Bread&Net is a multi-day unconference, where activists, technologists, lawyers, artists, trainers, journalists, researchers, entrepreneurs and others from across the region will come together to strengthen collective efforts to advance human rights in digitally networked spaces.
From November 15 to 17, 2019 in Beirut, Lebanon, regional activists, technologists, lawyers, artists, trainers, journalists, researchers, entrepreneurs, and others will convene to set a collective, forward-looking agenda promoting digital freedoms in the Middle East and North Africa. We will support that agenda by developing improved strategies for engaging broader, more diverse communities in the development and critique of practices and policies that implicate human rights in digitally networked spaces.
Why Bread&Net?
Over the past decade, civil society has become dependent on access to digital networks and tools. In the MENA region, however, the advantages these networks and tools afford have been mitigated by increasingly restrictive laws, scaled-up mass surveillance, disinformation campaigns, and crackdowns on online freedom of expression. The resulting constriction of civic space has all but neutralized advocacy for digital rights. Bread&Net will reactivate and renew an existing yet latent network of multidisciplinary stakeholders by offering an open, safe physical space from which to devise strategies and tactics that respond to these challenges.