NEW YORK: Relentless, borderless, and often anonymous the online world is "the new frontier for gender-based violence," the Executive Director of United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Natalia Kanem has said.
Nine-out-of-10 women report that online violence harms their sense of well-being. More than a third of women state that cyber violence has led to mental health issues. Digital violence inhibits authentic self-expression, and adversely impacts the professional and economic livelihoods of people who depend on online and social media spaces. Online violence silences the voices of women, said a statement issued by UNFPA.
According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, 85 percent of women with access to the internet reported witnessing online violence against other women, and 38 percent have experienced it personally.
Moreover, some 65 percent of women surveyed have experienced cyber-harassment, hate speech, and defamation, while 57 percent have experienced video and image-based abuse and ‘astroturfing’, where damaging content is shared concurrently across platforms, said the statement.
When someone infringes on music or film copyright, digital platforms remove the content immediately. Governments have passed laws making copyright infringement illegal and digital platforms have devised ways to identify and prevent unauthorized use of copyrighted material. These same protections and repercussions must also extend to individuals and their photos, Natalia Kanem noted.
The UNFPA has launched the "bodyright" campaign highlighting that corporate logos and copyrighted IP are more highly valued and better protected online than images of human bodies, which are often uploaded to the Internet without consent, and used maliciously.
The bodyright initiative is part of the wider 16 Days of Activism against Violence Against Women campaign, which runs until 10 December.
UNFPA has also launched “The Virtual Is Real” website, which features stories of victims and survivors of digital violence from around the world, alongside innovative work done by UNFPA to address this human rights violation.