UNIMAC joins the conversation on civic space, digital rights, and the responsibilities that make both meaningful — because rights without responsibility are incomplete.
FOAEA Workshop — Yaoundé·Joint session with Globe Watch Foundation·Represented by Griselda Nsombo, UNIMAC Focal Point
Rights
Responsibility
Rights ↔ Responsibilities
Rule of Law · Civic Space · Digital Rights · Human Rights Education · Freedom of Expression · Freedom of Association · Access to Information · Peaceful Assembly · Digital Responsibility · FOAEA · Globe Watch Foundation · Civic Participation · UNIMAC Cameroon · Online Safety · Rule of Law · Civic Space · Digital Rights · Human Rights Education · Freedom of Expression · Freedom of Association · Access to Information · Peaceful Assembly · Digital Responsibility · FOAEA · Globe Watch Foundation · Civic Participation · UNIMAC Cameroon · Online Safety ·
Date
1 August 2026
Organiser
FOAEA
Co-host
Globe Watch Foundation
UNIMAC Rep
Griselda Nsombo
Asociety cannot fully protect rights that its citizens do not understand. That principle sits at the heart of human rights education — the recognition that knowledge is the precondition for protection. On 1 August 2026, UNIMAC joined that conversation directly, participating in a workshop organised by FOAEA on the theme “Advocacy Within the Rule of Law” — represented by Yaoundé Focal Point Griselda Nsombo.
The session brought together participants for a joint session with Globe Watch Foundation — described at the workshop as a watchdog for global sustainability, promoting human rights education, social inclusion, and gender equality — to explore civic space, digital rights, and the responsibilities that make both meaningful.
Core Principle
Rights come with responsibilities.
The workshop centred on a foundational principle in civic education: the freedoms that protect individuals — expression, association, access to information, peaceful assembly — are inseparable from the responsibilities those freedoms require. Exercising a right without regard for others’ rights is not civic participation. It is civic disorder.
The four foundational freedoms
Understanding Civic Space — The Environment That Makes Citizenship Possible
The workshop introduced and unpacked the concept of civic space — the environment that allows individuals and organisations to participate freely in the political, economic, social, and cultural life of their country. Civic space is not simply a legal concept. It is the practical condition under which citizens can actually exercise the rights that law nominally grants them.
Four freedoms define and constitute civic space. Taken together, they form the architecture within which meaningful civic participation becomes possible.
Freedom of expression
The right to hold and communicate opinions, ideas, and information without interference or censorship — the foundation of public discourse and informed decision-making.
Without expression, citizens cannot communicate needs, challenge authority, or participate in public debate.
Freedom of association
The right to form and join organisations, including civil society organisations, trade unions, political parties, and community groups — the mechanism through which individuals amplify collective voice.
Without association, citizens act alone. With it, they can build the institutions that hold power accountable.
Access to information
The right to seek, receive, and share information — including information about how government institutions operate and make decisions that affect citizens’ lives.
Without information access, rights exist on paper but cannot be exercised in practice. Informed citizens are prerequisite to accountable governance.
Freedom of peaceful assembly
The right to gather publicly and collectively to express views, demonstrate, and advocate — the physical manifestation of civic participation in shared democratic space.
Without peaceful assembly, citizens cannot signal collective priorities to institutions that must remain responsive to them.
These four freedoms are interdependent. Restricting any one of them undermines all the others. A citizen who can express views but cannot access information is expressing opinion in a vacuum. A citizen who can associate but cannot assemble cannot convert organisation into visible civic action. Civic space is a system, not a menu.
Protecting people in the digital environment
Digital Rights: The Extension of Citizenship Into Online Space
As daily life, civic participation, commerce, and political discourse migrate increasingly online, the rights that protect citizens cannot stop at the boundary between physical and digital space. The workshop introduced participants to digital rights — the rights and freedoms that protect people while using digital technologies including the internet — and framed them as a direct extension of the civic rights that precede them.
🔒
Personal privacy
The right to control who has access to personal information, communications, and online behaviour — and to expect that digital activities are not monitored without consent or legal authority.
🗃️
Personal data protection
The right to know what data is collected about you, how it is used, who has access to it, and to request its correction or deletion — increasingly codified in data protection frameworks globally.
💬
Freedom of online participation
The right to access digital platforms, participate in online discourse, and engage with digital civic life without arbitrary restriction or discrimination.
🛡️
Protection from cyberbullying & harassment
The right to use digital spaces without being subjected to targeted abuse, threatening behaviour, or systematic harassment — a particular concern for women, young people, and public advocates.
⚖️
Freedom from digital discrimination
The right to equal treatment and access in digital environments — not to be excluded, restricted, or disadvantaged based on identity, location, or demographic characteristics.
The online environment is also a space where rights, responsibilities, and respectful behaviour matter. The same principles of civic life apply — with the additional complexity that online actions can reach thousands of people within seconds.
FOAEA Workshop — Advocacy Within the Rule of Law, Yaoundé 2026
📷 Photograph
Workshop participants at the FOAEA session exploring digital rights and civic responsibilities, Yaoundé
alt: “Participants at the FOAEA and Globe Watch Foundation joint workshop on digital rights and civic space, Yaoundé, Cameroon, August 2026”
The balance at the heart of citizenship
Rights and Responsibilities: Two Sides of the Same Principle
The workshop’s strongest message was structural: rights are not self-sustaining. They require the active participation of citizens who understand that exercising a right creates a corresponding obligation to respect the same right in others. A society where everyone claims rights and no one accepts responsibilities is not a rights-respecting society — it is an adversarial one.
Participants were invited to commit to five practices of responsible citizenship, each connecting a right to its corresponding responsibility.
✓
Respect others’ rights, online and offline
Freedom of expression includes the right not to have your expression weaponised against you. Exercising your voice requires letting others exercise theirs.
✓
Use digital platforms responsibly for accountability
Digital tools are extraordinarily powerful instruments for civic participation and institutional accountability — and extraordinarily destructive when misused for harassment or misinformation.
✓
Verify information before sharing it
In a digital environment where information reaches thousands within seconds, the responsibility to verify before sharing is not a courtesy — it is a civic obligation.
✓
Promote peace and constructive dialogue
Civic space depends on the possibility of disagreement without destruction. Responsible citizenship means engaging in dialogue that seeks understanding, not escalation.
✓
Avoid spreading harmful or misleading information
Misinformation undermines the shared factual basis on which democratic participation depends. Choosing not to spread it — even when it is convenient — is an act of civic responsibility.
These five practices are not idealistic aspirations. They are the minimum conditions for digital civic life to function as an asset to communities rather than a liability. Each represents a specific choice that any citizen with internet access makes, many times every day.
The community benefit of civic knowledge
Why Rights Education Is a Development Issue, Not Just a Legal One
Human rights education is often positioned as a legal or academic exercise. The workshop in Yaoundé framed it differently — as a practical development intervention with direct, measurable effects on the communities in which citizens live and participate.
Young people
Youth equipped with knowledge of their civic and digital rights are better positioned to participate in community decision-making, advocate for issues affecting them, and protect themselves from digital harm — at the age when these capabilities have the most longitudinal impact.
Women
Knowledge of rights — including the right to free expression, access to information, and protection from online harassment — is particularly consequential for women, who face structurally higher rates of digital gender-based violence and are disproportionately excluded from civic digital spaces.
Civil society organisations
Organisations that understand the legal boundaries of their advocacy, the digital rights framework protecting their communications, and the civic space principles guaranteeing their participation can operate more effectively and with greater institutional confidence.
Community leaders
Local leaders who understand what civic space means — and what threatens it — are better equipped to protect it in their communities, and to educate the people they lead about the rights that enable their own participation.
For each of these groups, rights education produces the same set of downstream capabilities:
✓
Participate meaningfully in community affairs and decision-making processes
✓
Advocate effectively for issues that affect themselves and their communities
✓
Engage with government institutions and civil society organisations from an informed position
✓
Promote accountability within civic and digital spaces
✓
Protect themselves from harm in digital environments
✓
Support peaceful, evidence-based dialogue that strengthens rather than fragments community bonds
How UNIMAC shows up
UNIMAC’s Continued Engagement: Learning as Advocacy Preparation
UNIMAC’s participation in the FOAEA workshop was not peripheral. Griselda Nsombo, as UNIMAC’s Focal Point for Yaoundé, engaged in a workshop that directly intersects with the organisation’s core work: empowering women and young people, promoting social inclusion, advocating for human rights, and building the capacity of vulnerable communities to participate in their own development.
GN
Griselda Nsombo
UNIMAC Focal Point — Yaoundé · FOAEA Workshop, 1 August 2026
Her participation signals UNIMAC’s commitment to continuous learning — bringing knowledge of civic space, digital rights, and responsible citizenship back into community-focused programmes that reach the women, young people, and vulnerable groups who need these frameworks most.
Learning
Direct exposure to frameworks for civic and digital rights education that can be integrated into UNIMAC’s community engagement and capacity-building work.
Exchange
Sharing of UNIMAC’s field experience with partner organisations, and receiving perspectives from civil society actors working in adjacent domains.
Partnership
Strengthened relationships with FOAEA, Globe Watch Foundation, and other workshop participants — expanding the civil society network through which future collaborative initiatives can emerge.
The workshop’s practical takeaway
Five Principles to Carry Forward
The workshop closed with a set of principles that translate rights education into daily civic practice. They are not aspirational. They are operational — specific choices that any citizen makes every time they open a browser, attend a community meeting, share a post, or engage in conversation.
01
Know your rights
Understanding what civic and digital rights exist is the precondition for exercising them and for recognising when they are being violated.
02
Respect the rights of others
Every right you claim for yourself must be equally available to those who disagree with you. That is not a limitation on your rights — it is the definition of them.
03
Verify before you share
In a digital environment, sharing unverified information is not neutral. It actively contributes to a less reliable information ecosystem that harms everyone.
04
Speak responsibly
The power to communicate with thousands imposes a responsibility proportionate to that reach. Speaking responsibly is a form of civic care.
05
Promote dialogue
The goal of civic participation is not to win arguments but to build shared understanding. Communities that can disagree constructively are harder to fracture.
A stronger society is built not only by people who know their rights, but by citizens who understand their responsibilities. These two things are not in tension — they are the same principle, held in balance.
Workshop conclusion — FOAEA, Yaoundé, 1 August 2026
Civic & digital rights in Cameroon
Frequently Asked Questions
What is civic space and why does it matter?▸
Civic space refers to the environment that allows individuals and organisations to participate freely in the political, economic, social, and cultural life of their country. It is constituted by four core freedoms: freedom of expression, freedom of association, access to information, and freedom of peaceful assembly. Without these freedoms functioning in practice, citizens cannot exercise their rights or hold institutions accountable, regardless of what is written in law.
What are digital rights?▸
Digital rights are the rights and freedoms that protect people while using digital technologies, including the internet. They include the right to personal privacy, personal data protection, freedom of online participation, protection from cyberbullying and online harassment, and freedom from digital discrimination. Digital rights are an extension of civic rights into the online environment, and are governed by a combination of national law, international human rights frameworks, and platform policies.
What is the relationship between rights and responsibilities?▸
Rights and responsibilities are inseparable. Every civic or digital right an individual exercises creates a corresponding obligation to respect the same right in others. Freedom of expression, for example, includes the responsibility not to use that expression to incite violence, spread harmful misinformation, or infringe the rights of others. A society in which citizens claim rights without accepting responsibilities cannot sustain those rights over time.
What is FOAEA and what is their focus?▸
FOAEA is the organiser of the 1 August 2026 workshop on Advocacy Within the Rule of Law, held in Yaoundé, Cameroon. The workshop provided a platform for civil society organisations including UNIMAC to discuss human rights education, civic space, digital rights, and responsible citizenship in collaboration with Globe Watch Foundation.
How does UNIMAC engage with civic and digital rights issues?▸
UNIMAC participates in forums, workshops, and partnership platforms that advance human rights education, civic participation, and the protection of vulnerable communities in digital and physical spaces. The organisation’s participation in the FOAEA workshop, represented by Yaoundé Focal Point Griselda Nsombo, reflects its commitment to learning from and contributing to civil society conversations on rights, responsibilities, and inclusive civic engagement across Cameroon.
Building Communities Where Rights and Responsibilities Walk Together
UNIMAC remains committed to supporting initiatives that empower vulnerable communities with the knowledge and skills needed to participate meaningfully, responsibly, and safely in civic and digital life across Cameroon.
UNIMAC Cameroon ·
info@unimaccameroon.org · Universal Maidens Association Cameroon
About
Universal Maidens Association Cameroon (UNIMAC)
UNIMAC is a nonprofit organisation committed to empowering women, girls, young people, and vulnerable communities through human rights advocacy, education, humanitarian action, health promotion, entrepreneurship, and sustainable community development. Through community engagement, capacity building, and strategic partnerships, UNIMAC works to promote inclusive, peaceful, and resilient communities across Cameroon.
unimaccameroon.org
Rule of LawCivic SpaceDigital RightsHuman Rights EducationFOAEAGlobe Watch FoundationFreedom of ExpressionFreedom of AssociationDigital ResponsibilityOnline SafetyCivic ParticipationUNIMACYaoundéCameroon
