Access Now Grants: meet the Community Defenders
Our Access Now Grants team is honored to resource “Community Defenders” — grant recipients who are grounded in lived experience, accountable to their communities, and driven by the needs and aspirations of their people. They represent and advocate for local marginalized groups and individuals, with whom they have shared history, identity, and collective demands. These grantees are rooted in broader struggles for justice, equity, and self-determination. Their work on digital rights emerges from the necessity to protect and advance their communities in the digital sphere, as part of their ongoing fight for freedom and safety, and we support them in that pursuit.
Learn more about four of these groups — Haki na Sheria, Nubian Rights Forum, KRYSS Network, and VOICE — below.
Haki na Sheria, based in Kenya, works to end systemic discrimination against marginalized communities in the north of the country, with a focus on statelessness and digital ID, legal and digital invisibility, and biometric purgatory. Access Now has been supporting them for six years. Follow their work on_ LinkedIn or X._
How do you help?
“Colonial, postcolonial, and contemporary dynamics, including analog exclusion, affect how Northern Kenyans, particularly Somali Kenyans, access citizenship documents, including digital IDs. Layers of bureaucratic, legal, and social barriers enacted under British colonial rule have since been reinforced; today, Northern Kenyans and Muslims across Kenya still face extra vetting, scrutiny, and suspicion when applying for national ID cards. Yet despite this, work at the intersection of digital ID, minority rights, and statelessness remains underfunded, and the communities most impacted are politically marginalized. To address this gap, we build community-based paralegal models, document real-life incidents and impacts of exclusion, and use community organizing, public advocacy, and strategic litigation to make change a reality.”
What does helping look like in practice?
“Our work has been particularly focused on tackling the challenge of ‘double registration’ — a situation which saw more than 40,000 ethnic Somalis from northeastern Kenya unknowingly biometrically registered as both Kenyan citizens and as refugees, leaving them in legal and digital limbo. They have been prevented from getting ID cards or birth certificates, and thus in turn barred from access to everything from education and employment, to mobile money services and freedom of movement. We worked to bring this issue in front of a judge and in January 2025, the court issued a landmark judgment affirming the rights of double-registered individuals, and ordering Kenya’s government to allow them to be deregistered from the refugee database and correctly registered as Kenyan citizens. This was a major victory for safeguarding the right to identity in the digital age, and proof of how civil society efforts can challenge systemic exclusion.”
What does the future look like to you?
“We envision a future where digital rights frameworks are shaped by the lived realities of the most marginalized, including undocumented individuals, ethnic minorities, refugees, and stateless persons. Rights-based digital systems can only emerge when these voices are centered in design, decision-making, and oversight. This vision is what drives our commitment to community-led legal empowerment, strategic litigation, and policy reform.”
Nubian Rights Forum is a Kenya-based organization that Access Now has been supporting for five years. Via community-led advocacy and strategic litigation efforts, they work to dismantle systemic exclusion and barriers facing Kenya’s most marginalized communities, especially members of the Nubian ethnic minority, with a focus on citizenship, statelessness, and land rights. Follow their work on Facebook,_ Instagram_, or X.__
How do you help?
“Digital rights aren’t just about access to technology; they’re fundamental rights to exist within a system that recognizes your humanity. We walk alongside some of Kenya’s most historically marginalized communities, especially members of the Nubian community, who remain largely invisible in the eyes of the state. Systemic exclusion has denied many Nubians legal identity; a crisis exacerbated by poorly designed digital identity systems. For example, Kenya’s Huduma Namba system excludes Nubians by design, embedding the historical injustices into digital policy, denying Nubians the ability to vote and enjoy government services such as health, education, employment, or property ownership. Digital identity and statelessness are incredibly complex, intersectional issues that aren’t always headline-grabbing, yet they profoundly affect people’s ability to access almost every other right.”
What does helping look like in practice?
“Our community member Hassan’s story is one that exemplifies why our work, which sits at the intersection of legal identity, technology, and minority rights, matters. Hassan spent four years without an ID card_,_ which was denied due to arbitrary vetting tied to his Nubian heritage. Without a national ID, Hassan couldn’t pursue his university education, he couldn’t register for national exams, he couldn’t even open a bank account. His future was frozen. We helped Hassan to navigate the appeal process, document his family lineage, and ultimately, successfully obtain his ID. Many others like Hassan face a lifetime of exclusion, their potential stifled and erased — our goal is to accompany them in fighting for the right to exist.”
What does the future look like to you?
“We want to see digital identity systems built with inclusion at their very core, in genuine consultation with those they impact the most. We envision African digital ecosystems that reflect justice, rather than reproducing colonial models of surveillance and exclusion. And we imagine a world where empowered communities aren’t just users of technology, but are the co-creators of the policies and platforms that shape their own lives. That’s the future we’re fighting for, with consistent support from partners like Access Now.”
_KRYSS Network, based in Malaysia, works with young people on issues of freedom of opinion and expression, focused on girls, women, and gender non-conforming individuals. They have been an Access Now grantee for five years. Follow their work on_ Facebook,_ Instagram, or X.___
How do you help?
“KRYSS began as a voluntary collective that is passionate about creating safer spaces for young people who are too often denied opportunities to participate in social activism or dismissed for being considered ‘too young.’ In Malaysia, girls, women, and non-binary people often face disproportionate barriers when it comes to exercising their rights to freedom of expression and opinion. Our focus is on promoting safer online spaces for these marginalized communities, so they feel able to better express their lived realities and experiences, share their opinions, and disclose any human rights violations they have suffered, without experiencing harassment and online violence.”
What does helping look like in practice?
“There’s very little awareness of the complicated and often long-lasting mental health impacts on technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) — and when survivors do come to terms with the trauma they’ve experienced, they can be met with disbelief or pushback, with people asking ‘Why didn’t you say something earlier?’ It’s really essential that these people can access support, resources, and therapy. In collaboration with members of the Malaysian parliament, we recently organized a series of workshops and meetings on the topic, with participants saying they left feeling much more equipped to support family or friends who might experience TFGBV. Talking about TFGBV remains taboo in Malaysia, but something we’re working to change. To this end, we created a microsite specifically aimed at anyone interested in learning and taking action against TFGBV in Malaysia.
What does the future look like to you?
“We’d like to see stronger laws, and improved enforcement of existing laws — such as the law against doxxing — to stop TFGBV in Malaysia. We have seen a lot of promising initial efforts, but it’s still an ongoing, long, and painful journey. We want to help build an online ecosystem based on gender equality, non-discrimination, and feminist principles, where everyone can fully exercise their freedom of opinion and expression, public participation, and bodily autonomy.”
_VOICE, based in Bangladesh, focuses on building the capacity of journalists and human rights defenders, particularly women human rights defenders and youth activists, by providing training on digital safety, human rights-based reporting, and protecting privacy and data. These activities have established VOICE as a leader on media freedom, digital rights, and online safety, strengthening the digital ecosystem.They have been an Access Now grantee for two years. Follow their work on_ Facebook, Instagram, or X,____
How do you help?
“For many of the journalists, activists, and human rights defenders we work with, particularly women, women entrepreneurs, Indigenous communities, LGBTQ+ individuals, and people living in rural or semi-urban areas, digital rights violations are deeply personal threats to their livelihoods and safety. For example, when Bangladeshi authorities shut down the internet for 13 days in July 2024, journalists were prevented from reporting and documenting human rights violations, activists were blocked from organizing demonstrations, and business owners suffered financial setbacks. Yet these same communities sometimes lack understanding of the technologies being used against them — whether for online surveillance or scams — which leaves them less able to protect themselves or to advocate for systemic change. This is the gap we try to bridge.”
What does helping look like in practice?
“Following our digital safety and security workshop, participants told us how the digital safety and security training they received positively impacted their communities. In Bangladesh’s Netrokona district, for instance, one young Indigenous woman entrepreneur who relies on online sales to support her family implemented encryption and backup protocols, which kept her business running during a local internet shutdown, and also potentially helped her avoid being extorted via deepfake blackmail — an increasingly common tactic used to target small business owners. She has since moved on to mentor other women in her community.”
What does the future look like to you?
“Following the July 2024 uprising and subsequent regime change in Bangladesh, digital rights are very much on the national agenda, with our country’s interim government open to reforming repressive digital laws. This is a rare opportunity for civil society to help shape digital spaces into platforms for empowerment, resilience, and collective storytelling, instead of sources of exclusion. This would be made possible by creating a decentralized network of locally led task forces, made up of women, gender-diverse people, human rights defenders, media, Indigenous leaders, and grassroots activists, who proactively monitor digital threats, co-create advocacy strategies, and engage policymakers in real time.”