privacy and security

Privacy allows women and members of marginalised communities to create safe spaces of expression and makes available tools that challenge norms that restrict equality, access and control. Bianca Baldo interviews Eva Blum-Dumontet, one of the authors of the recent report from Privacy International on gender and privacy.

Privacy was initially understood simply as the right to be left alone. The increasing use of internet, social media, surveillance and algorithmic processing has however shifted the meanings of privacy, and here we explore the conceptual understandings of privacy and its links to autonomy, human dignity and self-determination.

This article sums up the different and important reasons why we should stop using the term "revenge porn" when describing certain kinds of violations online that entail the non-consensual taking and circulation of intimate images. Why does language matter and how does it shape our perceptions and responses? Sophie Maddocks tells us more, based on her extensive research and interviews with…

This article expresses personal experience of navigating the digital space and learning about digital security in a world filled with neurotypical upper caste people in authority.

In this article, Garnett Achieng takes a deep-dive look into the Telegram app from the perspective of African women’s experience, particularly that of data privacy and online gender based violence.

What does it mean to use the internet freely and fully? What freedom do you have to express who you are, how you live your life, what you desire, dream and believe in on the internet? And how safely can you communicate, contribute, exist, navigate and be in the spaces online that can so powerfully connect you to communities and knowledges that build our sense of self? This article written by…

Drawing on findings from APC's MDG3: Take Back the Tech! project with women's rights organisations in twelve countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, this paper explores the links between the internet, cell phones and violence against women and illustrates that technology related violence impacts women as seriously as other forms of violence.

How is the internet a key public sphere for the struggle for sexual citizenship and the exercise of sexual rights? What is its value to a diversity of users, especially those most marginalised or discriminated against because of their sexual, gender or other forms of social identity? Why do arguments for the regulation of the internet anchor on the moral imperative to regulate sexuality? Who are…

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has been a challenging space for both women's rights advocates and for broader constituencies engaged in advocacy for gender equality and sexuality related rights. In the fifth and final year of its mandate, women's rights are still being dwarfed as a critical issue to be debated in this arena, while sexuality issues, although present, are not seen as a matter…

In the context of a country with one of the world's worst human rights records, women and girls are the victims of sexual violence perpetrated mostly by combatants from both sides. However, Sylvie Niombo finds in this paper that the intersections between violence against women and girls and ICTs in the DRC are not well established. The internet makes it possible to share experiences and receive…