NASHVILLE, TENN. (May 13, 2026) — This past weekend, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) sponsored the AI Hack for Freedom II, the second edition of a hackathon aimed at building powerful digital tools for pro-democracy movements.
The hackathon brought together eight globally-renowned human rights and democracy advocates from Nicaragua, Hong Kong, Rwanda, Venezuela, Palestine, Serbia, and beyond with top open-source software developers to build digital tools that support movements under repression. The activists served as team captains, guiding the development of software applications and solutions to help keep their movements alive. Developers used cutting edge AI tools and agents to rapidly prototype and build solutions that would have otherwise taken months to develop.
Unlike at the first AI Hack for Freedom in January, where the activist team captains were limited to guiding the developers, this time, AI tools are advanced enough where the team captains were able to code quite a bit of their projects themselves. This evolution speaks to the rapid advancement of AI agents over the past few months and highlights the special technological time we are in.
A panel of three judges selected the top three winners out of eight participating teams. The teams were evaluated on the scale of the problem addressed, integration of AI tools into their solutions, and the quality of technical execution. The first-place team received a $25,000 prize, the second-place team $15,000, and the third-place team $5,000. Each additional participating team was awarded $1,000. All prizes were paid in Bitcoin for its immediate, borderless, peer-to-peer benefits.
The event was hosted by AI Freedom Lab, a community dedicated to ensuring AI tools serve individual freedom, at Bitcoin Park, a campus in Nashville dedicated to supporting and accelerating the grassroots freedom tech movement.
Just before the hackathon, the activists spent three days in San Diego for HRF’s Agent Camp. Through HRF’s partnership with Finite, a company dedicated to making frontier AI accessible to non-developers, activists at Agent Camp learned to run their own open-source coding and personal agents based on a customized Hermes setup using Finite.Computer. After this training, they were not only equipped to lead the hackathon, but to continue building digital solutions for their movements long into the future.
Top three winners
Tarkus
Team Captain: Jhanisse Vaca-Daza
Bolivian pro-democracy activist; co-founder, Ríos de Pie
As team captain, Vaca-Daza led the development of Tarkus, an AI-powered platform to maximize the impact of trainers running in-person strategic nonviolence workshops. The tool helps generate educational materials, culturally-relevant lessons, and case studies, while also giving students a live interface for asking questions and engaging. An AI agent then analyzes participants’ interaction with the platform for learning patterns, gaps in comprehension, and signs of distress to provide trainers live feedback and content suggestions. Because Tarkus is open-source and can be self-hosted, trainers can bring nonviolence education to far more communities experiencing censorship and repression without needing to depend on platforms that regimes can shut down.
I truly believe Tarkus is the best way to get this much needed technique [strategic nonviolent struggle] to continue spreading, because AI enhances the training experience while the trainer builds the trust and legitimacy to transfer the skills
– Jhanisse Vaca-Daza
Zuka
Team Captain: Anaïse Kanimba
Rwandan human rights activist; Director, Africa Bitcoin Institute
Under Kanimba’s leadership, the team created Zuka, an open-source application that lets dissidents and journalists share information without revealing their identities. Individuals create an AI-generated avatar (including a face, voice, name, and biography) and use it to publish videos and social media content safely. But protecting identity is only part of the challenge. Users need protocols that cannot be censored. That’s why Zuka is built on Nostr, a decentralized and censorship-resistant communications platform that requires no email address or personal data to create an account. This means content is distributed across independent servers worldwide so no government can take them down. Each avatar also comes with a Bitcoin wallet to receive uncensorable donations and financial support.
Zuka was built in honor of all the brave Rwandans who have been imprisoned, disappeared and killed for speaking the truth.
– Anaïse Kanimba
Roshan
Team Captain: Roya Mahboob
Afghan tech entrepreneur; President and Co-Founder, Digital Citizen Fund
Under Mahboob’s guidance, the team developed Roshan, a personalized AI-powered learning companion designed to provide personalized education for girls denied access to schooling by authoritarian regimes. The app supports a wide range of subjects, from English-language exam preparations and job skills training to STEM education. Roshan teaches new concepts, quizzes students to reinforce understanding, and adapts lessons to each student’s pace and goals. To ensure accessibility in underserved areas, learning materials are preloaded so the app can function offline and in low-connectivity areas. Although Roshan is still in testing, Mahboob is preparing to bring it to her network of 2,000 female students in Afghanistan with the ambition of scaling it to the millions of children out of school around the world.
Education should not disappear just because a classroom closes. Through Roshan and [my other project] AfghanDreamers.ai, we are building a learning companion that meets girls where they are. Our belief is simple: if a girl still has a dream, she should still have the opportunity to build a future.
– Roya Mahboob
Stay Tuned
HRF and the AI Freedom Lab will host a third edition of the hackathon on September 24 and 25 in Washington, DC. Stay tuned for more details.
