Program
This year’s Theme: Realities Reimagined
The realities many of us navigate today are increasingly defined by crisis, conflict, surveillance, shrinking civic space, and the growing concentration of power in digital systems. While responding to these challenges remains urgent, Bread&Net 2026 invites us to look beyond reaction and toward possibility.
Realities Reimagined is an invitation to collectively envision and shape alternative digital futures; ones where technology serves communities rather than controls them, where rights and justice are embedded by design, and where people have meaningful agency over the systems that affect their lives. This theme creates space not only for critical reflection on today’s realities, but also for experimentation, creativity, and the development of practical alternatives.
Themes/ Tracks
Reimagining Technology Beyond Harm
Across the WANA region, technology is increasingly shaping our societies in ways that can reinforce inequality, enable surveillance, undermine human rights, and create new forms of harm. At the same time, communities across the region have built years of knowledge, research, advocacy, and collective expertise to challenge these realities and imagine alternatives.
This track explores how we can move beyond documenting and responding to harm to actively shaping technologies that reflect our realities, languages, values, and needs. It creates space to examine the social, political, and economic impacts of technology, share lessons and solutions, and envision safer, more accountable, and community-centered digital futures rooted in the experiences of the region.
Reimagining Power, Accountability & Resistance
Across the WANA region, technology is increasingly being used as a tool of surveillance, control, exclusion, and violence. From spyware targeting activists and journalists to AI-powered systems used in warfare, border control, content moderation, and algorithmic decision-making, technological systems are reshaping civic spaces, conflicts, and public life while often operating without meaningful accountability. At the same time, digital rights defenders, researchers, and civil society organizations across the region have spent decades documenting harms, challenging abuses, and advocating for more just technologies and governance frameworks. This track examines how technologies are being weaponized and deployed in contexts of conflict, political repression, economic instability, and shrinking civic space, while exploring new pathways for accountability, resistance, and technological sovereignty. By bringing together technical expertise, advocacy experience, and critical analysis, it seeks to deepen understanding of emerging technological threats, assess the effectiveness of existing responses, and imagine collective strategies to challenge harmful systems and build more rights-respecting digital futures.
Reimagining Collective Power & Movement Building
As tech-facilitated human rights violations grow more complex, so must the ways we organize against them. This track explores how movements across the region are adapting their strategies, building alliances, and sustaining momentum under pressure. It looks at what it means to mobilize today, across borders, disciplines, and struggles, and asks how our communities can move from reactive responses to more coordinated, resilient, and long-term action. It examines cross-movement organizing between digital rights, labor, climate, social justice, and arts and cultural practices, drawing on lessons learned from past and ongoing mobilizations in the region. It also explores new models for coalition-building, strengthening regional solidarity, and addressing persistent funding injustices that shape and often constrain collective action.
Reimagining Crisis Response in Digital Spaces
The ongoing Israeli aggressions in Lebanon, Palestine, and the surrounding region have had devastating consequences on digital security and safety across WANA, from large-scale security breaches and disinformation campaigns to increased personal risk and beyond. This crisis has continuously reshaped our region, and it shows no signs of stopping. It is therefore essential to examine the emergency response that must happen in proportion to such events, particularly as communities, civil society organizations, journalists, technologists, and academics navigate and survive ongoing crises, displacement, surveillance, digital security threats, and censorship. As the situation develops, so must our strategies, tools, and solidarities. Protecting our communities and our digital futures is not separate from reimagining them but rather a preconditional step.
Introductory Track
This track is designed for newcomers to the digital rights field who are beginning to explore how technology shapes power, rights, and everyday life in the WANA region. It offers an accessible entry point into key concepts, debates, and practices, helping participants build foundational understanding while connecting with others entering the space. The track creates room for learning, questions, and shared reflection without assuming prior technical or advocacy experience.
Open Track
This track welcomes submissions that do not fit neatly within the four thematic tracks but remain relevant to the broader context of digital rights, technology, and social justice in the WANA region. It offers space for emerging ideas, cross-cutting issues, experimental approaches, and urgent topics that may not be fully captured elsewhere in the program.