Every year, when exam season rolls around for students across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), many governments use the risk of cheating as an excuse to shut down the internet or block social media platforms. And every year, this results in millions of people losing connectivity, businesses grinding to a halt, and disruption to daily life across entire countries. Of course, exam shutdowns are not the only threat to education in the region; students in Gaza have begun a third academic year in tents and makeshift spaces, while in Lebanon, nearly 100,000 students were unable to return to school at all.
But across the wider MENA region, this year’s exam season saw mixed results for exam shutdowns. For the first time since Access Now, SMEX, and the Internet Society began tracking this phenomenon as part of the #NoExamShutdown campaign, the trend went in two different directions across the map. For example, Algeria, which has been a persistent offender for the past decade, limited shutdown measures to the inside of exam centres, without disconnecting the rest of the country. Meanwhile Syria, which imposed 11 nationwide exam-related shutdowns just last year, appears to have held its 2026 exams without any documented disruptions. On the other hand, Tunisia — a country previously ranked as having the highest internet freedom environment in MENA — joined the offender list for the first time, imposing covert connectivity restrictions during both of its Baccalaureate exam sessions. Read on for more details of this year’s exam season results.
✎ In Iraq, the numbers tell a complicated story
Iraq’s exam-related internet shutdowns are now in their 11th consecutive year, with 2026 adding at least 34 documented disruptions, according to Cloudflare Radar and ISOC Pulse data.
The first set of disruptions occurred throughout June, aligned with the country’s middle and high school exam schedules. The Iraqi Ministry of Communications had previously announced the shutdowns, planned to last approximately 90 minutes every morning on exam days. The Minister of Communications Mustafa Sanad later confirmed the shutdown, vowing to develop a digital system to eliminate centralized exam distribution and, thus, the “need” to cut off internet access. However, similar pledges have been made — and broken — before. In August, a second wave of exam-related shutdowns hit on five consecutive mornings from August 26 to 31. The disruptions then continued daily until September 10, resuming from September 26 during postponed exams.
On average, this year’s disruptions were shorter in duration than in 2025, and there were fewer of them overall, but whether this represents a genuine policy shift in the right direction, only time will tell.
✎ Sudan’s shutdowns continue amid war
For a sixth consecutive year, Sudan’s government cut connectivity during exams, ordering 10 internet shutdowns between April 13-23. MTN Sudan notified subscribers in advance of the disruptions, but these shutdowns were imposed amid the country’s ongoing and devastating civil war, making it even harder to justify the collective cost to people’s safety, access to information, income, and even healthcare.
✎ Syria: Breaking with the past?
Following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s tyrannical regime in 2024, many wondered whether the new administration would break with the country’s longstanding pattern of implementing nationwide shutdowns during national exams. While authorities stuck to tradition in 2025, something appears to have shifted in 2026, with neither Cloudflare nor ISOC reporting any exam-related shutdowns during this year’s exam period. This marks the first time in at least a decade that Syria has refrained from imposing shutdowns during national exams; proof that even the most entrenched patterns can be broken.
✎ Algeria turns a page
When Baccalaureate exams began in Algeria on June 7 of this year, people across the country were pleasantly surprised to find that their internet access had not been cut, for the first time in 10 years. As the Minister of Education Mohamed Seghir Saâdaoui explained, connectivity would henceforth only be imposed inside exam centres, with the wider country remaining connected. This marks a significant shift from authorities’ previous approach, which has previously included both total nationwide shutdowns and targeted app blocking only during exam hours. Even if the government has not openly admitted as much, the shift towards fewer, more limited restrictions shows the power of public pressure from citizens, businesses, and civil society to affect real change.
✎ Tunisia: A new offender
Historically, Tunisia has been considered to have the highest internet freedom country in MENA. Yet this year, the country appeared on the #NoExamShutdown campaign’s radar for the first time. OONI anomaly data suggests there were widespread mobile internet disruptions, affecting messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Messenger across Tunisia, during both the main Baccalaureate session (June 3-10) and the reset period (June 29-July 2). These restrictions, which were imposed without prior notice, impacted businesses and people across the country. This is an alarming step in the wrong direction; one that will need to be closely followed in years to come.
✎ Jordan: Announced, localized, and still unacceptable
Jordan has a long history of exam-related shutdowns, with 2023 being a rare and one-off exception to its annual pattern of hitting the kill switch during exams, even as other platform restrictions remained in place. Unfortunately, 2026 continued in this vein; on July 23, Jordan’s Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) announced that IP-based messaging applications would be blocked near schools hosting the Tawjihi (General Secondary Certificate) exams, during examination hours only. But announcing a shutdown in advance does not make it any more of an acceptable measure. The TRC’s “localized” and “temporary” framing warrants scrutiny; targeted does not mean proportionate, and a public measure imposed annually and without legal challenge is one that risks being normalized.
➞ A spreading problem
The countries mentioned above are those we track most closely. But exam-related shutdowns are not confined to the MENA region.
✎ India
In June 2026, the Indian government used Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, to block Telegram for the week leading up to the country’s postponed NEET-UG (national medical school entrance) exams. The original NEET-UG exams, taken by 2.27 million candidates on May 3, were voided after it was revealed that materials matching the test’s questions had been leaked.
➞ A mixed report with room to improve
➞ What you can do
If you have experienced internet disruptions during exam periods, we want to hear from you. Your testimonies can help us to document and measure what governments try to conceal.
- Share your story → https://forms.gle/pUh6EPwwtkD65BDY6
- Join the coalition → accessnow.org/campaign/keepiton
- Spread the word → #NoExamShutdown #KeepItOn
Note on methodology: The figures in this blog reflect the total number of individual disruptions observed during exam periods. However, as part of the #KeepItOn Shutdown Tracker Optimization Project (STOP) dataset, Access Now counts shutdown instances by each exam period rather than each individual disruption, roughly corresponding to the number of times that authorities deliberately choose to shut down the internet before each exam period begins. This means that the numbers in this blog may differ from our future annual reporting. For more details, read our STOP methodology FAQ (see: “What metrics do we use to track and report on shutdowns? Why do we count shutdowns differently depending on context?”).