Skyline International for Human Rights at RightsCon 2026 in Lusaka

RightsCon 2026 convenes from 5 to 9 May in Lusaka, Zambia - and Skyline International for Human Rights will be there. Our Executive Director will participate across four days of programming, bringing Skyline's work on surveillance, digital rights, and Palestinian human rights into the heart of one of the most important global gatherings on technology and human rights.

Across the week, Skyline will co-host two in-person dialogues and a hands-on workshop and will participate in a community booth with Vuka! Coalition for Civic Action to connect with the broader human rights community in Lusaka.

Digital Apartheid and Siege Warfare: How tech enables occupation and control in Palestine (In-person dialogue)

Wednesday 7 May 2026, 11:30 – 12:30 CAT
Co-hosted by 7amleh and Skyline International for Human Rights

This session opens a critical conversation about the ways digital tools - from algorithmic content moderation to AI-powered surveillance - are being deployed as instruments of occupation, segregation, and war against Palestinians, with particular attention to the experiences of women. Participants will examine how the suppression of Palestinian voices online is not incidental but structural and how major technology companies have become complicit through the provision of cloud infrastructure and computing capacity to state actors.

The session is designed as a genuinely open exchange. Participants are invited to draw parallels from other contexts, reflect on how digital repression manifests in their own regions, and collectively think through how communities can document and resist these dynamics. The goal is a shared, grounded understanding of why tech-enabled oppression in conflict zones is a global concern and what organized responses might look like.

Surveillance as Warfare: Biometric control, AI targeting, and corporate complicity (In-person dialogue)

Thursday 8 May 2026, 10:15–11:15 CAT
Co-hosted by Skyline International for Human Rights, 7amleh, and Access Now

In Gaza and the West Bank, surveillance is not a metaphor - it is an active instrument of population control. AI systems such as "Lavender" and "Gospel" are used to generate targeting lists; facial recognition and biometric data extraction are deployed at scale; and the entire architecture is made possible by Israeli, American, and European technology and security companies whose products, software, and cloud services underpin these operations. The legal and humanitarian implications are profound.

This dialogue will examine how AI-driven targeting and biometric surveillance function as warfare tools in the occupied Palestinian territories; the specific roles played by technology corporations in enabling violations through products and services, the regulatory gaps - from EU export controls to weak due diligence requirements - that allow this to continue without accountability; and what civil society, policymakers, and advocates can do to challenge these systems and advance meaningful legal accountability

From Palestine to Ghana to Mexico: the interconnectedness of violent tech, and the interconnectedness of resistance (In-person workshop)

Wednesday 5 May 2026, 16:30–17:30 CAT
Co-facilitated by R3D, the International Justice Clinic at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, Skyline International for Human Rights

The genocidal war on Gaza is not committed by the Israeli occupation alone, but a web of international actors and networks including tech companies and governments that found profit in the genocide. This is clearly illustrated by the report of Francesca Albanese "from economy of occupation to economy of genocide". This ecosystem developed technologies that maintained 70 years of Israeli occupation, and empowered oppression worldwide against different communities: immigrants in Europe, protestors in the United States, journalists and civil society in Ghana, Togo, Bangladesh and Mexico, only to name a few examples.

In this workshop participants will engage in hands-on research activity with the aim to better understand the geopolitics and power dynamics that produce oppressive surveillance and defense technologies around the world, revise frameworks to identify perpetrators of human rights violations, and explore how this knowledge could lead into better coordinated collective action and tactics in the Global South.

Working in groups, participants will receive specific case studies on the use of surveillance technologies in Latin America, Africa, Asia, SWANA region, Europe and the US, to identify and connect financiers and profiteers. Participants will collectively create a physical map that connects Silicon Valley, militaries, governments, venture capitalists, public scientific R&D funds, western universities. Participants will be encouraged to bring their expertise and highlight relevant resources produced through their own work. After creating this map, participants will have an open discussion on how this collective awareness could inspire better tactics for coordination to protect people from the prevalence of surveillance and oppressive AI empowered technologies in the Global South.

Vuka! Coalition for Civic Action (Community booth)

7 - 8 May from 13:30–17:30 CAT

As a Steering Committee member of Vuka! Coalition for Civic Action, Skyline International will join Vuka!'s community booth at the RightsCon Community Village. Our Executive Director will deliver a lightning talk on privacy and emerging tech regulations. Come find us over two days of programming and pick up resources!