During times of political unrest, the streets become dangerous, and information spreads mostly online. Without internet access, I have no way to stay informed about what’s happening. This isolation disrupts everything. I can only plan and organize when the internet returns, leaving our lives at the mercy of these shutdowns.
— Retired professor, Venezuela
The data is in and it’s official: in 2024, we saw more internet shutdowns, in more countries, implemented by more offenders, and across more borders. As our new report, Emboldened offenders, endangered communities: internet shutdowns in 2024, documents, it was a record-breaking year across the board, providing further proof that the scourge of internet shutdowns is an unyielding threat to human rights — and human life — around the world.
In 2024, Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition documented 296 shutdowns in 54 countries, surpassing the previous 2023 record of 283 shutdowns in 39 countries. This equates to a 35% increase in the number of countries where shutdowns occurred compared with the previous high in 2022 (40), with seven countries joining the first-time offenders list. As the year came to a close, 47 active shutdowns continued into 2025, 35 of which had already been ongoing for more than a year.
Conflict was the leading trigger for internet shutdowns for a second year running, with perpetrators expanding their arsenal of tools deployed to cut connectivity in situations of war, conflict, and violence, from jamming devices and cutting cables, to destroying infrastructure and sabotaging internet service providers. Meanwhile, we saw an alarming rise in cross-border shutdowns, with 25 such shutdowns implemented by eight offenders, impacting people in 13 countries. These included shutdowns carried out by Russia in Ukraine, Israel in Gaza, and both Thailand and China in Myanmar. The cross-border nature of these shutdowns makes it even more difficult for people whose lives have been disrupted by shutdowns to achieve redress, and for perpetrators to be held to account.
When I was displaced with my family to Rafah, my husband stayed behind in Gaza City. When the internet went down in northern Gaza, we lived in a state of fear for more than a month and a half. We had no news of my husband until he managed to regain access to the internet using an Israeli SIM card. To this day, we’re still in a state of worry because of the constant internet outages. I struggled to do my job as a journalist and eventually stopped working due to the internet shutdown. I never imagined that a blackout in the Gaza Strip would last for months, nor that this suffering would persist without any resolution.
— Journalist, Gaza Strip, Palestine
For the first time since 2018, India dropped from first to second place in the global shame list of offenders, although authorities there still imposed no fewer than 84 shutdowns — the most for a democracy. At the very top of the list was Myanmar, where at least six perpetrators, led predominantly by the military regime, imposed 85 shutdowns on a population that has continued bravely resisting an increasingly oppressive dictatorship four years after the junta seized power in a violent coup. Pakistan imposed 21 shutdowns, the highest number ever for the country, while Russia imposed 19 shutdowns, including seven in Ukraine as part of its ongoing full-scale invasion.
Despite ongoing efforts by the #KeepItOn coalition to document and drive consensus around the human harms of internet shutdowns, our latest findings show that perpetrators are still ramping up efforts to silence, censor, and suppress people — and doing so with impunity. But none of us should let up in the fight to end internet shutdowns for good.
As the testimonials we share in this year’s report demonstrate, the harms of shutdowns are innumerable, long-lasting, and far-reaching. Behind each of the 1,754 shutdowns that we’ve documented since 2016 is a story of people and communities cut off from the world and each other. Their stories make it clear: even one shutdown is one too many.
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From bad to worse
We documented a record-breaking 103 conflict-related shutdowns in 11 countries in 2024, and as we note above, warring parties deployed new tools and tactics to collectively punish or terrorize people living through war and violence. Notably, we saw two cases in 2024 where offenders targeted LEO satellite internet services in Myanmar because people rely on them when telecommunications networks are cut off — the first time we have documented this type of attack, and a development to monitor as more people connect through satellite internet.
Other leading triggers were protests (74 shutdowns), exams (16 shutdowns), and elections (12 shutdowns) — all situations where cutting off access to information has profound and serious consequences.
Continuing a devastating and horrific multi-year trend, authorities frequently imposed shutdowns to cover up grave human rights abuses, such as killing of protesters, targeting of civilians with airstrikes, and blocking humanitarian aid. In total, we documented 72 shutdowns coinciding with grave human rights abuses in 17 countries.
The year also set a new record for the use of platform blocks, with a total of 71 blocks recorded in 35 countries. This kind of shutdown is no more acceptable than completely cutting off the internet; authorities often block communications platforms —such as popular social media sites or messaging services — to control information flows or target people using specific platforms. It’s notable that for the first time, X was the most blocked platform globally, which correlates to a period of degradation in content governance on the platform. Meanwhile, Signal and TikTok, along with X, had the sharpest percentage increase in blocks from the previous year.
As an Open Source Intelligence Investigator (OSINT) analyst, the internet is essential to my work. On the day of the riots, I was unable to even contact my family to let them know I was safe. This was the longest [nationwide] internet shutdown in Pakistan’s history. Despite the government’s repeated claims that the internet had been restored, on the ground, it was not. Additionally, the government blocked access to X citing national security reasons, which is crucial for my work.
— OSINT analyst, Pakistan
Civil society strikes back
Even as shutdown perpetrators change tactics and grow more sophisticated, so too has the collective effort to stop the shutdowns and hold offenders accountable. In 2024, civil society stepped up once again. The #KeepItOn coalition monitored high-risk elections in 25 countries to advocate against shutdowns, denounced exam-related shutdowns in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and beyond, and documented the stories of those directly impacted by shutdowns, some of which are featured in this year’s report.
On the technical measurement front, our long-term partner, the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), launched a new initiative to enhance community-driven censorship testing, while IT service provider Cloudflare made its shutdown tracking tools available in 12 languages. Meanwhile, the #KeepItOn coalition continued to work with partners, including VPN service providers, to help people circumvent shutdowns, while also continuing to prioritize advocacy briefings, capacity building, strategic litigation, and active engagement to strengthen our allyship against shutdowns.
These efforts led to some important achievements. In January 2024, authorities in Bangladesh followed through on a commitment to ensuring unfettered access to the internet throughout their election, although they later regressed by imposing shutdowns during protests. In March, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights adopted a landmark resolution urging member states to refrain from imposing shutdowns during elections. And in November, authorities in Mauritius rescinded an order to ban social media during their election, following 24 hours of intense pushback from local and international civil society. Finally, at the 2024 UN Summit of the Future, world leaders committed to “[r]efrain from internet shutdowns and measures that target internet access,” as part of the consensus adoption of the Pact for the Future and Global Digital Compact. This was a significant victory and a high-level affirmation of a decade of advocacy against internet shutdowns at intergovernmental forums.
What we want
In a world where internet access is consistently weaponized, restricted, and precarious, marked by pervasive patterns of crushing censorship and a dangerous shift toward normalization, no single stakeholder can end internet shutdowns alone — and the time to act is now.
Our report includes detailed recommendations for parties to conflict, governments, international organizations, donors, and the private sector, to end shutdowns and the suffering that they cause. This means: ensuring people impacted by war and conflict have continued access to telecommunications platforms; protecting people’s rights to freedom of expression and access to information at all times; pursuing accountability and redress for those impacted by shutdowns; strengthening norms to end shutdowns; and supporting the frontline and grassroots organizations that work tirelessly to tackle the damage done by shutdowns imposed on their communities.
Given that conflict remained the primary trigger for shutdowns in 2024, we also want to underscore that governments and the international community have a duty to hold perpetrators and their enablers accountable for gross human rights abuses and crimes against humanity that are carried out under the cover of internet shutdowns — using any and all available avenues of justice.
More than anything, in the face of increasingly sophisticated and enduring efforts to censor and circumvent people’s ability to access the internet and enjoy human rights, collective action remains essential. Together, we can turn the tide against the use of shutdowns as a tool for violence, authoritarianism, and oppression around the world, and ensure that no one is forced to live their lives at the mercy of an internet shutdown.