Over two days in Eldoret, more than 40 civil society actors confronted a hard truth: the same tools they use to defend rights are being turned against them. Here is what happened, what was learned, and why it matters.
At a Glance
- 40+ participants including CSOs, HRDs, and community-based organisations
- 2-day practitioner-led, interactive training format
- 5+ thematic focus areas including TFGBV, misinformation, and platform governance
On 18–19 March 2026, Boma Inn in Eldoret City became a gathering point for human rights defenders, civil society organisations, community-based organisations, and digital rights advocates from across the Rift Valley and beyond. Convened by KICTANet and delivered in close partnership with the Tatua Digital Resilience Centre, the two-day training workshop tackled some of the most urgent questions facing Kenyan civil society today.
How do you defend communities online when you yourself are under attack? How do you document digital abuse without being exposed to further harm? And how do you influence platform governance when the platforms are designed with entirely different users in mind?
“In an era where civic space is increasingly shifting online, the threats of surveillance, harassment, and disinformation are no longer to be assumed – they are becoming our daily realities, especially for those who stand for social justice.”- Dr. Grace Githaiga, CEO, KICTANet
Why Eldoret, and Why Now
National digital safety policies are only meaningful when they reach the communities they are meant to protect. Eldoret, as a major regional hub in Uasin Gishu County, presented an important opportunity to engage CSOs and HRDs whose day-to-day work intersects with vulnerable groups – children, women, youth, and persons with disabilities — who face disproportionate online risks.
The timing is also critical. As Kenya approaches an election cycle, the digital environment is intensifying. Misinformation campaigns, coordinated harassment of women candidates and voters, and the surveillance of civic activists are not hypothetical scenarios – they are documented, recurring realities. Equipping frontline organisations now is both strategic and urgent.
The Issues on the Table
Participants brought their own lived experiences of digital threats, and the workshop created space to name, analyse, and respond to those experiences collectively. Six themes anchored the discussions:
- Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence: How digital tools are weaponised to target, silence, and control women and girls, and what HRDs can do to respond and advocate.
- Misinformation & Disinformation: Tracing harmful information campaigns, monitoring them, and mounting counter-narratives with evidence.
- Cyberbullying & Online Exploitation: Documenting incidents rigorously using digital forensics, and navigating platform reporting mechanisms effectively.
- Platform Governance: How CSOs can engage meaningfully in policy discussions about content moderation and user protection in African contexts.
- Organisational Digital Safety: Building internal protocols to protect staff, data, and communications against targeted digital attacks.
- Democracy & Civic Space: Safeguarding democratic participation and the integrity of public discourse as elections approach and digital manipulation intensifies.
Tatua’s Role: From Theory to Institutional Action
John Gathii, Digital Resilience Fellow on Digital Resilience at Tatua, anchored the workshop’s applied technical dimension. The goal was not simply to inform, but to equip organisations with tools they could deploy immediately.
“We explored ways in which organisations can protect themselves and their communities from digital threats, while also contributing to a more secure and inclusive civic space.”- John Gathii, Digital Resilience Fellow on Digital Resilience.
Tatua’s approach centres on building institutional resilience , not just individual awareness. This means helping organisations develop clear digital safety policies, incident response protocols, and staff capacity to identify and document threats before they escalate. The Eldoret workshop exemplified this methodology: hands-on technical sessions on digital evidence documentation sat alongside strategy workshops on crafting localised advocacy roadmaps.
Critically, the Eldoret workshop served a dual purpose. Beyond capacity-building, it functioned as a structured focus group to gather direct community input for Tatua’s forthcoming forensic guidebook – a practical resource being developed to help HRDs and CSOs document digital threats and online abuses with the rigour required for legal proceedings and evidence-based advocacy. The lived experiences, practical challenges, and knowledge gaps surfaced during these sessions are feeding directly into the guidebook’s design, ensuring it is grounded in the realities of frontline defenders rather than built solely from technical expertise
The Principle of Radical Inclusion
A thread running throughout the two days was that digital safety cannot be designed for vulnerable communities without those communities in the room. The people who face the highest risks of online harm ; women human rights defenders, LGBTQ+ advocates, disability rights organisations – often understand those risks most precisely. Their expertise must inform the solutions.
This also means challenging the tendency to treat civil society organisations purely as beneficiaries of digital safety interventions. This model positions CSOs and HRDs as architects of solutions, advocates who can shape platforms and policy, and monitors who hold digital spaces accountable.
“We cannot seriously discuss the safety of marginalised communities if those in greatest need of protection remain excluded from the very tables where safety policies are drafted.”
What Participants Walked Away With
Five tangible outcomes from the Eldoret workshop:
- Technical documentation skills: Training in monitoring and rigorously documenting online exploitation and abuse, building the evidence base for legal action and advocacy.
- Localised advocacy roadmaps: Tailored strategies for influencing local and national digital policy, grounded in specific threats and contexts.
- Institutional safety protocols: Frameworks for responding to online violence, cyberbullying, and exploitation at an organisational level – actionable protocols with clear ownership.
- Peer networks: Connections across CSOs, HRDs, legal experts, and CBOs to enable mutual support and shared intelligence on emerging digital threats.
- Platform governance fluency: Understanding how digital platforms are governed and how Kenyan organisations can participate in content moderation and policy discussions.
Part of a Larger Movement
For Tatua, this workshop reflects the organisation’s core conviction: digital resilience is not a technical add-on for civil society – it is foundational. Organisations that advocate for human rights, document abuses, protect survivors, and hold power to account cannot do so effectively if they are themselves exposed, surveilled, or silenced online.
