Contemporary Challenges in Ending Violence against Women and Girls: Preventing and Responding to Online Attacks

In today’s digital age, the Internet and other technologies are rapidly creating new social digital spaces and transforming how individuals meet, communicate, meanwhile reshaping society as a whole. Despite the benefits and empowering potential of the Internet and ICT, women and girls across the word have increasingly voiced their concern at harmful, sexist, misogynistic and violent content and behavior online. Female political leaders, journalists, and human rights defenders are at particular risk of online and ICT-facilitated violence, while the phenomenon has spread across cultures and continents to the workplace, schools, homes and campuses, affecting millions of women and girls. Through this panel discussion, we hope to gain understanding of how to effectively apply a human rights-based approach to prevent and combat these latest manifestations of violence as human rights violations, which shares its root causes with other forms of abuse and discrimination.