Article 19 Tunisia: Equipping civil society organisations with knowledge of online censorship

By APC

Published on 18 August 2015
Page last updated on 28 April 2023

Since early 2015, the Local Action to Secure Internet Rights (LASIR) project has focused on empowering national and local actors in their defence of human rights on the internet, in countries as diverse as South Korea, Brazil, the Philippines, India, Jordan, Uganda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bangladesh, Kenya and Tunisia. All LASIR partners are strong local organisations, with ongoing work on internet rights. They are developing, together with APC, integrated strategies of policy research, context analysis, coalition building, media outreach and popular engagement.

Now that the project has reached its final stage, APC is sharing a series of interviews to highlight the participants’ experiences and conclusions. Today, we want you to meet Article 19 Tunisia, which works to ensure that freedom of expression remains at the core of the new government and its policies.

What was your goal when you decided to be part of the LASIR project?

We aimed to equip NGOs and civil society organisations with adequate knowledge of online censorship, so that they can challenge the relevant authorities.

What have the outcomes been so far?

We have worked on putting together a national coalition, Alliance Article 32, to help advocate for online freedoms and against the control and censorship of the internet in Tunisia. We are still engaged in the process, which involves lots of research and development work. The draft of the charter of the coalition has been developed, and we hainitiated very relevant discussions among CSOs and already gained a lot of credit and trust in the online censorship realm.

Source: Article 19 Tunisia

We have also developed web content to promote freedom of expression online, and to encourage online users to test whether certain sites are blocked. The site will be linked to the other implementing partners’ websites to leverage on each others’ work as part of the Web We Want campaign.

Where can we follow your work and activities?