Decolonise Decentralisation: Co-building Human Rights Tech

Duration: NaN:NaN:NaN

Speaker: Sam de Silva

Type: Workshop

Expertise: No prior knowledge

Event: Devcon

Date: Nov 2026

This workshop sets out to draft, together and quickly, a practical starting strategy for co-building human rights tech in the Global South, technologists and local rights communities designing with each other rather than for one another. We start from a simple premise, that this can't be built on Global North templates and the complexity is real even within a single country like India. In small mixed groups of practitioners, rights organisers and builders, we'll map where decentralised tools have genuinely helped and where they've done harm, get clear on what different communities actually need, and agree concrete next steps to keep co-building after the room clears. To pick our priorities we'll run quadratic voting on the room, putting the tool to work while we test it. Participants will leave with a rough shared roadmap and a handful of collaborations to carry forward after Devcon.