September 28, 2026
1:30 PM UK / 1:30 PM Nigeria / 7:30 AM Colombia / 8:30 AM New York / 6:00 PM India
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 shutdown 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: This webinar brings together legal experts from across regions to examine the implementation gap. Participants will hear directly from lawyers litigating these cases, understand what barriers prove most persistent, and explore what has been attempted to close the gap between court judgments and on-the-ground practice. It’s an opportunity to engage with the current state of digital rights litigation and the complex realities of enforcement.
Moderator:
Yuri Marchenko, Senior Legal Officer at Media Defence.
Meet the Panelists
Mojirayo Ogunlana-Nkanga 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 a lawyer at the Software Freedom Law Center in India, which runs an internet shutdown tracker documenting disruptions across the region. He brings expertise on 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.
