Global Issues
Online Abuse is Real Violence — and Africa’s Women and Girls are Paying the Price
UNITED NATIONS, January 7 (IPS) - New estimates show that violence against women and girls remains one of the most pervasive human rights violations in the world – and that one of its fastest-growing frontiers is the digital space.
Technology-facilitated gender-based violence includes online harassment, cyberstalking, image-based abuse, deepfake exploitation and coordinated digital attacks, and all of these are proliferating.
Anonymous accounts, weak reporting systems, and limited legal consequences have enabled perpetrators to weaponize technology to shame, silence, and violate women and girls at unprecedented scale and speed.
Africa is no exception.
Across the continent, disturbing patterns are emerging: Girls are facing cyberbullying and sextortion. Women leaders and human rights defenders are disproportionately targeted through coordinated online abuse designed to intimidate them out of public life.
During elections, women in public roles report harassment, smear campaigns and doxxing – tactics meant to silence civic participation.
In humanitarian settings – from the Sahel to the Lake Chad Basin to Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – displaced women and girls rely on digital tools to stay connected and access essential services.
Yet these same tools expose them to surveillance, extortion, blackmail and exploitation.
In conflict contexts, online threats have escalated into offline consequences – including intimidation, detention and physical violence.
Despite the scale of the problem, most cases remain invisible because technology companies, justice systems and communities have not kept pace. Reporting mechanisms are often ineffective.
Digital safety is rarely taught in schools or homes. Survivors face retaliation and victim-blaming. Perpetrators, and the platforms that enable them, are almost never held accountable.
The consequences are severe. Technology-facilitated violence impacts mental health, restricts mobility, destroys livelihoods and erodes confidence. “This virtual world can have real emotional impacts. It’s not enough to say ignore it or log off,” a 24-year-old woman in Chad told UNFPA.
Other young women in Africa also describe witnessing or experiencing harms with real-world impacts: “My page was hacked, I was forced to do things against my will,” a 31-year-old woman from Liberia said.
“Someone had published naked photos and videos of me in our local village Facebook group,” a young woman in Kenya shared. “I gathered the courage and went to a police station to report the incident. The officers I spoke to first admonished me and told me that this was not a criminal case, but rather a case of indecent behaviour on my part.”
In aggregate, these harms are reshaping the digital public sphere in ways that exclude women and girls.
When girls abandon online learning for fear their images may be misused, or when women delete their accounts to escape harassment, societies lose leadership, innovation and the voices essential to progress.
Gender equality cannot advance when half the population is pushed out of digital spaces.
That is why UNFPA and partners convened the first-ever Africa Symposium on Technology-facilitated Gender-based Violence in November, convening leaders in digital rights and gender-based violence prevention and response. It is time to build alliances and explore solutions. Africa is home to multiple hubs of technological innovation, and to the world’s youngest population.
As the digital divide slowly closes, we must ensure that the technology being adopted is safe, private and secure, and does not reinforce or amplify existing gender and social inequalities.
Symposium attendees recognized the need for a bold, coordinated response, one that follows the same principles that guide all efforts to end gender-based violence: dignity, consent, confidentiality, privacy, and survivor-centered care.
We must create a world where “African innovators lead the way in designing digital ecosystems that are safe, ecosystems that are inclusive and empowering for all, and in particular for women and marginalized communities,” said Judy Karioko, from the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) in Kenya, at one of the Symposium’s sessions.
UNFPA is committed to making every space – physical or digital – safe for women and girls in all their diversity. Through the Making All Spaces Safe programme, supported by Global Affairs Canada, concrete action is being taken across Africa, including Benin, Ghana, Kenya and Tunisia, to integrate technology risks into efforts to end gender-based violence.
But no single institution can end digital violence alone. Governments, tech companies, educators, civil society, faith leaders, families – and every digital citizen – share responsibility.
The world’s future begins with Africa. As a region, and as a global community, we cannot wait. Because if we fail to make the online world safe, we fail to protect the future of girls, and the world growing up in the digital age.
Dr. Sennen Hounton is the UNFPA Regional Director for West and Central Africa, while Ms. Lydia Zigomo is the UNFPA Regional Director for East and Southern Africa
Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations
IPS UN Bureau
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