Digital Rights in the Asia-Pacific 2024 or DRAPAC24 aimed to foster resilience and solidarity within the digital rights community. This year’s event gathered over 287 changemakers from 150 organizations in Taipei, Taiwan for two days of conversations centered on three broad themes: regional solution-making, empowerment of young persons, and adoption of open technology.
The DRAPAC Assembly traces its roots to the Coconet camps organised in the Philippines and Indonesia, and it has now evolved into a space for collective solution-making and alliance-building within the broader Asia-Pacific community. Its inaugural edition held last May 2023 in Chiang Mai, Thailand gathered a wide range of stakeholders – from activists and technologists to artists and journalists – for five days of workshops, panels, art exhibits, film screenings, and networking sessions.
Building on the success and lessons from DRAPAC23, this year’s event featured a more focused but diverse mix of sessions. DRAPAC24 platformed new voices, highlighted novel and community-led approaches to addressing digital rights challenges, and provided spaces for engagement and collaboration. Through DRAPAC, Asia-Pacific civil society can come together to advance the digital rights movement and forge a unified response to shared challenges in the region.