
Illustration by Sebastien Thibault
People-Powered Solutions: Connecting Local Communities and Global Challenges
Champions of Fair Labor: Ensuring Worker Rights and Economic Justice
Guardians of the Public Square: Protecting Civic Engagement
Climate Justice Cultivators: Strengthening Community Land and Resource Rights
Global South Architects: Rethinking Sovereign Debt and Global Finance
Public Interest Innovators: Advocating for the Public Good in Global Tech
Defenders of Dignity: Building a Safe and Gender Just Future for All
Public Interest Innovators: Advocating for the Public Good in Global Tech
As technology reshapes global culture, politics, and economics, many communities—especially from the Global South—remain excluded from their development, benefits, and governance, while also being impacted by their harms. An equitable and ethical digital future will only be possible when we expand tech power from a consolidated model to a shared one, foreground the public interest in design and deployment, and center voices who can protect those experiencing persistent discrimination and harassment online.
Around the world, visionary leaders are creating collaborative systems that amplify these voices while challenging harmful surveillance, harassment, and disinformation practices. Emphasizing people-centered frameworks, we must support leaders and civil society organizations that are advancing public interest technology and ensuring digital governance advances transparency, privacy, and free expression for all people.
International Justice Clinic, UCI Law: Protecting Digital Rights and Furthering Accountability Worldwide
From spyware to algorithmic censorship, digital technologies threaten freedom of expression worldwide. The International Justice Clinic fights back by embedding human rights protections into national laws and corporate policies, building global coalitions to hold tech companies and governments accountable.

Ford Foundation Launches First Global South Network to Strengthen the Digital Resilience of Civil Society
Ford’s Digital Resilience Network supports Global South social justice organizations in leveraging the benefits of technology while minimizing its harms.

Spyware Accountability Initiative, With Seed Funding From Apple and Leading Philanthropies, Announces Over $4 Million in Grants to Address the Harms of Spyware on Civil Society
Tech companies and leading philanthropies, including Ford, partner to support civil society organizations in mitigating the harms of state-sponsored mercenary spyware, especially in the Global South.
“I really want an institute where there are people distributed around the world who don’t have to leave their communities but are embedded in their own communities impacting the trajectory of AI development. I think that is really a counterpoint of the centralization of power that we are currently seeing.”

Making AI Systems More Just With Hilary Pennington and Dr. Timnit Gebru
Dr. Timnit Gebru, founder and executive director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, shares her belief that, with careful deployment that includes diverse perspectives, AI can be beneficial to all people.

Technology and Gender: Hilary Pennington With Mariana Valente
InternetLab director Mariana Valente discusses how the internet has the potential to advance gender equality when it is guided by fundamental human rights.

Opinion: The Internet Was Once a Tool for Justice. It Can Be Again
Technology once held the promise to empower social movements and further justice— but we must reclaim it from the forces that now use it for misinformation, surveillance, and exclusion.

How Digital Resilience Advances Safety and Equality in the Global South
Organizations across the Global South are uniting to protect journalists, human rights defenders, and nonprofit leaders from digital harms, including surveillance, censorship, harassment, and disinformation.
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Illustrations by Sebastien Thibault