Reasons for hope – and a call for resistance
As 2025 comes to an end, over the last weeks, we’ve had reasons to celebrate – along with reminders of how important it is for us to build resilience for the battles ahead.
This week, we rejoiced at the release of more than 100 political prisoners in Belarus, including Nobel Peace Prize winner and Viasna member Ales Bialiatski, key opposition figure Maryia Kalesnikava, and other prominent human rights defenders. Knowing they are reunited with their families and supporters gives us hope – as their freedom will no doubt help strengthen the defence of human rights.
But we know too many human rights defenders, journalists, and activists remain behind bars in Belarus, and around the world. With this week’s guilty verdict against Hong Kong publisher and democracy activist Jimmy Lai, the recent arrest of Iranian human rights defender, journalist, and 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, and the continued detention of Yemeni journalist Naseh Shaker, we see clearly the contempt so many governments have for the rule of law and our rights.
This year has been difficult, for so many reasons: war crimes perpetrated in Ukraine, in Palestine, and in Sudan, renewed attacks on freedoms we thought were secure and steady, and on the international systems built to safeguard our rights – increasingly undermined and dismissed as not fit for purpose. Yet, despite these challenges, rights defenders and our colleagues around the world continued their tireless work.
After years of persistent campaigning, Egyptian-British activist and writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah was released in September from an Egyptian prison. His much-anticipated reunion with family and supporters gives hope for other political prisoners in Egypt and we will continue to raise their cases with the international community.
In Mexico, a district judge granted ARTICLE 19’s request to definitively suspend a package of laws that would create a system of mass surveillance without democratic controls. In a country where journalists and human rights defenders are constant targets of attacks, and where militarisation has intensified, this legislative package represents an extreme risk, so this is an important step towards protecting people and organisations that do vital work for human rights.
This year we led calls to address Big Tech’s monopolistic hold over the infrastructure of the internet – a danger made all too clear by the recent outages that severely disrupted people’s ability to access public media, government portals, and thousands of key websites and information hubs. We highlighted the threats AI and digital platforms can pose to democracy, advocated for robust policies to combat these risks, and advanced discussions on strengthening the implementation of the Digital Markets Act — a key EU tool to tackle Big Tech power.
From Brussels to New York to Berlin, we made the case for building democratic alternatives that challenge the concentration of power in digital markets, prioritise human rights, and are rooted in the needs of communities.
Our digital markets work has global reach. This year, ARTICLE 19 Brazil and South America brought together our colleagues from Mexico and Central America, Kenya and East Africa, and Senegal and West Africa, alongside civil society and government representatives, to learn from each other and discuss strategies around confronting economic concentration in digital markets in the Global South.
As we say goodbye to 2025 we know must be prepared for the enormous challenges before us. We must take heart in what we have achieved, and accept the reality of what we need to do to empower communities and stand up for fundamental freedoms around the world.
Thank you for being part of this movement, and we look forward to building support for freedom of expression and the right to know – for everyone, everywhere to have their voices heard – in 2026.
