## Planning the OONI Partner Gathering 2024We are excited to share that on 8th and 9th May 2024, we will host an in-person OONI Partner Gathering in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As part of this 2-day event, we will bring our partners (primarily from Asia and the Middle East) together to share skills and knowledge on internet censorship research. The goal of the event is to strengthen regional and global collaboration on censorship measurement research and advocacy.
To host this event, we had previously (in 2023) carried out all the necessary fundraising and logistical planning work. As we were not able to reach the target overall budget that would have allowed us to bring all our partners from around the world, we decided to limit the scope of the event primarily to our partners from Asia and the Middle East (while also inviting some of our international partners, whose work is relevant/important to our regional partners). We decided this because countries in Asia and the Middle East experience the most pervasive forms of internet censorship (and we therefore prioritized these regions over other regions which experience less internet censorship).
In an effort to ensure that the OONI Partner Gathering is hosted in a location that is as visa-friendly as possible for our participants, we developed a script which identifies such locations based on various parameters, such as visa requirements, safety index, and flight travel time (
https://github.com/hellais/global-gather). Based on this data-driven approach, Malaysia was identified as one of the top visa-free countries in the world for our specific list of participants. This was another reason why we decided to limit the event primarily to our partners from Asia. That said, we hope to host additional OONI Partner Gathering events for our partners in Africa and Latin America over the next few years.
In January 2024, we sent official invitations (along with a Concept Note) to our partners from Asia (Southeast Asia, South Asia, East Asia, Central Asia), the Middle East, and to some of our international partners. We also started coordinating with a travel agency on the booking of flights, with the hotel on the booking of rooms and meeting spaces, and on a number of other logistics. We expect to welcome 46 participants at the OONI Partner Gathering in May 2024.
## OONI workshops and presentations
### OONI training for Digital Rights Foundation PakistanOn 12th January 2024, OONI’s Elizaveta hosted an online OONI workshop for Pakistan’s Digital Rights Foundation (
https://digitalrightsfoundation.pk/), training their team members on how to use OONI tools in preparation for Pakistan’s upcoming 2024 elections. The goal of this training was to enable Digital Rights Foundation to train local journalists on how to use OONI tools to measure and monitor censorship events.
### OONI Q&A for BebasID IndonesiaOn 12th January 2024, OONI’s Elizaveta and Simone hosted an online OONI Q&A session with the BebasID community in Indonesia (
https://bebasid.com/). As part of this session, we answered questions regarding the use of OONI tools, we collected community feedback, and we discussed the current state of internet censorship in Indonesia with the BebasID community.
### OONI training for human rights advocates in SenegalBetween 16th-18th January 2024, OONI’s Elizaveta co-hosted a 3-day hybrid training for human rights advocates in Dakar, Senegal. We organized this training in collaboration with our local partners, Computech (
https://computechinstitute.com/) and Jonction (
https://jonction.e-monsite.com/), and the event was possible thanks to support from Access Now.
The goal of the training was to share OONI skills and knowledge that would enable Senegalese human rights advocates and trainers to run OONI workshops for their communities in 5 different regions of Senegal.
As part of this training, Elizaveta facilitated the following sessions:
* Introduction to Internet Censorship
* Using OONI Probe and OONI Run: Hands-on workshop
* Updating the Senegalese test list: Hands-on workshop
* Using OONI Explorer: Hands-on workshop
As part of this training, the participants created the programmes for their own training and scheduled them for January and February 2024. Overall, the goal was to enable local Senegalese trainers and human rights defenders to lead and facilitate OONI censorship measurement workshops in their communities in preparation for the country’s 2024 elections.
### OONI presentation at IAB Workshop on Barriers to Internet Access of Services (BIAS)On 17th January 2024, OONI’s Simone presented our research report on how internet censorship in Russia changed during the first year of military conflict in Ukraine (
https://ooni.org/post/2023-russia-a-year-after-the-conflict/) as part of the IAB Workshop on Barriers to Internet Access of Services (BIAS), 2024 (
https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/biasws/about/).
The presentation is available on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/rz2qkRfaNVE?si=i33_45UTX96Vs21z&t=3404## Activities by the OONI community
### OONI workshop by Digital Rights Foundation for journalists in PakistanIn January 2024, our partner, Digital Rights Foundation (
https://digitalrightsfoundation.pk/), facilitated two workshops for 60 journalists in Pakistan in preparation for the country’s 2024 elections. As part of this workshop, Digital Rights Foundation introduced participants to OONI tools and encouraged them to run OONI Probe tests leading up to the election.
As part of their 2024 election monitoring efforts, Pakistan’s Digital Rights Foundation encouraged the use of OONI Probe as part of their ElectionDesk resource:
https://election2024.digitalrightsfoundation.pk/internet-shutdowns/### OONI training by Digital Rights Lab for journalists in SudanOn 13th January 2024, our partner, Digital Rights Lab Sudan (
https://ooni.org/partners/drlab/), facilitated online OONI training sessions in Arabic for journalists in Sudan. As part of the training sessions, they introduced participants to OONI tools and internet measurement.
### OONI training by Computech and Jonction in SenegalOn 27th January 2024, our partners, Computech (
https://computechinstitute.com/) and Jonction (
https://jonction.e-monsite.com/), hosted an OONI training session in Saint Louis, Senegal. This training (run by local trainers) included hands-on workshops on using OONI Probe and OONI Run.
### OONI training by Advocacy Assembly fellow for human rights defenders in Sierra LeoneOn 29th January 2024, the Center for Advocacy and Sustainable Empowerment hosted an in-person workshop in Bo, Sierra Leone, as part of the Advocacy Assembly Internet Shutdown Mentored Training Program (
https://advocacyassembly.org/en/news/236). As part of this workshop, they introduced participants to OONI tools. OONI’s Elizaveta joined this workshop for the online Q&A session to address participants’ questions in relation to OONI’s work and tools.
## OONI Community MeetingOn 30th January 2024, we hosted the monthly OONI Community Meeting on our Slack channel (
https://slack.ooni.org/), during which we discussed the following topics:
Preparing for elections in 2024: How to monitor and respond to censorship events
Improving OONI Explorer: Request for community feedback on needs and challenges
## Measurement coverageIn January 2024, 64,404,108 OONI Probe measurements were collected from 3,028 networks in 167 countries around the world.
This information can also be found through our measurement stats on OONI Explorer (see chart on “monthly coverage worldwide”):
https://explorer.ooni.org/ ~ OONI team.