In today’s multipolar world, great power competition and tensions increasingly threaten international and regional security. The behavior and foreign policy of authoritarian governments also challenge international peace and stability, waging or planning wars of aggression, and actively undermining the rule of law and democracy.
Many countries face increasing restrictions on free speech, assembly, and political dissent, with governments using intimidation and violence against activists and opposition groups. Democratic backsliding and rising authoritarianism in many parts of the world poses fundamental threats to global human rights and democratic values.
Technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, digital surveillance, and big data are reshaping societies and industries. While these innovations offer various benefits, they also present unique challenges for human rights. This escalating risk has led to a heightened focus on digital security and the need for comprehensive strategies to counter such threats.
Authoritarian governments leverage digital technologies to repress the rights and freedoms of their citizens at home, silence dissent among diasporas and other individuals beyond their borders, and to interfere in democratic governments, processes and institutions abroad. Left uncontested, the damaging abuse of technologies will further lead to a decline of human rights worldwide.
From internet shutdowns and social media censorship to AI surveillance, spyware, and foreign influence campaigns, authoritarian and illiberal governments use new technologies to suppress human rights and erode democracy at home and abroad. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran as well as Myanmar, Turkey, and India have emerged as key players in this field, using a multitude of practices to shape the information ecosystem and hold on to power. While governments, policymakers, academics, and research institutes have acknowledged the problem, initiatives remain largely uncoordinated, to the detriment of our fight against digital authoritarianism.
To fill this gap and build on its ongoing work on Digital Authoritarianism, MIGS seeks to create the Global Digital Authoritarianism Atlas (GDAA), a centralized platform bringing together existing and future global digital authoritarianism measurement data from 100+ countries. The platform will serve as a trustworthy source of information for activists, journalists, policy actors, and researchers.
The objectives of the Global Task Force on Digital Authoritarianism are as follows:
MIGS has assembled a task force of experts with expertise in the field of human rights and technology for consultations on emerging global trends in relations to digital authoritarianism, and to help advise the GDAA’s funding and operational strategy.
The Task Force members are:
Modern open and democratic societies are affected by the broad and fast diffusion and use of various forms of mis-/disinformation and other online harms due to complex sociopolitical, cultural, and technological changes. As Canadians spend more time online and rely on social media to get their news, they are also more at risk of mis-and disinformation, hate speech, and other forms of technology-facilitated harms conducted by domestic and foreign actors, including state actors such as China, Russia and Iran. We need to remain at the forefront of these challenges, including by developing tools to anticipate and mitigate the effects of these challenges on Canadians and Canadian society and democracy.
Spanning over 15 months, the Canadian Digital Defenders Collective seeks to strengthen the cognitive resilience of Canadians to online disinformation, hate speech, and foreign influence campaigns by building their capacity to recognize these threats and giving them the tools to address them. We want to achieve this goal through four activities: 1) one-day training sessions in four Canadian cities 2) Briefings with Canadian federal and provincial officials, as well as diplomats, law enforcement, migration officials, and parliamentarians 3) a podcast series and 4) an Operational Playbook on digital threats and resilience.
MIGS is working with ethno-cultural communities throughout its project, particularly those targeted by or most at risk on foreign interference and disinformation. We are also collaborating with Freedom House, the MacDonald Laurier Institute, the Chaire Raoul Dandurand, the Canadian International Council, the Asia Pacific Foundation, and International Support for Uyghurs.
The sessions are held in Montreal (10 January 2025), Ottawa (16 January 2025), Toronto (23 January 2025) and Vancouver (3 February 2025).
This project is made possible thanks to the support of the Department of Canadian Heritage.
MIGS launched the Global Parliamentary Alliance Against Atrocity Crimes (GPAAAC) in May 2022. With the support of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Canada, MIGS created a network of Canadian, German and EU-member state parliamentarians, to explore how parliamentarians can better prevent and respond to mass atrocity crimes, while defending and strengthening democracy and the liberal order. The project focuses on Ukraine and the key international challenges the crisis there poses to human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Utilizing MIGS wide network of parliamentarians, this project will provide a model for best practices for preventing and responding to future atrocity crimes. In the past MIGS has worked with parliamentarians through the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Prevention of Genocide and with Parliamentarians for Global Action.
