Chad: Year-long social media outages continue as of March 2019 /update 4

Event

Individuals in Chad remain unable to access various social media networks (Facebook, Viber, Whatsapp) as of Thursday, March 28. The outages have been ongoing since the first week of April 2018 without any explanation from the authorities or telecommunication companies. Lawyers filed a petition on March 28 at the Court of Appeal asking the Chadian government to put an end to the outage; however, the Court has rejected their appeal, claiming that social media has the potential to cause unrest and damage the state's internal security. Associated protests - with the potential to turn violent - are possible in the coming days and weeks.

Context

Public access to social media networks has been suspended during periods of high sociopolitical tensions in the recent past in Chad, including during the presidential election in April 2016.

Advice

Individuals present in Chad are advised to avoid all potential protests due to the possibility of violence.