Help us bring HRF’s ideas to the SXSW stage in Austin.
Each year, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) brings the global struggle for freedom to South by Southwest (SXSW), one of the world’s largest gatherings of innovators, creators, technologists, and thought leaders in Austin, Texas.
This year, HRF has submitted eight sessions for SXSW 2027, bringing together experts tackling authoritarianism across the spectrum of innovation, from AI-powered tools for dissidents and freedom tech in North Korea to the politics of women’s football, illicit sports betting, and even the power of comedy to outsmart censorship.
But we need your vote to get them to Austin.
Through August 23, SXSW Community Voting is open to the public. Explore HRF’s eight proposals below and vote for the sessions you want to see at SXSW 2027.
Firewall in Your Pocket: Freedom Tech in North Korea
How do you build technology for people living under one of the world’s most closed regimes?
This fireside chat explores how North Korea controls money, media, phones, and information — and how USB drives, offline libraries, hacked phones, diaspora media, and other forms of freedom tech can help break through those barriers. The conversation will challenge technologists to build tools that expand freedom without increasing the risks to those who use them.
Tyranny Tracker: A Democracy Index Built to Inform Action
What if you could better understand authoritarianism, country by country, and use that knowledge to inform action?
This session introduces HRF’s Tyranny Tracker, an interactive digital tool that helps users understand political regimes around the world, how authoritarian governments maintain their grip on power, and how activists can challenge them. With 75% of the world’s population living under authoritarian rule, understanding these systems is more important than ever.
The Politics of the Women’s World Cup
The Women’s World Cup is more than a sporting event. It has become a global stage where politics, culture, human rights, and the growing influence of authoritarian regimes collide.
Featuring former Afghanistan captain Khalida Popal and experts in sports and human rights, this panel will examine the growing political power of women’s football, the human rights challenges facing the sport, and how football has become a platform for survival and resistance in countries like Afghanistan and Iran.
Can AI Take a Joke? How Comedy Has Always Outwitted Power
Dictators have always had a problem with comedians. Now, AI might too.
Humor thrives on irony, ambiguity, timing, and shared context — exactly the qualities that make jokes difficult to censor and machines struggle to understand. This panel brings together comedians, researchers, and human rights experts to explore how humor has historically challenged authoritarian power and ask a timely question: Will AI make comedy harder to censor, or will it become the most powerful censor yet?
Power Plays: How Afghan Female Footballers Bested the Taliban
Women’s football in Afghanistan has never been just about football.
In this live edition of HRF’s narrative audio series Power Plays, former Afghanistan national team captain and founder Khalida Popal joins HRF’s Karim Zidan to tell the extraordinary story of Afghan women’s football and explore how sport became a platform for resistance, survival, and human rights under the Taliban.
How Authoritarian Regimes Gamble on Sport
Behind parts of the global sports economy lies a much darker industry.
Investigative journalists and human rights experts will examine how authoritarian regimes — including China, Russia, and North Korea — profit from illicit sports betting networks connected to organized crime, human trafficking, exploitation, and corruption. The panel will expose an overlooked threat hiding in plain sight across international sports.
Giving Dissidents Superpowers with AI
What once required a team of developers and significant funding can increasingly be built by a single activist with AI.
Around the world, dissidents are already using AI to document human rights abuses, monitor elections, preserve evidence, build advocacy platforms, and protect their work. This panel will explore how AI and open-source agents can become a force multiplier for activists, and how to distinguish tools that empower human rights defenders from those that put them at greater risk.
AI Hack for Freedom: Hackathons for Human Rights
What happens when you put dissidents and AI developers in the same room and ask them to build for freedom?
HRF’s AI Hack for Freedom initiative pairs activists with developers to turn frontline challenges into practical tools. From safety alert apps and censorship-resistant crowdfunding platforms to private AI assistants for political prisoner advocates, this session will showcase what they have built and how AI is dramatically lowering the barriers to creating freedom tech.
Help us bring these conversations to SXSW!
SXSW brings together people shaping the future of technology, culture, media, and society. HRF wants to make sure freedom is part of that conversation.
Community Voting is open through August 23. Every vote helps determine which sessions move forward.
Explore the proposals, vote for your favorites, and help us bring the global struggle for freedom to SXSW 2027.
The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies.
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