online GBV

In Colombia there is no law or public policy that relates directly to violence against women and information and communication technologies. "This is a scenario where a lot that needs to be done, but which, at the same time, offers us an opportunity," said Olga Martinez Paz of the organization Colnodo, which runs the Colombia part of the APC project "End violence: women's rights and safety online…

The 57th Commission on the Status of Women took place from 4 to 15 March 2013 at United Nations Headquarters in New York. The session’s priority theme was “Elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls”, and representatives of the Association for Progressive Communications' Women's Rights Programme attended the meeting of this global policy-making body dedicated…

Violence against women (VAW) that is mediated by technology is increasingly becoming part of women's experience of violence and their online interactions. In the same way we face risks offline, in the streets and in our homes, women and girls can face specific dangers and risks on the internet such as online harassment, cyberstalking, privacy invasions with the threat of blackmail, viral 'rape…

It was a bit like ping-pong - reporters, activists, and representatives from civil society organisations in a hot debate on privacy in Facebook. Some pointed out how Facebook (FB) from its inception is designed to encourage giving up your innermost secrets – or at least your relationship status. That privacy configurations change frequently on FB and it's hard to keep up or understand the…

This article, written by Florencia Flores Iborra for GenderIT.org, analyses some current cultural practices on some of the more popular online social networks, and the ways in which the publication policies of these platforms support or restrict the proliferation of certain behaviors relating to respect for the rights of women on the internet.

The 2012 "Take Back the Tech! campaign":https://www.takebackthetech.net/, a collaborative campaign that takes place annually during the "16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence":http://16dayscwgl.rutgers.edu/, featured 16 stories for 16 days. Each of these stories presented a different way how…

As I write, our online campaign: "respect online, respect offline" which, for 16 days, highlighted violence against women and girls in line with the campaign Take Back the Tech! inviting women and girls to use ICT to denounce violence, has just come to an end. But I realize that our campaign has been disrupted by the violence in my country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, even though it has not…

What I most value about the IGF is that thanks to its multi-stakeholder principle, it widens my perspective on pressing internet governance issues. However, all three sessions I attended on day two in room number four, while talking about human rights, failed to include women's right perspective. Women internet users are important stakeholder and it is evident that even after six years of…

The Association for Progressive Communications (APC)'s “Connect your rights: Internet rights are human rights” campaign has commissioned one of the first international surveys of the online threats faced by women human rights defenders (WHRDs). Responses came from 13 English-speaking countries, and across Spanish-speaking Latin America, with just over 40 people responding. The survey thus…

A Feminist talk entry published in GenderIT.org (in Portuguese) started an interesting exchange related to the complex fields of freedom of expression, censorship, hate speech, legal remedies, and ICT related violence against women. You must be asking yourself what it was about, in order to start such a complex debate. Well, it all starts with a map.