September 28, 2026
1:30 PM UK / 1:30 PM Nigeria / 7:30 AM Colombia / 8:30 AM New York / 6:00 PM India
In Collaboration with Access Now
Governments worldwide use internet shutdowns to silence dissent and control information flow. The methods vary. Some impose full nationwide blackouts, others target specific regions or platforms. Often there’s no legal basis cited, no public notice, no warning. The justifications offered such as national security, public order, and preventing misinformation sit uneasily against documented patterns of shutdowns during elections, protests, and periods of political sensitivity.
The consequences are immediate and cascading. Journalists lose the ability to communicate with sources, verify information, and publish reporting. Hospitals can’t access patient records or consult specialists remotely. Schools and banks go offline. Supply chains break down. In this disconnection, abuses can occur without documentation, independent verification, or public accountability. Disappearances, violence, and atrocities happen unseen.
Over the past decade, courts across Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America have ruled that internet shutdowns violate fundamental rights. Zimbabwe, India, the ECOWAS region, Sudan, Colombia, and the European Court of Human Rights have all issued judgments against shutdowns or website blocking. Yet implementation of these landmark decisions remains sporadic or entirely absent.
The disconnect between established legal standards and practice is widening. Many governments continue to restrict internet access in sensitive periods or areas, employing increasingly sophisticated methods to do so. Enforcement remains inconsistent across jurisdictions.
Why attend: Held in collaboration with Access Now, this webinar brings together legal experts from across regions to examine the implementation gap. Participants will hear directly from lawyers litigating these cases, understand which barriers prove most persistent, and explore what has been attempted to close the distance between court judgments and practice on the ground.
It will be useful to anyone litigating shutdown cases, reporting on them, or working on digital rights and access to information.
Moderator:
Yuri Marchenko, Senior Legal Officer at Media Defence.
Meet the Panelists
Mojirayo Ogunlana is a Nigerian human rights and digital rights lawyer based in Abuja who litigates against internet shutdowns and online censorship across West Africa. She has represented applicants in landmark regional cases and is deeply engaged with enforcement challenges in the ECOWAS jurisdiction.
Prasanth Sugathan is the Legal Director at the Software Freedom Law Center, India (SFLC.IN), a New Delhi-based legal services organisation. He has more than two decades of experience in the legal profession and his areas of practice include technology law, Intellectual property law, administrative law and constitutional law and in domestic litigation strategies and the evolving jurisprudence on digital rights in Asia.
Emmanuel Vargas Penagos is co-founder and co-director of El Veinte in Colombia. He litigated the Cali internet shutdown case, in which the Constitutional Court found that the government’s failure to investigate and inform was itself a violation of freedom of expression and ordered it to report on what happened. It was the first shutdown judgment by a court in Latin America.
Peter Micek is General Counsel and UN Policy Manager at Access Now, based in New York City. He leads the organization’s Legal arm, managing global programming and operations, and brings international advocacy perspective on enforcement mechanisms and state accountability.
