Technology-mediated Violence against Women in India: Discussion paper

Archival image(1978) of women’s protest against rape laws outside Supreme Court of India

Technology-mediated Violence against Women in India:
How can we strengthen existing legal-institutional response mechanisms?

A discussion paper from IT for Change
January 2017

In January 2017, IT for Change initiated work in the area of forging an effective legal-institutional response to technology-mediated violence against women in India, with support from the WWW Foundation. We began work on this project by producing a discussion paper on this issue, analysing the adequacy of the current legal and institutional framework and proposing alternate models that need to be debated and analysed. The discussion paper raises a series of questions on overhauling the existing legal framework, effectively addressing intermediary liability and strengthening law enforcement and other institutional mechanisms.

On January 19th, 2017 we convened a pre-consultation meeting in Bengaluru to debate these questions with a small group of feminist scholars and practitioners, to review the discussion paper and brainstorm on strategic directions to take this issue forward. The revised discussion paper and the report of the pre-consultation are available here.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Understanding Technology-mediated Violence against Women
How does the law view technology-mediated VAW? – Taking stock of existing legal provisions

Gaps in existing provisions of the law.
How can we overhaul existing legal frameworks?

Intermediary liability
Enhancing the responsiveness of law enforcement agencies
Conclusion and questions for discussion