2025 was an impactful and foundational year for the Alliance for Universal Digital Rights. This year we expanded AUDRi’s representation and work across multiple regions and worked directly to influence global digital governance. We worked against a backdrop of a turbulent civil society space, and accelerated development and adoption of emerging technologies. Here are some of our highlights:
Expanding our global presence
This year, AUDRi attended many different digital rights-focused and feminist-led events, with a focus on sharing our message and strengthening the movement to ensure that women and girls are not excluded from digital governance.
- Our work took us to eight different countries, and we deepened our global and regional networks in spaces like RightsCon, AI in Governance, Digital Rights Asia-Pacific Assembly, Southern African Youth Forum, High-Level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Appraisal of the United Nations Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons, the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa (FIFAfrica) and theInternet Governance Forum (IGF).
- We used those opportunities to strategise AUDRi’s impact and vision. At the IGF in Norway we brought CSO allies and partners together to co-develop strategies for implementing and monitoring the Global Digital Compact (GDC), the Feminist Digital Principles, and related frameworks. At FIFAfrica, we launched AUDRi’s Africa Regional Cluster and worked with CSOs based on the continent to accelerate the growth of the African Feminist Digital Rights movement.
Leveraging our unique expertise
AUDRi’s steering committee and membership boasts a diverse range of experience and expertise, including legal analysis, gender and digital rights advocacy, thought leadership and technical expertise around AI and emerging technologies, and more. This was reflected in our contributions to multiple submissions and processes.
- Our work on the Global Digital Compact (GDC) continued, with the delivery of written and oral statements at the Pact of the Future Stakeholder Consultation convened by the UN Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies, in which we reaffirmed our call for a people-centred, inclusive, and human rights-based information society.
- Along with our key partners in the Global in Digital Coalition (formerly Gender in the GDC Coalition) we submitted detailed feedback on the Elements Paper and Zero Draft and the first revision of the WSIS+20 Outcome Document. These interventions raised concerns about the dilution of gender-responsive language, reinforced our prior recommendations, and advocated for stronger protections for women and marginalised groups in digital governance. In response to the removal of gender commitments, AUDRI co-signed an open letter with coalition members, urging stakeholders to preserve rights-based language in the final document, reaffirming AUDRi’s role as a guardian of human rights within the global digital governance frameworks.
- We submitted substantive inputs to the UN Working Group on Discrimination Against Women for their 2026 thematic report on Gender Equality, the Digital Space and AI, in collaboration with coalition partners. The submission addressed algorithmic bias, online harassment, and systemic digital discrimination, drawing directly on lived experiences and feminist analysis to spotlight how digital spaces perpetuate inequality.
- We submitted our inputs to the draft recommendation on Equality and Artificial Intelligence which is being prepared by the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Anti-Discrimination, Diversity and Inclusion (CDADI) and Gender Equality Commission (GEC). AUDRi’s Secretariat Women Leading in AI’s Ivanna Bartoletti drafted the report and Equality Now’s Tsitsi Matekaire is a CSO observer in the Council of Europe’s Expert Committee. The recommendation is expected to be adopted next year.
Strengthening our movement and influence
This year, we expanded opportunities for members to shape global digital rights agendas.
- We hosted a member-focused webinar on the WSIS+20 Review, offering an overview of the WSIS process and sharing AUDRi’s recent submissions and Recommendations.
- Regional movement building took a major step forward with the creation of the AUDRi Africa Cluster, publicly launched at the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa (FIFAfrica) and bringing together AUDRi members from Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Senegal, and Ethiopia. Members highlighted how AUDRi’s feminist digital principles provided a shared vocabulary to address local challenges such as online gender-based violence, shrinking civic space, and data exploitation.
- AUDRi deepened our engagement with Amnesty’s Global Community for Youth Digital Rights with two community webinars on the Feminist Digital Principles and opportunities for youth activists to engage with international digital rights mechanisms.
- The Gender in Digital Coalition has gained observer status in the UN Working Group on Data Governance. We look forward to leveraging this opportunity next year!
We are deeply grateful to all AUDRi members, partners, and supporters for believing in our vision of a feminist, human-rights–centred digital future. Your commitment, energy, and solidarity have powered every milestone we reached this year – from expanding our regional clusters (look out for news about Asia and LAC Clusters soon!), to strengthening our collective voice in global governance spaces.
In 2026, our focus is to deepen member engagement, strengthen regional organising, and continue building. We continue to invest in tools, partnerships, and platforms that amplify member voices in international spaces, and which will allow us to keep up with a fast-changing and increasingly powerful digital world. We have drafted AUDRi’s first guide for engaging with UN and regional human rights mechanisms, designed to help members report digital rights violations, hold governments accountable, and to ensure that everyone can access the benefits and opportunities of emerging technologies.
AUDRi is a movement shaped by the communities it exists to serve. Thank you for walking this path with us, and sharing our vision of a safe and free shared digital future.
