Rahwa Behre

Rahwa is a human rights defender, researcher, and archivist leveraging emerging technologies to champion freedom of expression, community memory, digital equity, and journalist safety. Collaborating with global NGOs, Rahwa has contributed to reports on human rights abuses and led programmatic efforts for government-funded transitional justice initiatives in post-conflict zones. Her work has been featured in the BBC documentary, “War Crimes: Are social media companies removing key video evidence?” In 2021, she founded Permachive, a technology, information and media organization democratizing the capacity to remember, reimagine, and reform for the benefit of humanity. Prior to this, Rahwa served as the SVP of Digital Assets and Markets at a global cryptocurrency exchange and has been in web3 since 2016. Rahwa’s current focus areas include censorship-resistant technologies, internet freedoms and safety, storytelling, and community archives.

Rahwa led the remote Archive Accelerator program, designed to empower community-based and community-led archives in protecting their digital assets from neglect and manipulation. She introduced the innovative Store Framework developed by Starling Lab, along with next-generation storage technologies, to  support archivists assess the efficacy of decentralization and cryptography in enhancing their preservation strategies.