Today, APC kicked off Day 1 of the Advocacy International: Advancing our digital rights agenda for Asia workshop. This workshop is a culmination of many discussions over the years at APC on a crucial issue the representation of more Asian civil society voices in international advocacy spaces, who had largely been absent so far and who could influence important outcomes. The workshop therefore was designed to familiarise civil society working on digital rights issues with international advocacy and its ecosystem, as a way to encourage more organisations to engage with these spaces. This workshop, however, is not meant to be a deep dive, but rather to give the participants directions, information and options in order to further our advocacy in these spaces.
The workshop is being attended by 23 participants from APC’s member and partner organisations in Asia, and we are lucky to have participants from across the region Taiwan, South Korea, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal, India and Pakistan.
Day 1 had two substantive sessions the first one was Introduction to International Advocacy. This session was facilitated by Paula Martins, the human rights policy advocacy lead at APC. In this session, participants were asked to come up with a definition of advocacy, with participants reflecting on advocacy as “change” and a way for “protecting rights” and “changing laws” but also often as “frustrating” and the “great wall” to be overcome. An interesting point of discussion was whether all advocacy can be assumed to be good simply because it is advocacy.
To read more on the article titled “Day 1 of Advocacy International: “Is all advocacy good?” and other questions” click here.
