The cancellation of RightsCon 2026 in Zambia, just days before it was due to open, is no mere diplomatic incident but a clear signal that even the most established forums for digital rights are vulnerable to interference by powers that quietly question their right to exist.According to a statement from the organisers, led by Access Now, the summit was set to take place in Lusaka from May 5 to 8, 2026. Thousands of participants from over 150 countries were expected to attend. Then, five days before they were due to arrive, the event was cancelled – reportedly under pressure from China, allegedly linked to the attendance of Taiwanese civil society actors.The incident reveals how foreign powers can impose their red lines far beyond their borders – and how the spaces where digital rights are debated are themselves subject to the control of governments that dominate the global AI and digital discourse.Forums such as RightsCon are supposed to be open spaces where civil society, academia, governments and businesses debate the future of the internet, artificial intelligence and digital freedoms. When their very functioning can be vetoed by a foreign power, they cease to be universal. They become subordinate to the narratives of the dominant.Control of digital spaces as a new form of colonialismThat the 2026 edition was due to take place in Zambia is central to what this cancellation reveals. In much of the Global South, control over digital spaces has emerged as a new form of colonialism.The technologically advanced nations increasingly assert digital sovereignty as a matter of national interest. But for countries that depend on foreign infrastructure, investment and technologies – and on the global standards shaped by those who provide them – digital sovereignty is a promise without substance. They are formally sovereign over digital policy, yet structurally unable to determine what their digital spaces should look like, or even to protect the right of assembly within them.The cancellation of RightsCon brings this digital colonialism into sharp focus. It demonstrates that those who dominate global digital infrastructure and narratives are also able to control the terms of the debate itself. The powerful nations – the United States and China foremost among them – are shaping not only national standards but the very idea of what digital sovereignty means and who it is for.The sovereignty trapThe dominant response to such vulnerability, increasingly, is more sovereignty. From Washington to Beijing to Brussels to Delhi, governments frame control over digital infrastructure, data flows and standard-setting as essential to national security. But sovereignty, as currently deployed, is a statist concept. It asks: who controls the infrastructure? It does not ask: whose rights does that infrastructure serve?This is the sovereignty trap. Zambia did not lack sovereignty in any formal sense. What it lacked was the structural power to resist external pressure on a matter of civic assembly and free expression. The threats to digital rights do not come only from beyond borders. Across the world, governments invoke sovereignty to justify surveillance, censorship and the criminalisation of online speech. Algorithms designed for engagement amplify disinformation and drown out the voices of those who lack institutional power. Communities in the Global South face a double bind: censorship from foreign governments that can cancel their forums, censorship from domestic governments that can silence their speech – and platforms that mediate their expression but are designed and governed elsewhere.More sovereignty does not resolve this bind but works to deepen it.From sovereignty to self-determinationWhat is needed is a different framework altogether: digital self-determination. Where sovereignty concerns the authority of states, self-determination concerns the rights of both nations and peoples to meaningfully shape the digital environments they inhabit – to participate in setting rules, to resist external domination, and to hold power accountable, whether that power is foreign or domestic.Digital self-determination reframes the question. It asks not only whether a country controls its own data or infrastructure, but whether its people – including marginalised communities, civil society actors, and those across the Global South – have a genuine voice in how digital spaces are governed. It treats the right to convene, to debate, and to dissent in digital and digitally adjacent spaces as foundational, not incidental.This should concern everyone, not only those in the Global South. The logic of digital domination is expansive. If a powerful state can cancel a multinational civil society forum on foreign soil today, the precedent extends: any sufficiently powerful actor – state or corporate – can shape what is discussed, by whom, and where. The erosion of open digital governance is not a problem for the periphery. It is a structural feature of the current global order.The cancellation of RightsCon did not create these dynamics. It made them visible. The answer is not to retreat into competing national sovereignties, each guarding its own digital borders. It is to build frameworks of digital self-determination that guarantee the right of peoples to resist external and internal digital coercion, the right of peoples everywhere to participate in shaping digital governance, and the accountability of both state and non-state actors who control digital infrastructure.As long as digital power remains concentrated in the hands of a few players capable of imposing their terms across borders – and as long as national security and sovereignty remains the available counter-framework – digital rights will remain fragile. The path forward lies in centring the debate on self-determination and universality of digital rights: the right of all peoples, to shape the digital world they inhabit.Dr. Ritumbra Manuvie is a tenured Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen, and Founder Director of Foundation Diaspora in Action for Human Rights and Democracy.