The Digital Trust & Safety Partnership will be at RightsCon 2026, in Lusaka, Zambia, and online.
The 14th edition of the world’s leading summit on human rights in the digital age, RightsCon brings together experts and advocates from civil society, governments, and technology companies. DTSP executive director David Sullivan and head of outreach and engagement Farzaneh Badiei will be in Lusaka and look forward to participating in the following sessions:
Towards collaboration: Trust and safety and human rights in the African context
- Date & time: Wednesday May 6 | 2 – 3pm CAT
- Location: Room A113 (Kenneth Kuanda) and online (Hybrid)
- While trust and safety and human rights fields share the goal of protecting users from harm, these communities are not yet collaborating effectively enough. David Sullivan and Farzaneh Badiei join this roundtable — building on a 2025 paper co-authored by GNI and TSF — to examine how the paper’s conclusions can be adapted to the African region, and to explain how the DTSP Safe Framework Specification serves as a bridge between the two fields. The session is capped at 20 online participants on a first-come, first-served basis.
Insights on applying human rights standards to AI governance from the Oversight Board
- Date & time: Thursday May 7 | 10:15 – 11:15am CAT
- Location: Room A105 (Kenneth Kuanda)
- As the Oversight Board marks five years of independent content governance, David Sullivan joins this session to share insights on applying a human rights-based framework grounded in Article 19 of the ICCPR and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
Can international standards support digital safety across the African continent?
- Date & time: Thursday May 7 | 4:30 – 5:30pm CAT
- Location: Room A104 (Kenneth Kuanda)
- This session examines whether fragmented trust and safety practices — including inconsistent platform approaches, varied regulatory frameworks, and uneven implementation capacities — are hindering efforts to build a safer and more rights-respecting digital environment across Africa. David Sullivan and Farzaneh Badiei join participants to explore the potential of ISO/IEC 25389 as a shared, content-agnostic procedural benchmark that respects local contexts while promoting coherence across the continent.