: Can we find sustainability in a precarious funding climate?

The funding landscape as we know it has changed quickly, creating a climate of uncertainty for many civil society organisations and social movements. The ongoing dynamics risk fracturing movements, turning groups against one another in competition for resources and undermining their collective power. In this context, we have been seeking to reflect together on how to assess and respond to these challenges, precisely at a moment when we need more – and not less – international solidarity and joint action.

DEFENDING DIGITAL RIGHTS

WSIS+20 review: Eight practical recommendations

This document builds on the Five-Point Plan for an Inclusive WSIS+20 Review – endorsed by 114 organisations and 57 individual experts – to offer practical recommendations to ensure transparency, inclusivity and meaningful stakeholder engagement in the World Summit on the Information Society 20-year review process.

Who tells our stories? Automated journalism and fundamental rights

Technologies are neither neutral nor inevitable. How these technologies are designed, who they benefit and under what conditions they are incorporated are all profoundly political decisions. When we talk about AI in journalism, what is at stake is not just the future of the profession, but the quality of public debate, the diversity of voices and the right to verified, plural and free information. TAMBIÉN EN ESPAÑOL.

Global campaign defends fundamental rights of platform workers

APC member Derechos Digitales launched an audiovisual piece inviting us to rethink labour precarity from a critical and creative perspective. The video is part of a campaign sending a a clear message: the lives of platform workers are not a game. TAMBIÉN EN ESPAÑOL.

WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY

The role of digitalisation in collective action to end plastic pollution

On World Environment Day, the APC Environmental Sustainability Group invites all stakeholders to reflect on the impacts of digital technologies on the planet, as well as their role in contributing to collective action to end plastic pollution.

Sensing with the sun: A short introduction to a sensor story within communities

Sensors can be put at the service of those affected to empower local voices in their pursuit to detect and document socio-environmental violations – in such a way that governments and corporations cannot refuse to recognise the problem. Learn more about a community of practice exploring them.

TACKLING GENDER

Global symposium on technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV)

The recordings from the Third Global Symposium on Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence held by UNFPA, Global Affairs Canada and APC this year are now available. The event attracted over 1,400 registrants from 84 countries, and focused on intersectional challenges, collective action, and the growing threat of anti-gender discourse in the digital age.

TFGBV experienced by Black women and gender non-conforming persons

From South Africa, this article, written for a Feminist Internet Research Network special edition for GenderIT.org, proposes a decolonial feminist approach to exploratory research on technology-facilitated gender-based violence as a way to address the issues raised on multiple fronts.

How are women changing networks, and networks changing women?

Episode 2 of the new season of the Routing for Communities podcast is on the air. Join us on an audio journey as we explore fundamental questions in the field of community networks, seen through the perspectives of women from a range of countries who play various roles – from hands-on technical work to national and international advocacy for better policies and regulation. Listen now.

BUILDING A FREE INTERNET

Kiwix on access to vital information anywhere, including places of confinement and isolated communities

In this month's interview for the Building a Free Internet of the Future series we spoke with Stephane Coillet-Matillon of Kiwix, a non-profit organisation and free and open source software project, dedicated to providing offline access to free educational content, which was recently awarded an NGI0 grant.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Blended Training Programme for ICT Network Managers in LAC and Africa: Call for applications now open!

Applications for this online training programme are being accepted until 9 June 2025 from those working in rural and remote areas and Indigenous communities across Latin America or Africa.

Relevant events for our community

Check out other APC network events coming up this year.