The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) is holding its 63rd session (HRC63) in Geneva from 7 September to 9 October 2026. As this session begins, APC reiterates the importance of strengthening the council as a key mechanism for advancing human rights online. APC considers the HRC sessions as an important opportunity to influence the setting up of international norms on human rights in digital contexts and to raise awareness regarding violations of human rights online in specific countries.
The session will include updates by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, interactive dialogues with mandate holders, panel discussions, adoption of Universal Periodic Review (UPR) outcomes, appointment of special procedure mandate holders, and consideration of resolutions. The full programme and all the reports that will be presented during HRC63 can be accessed here.
This brief highlights key digital issues in HRC63’s agenda. APC will be attending the session and our priorities include the following:
- The situation of human rights defenders in digital contexts, particularly women human right defenders.
- Artificial intelligence, particularly in relation to cultural rights and the right to development.
- Technology-facilitated gender-based violence
- Human rights in digital contexts in Paraguay and Namibia.
Reports related to human rights and digital technologies
Protecting human rights defenders in the digital age
This session, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) will present a thematic report on protecting human rights defenders (HRDs) in the digital age. This report is part of the implementation of the landmark resolution on human rights defenders and new and emerging technologies adopted by consensus at the 58th session of the HRC in 2025, which represented an important step forward for the protection of HRDs, including women human right defenders (WHRDs), in the digital age.
This report by the OHCHR will address the risks created by new and emerging technologies to HRDs, including connectivity disruptions, privacy infringements and abuse of digital communications tools to target defenders, and will seek to identify effective practices and responses to address these risks.
APC has been working with members and partners documenting and analysing digital risks and harms, including TFGBV, against HRDs and WHRDs and actively engaged in the process of developing this report and the consultations that led to it, as well as with written input.
In our submission to this report, we highlighted how digital technologies, while indispensable to defenders’ work, have also become instruments of authoritarian control. Surveillance, harassment, censorship, disinformation and weaponised AI are deployed to target, silence and discredit HRDs and their work. In our input we also highlighted how structural factors such as discrimination based on gender or marginalisation due to other characteristics exacerbate these risks and harms, particularly in conflict setting contexts.
For instance, research by Myanmar Internet Project (MIP) in collaboration with and support from APC, shows how an expansive ecosystem of digital repression in the country has a differential gendered impact. According to this research, threats of arrest, self-censorship, widespread TFGBV and increased vulnerability of women during internet shutdowns are key gendered impacts on the work of WHRDs in Myanmar. Upcoming research led by APC and partners shows a heightened impact on environmental defenders, WHRDs of land and territory and Indigenous peoples, among other groups. Technology-facilitated violence, smear and disinformation campaigns and digital surveillance are increasingly being used by state and non-state actors against environmental defenders with the goal to repress, isolate and silence the resistance of communities facing violations of their territorial and land rights.
APC will use this session as an opportunity to raise awareness on the intersectional, gendered threats, risks and impacts experienced by WHRDs, LGBTQIA+ persons, HRDs and environmental defenders, stressing that digital violence is part of an online-offline continuum that seeks to silence dissent and restrict civic participation. We will also use our participation at this session to call states, companies and the donor community to adopt holistic, feminist and intersectional approaches for the protection of defenders. As the upcoming position paper, Feminist holistic protection for WHRDs, by the Safety for Voices Consortium states, digital safety cannot be reduced to technical fixes or individual practices. It requires structural change, collective protection, and accountability from states, corporations, donors, civil society and technology communities.
During HRC63, APC will co-host together with the Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations Office, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Access Now, Privacy International and Myanmar Internet Project the side event, “Protecting Human Rights Defenders in the Digital Age", on 15 September at 2:00 p.m. to launch this report. The event will bring together defenders who contributed to the report’s consultations to discuss key challenges and recommendations, and to identify areas for cooperation among protection actors.
AI, cultural rights and the right to development
On 11 September, during an interactive dialogue, the Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development (EMRTD) will present its thematic study on artificial intelligence, cultural rights and the right to development.
APC and our member Derechos Digitales, who jointly submitted input to inform this report, consider this study an important contribution to ongoing efforts to advance a human rights-based approach to AI governance. The presentation of the report provides an opportunity to advocate for concrete obligations on states and companies to ensure cultural rights become central to how AI systems are designed, financed and deployed.
During this session, APC, together with Derechos Digitales, will highlight key priority areas for the way forward including: the report’s critical questions about digital extractivism, and whose interests AI serves and who benefits; the need for greater efforts to guarantee civil society’s meaningful participation in the design and development of technologies; the focus on corporate concentration and, going forward, to move beyond diagnosing this toward concrete responses. We will also call for the translation of the report’s call to human rights due diligence into concrete measures and obligations, for example through the inclusion of moratoriums as policy pathways when AI cannot, a priori, comply with human rights standards. This should extend to data centres and other AI infrastructure known to cause harm. Finally, we will advocate for EMRTD recommendations to be implemented with a gendered and intersectional approach, to explicitly name and involve marginalised groups.
A more in-depth analysis of the study by APC and Derechos Digitales is available here.
Technology-facilitated gender-based violence
During an interactive dialogue on 24 September, the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee will present a study on technology-facilitated gender-based violence and its impact on women and girls.
In this report, the advisory committee examines technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) as a pervasive form of online abuse that presents a serious threat to human rights and exacerbates gender inequalities. The report stresses that TFGBV is rooted in and reproduces existing gender inequalities, and that it is part of a continuum that includes violence in the offline world. The report examines prevalent forms of TFGBV, including image-based abuse, as some the most devastating forms of TFGBV dramatically amplified by AI, surveillance, including state surveillance and the use of spyware, gendered disinformation, hate speech and misogynistic content
APC and the Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders (IM-Defensoras) contributed a joint submission that highlighted the need to go beyond women and girls and expand the analysis to evaluate the differentiated, gendered impacts that TFGBV has in the lives of women, girls and LGBTQIA+ persons, with particular attention to WHRDs. Alongside the human rights implications of TFGBV, including on the right to freedom of expression, political participation, access to information, security and bodily integrity, education and economic participation, our submission highlighted critical gaps in current international and national frameworks that limit the effectiveness of responses to TFGBV.
Along these lines, we welcome the report’s call for a human rights-based framework, and a survivor-centred and intersectional approach to address TFGBV. As stated in our submission, without a gender intersectional perspective, pre-existing structural inequalities may be aggravated and perpetuated by digital technologies and the laws and norms that govern them. This is the case for many cybercrime frameworks, with vague and broad terms and conducts, that allow arbitrary or discretionary application, posing serious dangers to the exercise of fundamental rights due to their criminalising effects which, in turn, deepen gender inequalities.
Regarding the bridge between AI and TFGBV governance, findings of this study are in line with APC research that found that most AI frameworks neglect gender and TFGBV. APC also welcomes the report’s calls for enforceable regulation of the technology industry, focused on safety by design and with gender-based approach, followed by effective enforcement, survivor support and support of civil society organisations and regulators focused on TFGBV.
APC will use our participation at the session as an opportunity to raise awareness of our submission and work on the impacts of TFGBV in specific groups, including WHRDs and marginalised groups; raise awareness about TFGBV harms enabled or amplified by AI and the need for bridging the gap between TFGBV and AI governance, advocating for an approach that places human rights at the centre of AI design, development, deployment and oversight; and the need for legal frameworks with a gender intersectional perspective that adequately protect women and gender-diverse peoples.
Adoption of Universal Periodic Review reports
APC sees the HRC’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) as an important mechanism for the promotion of human rights in digital contexts. From the mechanism’s inception in 2008, APC has utilised it to raise awareness of the impact of digital technologies on human rights and to promote digital rights.
The value of the UPR in promoting human rights in digital contexts comes from its ability to shape human rights norms and the ability to share best practices via the interactive dialogues and the outputs of the reviews. Civil society also benefits from engaging with the UPR as it allows to expand and strengthen networks and strengthen relationships with key stakeholders at national, regional and global levels.
During this session, APC will raise concerns relating to the situation of human rights in digital contexts during the adoption of UPR reports for Paraguay and Namibia.
Namibia
This review marks the fourth cycle for Namibia in the UPR mechanism. APC submitted a stakeholder report that focused on key issues relating to human rights in the digital context, including digital connectivity and inclusion, freedom of expression online and disinformation; privacy and data protection, surveillance, and cybersecurity and TFGBV.
Ahead of the adoption of the report, in our written statement to the Council, we welcome the attention given during Namibia’s review to gender-based violence and discrimination against LGBTQIA+ persons, the call for safeguards in the application of cybercrime frameworks to prevent arbitrary surveillance, and calls to protect freedom of the press and avoid criminalisation of digital activism. We also support recommendations regarding the need to extend protection of freedom of expression and privacy to digital spaces, and to protect LGBTQIA+ persons and HRDs. We encourage the Government of Namibia to ensure transparent and inclusive follow-up to these recommendations, including through meaningful engagement with civil society.
Paraguay
APC submitted a joint stakeholder submission (in Spanish) with our members TEDIC and Derechos Digitales that addresses the intersection of human rights and technology in Paraguay. Issues of focus included the expansion of state surveillance capacities, digital inequality, TFGBV and access to justice, online freedom of expression, freedom of association and civic space, and cybersecurity and data protection.
We welcome recommendations made to Paraguay in relation to the need to strengthen prevention of and response to violence against women and girls, including by revising existing legislation to comprehensively address digital violence against women. TFGBV is a widespread and structural phenomenon and the legal framework in place is insufficient to address it. Moreover, civil society has reported that it has been used in a distorted manner to censor freedom of expression, especially of journalists. Certain cases in Paraguay exposed the profound shortcomings of the judicial system in providing justice and redress to victims.
APC also commends the concerns expressed by countries on the Anti-NGO Law, and the law on journalists and human rights defenders. As stated in our input, there has been a significant restriction of civic space in the country through the enactment of this law, characterised as an ambiguous legislation that imposes excessive controls that threaten the autonomy and work of civil society. We encourage the Paraguayan government to amend this law to align it with international human rights standards, ensuring the autonomy of civil society.
Resolutions related to human rights in the digital age
During HRC63, APC will be monitoring the negotiations around these resolutions:
- Strengthening international cooperation for promoting and protecting the rights of women and girls in the context of digital technologies.
- Implications of artificial intelligence for the promotion and protection of human rights.
How to follow the session
The main hashtag for the session is #HRC63 on social media, and all official public meetings will be live streamed through UN Web TV.
Follow APC on our social media channels for updates and analysis from HRC63, including on human rights defenders in digital contexts, AI and human rights, technology-facilitated gender-based violence, and digital rights in the UPR process.