APrIGF Document Platform

As digital systems underpin identity, commerce, and governance, users face risks they can’t meaningfully assess or control. DCDR responds by making protection proactive and engineered into infrastructure—moving faster and more effectively than traditional legal or regulatory approaches.
 

DCDR makes rights executable by embedding them directly into system design and code. It ensures data use is strictly purpose-bound, minimal, and transparently enforced, while structured taxonomies of harms, rights, and controls enable automation, auditing, and interoperability across digital systems.DCDR is built on three guiding principles: I Am My Data, which treats an individual’s data as inseparable from the person; End Remedy, which focuses on preventing harms rather than compensating after they occur; and Rights By Design, which ensures that legal and ethical protections are encoded directly into technology so that compliance becomes automatic, transparent, and verifiable.

Recommendations

Treat internet as critical infrastructure in disaster planning and ensure continuity through backup systems and diverse providers.

Build digital capacity and literacy in vulnerable and remote communities to strengthen preparedness and local response.

Embed rights-based data governance—protect privacy, promote transparency, and design early warning systems that build public trust.

Recommendations

Treat internet as critical infrastructure in disaster planning and ensure continuity through backup systems and diverse providers.

Build digital capacity and literacy in vulnerable and remote communities to strengthen preparedness and local response.

Embed rights-based data governance—protect privacy, promote transparency, and design early warning systems that build public trust.

Key Takeaways

Connectivity is critical: Reliable internet access is as essential as electricity during disasters; outages or shutdowns severely hinder response and coordination.

Resilience needs redundancy: Decentralized networks, radio backups, and regional or satellite alternatives (like Starlink) are vital when physical infrastructure fails.

Equity and trust matter: Marginalized communities face the greatest risk; inclusive access, digital literacy, and data protection must underpin disaster response systems.

Tension between digital sovereignty (national/regional control) and global Internet interoperability is flagged as a key challenge.

Internet fragmentation is a rising challenge in view of domestic / national policies particularly data laocalization, content regulation etc., which poses long term threat to the region’s digital integration and digital sovereignty.

Regional approaches to data governance is a crucial subject, with a focus on balancing innovation with protection. However a rights based, locally adapted frameworks and investment in DPI is appreciated.

AprIGF is a great platform to discuss the need for inclusive dialogue and policy coherence to maintain a globally interoperable Internet. There is need to enhance cooperation within and between different stakeholders in Internet Governance space.

The Showcase session on “Experience of Co-designing Digital Justice and Inclusion Initiatives with Communities in Bangladesh” presented how Oxfam in Bangladesh and Monash University are partnering under PROTIC II to bridge digital divides among fisherfolk, domestic workers, and tea-garden communities. Speakers demonstrated how community-driven research and participatory co-design have produced inclusive tools such as PAROLI, Nodir Koushol, Jalshikkah, and PRAGATI, which strengthen digital literacy, enable peer learning, and amplify community voices for rights and livelihood improvement.
 
Audience engagement was lively, centering on the effectiveness of co-design models, sustainability of digital inclusion efforts, and ways policymakers can integrate community voices. The discussion reaffirmed that co-creation with communities is essential for long-term adoption and relevance. Sustainability, participants agreed, requires active involvement of government and policy actors from the start. The session concluded that inclusive, low-tech, and locally led digital initiatives can transform marginalized groups into informed digital citizens capable of influencing policy and social change.