Nighat Dad, Executive Director of the Digital Rights Foundation
Nighat Dad is the Executive Director of Digital Rights Foundation. She is a TED Global Fellow for 2017, has been listed as TIME’s Next Generation Leader, and is the recipient of Atlantic Council Freedom Award, and Human Rights Tulip Award.
These are highlights of an interview conducted as part of the Humans of the Internet space at MozFest 2017. Read the full interview and listen to others at the Humans of the Internet playlist.
I am from Pakistan. I am a founder of a nonprofit organization called the Digital Rights Foundation. We work around issues related to internet freedom, the right to privacy, mass surveillance, and online harassment — things that come under internet governance.
Even resolving one case related to online violence against women gives a sense of success. For a long time I wanted to start something to address this larger issue in a proper way — with a right redressal mechanism. So I started the Cyber Harassment Helpline.
A couple of years back when I started this work I was very passionate. I’m still very passionate. I think it’s my passion that inspires me everyday. There are many challenges when you talk about internet freedom or our rights in online spaces. It’s not only the challenges coming from governments clamping down on online speech and citizens right to privacy — there are also challenges that come from the public at large, especially if you work in a closed society.
So after eight years I’m starting to feel tired. It’s an everyday struggle and things are hardly getting better. Every day we find a new challenge and have to devise a new solution. The internet is an ever-changing space. It’s very tiring. It burns you out. We have limited resources and it is hard to sustain ourselves and keep working. When somebody is at risk, when they’re facing violence or threats, and they reach out to you in the middle of the night you cannot turn away that request. We are only a few people. We need to work together to fight these massive battles: Governments are not on our side. Corporations are not on our side. So there’s an overall anger and frustration.
A healthy internet for me is an open internet, where users have safe and secure access. However we cannot just restrict ourselves to the internet-internet [the infrastructure] — we have to consider the humans who are trying to make the internet healthy. We need to connect this to human side. We need to pay attention to the people who are paving the ways for others to get access to a healthy internet.
My optimism comes from the support, the solidarity, and the strength that I get from the rest of the community. These may not be people physically around me — but I can find them virtually.
This content is distributed on the StoryEngine.io website under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
If you are interested in contributing to The Deep Listen or would like to talk to Loup, please reach out to us. We would love to hear from you!
