Year after year, since Access Now first
began issuing our series of annual
#KeepItOn reports,
we have been
confronted with worsening conditions
for internet shutdowns and human rights
globally.
This report for 2023 is no
exception, and many of the realities people
faced this past year are not new, with the
harms we have been documenting now
for more than eight years repeating and
intensifying. Even still, 2023 stands apart.
The gravity of our findings in this year’s
report cannot be overstated and should
be read as an urgent call to action for all
stakeholders. Authorities have leveraged
internet shutdowns as a blatant tool for
enabling and exacerbating violence,
war crimes, and other atrocities. Tens of
thousands of lives have been taken — from
Palestine to Myanmar, Sudan to Ukraine
— by attackers using internet shutdowns
to shield their actions from accountability.