It’s been a year of increasing debates about the internet and human rights among governments in the UN. Read this account of the main developments since 2011 and the challenges ahead.

Bytes for All, Pakistan, strongly condemns hate speech on the Internet, however banning channels of communication, limiting access to information platforms, and steps to curtail free expression only serve to pave the way for politics-based control systems that curb the voices of individuals.

Five years back, I took the highway to Grahamstown, South Africa. I had landed in Port Elizabeth before being picked up by a Rhodes University shuttle bus. This year, Highway Africa is taking place at Rhodes in Grahamstown for the 16th time and looking at the media’s coverage of Africa’s rising.

Skopje is not exactly a landmark for free thinkers, social critics and other kinds of independent folks. However, that does not mean that discordant voices do not make themselves heard. A chronicle of media resistance in Macedonia.

The people of Ecuador are working together to get the government to change a new regulation that will allow the state to collect users’ personal data without a warrant.

APCNews has interviewed Rebecca Vincent, a human rights consultant who is currently working with ARTICLE 19 to coordinate the International Partnership Group for Azerbaijan, a coalition of international organisations working to promote and protect freedom of expression in Azerbaijan. Here’s her take on the human rights situation on Azerbaijan’s net.

Campaigning through websites, microblogging and other uses of technology help increase the membership and reach of associations and provide powerful ways to organise peaceful assemblies. This issue paper by Alex Comninos sheds a new light on how the internet impacts the exercise of the right to freedom of association and freedom of assembly.