Internet shutdowns in 2023

Year after year, since Access Now first began issuing our series of annual #KeepItOn reports,1 we have been confronted with worsening conditions for internet shutdowns and human rights globally.2 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. We cannot allow them to succeed.

While we discuss quantitative analysis around the number of shutdowns and how they are deployed around the world throughout the report, we must first center the individual people and communities who are impacted by them, and in particular those who have lost their lives or suffered unspeakable acts of violence while being cut off from the world. We cannot treat these findings as the inevitable continuation of a worsening trend, but rather as a call to redouble our collective efforts to uphold human rights, particularly for the most vulnerable among us. To the #KeepItOn community and the many frontline defenders who have made the research, documentation, and advocacy behind this report possible, we extend our gratitude and honor your efforts. This work is grueling and has taken a heavy toll on many in our community. Know that your tireless efforts are not in vain.