The Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) and Access Now co-founded the MENA Coalition to Combat Digital Surveillance (MCCS) at RightsCon in 2021. The Coalition is now composed of 15 diverse NGOs from across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, including groups from Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan, as well as regional and international members. Many Coalition members work with their communities at a grassroots level to provide digital security support to human rights defenders and expose the use of spyware and surveillance tech in their respective countries.

The Coalition came together to end the sales of spyware and digital surveillance tools to repressive governments in the region, fight for a safe and open internet, defend human rights, and protect human rights defenders, journalists, and internet users from governments’ prying eyes. Members work together to address the proliferation of spyware technologies and their increasing use by repressive governments in the MENA region to stifle dissent and crack down on human rights defenders. The Coalition tackles this issue through rigorous research, coalition-building, and targeted advocacy efforts.

The ultimate objective of the Coalition is to contribute to the safety of human rights defenders, journalists, and dissidents from and in the Middle East and North Africa, ensuring their protection against spyware and other surveillance technologies that invade their privacy and expose them and their communities to danger. We advocate for an end to the use, sale, and transfer of spyware and surveillance technologies in the region by applying effective pressure on the sellers, using means of advocacy, documentation, research, and strategic litigation.

Our efforts to expose the spyware industry include carrying out research which maps digital surveillance technologies in MENA, the companies which manufacture and export them, their investors, country of origin, and human rights abuses linked to their use. Our objective is not only to provide much-needed transparency into a secretive industry, but also to provide a topology of corporate and public actors who allow/enable the sale and transfer of invasive and rights-abusing technologies.

For more information, contact the following members:

1. Access Now
2. ALQST for Human Rights
3. ARTICLE 19
4. Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
5. Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR)
6. Front Line Defenders
7. Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR)
8. Human Rights Watch
9. Iraqi Network for Social Media (INSM)
10. Jordan Open Source Association (JOSA)
11. Masaar – Technology and Law Community
12. Middle East Democracy Center
13. Red Line for Gulf
14. Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
15. SMEX