3 June 2025 - On Tuesday June 2nd, the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights held its seventh Annual Meeting and General Assembly, at the the Casa Da Musica, in Porto. A symbolic venue, as the building was specifically built for the European Capital of Culture in 2001.

In his introductory address, Felipe Filipe Araújo, Vice-President of the City of Porto and organizer of the event, insisted on the importance, today more than ever, of addressing digital rights as a specific topic, “As we advance our smart city initiatives, we remain committed to ensuring that technology serves our citizens, while protecting their privacy, dignity, and fundamental freedom. Porto pledges to continue working collaboratively with fellow cities in the Coalition to advance digital rights. We believe that by sharing knowledge, experiences, and best practices, we can build more equitable and inclusive digital futures for all our citizens”.

The main discussions of the meeting focused on steering the Coalition towards a not-for-profit organization, an important move for the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights, showing the member cities’ commitment around the world to drive a human-rights based digital transformation.

The meeting was also a time to look back at what CC4DR has done for the past year in terms of advocacy and knowledge-sharing activities.

CC4DR has voiced its ideas on digital rights during major events such as Smart City World Expo (Barcelona, November 2024) or Gitex Europe (Berlin, May 2025). The Coalition also pushed its policy work by translating into short and clear policy briefs its core principles, namely digital inclusion, digital democracy, data protection, and responsible technologies. 

The end of 2024 marked a key milestone with the first edition of the International Digital Rights Days in December, with events happening in over 30 cities around the world (led by Bordeaux Métropole and Porto). A second edition was confirmed during the Annual Meeting with even more activities planned, December 10th and 11th 2025!

The Cities Coalition for Digital Rights also engaged with its members, researchers and CSO into developing knowledge on urban application of ethical principles related to technology, thanks to an AI Governance Maturity Survey (led by Toronto and New York City), a Task Force on consent-based data sharing (led by Helsinki), mentoring session on digital democracy and participation (led by Amsterdam and Barcelona) and workshop on policy tools for ethical urban AI (led by Barcelona). 

In the coming year, CC4DR will focus on continuing developing its advocacy, based on the five principles of its declaration, and organising more activities to deepen knowledge on applying human rights in urban technology settings. 

Finally, to give some inspiration, the cities of Amsterdam, Barcelona, Glasgow, Manchester and Porto showed concrete ways to shape the future digital rights in cities, both at technical and political level.

Discover more about:

• The Ethical Leaflet of the City of Amsterdam
• The Digital Rights and Public Technologies approach of Barcelona City Council.
• The Glasgow’s Digital Strategy of Glasgow City Council, embedded in human rights framework.
• Manchester’s digital strategy #DoingDigitalTogether to protect and promote digital rights
• The data transparency pilot project of Porto Digital