The 2018 edition of the Annual Freedom Online Conference is scheduled to hold from November 28 to 30, 2018, and will be hosted by the German Government at the German Federal Foreign Office in Berlin.
The Freedom Online Coalition is an intergovernmental coalition that was established at the inaugural Freedom Online Conference in The Hague, the Netherlands, on December 8 and 9, 2011 with the objective to advance Internet freedom globally through the coordination of diplomatic initiatives and interventions at relevant international platforms.
Its membership has grown from an initial 15 in 2011 to 30 in early 2018 and includes such countries as Austria, Canada, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Ireland, Kenya, Latvia, the Republic of Maldives, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Tunisia, the United Kingdom and the United States, among others.
Germany currently holds the chairmanship of the Coalition.
Member-countries of the coalition endorse the principle that the human rights that people have offline should equally be enjoyed online, committing to the promotion of freedoms of expression, association, and peaceful assembly with respect to the Internet and connection technologies across the world.
This year’s Conference is the seventh of its kind. Since its inception in The Netherlands in 2011, the Coalition has held its Annual Conference in Kenya (in 2012), Tunisia (in 2013), Estonia (in 2014), Mongolia (in 2015) and Costa Rica (in 2016).
Detailed information about this year’s event will be made available later.
