Networking Session #232 Bringing Safety Communities Together a Fishbowl Style Event

Summary

This discussion focused on technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) and the need for multisectoral collaboration to address this growing issue. The session brought together researchers, advocates, and practitioners to share findings and identify gaps in current approaches to combating online violence against women and marginalized groups.

Neema Iyer presented research from Uganda’s 2021 elections, revealing that women politicians faced significant sexist and sexualized comments online, which deterred many from using social media for campaigning despite its affordability. Her team also studied AI’s impact on African women, finding under-representation in datasets, algorithmic discrimination, and threats to low-skilled jobs. Notably, their research on perpetrators revealed that many are minors who learn harmful behaviors in peer spaces, highlighting the need for better digital citizenship education for young people.

Ayesha Mago from the Sexual Violence Research Initiative discussed their global research agenda, which identified major gaps in TFGBV prevention strategies, understanding of perpetration patterns, and support for marginalized populations including women with disabilities and LGBTIQ+ individuals. She emphasized the disconnect between policy frameworks and actual survivor needs, noting that many well-intentioned regulations fail to provide meaningful support.

Tom Orrell highlighted the importance of context-specific approaches, sharing examples from the Philippines where local stakeholders collaborated to define TFGBV within their cultural context. The discussion revealed challenges in defining TFGBV boundaries, particularly when online harm translates to offline violence, and the critical need for safe online spaces for criminalized communities who depend on digital platforms for connection and support.

Keypoints

## Major Discussion Points:

– **Research findings on women politicians and digital participation**: Discussion of studies showing that women politicians in Uganda faced sexist online violence during the 2021 “scientific election,” leading many to avoid social media campaigning despite its affordability and potential benefits for their campaigns.

– **AI’s discriminatory impact on African women**: Examination of how artificial intelligence systems contain data bias due to under-representation of African women, leading to algorithmic discrimination, digital surveillance issues, labor exploitation, and threats to low-skilled jobs.

– **Perpetrator-focused research and youth involvement**: Findings that a significant proportion of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) perpetrators are minors who learn harmful behaviors in peer spaces online, highlighting the need for education about online empathy and behavior rather than focusing solely on victim-blaming.

– **Breaking down silos between communities**: Multiple speakers emphasized the critical need to connect digital rights advocates, GBV researchers, health professionals, and traditional women’s rights organizations who often work in isolation despite addressing interconnected issues.

– **Implementation challenges and survivor needs**: Discussion of gaps between policy creation and enforcement, particularly around cybercrime laws, and the need to center survivor voices in developing responses rather than focusing primarily on criminalization approaches.

## Overall Purpose:

The discussion aimed to bring together researchers, practitioners, and advocates from different sectors (digital rights, gender-based violence prevention, health, policy) to share research findings, identify collaboration opportunities, and build a more connected community of practice around technology-facilitated gender-based violence.

## Overall Tone:

The discussion maintained a collaborative and solution-oriented tone throughout. It began formally with research presentations but became increasingly interactive and networking-focused as audience members shared their work and asked questions. The tone was serious given the subject matter but remained constructive and forward-looking, with speakers emphasizing opportunities for partnership and collective action rather than dwelling on problems alone.

Speakers

– **Neema Iyer**: Feminist researcher focusing on technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV), conducted studies on women politicians in Uganda’s 2021 elections, AI impact on women in Africa, and perpetrator research

– **Ayesha Mago**: Global Advocacy Director at SVRI (Sexual Violence Research Initiative), leads TFGBV work for a global research network that builds evidence on violence against women and children in low- and middle-income countries

– **Tom Orrell**: Works at Development Gateway, involved in implementation work developing tools, platforms, and policy recommendations in-country with local partners

– **Audience**: Various participants including representatives from different organizations and countries

**Additional speakers:**

– **Onu**: Secretary General of Bangladesh Internet Governance Forum

– **Representative from Digital Health and Rights Project**: Researcher studying tech-facilitated abuse among young people in Ghana, Kenya, Colombia, and Vietnam, particularly focusing on HIV communities and LGBTQ+ populations

– **Denny**: Works with organization called Tatl, builds open source software to research and respond to online harms, focuses on detection of online gender-based violence in Indian languages

– **Manpreet**: Works at Chen, involved in Survivor AI project and encryption work related to TFGBV

– **Carla**: Works for Association for Progressive Communications (APC), involved in Women’s Rights Program and Feminist Internet Research Network

– **Mia Marzot**: Digital rights advocacy lead at Oxfam, works with partners from 10 countries in the global south

– **Mohammed Aded Ali**: From Somalia, concerned about increasing digital gender-based violence

– **Santiago Danibia**: From VHRP program, trans man advocate working on safe digital spaces for trans people

– **Oni Kamakwakwa**: From Global Digital Inclusion Partnership, co-founder of Wise for Africa (feminist organization in South Africa working on feminist jurisprudence for gender-based violence cases)

# Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence: A Multisectoral Discussion on Research, Collaboration, and Prevention

## Introduction

This collaborative discussion at the Internet Governance Forum brought together researchers, advocates, and practitioners from diverse sectors to address technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV). The session featured extensive audience participation and networking, creating a dialogue that highlighted both the complexity of TFGBV and the urgent need for coordinated responses across traditional sectoral boundaries.

The discussion was anchored by three main presenters: Neema Iyer, a feminist researcher focusing on TFGBV with extensive experience studying women politicians in Uganda and AI’s impact on African women; Ayesha Mago, Global Advocacy Director at the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI), who leads TFGBV work for a global research network; and Tom Orrell, who contributed session management and facilitation. The session also featured significant contributions from audience members representing organisations across multiple countries and sectors, including digital rights advocates, health researchers, and women’s rights practitioners.

## Research Findings and Evidence Gaps

### Women Politicians and Digital Participation

Neema Iyer presented compelling research from Uganda’s 2021 elections, which she described as a “scientific election” due to COVID-19 restrictions that made digital campaigning particularly important. Her team’s findings revealed a troubling paradox in digital political participation. Whilst social media campaigning offers significant advantages for women politicians—particularly its affordability compared to traditional media—many women candidates chose to avoid these platforms entirely due to fear of online violence.

“So we actually found out it was actually really quite difficult to find the accounts of women to actually monitor because a lot of them chose to actually stay away from it instead of embracing,” Iyer explained. “Because women actually tend to really benefit from social media campaigning because it’s much more affordable… So it was a bit heartbreaking to see that they weren’t using it to its full capacity.”

The research documented extensive sexist and sexualised comments directed at women politicians, creating a hostile environment that effectively excluded them from affordable campaign tools. This finding illustrates how TFGBV creates structural barriers to democratic participation, moving beyond individual harm to systemic inequality.

### AI’s Discriminatory Impact on African Women

Iyer’s team also conducted groundbreaking research on artificial intelligence’s impact on African women, revealing multiple layers of discrimination embedded in AI systems. Their findings identified under-representation of African women in datasets used to train AI systems, leading to algorithmic discrimination that affects everything from facial recognition technology to hiring algorithms.

The research documented several key areas of concern: digital surveillance disproportionately affecting women, labour exploitation through AI-driven platforms, and threats to low-skilled jobs traditionally held by women. This work expands the understanding of TFGBV beyond social media harassment to encompass broader technological systems that perpetuate gender inequality.

### Global Research Agenda and Evidence Gaps

Ayesha Mago presented findings from SVRI’s global research agenda, which identified significant gaps in current approaches to TFGBV. The research revealed major shortcomings in prevention strategies, with current approaches focusing heavily on detection and punishment rather than addressing root causes.

“And the huge emphasis on detection and incarceration, in fact, is hindering approaches to actually preventing this kind of behaviour online,” Mago observed, challenging the dominant punitive approach to addressing online violence.

SVRI’s work identified particular gaps in understanding TFGBV’s impact on marginalised populations, including women with disabilities and LGBTIQ+ individuals. The research also highlighted a disconnect between policy frameworks and actual survivor needs, noting that many well-intentioned regulations fail to provide meaningful support to those experiencing online violence.

## Perpetrator-Focused Research and Youth Involvement

One of the most significant findings presented was Iyer’s research on TFGBV perpetrators, which revealed that a substantial proportion are minors. This discovery fundamentally challenges conventional approaches to addressing online violence.

“And quite interestingly, we found out that quite a big proportion tend to be minors. So it’s oftentimes children on the internet behaving badly,” Iyer explained. “So the question becomes then, how do we actually reach and teach younger people about how do you behave in online spaces? Because I think as humans, we’re taught so much how to behave in public… But that’s not the case once you build an account online.”

This finding suggests that many young perpetrators learn harmful behaviours in peer spaces online, where traditional social conditioning mechanisms don’t operate. The research indicates a need for education about online empathy and digital citizenship rather than focusing solely on victim-blaming or criminalisation approaches.

## Cross-Sector Collaboration and Breaking Down Silos

A central theme throughout the discussion was the critical need to break down silos between different communities working on related issues. Multiple speakers emphasised that TFGBV requires multisectoral responses that bring together digital rights advocates, GBV researchers, health professionals, and traditional women’s rights organisations.

Mago highlighted SVRI’s approach to fostering collaboration through their 300-member community of practice, which provides safe spaces for challenging conversations and resource sharing. “We run a community of practice… and we found that to be much more successful than these kinds of in-person conferences,” she noted, suggesting that online communities can be more effective for connecting diverse stakeholders globally.

Carla from the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) contributed significantly to this discussion, highlighting their Women’s Rights Program and Feminist Internet Research Network’s work in connecting researchers and advocates across different contexts.

The discussion revealed that whilst there is growing recognition of the need for collaboration, significant barriers remain. Several speakers noted that women’s rights organisations often show resistance to technical topics due to lack of digital skills and confidence, whilst technical communities may lack understanding of gender dynamics and survivor needs.

## Platform Expansion and Emerging Spaces

The discussion highlighted significant gaps in current research focus, particularly regarding platforms where young people are active. Iyer emphasised the need to expand research beyond traditional social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to include gaming platforms such as Roblox and Fortnite, where many children spend considerable time.

This observation was supported by audience contributions, including research from the Digital Health and Rights Project showing that 75% of young people across four countries (Ghana, Kenya, Colombia, and Vietnam) experienced tech-facilitated abuse, with particularly high rates among LGBTQ+ and HIV-affected populations.

## Legal and Policy Implementation Challenges

Despite the existence of legal frameworks addressing online violence, the discussion revealed significant implementation challenges. Multiple speakers highlighted gaps between policy creation and enforcement, particularly around cybersecurity laws.

Oni Kamakwakwa from the Global Digital Inclusion Partnership provided a stark illustration of these challenges: “However, there is no knowledge of how to enforce it, including within the judiciary as well… But the reality of it is that we have women who continuously get harassed, including serious cases of revenge porn, where even the police are laughing at the incidents because they don’t realise that… this is how we expect judiciary clusters to actually respond to these cases.”

This observation highlighted how deeply embedded attitudes within law enforcement and judicial systems can undermine even well-crafted legal protections.

## Marginalised Communities and Recognition Issues

The discussion gave particular attention to the challenges faced by marginalised communities online. Santiago Danibia, a trans man advocate, raised a particularly poignant question about recognition in digital spaces: “My question is around how we work over that, over not having recognition even in the countries, and how we do or how we help or we move the idea of being recognised in the digital world, if we don’t have safe spaces even in the countries that are supposed to protect us.”

This question highlighted the intersection of legal recognition, safety, and digital inclusion for trans communities and other marginalised groups. The discussion revealed a fundamental tension in digital inclusion work: online spaces are often essential for marginalised communities to connect with support and partners, yet these same spaces can pose significant safety risks.

## Innovative Approaches and Tools

Several audience members shared innovative approaches to addressing TFGBV challenges. Denny from Tatl described building open-source software to research and respond to online harms, with a particular focus on detection of online gender-based violence in Indian languages. This work involved crowdsourcing data and developing machine learning models, with potential for replication across other countries and languages.

Manpreet from Chen discussed the Survivor AI project and encryption work related to TFGBV, highlighting how technical solutions can be developed with survivor needs in mind.

## Areas of Strong Consensus and Future Directions

The discussion revealed remarkable consensus on several key points: the need for cross-sector collaboration, shifting focus from victim-centred approaches to understanding perpetrator behaviour, addressing significant research gaps, and improving implementation of existing laws.

The session generated concrete commitments, including SVRI’s continued funding of research grants in low- and middle-income countries, encouragement for participants to join the TFGBV community of practice, and plans for follow-up networking. Iyer indicated plans to repeat the Uganda elections analysis in 2026 to compare changes over five years.

## Conclusion

This comprehensive discussion demonstrated both the complexity of technology-facilitated gender-based violence and the potential for collaborative responses across traditional sectoral boundaries. The session successfully brought together diverse perspectives and expertise, with extensive audience participation creating a foundation for continued collaboration and coordinated action.

The discussion revealed that whilst significant challenges remain—from definitional issues to implementation gaps—there is strong consensus on priority areas for action. The emphasis on perpetrator-focused research, cross-sector collaboration, and prevention-oriented approaches provides a clear direction for future work.

The collaborative tone and practical focus of the discussion, combined with concrete commitments for follow-up action, suggest that this conversation represents an important step towards more coordinated and effective responses to technology-facilitated gender-based violence.

Neema Iyer: and a number of other women politicians who participated in the 2021 elections in Uganda. And Uganda is actually going into elections again in 2026, that’s Jan next year. And we’re planning to do another analysis so that we can actually compare and look at how things have changed in the past five years. And what we found out is that women face a lot of sexist and sexualized comments online. But I think what was even more interesting, so this particular election, the president of Uganda called it a scientific election because it happened during COVID. And they were trying to reduce the number of rallies that were happening in public. So they said, let’s move more of the campaigning to an online space. But unfortunately, a lot of the women leaders don’t really have digital skills. That’s one, but there’s also the fear of what kind of online violence they might face that they don’t want to deal with. So we actually found out it was actually really quite difficult to find the accounts of women to actually monitor because a lot of them chose to actually stay away from it instead of embracing. Because women actually tend to really benefit from social media campaigning because it’s much more affordable. Like they can’t often afford the rallies or the radio shows or the TV ads, but social media is so much more affordable. So it was a bit heartbreaking to see that they weren’t using it to its full capacity. The next study we had is looking at the impact of AI on women in Africa. And we did this as part of a three-study series looking at what’s happening and what we think will continue to happen. And what we really found is that there’s an under-representation of African women in the data sets itself. So this leads to the kind of data bias. We found there’s a lot of algorithmic discrimination against marginalized women. There’s also issues of digital surveillance and censorship that AI makes very possible. There’s labor exploitation, and it also threatens low-skilled jobs. So just looking more holistically of what is AI doing to harm women in other ways beyond social media, for example. And then the last one I want to touch upon is our recent research on perpetrators. So a lot of research on TFGBV is really focused on women. Women as the victims, women should report, women should go to the police. It’s often that narrative that we see in this kind of research. And we said, OK, let’s just flip the script and see why do people engage in this kind of behavior? Why are the perpetrators of this kind of violence? And quite interestingly, we found out that quite a big proportion tend to be minors. So it’s oftentimes children on the internet behaving badly. And they learn this bad behavior in their peer spaces. So this kind of bad behavior is actually encouraged by their peers in these kind of spaces. So the question becomes then, how do we actually reach and teach younger people about how do you behave in online spaces? Because I think as humans, we’re taught so much how to behave in public. Our parents are constantly telling us what to do, what not to do. Society corrects you all the time. But that’s not the case once you build an account online. There are no rules. You can do whatever you want. You can insult anyone in whatever country. There are no repercussions, right? So it’s really trying to figure out where does this ideological radicalization happen to young people? And why are we focusing so much on victim blaming and platform inaction when there could be other pathways to reach minors to talk about empathy in online spaces? So a lot more work to be done in this sort of space. And just building into that, I think the time is really right for us to start studying the role of masculinity’s ideology. I think as a feminist researcher, we talk so much about feminist research, but I don’t think we dive deeply enough into the masculinities and what’s going on there and what is the connection to TFGBV. What are the perpetrator pathways? What does reformation look like? Why do people reform? What does that cause? And more importantly, I think we need to start looking at other platforms. I think we have focused for a long time on Twitter, Facebook. But if you look at the number of children that are playing Roblox that are on Fortnite, and I feel like we’ve barely touched the iceberg of what goes on there. So there’s a lot more research to be done, and I really hope we’ll have space to have that conversation. But I’ll pass it on to Aisha.

Ayesha Mago: Thank you, Nima. And thank you, Tom. And I think, actually, just listening to both Tom and Nima, it’s more clear than ever why we’re actually doing this together. And it’s a perfect segue from you, Nima, from what you were saying about research. Because I’m Aisha from the SVRI, that’s the Sexual Violence Research Initiative. I’m the Global Advocacy Director there, and I lead our TFGBV work. And SVRI is a global research network that builds evidence on violence against women and violence against children in low- and middle-income countries. And we do that to find out, really, what works and what doesn’t work, and to try and gather that information to really strengthen the field of violence programming and practitioners and policymaking and all of that, and at the same time, really strengthen researchers in low- and middle-income countries where there often aren’t the resources that they need to be. Within this, of course, there is a huge amount of work being done on TFGBV right now, and we do have quite a large evidence base. But there are still some really major gaps. In fact, as Nima has already mentioned, one of the key gaps is around perpetration. What we decided to do was, with some partners, the Association for Progressive Communications, UN Women, and the Global Partnership to End Online Harassment and Abuse, which is a coalition of multiple countries working on this, we decided to actually run a consultative process to create a research agenda for the field. And the point of that research agenda was to say, okay, we know there’s a lot of evidence out there, but where are the real gaps? And once we have conducted this process and identified these gaps, then we can work with researchers, with practitioners, with funders to persuade them to put resources where the real gaps are, and where the field as a whole is saying those gaps are. So we had feedback from hundreds and hundreds of people from around the world. I won’t go into the process, it’s way too long, but please do feel free to come and ask me if you’re interested in this. Because we really do believe in research priority setting as a sort of key thing for the field. And one of the areas we found that we really do not know much about is prevention, what works to prevent TFGBV, right? That includes tech company accountability, and as Tom mentioned, this whole area around safety by design and how to actually persuade tech companies to engage in that. But it also includes all the work Nima’s just talked about around perpetration. How do you stop people from perpetrating? And how do you deal with some of these really, really impactful studies that are showing that it is young people and lots of research that’s coming out of various places now that’s showing that the huge emphasis on detection and incarceration, in fact, is hindering approaches to actually preventing this kind of behavior online. We also found a big gap was on specific populations, and those are the populations that are most impacted by TFGBV. So that includes, you know, marginalized groups of women, such as women with disabilities, LGBTIQ+, populations, refugee and migrant women. So there’s an enormous invisibilization of these people in the research, even though we know that the impacts are the highest on them. Where there is data, it’s not just aggregated. Then there’s a whole area around survivor needs, and we’re going to try and talk about that a little bit more today, but it was around, like, what do survivors actually want in terms of services, and are all these policies and regulations and legal frameworks and stuff actually meeting that in any way? So the research agenda is a big part of our work on TFGBV. The other part is that we support a number of research grants all over the world, but in low- and middle-income countries, trying to drill down specifically into the areas of gaps that I’ve mentioned, and, you know, it might be work in Colombia on an app, working with the police to identify online grooming. It might be in South Africa on TFGBV and how it’s impacting specific communities of women with disabilities, young people in Nepal, gender disinformation in India. So a whole range of different research grants that we are funding, and actually a whole bunch of other stuff, but the one I want to mention I think is highly relevant in this context of bringing safety communities together is our community of practice. So we run a TFGBV community of practice. There are more than 300 members of it now. It really is a safe space to convene, to have really challenging conversations, to share resources, to share work, and right now we’re working on a partnership with UN Women where we are actually engaging in a whole series of policy dialogues so that some of the key messages, again, coming from the field can be fed into the larger global frameworks, and so that we can start saying, okay, what’s missing? What’s the field thing is missing, and, you know, how do we use the strength of some of the multilateral organizations, such as the UN, to actually get those messages across? So I mean, I’m going to stop there, other than just to say in terms of Internet Governance Forum, it’s a very, very different space for SVRI, but I think one of the key things that we really wanted to do was to start breaking some of the silos between digital rights and GBV researchers and practitioners, and we know that this is, you know, a huge, huge issue that needs multisectoral responses, but often we are not talking in the same rooms to each other, so that’s sort of a key goal for me here. Thank you.

Tom Orrell: Thank you. Thank you both. And thank you all for listening to us, and now it’s your turn to also get involved, so there’s no escape now, you’re not allowed to get up and walk away. We have a few questions for discussion, but actually before moving to those, we’d love to hear any reflections, thoughts, or any experiences of work that you’ve been doing on TFGBV, if you’d like to share with us, that would be great. We had hoped this would be a less formal networking session. This is the stage we were given. We didn’t expect to be standing on stage. Perhaps… We can go down. Should we sit on the edge of the stage, maybe, and that’s a nice kind of balance? Yeah. Yeah. Let’s go around. I’m going to just jump down. Oh. Not working. Oh, you have to lean. But… Oh, wow, that’s really… No, no one has a mic. No, for the live stream. Oh. Is it okay? All right, cool. Amazing. So would anyone like to jump in with any questions or experience sharing? And we can always move on to the conversation questions as well. One second, one second. Thank you. How do I change slides?

Audience: Good afternoon. My name is Onu from Bangladesh. I’m looking after Bangladesh Internet Governance Forum. I’m a Secretary General. Thank you very much. Your session and conversation is very well. But I have one observation regarding Ayesha. You mentioned the research funding you provide the community. You mentioned India. Do you have any planned research regarding this agenda in Bangladesh?

Ayesha Mago: So I don’t think we currently have a research grant in Bangladesh. But every year we do another set of research grants. But I don’t think we have one in Bangladesh right now, no. And not on TFGBV for sure. But we have funded research grants in Bangladesh on violence against women, yes.

Audience: Okay, okay. Your organization already involved any organization in Bangladesh?

Ayesha Mago: In the past, definitely. We’ve had partners there, yes. But I mean, we are not currently working with Bangladesh on this issue. But we would love to be. So let’s chat.

Audience: This is a bit of a comment on our work. And some questions that would be interesting to hear more about. So myself and my two colleagues, we’re from the Digital Health and Rights Project. So we’re really looking at things from a health angle. Particularly rooted in the HIV movement and communities living with and affected by HIV. We’ve just concluded a study with 300 young people in Ghana, Kenya, Colombia, and Vietnam. And we found that 75% of young people in our study had experienced tech-facilitated abuse. Some of that is along gender lines. A lot of that is around being LGBTQ+, or being part of a criminalized population of people living with HIV. So yeah, we’re really interested to connect with everyone. And learn more about this space and how we can be more engaged as we cross over multiple different spaces. And also, we really found that we were struggling to define tech-facilitated abuse and the bounds of it. So a lot of the young people were experiencing harm online, or the beginnings of harm. And then it translated into offline harm. And how we defined that was a really interesting piece of what we were talking about as a project. And the kind of classic phrase of your rights must be protected online as they are offline. And whether that really applies, because it’s quite a spectrum of both online and offline abuse. And the other really interesting conversation we’re having, and I think you kind of touched on it just there, was should we advocate for criminalization, and what other options are there? So yeah, those are the kind of questions that we would bring and want to discuss and learn more from others about. Amazing. Thank you very much. Hey, I’ll just add to the conversation around breaking silos. My name’s Denny, I’m with an organization called Tatl. Denny, we were supposed to meet. So we build open source software to research and respond to online harms. And OGPV is also one of our verticals for us. Our incentive to start this OGPV project was the lack of data sets and tooling when it comes to detection of online gender-based violence in Indian languages. So I feel like over the last two years, we’ve kind of created like a recipe where we started crowdsourcing slurs in Indian languages, annotating them and filtering them, consolidating them, whatever. And then co-create resources and machine learning models to detect OGPV in Indian languages. And I think the reason to share this with a larger group like this is that I think the process can be replicated across countries or across languages. And so happy to chat with other people who are looking to do something similar. Awesome. Super interesting. Thank you for sharing. It’s such amazing work. The lady at the back over here. And I thought there was another hand as well. Hi, my name is Manpreet from Chen. I think most of you have connected with us in different ways. Our current work, we’re actually working on Survivor AI, looking at helping, I think, again, I think all of you have connected in different ways, but just with the general other participants. Working on Survivor AI, working with where individual survivors can come onto the platform and create an escalation letter to support them and take down with any images on various different platforms. And we’re also working with European organizations around encryption and looking at how that actually impacts TBFGBV. And so, yeah, a lot of our resources around healing are in different languages as well and supporting that. So I think there’s some opportunities to connect and collaborate on different aspects around encryption and Survivor AI. Definitely, yeah, definitely. Thank you. Hi, hello everyone. I am Carla and I work for the Association for Progressive Communications. So first, thank you for starting this important conversation at the Internet Governance Forum and connecting the spaces because I think it’s quite relevant to have this conversation here as well. And I’m a huge fan of SVRI and policy and the work that they do and the work that we do together. I’m happy to say that APC, as some of you mentioned it too, that you have worked with us and we work with you. And it’s happy to see that there are more people that we can collaborate with on online gender-based violence or now TFGBV and these acronyms that we have on this subject. And yes, as APC, we have different approaches to the issue. And these approaches include as well research, capacity building, movement building. So APC has the Women’s Rights Program and in the Women’s Rights Program we have the Feminist Internet Research Network. And right now we are on the third cycle of research, specifically on technology-facilitated gender-based violence. We also have the platform GenderIT.org and through the platform it’s a think tank of feminist advocates who bring their voices and share from their own experiences on issues related to feminist internet, including technology-facilitated gender-based violence. We also have the Feminist Principles of the Internet and one of the principles is specifically on violence. So anyway, that’s just a very broad, small introduction of the work that APC does. We have a booth if you want to go and take a look. But I’m just excited to be here and to share with you and to learn from you as well, so thank you.

Neema Iyer: I’d also like to mention that the first project that I mentioned where we did the Africa-wide research was part of the Feminist Internet Research Network and it was really being a part of that network that actually set all our other feminist work in motion. I think it was really a transformative program and yeah, I just really appreciate having been a part of it all those years ago.

Audience: That’s great. Hi, thank you so much for convening this space. My name is Mia Marzot and I work for Oxfam. I’m the digital rights advocacy lead and particularly also have a booth right around the corner because we’re bringing together partners from 10 different countries in the so-called global south with the aim of making sure that the needs and perspectives of communities that are not necessarily always in these spaces are here. So we see Oxfam’s roles as acting a bit as a convener or raising the voices of the feminist young activists and organizations that we work with and partner with. And on that point, because you mentioned breaking silos and also the importance of making sure that this evidence that you’re gathering or the projects that you’re implementing are actually acted upon, that they don’t just remain words on a page as much as important it is to have words on a page. It’s great to see you guys here, but in, I guess, my question is in the more traditional spaces that have been looking at women’s rights and safety of women and girls, which opportunities do you see coming up, as in where can the technical community or the private sector tech companies should be engaging with? One place that comes to mind is the CSW, the Commission on the Status of Women. This year’s meeting had a very, very small focus on tech-facilitated gender-based violence and very little mention of it, although it’s an increasingly prevalent and important issue. So I guess my question is, what has been your experience in trying to bring some of the people that are maybe in this community, in these other spaces, and what opportunities do you see coming up where maybe we can join forces a little bit more as organizations or people concerned with this issue? We’ll come around here. Thank you very much for your presentation, much appreciated. My name is Mohammed Aded Ali, I’m from Somalia. Gender-based violence by digital is increasing, mainly women and girls, because blackmailing as well as harassing is an arena of digital issues. So, in your research, your prospective strategy, how that increasing violence can reduce, as well as who can take the responsibility of that increasing, because some of the country doesn’t have any policy or regulatory protecting the women and girls. That’s my question, thank you very much. Thank you.

Tom Orrell: We’ll come back to that. Thank you so much for all those reflections and inputs. We have some more, I was going to say, are there any more? Please keep it coming. We’ve got about 15 minutes left, so we can keep doing this for a few more minutes. Yeah, we can keep the conversation going. And also, if people want to respond to things that they’ve heard and questions that they’ve heard from others, please do jump in. It’s not just us.

Neema Iyer: If you have questions on things other people have mentioned.

Audience: Hi, my name is Santiago Danibia. I’m from the VHRP program, as my colleague said. So, I have a question. It’s around doing the project. We experienced the need to bring safe spaces, digital spaces, to trans people, making advocacy and incidency, over and even in the idea of a recognition of trans people in the difference, because usually when people talk about trans people, they only assume that trans people are trans women. I’m a trans man, and getting the idea of people recognizing myself and my community and my population around we being trans also has been one of our needs. And I wanted to ask a question, because you know that recently in the UK, the categorization about a woman becomes really hard for trans women, because they stop being recognized as women. So, my question is around how we work over that, over not having recognition even in the countries, and how we do or how we help or we move the idea of being recognized in the digital world, if we don’t have safe spaces even in the countries that are supposed to protect us. That’s a question.

Ayesha Mago: Possible question. That is such a hard question. I know. Nima, you take that. That joke is very nuanced as well.

Audience: Hello, my name is Oni Kamakwakwa. I’m from the Global Digital Inclusion Partnership, where we work on advancing meaningful connectivity for the global majority. And I guess my question is how do we make sure that standards for inclusion, for digital inclusion, begin to more boldly identify online safety as one of the things that actually impedes inclusion? So, it’s very uncomfortable to continuously be advocating for digital inclusion when there’s a whole population that is endangered by being included online specifically. So, that’s just one question. Also, personally, I’m a co-founder of a feminist organization in South Africa called Wise for Africa, that works on building feminist jurisprudence in how courts address gender-based violence specifically. And one of the things we’ve observed with online violence against women is that we always have really great policies, cybersecurity laws that criminalize the behavior. However, there is no knowledge of how to enforce it, including within the judiciary as well. Any insights and examples you can share with us for how we actually get past that hurdle? Because I feel like we are stuck on celebrating this amazing law. But the reality of it is that we have women who continuously get harassed, including serious cases of revenge porn, where even the police are laughing at the incidents because they don’t realize that, in the same way you see someone speeding down the highway and you chase them because they’ve broken a law, this is how we expect judiciary clusters to actually respond to these cases. So, are we making any progress, really, on the legal front, in terms of just enforcing these amazing policies and cybercrime laws that we are adopting?

Ayesha Mago: Sure.

Neema Iyer: There was a question on how to bring other spaces in. I do find some of the other questions were very difficult questions, but this one I feel I can answer. I actually want to talk about another research project that we had. It’s called Afrofeminist Data Futures. In that project, we talked to women’s rights organizations from all across Africa. I think we spoke to 40 organizations, but we mapped all of them, and we asked them about how they use data, their thoughts on data, just what do they think of their data future. We did this study in different languages. We did it with an Anglophone group, a Francophone group, and a Lusophone group. What I think was one of the most interesting insights is that as you moved across these languages, so countries colonized by the English, the French, and the Portuguese, you could really see, also going back to questions of digital inclusion, that there was a lesser and lesser understanding or skill level of digital skills. What I really felt was that there was a resistance to talking about data, to talking about digital rights, because they felt that it was really outside their domain of expertise. They felt like, okay, I’ve been doing women’s rights for many years, I understand this, I understand the pain of all these other issues, but when it came to talking about anything technical, they really would shy away. I’ve actually also experienced this when I’ve done trainings. I’ve done trainings with the most amazing people, talking about their times in Uganda, all the things they’ve been through, and then I come to train them on a data collection tool, and they become a different person. They just suddenly are very helpless. And so I think it really comes down to bringing them into the spaces, so us going into those spaces and them coming into our spaces, and getting rid of that fear of not knowing. So yeah, I think sort of what you’re doing, like bringing organizations to this convening, I think are really, really important. I also know the… Have you heard of the African School of Internet Governance? It’s another really amazing program. So I think all these programs, like FUN, AFRICIG, I think they’re so instrumental in bringing these different voices. And I don’t know if there are similar initiatives in other countries, but I think that they are very instrumental and there should be more of them. So answering that question.

Ayesha Mago: Great. Pass it on to you. So I wanted to quickly pick up on what you had mentioned about the measurement issues, because that’s a really, really big gap. And just very quickly, what I wanted to say was it came up big time in the research agenda that we still don’t have clear definitions. So how can we deal with, measure all of that? Lots of organizations are doing work on this. So I’ll share resources with you. And I’d love to hear more about your study as well. Remind me of other questions. I’ve got a whole list.

Tom Orrell: Okay, go on. I think there was a good question about where can the technical community and private sector companies be engaged in these spaces? Where can we join forces a little bit more?

Ayesha Mago: Right. I mean, just to add to what Nima was saying, I’m sure you have some ideas on this as well. But just to add, one thing we have found really successful, and maybe more successful than these in-person conferences, is something like the community of practice. Because people from all over the world and from all sorts of different sectors come to those meetings. And I mean, although they are online, it is a chance to really exchange views, exchange work, get to know about people’s programming and stuff that’s happening in all sorts of places that you just don’t. And often forums like this are actually very difficult to make those connections, right? I mean, I went to RightsCon last year, and I found it really hard to actually just keep a handle on things. So I would say those sorts of online communities are great spaces. And to keep pulling the tech sector in and not let them say no, I think that’s important. Yeah, I mean,

Tom Orrell: I’d add a couple of points to that on that particular question. From our perspective, and at Development Gateway, we do a lot of implementation work. So we work in-country with local partners to kind of develop tools, develop platforms, develop policy recommendations in-country. And I think from that development point of view, the closer you are to the context, the better your community is going to be and the more effective it’s likely to be. In the Philippines, we convened a two-day workshop bringing together national regulators, the local police force, representatives from city-level gender-based violence desks, together with media, media academics, local civil society groups, international civil society groups, UN women, all of these people in a room together. And we spent the first day basically talking about what TFGBV was in the Philippines. What is it here? Some people work on online. It’s a besmirchment and defamatory practice essentially, but it is a form of TFGBV when it’s gendered and it has become that in the country. So you uncover the nuances and the local practices and the local issues when you engage with people at that level. I think the value and the relevance of fora like the IGF is sharing and learning and building those communities of practice across country, across regions, across thematic areas, learning from each other, hopefully building synergies and sharing information as we move forward through those online spaces. But I think it’s also important for us to be able to feed into policy discussions and policy outcomes. What exactly we want to be saying, I don’t know, beyond platforms should be accountable for removing bad content. But I think that’s a very tricky question. There were a couple of other points I wanted to make in relation to some of the other questions. We’ve got about three and a half minutes, I’m not going to hog it all, don’t worry. I think you’re doing some really interesting work there on that intersection of SRH. Some of the comments that I just make I think apply to what you were saying as well, which is how do you actually define the parameters of TFGBV? I wanted to share a really cool experience that I had talking to someone who worked on sexual and reproductive health in the Philippines. She was part of the workshop I just mentioned, and she works for a local foundation in the Philippines that supports the training and deployment of frontline SRH workers. It hadn’t actually occurred to me, okay, wow, how do you integrate TFGBV into the work of a frontline SRH worker? Because it is a form of mental well-being that they need to support when you’re dealing especially with younger people who have this enormous access and presence online. For me, it was just a really interesting thing that I hadn’t, hands up, I hadn’t thought of that intersection before. But I think it just goes to show just how pervasive the digital aspect of our lives is. The point that you made about online harms then manifesting in the physical world, I think it’s been true for a while. But I think with TFGBV issues in particular, it’s especially poignant and especially painful I think for survivors, especially image-based abuse, et cetera. Those images, even when removed from some platforms, are likely to be somewhere in cyberspace for perpetuity, in perpetuity really. So the damage can be extremely long-lasting in the physical world. And that link with SRH I think is something that’s well worth teasing out. And what can we learn from successful SRH approaches over the last 20, 30 years, and how do we apply that to TFGBV? Those are some of the things I wanted to just share. We have about a minute and a half each. Maybe some final thoughts from my colleagues here, and then final thoughts really quickly.

Ayesha Mago: One and a half minutes. I just wanted to say one thing about what you were saying about how can you be recognized online when you are not recognized in the real world? I mean, we know both are the real world. And I do not have an answer for that question. But what I will say is that this incredibly difficult line specifically for communities that are discriminated against in public life, and therefore how important it is actually to access the online space, and then how do you navigate that online space? And it connects to what our colleague behind was also saying about like, but the online space is dangerous. But that online space is critical, right? Because for many people in communities that are criminalized, that is in fact the only space they have sometimes to connect with support communities, to connect with intimate partners, all of that. So while I do not have an answer to that, I think your point just makes it so much more important around how we have to make online spaces safe. And we have to keep fighting that fight. Yeah. Yeah.

Neema Iyer: I think I will take the last 15 seconds to just say thank you to everyone who contributed, everyone who asked questions. I think we were able to get the networking going a little bit. It was really interesting to hear about all the work that you are doing. So thank you for coming and making the session less awkward. I really appreciate it. Thank you all for being here. Thank you. Thank you so much. We did want to just say as well, for those who are interested in taking the network forward, there is a bar in the next room. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Agreement points

Need for cross-sector collaboration and breaking down silos

Speakers

– Neema Iyer
– Ayesha Mago
– Tom Orrell
– Audience

Arguments

Breaking silos between digital rights and GBV researchers is crucial for multisectoral responses to TFGBV

Context-specific implementation with local partners brings together diverse stakeholders more effectively than broad international forums

Women’s rights organizations across Africa show resistance to technical topics due to lack of digital skills and confidence

Summary

All speakers agreed that TFGBV requires multisectoral responses and that breaking down silos between different communities (digital rights, GBV researchers, women’s rights organizations, technical communities) is essential for effective solutions.

Topics

Gender rights online | Interdisciplinary approaches | Development

Research gaps and need for better definitions

Speakers

– Neema Iyer
– Ayesha Mago
– Audience

Arguments

Research needs to expand beyond Twitter and Facebook to platforms like Roblox and Fortnite where many children are active

Major research gaps exist in prevention strategies, specific marginalized populations, and survivor needs that current policies don’t address

Clear definitions are still lacking, making measurement and response difficult across organizations

Difficulty in defining tech-facilitated abuse boundaries when online harm translates to offline harm across a spectrum

Summary

Speakers consistently identified significant gaps in TFGBV research, including lack of clear definitions, insufficient focus on prevention, and need to expand research to new platforms and marginalized populations.

Topics

Gender rights online | Legal and regulatory | Children rights

Focus on perpetrators and prevention rather than victim-blaming

Speakers

– Neema Iyer
– Ayesha Mago

Arguments

Research on perpetrators reveals many are minors who learn harmful behavior from peers, suggesting need for education on online empathy rather than victim-blaming

Research shows emphasis on detection and incarceration hinders prevention approaches to online harmful behavior

Summary

Both speakers advocated for shifting focus from victim-centered approaches to understanding and preventing perpetrator behavior, particularly among young people.

Topics

Gender rights online | Children rights | Cybersecurity

Implementation and enforcement gaps in existing laws

Speakers

– Ayesha Mago
– Audience

Arguments

Research shows emphasis on detection and incarceration hinders prevention approaches to online harmful behavior

Despite good cybersecurity laws criminalizing behavior, there’s lack of knowledge on enforcement within judiciary systems

Police and courts often don’t understand severity of cases like revenge porn, treating them dismissively rather than as serious crimes

Summary

Speakers agreed that while laws exist to address TFGBV, there are significant gaps in implementation and enforcement, with justice systems lacking understanding of the severity of these crimes.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Gender rights online | Cybersecurity

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized the need for more comprehensive research approaches that go beyond traditional victim-focused studies to understand perpetrator behavior and develop prevention strategies.

Speakers

– Neema Iyer
– Ayesha Mago

Arguments

Need to study masculinity ideologies and perpetrator pathways for reformation rather than focusing solely on feminist research

Major research gaps exist in prevention strategies, specific marginalized populations, and survivor needs that current policies don’t address

Topics

Gender rights online | Sociocultural | Human rights principles

Both recognized the paradox that vulnerable and marginalized communities most need online spaces for connection and support, yet these same spaces pose significant safety risks, creating tension in digital inclusion efforts.

Speakers

– Ayesha Mago
– Audience

Arguments

Online spaces are critical for criminalized communities to connect with support and partners, making safety even more important

Need to address how online safety impediments affect digital inclusion efforts for vulnerable populations

Topics

Gender rights online | Human rights principles | Development

Both emphasized the importance of working within local contexts and building capacity among traditional women’s rights organizations to engage with technical aspects of TFGBV.

Speakers

– Neema Iyer
– Tom Orrell

Arguments

Women’s rights organizations across Africa show resistance to technical topics due to lack of digital skills and confidence

Context-specific implementation with local partners brings together diverse stakeholders more effectively than broad international forums

Topics

Development | Gender rights online | Interdisciplinary approaches

Unexpected consensus

Online communities more effective than in-person conferences

Speakers

– Ayesha Mago
– Tom Orrell

Arguments

Online communities of practice are more successful than in-person conferences for connecting diverse sectors globally

Context-specific implementation with local partners brings together diverse stakeholders more effectively than broad international forums

Explanation

Despite being at an in-person conference (IGF), speakers agreed that online communities and local context-specific gatherings are more effective for meaningful collaboration than large international forums, which is somewhat counterintuitive given the setting.

Topics

Interdisciplinary approaches | Development

Gaming platforms as critical research frontier

Speakers

– Neema Iyer
– Audience

Arguments

Research needs to expand beyond Twitter and Facebook to platforms like Roblox and Fortnite where many children are active

75% of young people in study across four countries experienced tech-facilitated abuse, particularly LGBTQ+ and HIV-affected populations

Explanation

The consensus on gaming platforms as a critical but understudied area for TFGBV research was unexpected, as these platforms are often not considered in traditional discussions of online gender-based violence.

Topics

Children rights | Gender rights online | Cybersecurity

Overall assessment

Summary

Strong consensus emerged around the need for cross-sector collaboration, shifting from victim-focused to prevention-focused approaches, addressing research and definitional gaps, and recognizing implementation challenges in existing legal frameworks. Speakers also agreed on the importance of local context and the particular vulnerabilities of marginalized communities online.

Consensus level

High level of consensus with complementary rather than conflicting viewpoints. The agreement suggests a mature field where practitioners and researchers have identified common challenges and are aligned on priority areas for action. This consensus provides a strong foundation for collaborative efforts and coordinated advocacy, though the challenge remains in translating this agreement into concrete action across different sectors and contexts.

Different viewpoints

Unexpected differences

Overall assessment

Summary

The discussion showed minimal disagreement, with speakers largely building on each other’s points collaboratively. The only disagreements were methodological – about whether online or in-person engagement is more effective, and different emphases on prevention strategies.

Disagreement level

Very low level of disagreement. This was primarily a collaborative knowledge-sharing session rather than a debate. The speakers demonstrated strong alignment on core issues and complementary expertise. The methodological differences actually strengthen the overall approach by offering multiple pathways to address TFGBV, suggesting that different strategies may be appropriate for different contexts and stakeholders.

Partial agreements

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized the need for more comprehensive research approaches that go beyond traditional victim-focused studies to understand perpetrator behavior and develop prevention strategies.

Speakers

– Neema Iyer
– Ayesha Mago

Arguments

Need to study masculinity ideologies and perpetrator pathways for reformation rather than focusing solely on feminist research

Major research gaps exist in prevention strategies, specific marginalized populations, and survivor needs that current policies don’t address

Topics

Gender rights online | Sociocultural | Human rights principles

Both recognized the paradox that vulnerable and marginalized communities most need online spaces for connection and support, yet these same spaces pose significant safety risks, creating tension in digital inclusion efforts.

Speakers

– Ayesha Mago
– Audience

Arguments

Online spaces are critical for criminalized communities to connect with support and partners, making safety even more important

Need to address how online safety impediments affect digital inclusion efforts for vulnerable populations

Topics

Gender rights online | Human rights principles | Development

Both emphasized the importance of working within local contexts and building capacity among traditional women’s rights organizations to engage with technical aspects of TFGBV.

Speakers

– Neema Iyer
– Tom Orrell

Arguments

Women’s rights organizations across Africa show resistance to technical topics due to lack of digital skills and confidence

Context-specific implementation with local partners brings together diverse stakeholders more effectively than broad international forums

Topics

Development | Gender rights online | Interdisciplinary approaches

Key takeaways

TFGBV research reveals significant gaps in prevention strategies, with current approaches focusing too heavily on victim-blaming rather than perpetrator intervention and education

Many TFGBV perpetrators are minors who learn harmful behavior from peers, indicating need for early intervention and online empathy education rather than criminalization approaches

Women politicians and marginalized communities avoid beneficial digital spaces due to fear of online violence, missing opportunities for affordable campaigning and community connection

Cross-sector collaboration between digital rights advocates and GBV researchers is essential but currently limited by siloed approaches and lack of shared spaces

AI and algorithmic systems perpetuate discrimination against African women and marginalized groups due to under-representation in datasets

Legal frameworks exist but enforcement remains problematic due to lack of understanding within judiciary and law enforcement systems

Online communities of practice are more effective than in-person conferences for connecting diverse global stakeholders across sectors

Research must expand beyond mainstream platforms like Twitter and Facebook to include gaming platforms where many children are active

Context-specific, local implementation with diverse stakeholders is more effective than broad international approaches

Resolutions and action items

SVRI to continue funding research grants in low- and middle-income countries targeting identified evidence gaps

Participants encouraged to join the 300-member TFGBV community of practice for ongoing collaboration

Follow-up networking planned for bar session to continue building connections

Uganda elections analysis to be repeated in 2026 to compare changes over five years

Replication of Indian language OGPV detection process across other countries and languages

Continued policy dialogues with UN Women to feed field messages into global frameworks

Unresolved issues

How to ensure legal recognition and safety for trans people in digital spaces when they lack recognition in their home countries

How to balance digital inclusion advocacy with online safety concerns for vulnerable populations

How to effectively enforce existing cybersecurity laws and educate judiciary systems on TFGBV severity

How to define clear boundaries of tech-facilitated abuse when online and offline harms intersect

How to bring technical and private sector communities into traditional women’s rights spaces like CSW

How to address increasing digital gender-based violence in countries lacking protective policies

How to overcome digital skills gaps and technical intimidation among women’s rights organizations

Suggested compromises

Using online communities of practice as alternative to challenging in-person conference networking

Focusing on local, context-specific implementation while maintaining global knowledge sharing through forums like IGF

Shifting from criminalization-focused approaches to education and prevention strategies for young perpetrators

Combining survivor-centered approaches with perpetrator-focused research rather than choosing one over the other

So we actually found out it was actually really quite difficult to find the accounts of women to actually monitor because a lot of them chose to actually stay away from it instead of embracing. Because women actually tend to really benefit from social media campaigning because it’s much more affordable… So it was a bit heartbreaking to see that they weren’t using it to its full capacity.

Speaker

Neema Iyer

Reason

This comment reveals a profound paradox in digital participation – that the very tool that could democratize political participation for women (social media) becomes inaccessible due to fear of violence. It challenges the assumption that digital spaces are inherently empowering and highlights how online violence creates systemic barriers to political participation.

Impact

This insight reframed the discussion from simply addressing online violence to understanding how it creates structural inequalities. It established the foundation for later discussions about digital inclusion and safety, showing how online violence isn’t just individual harm but a barrier to democratic participation.

And quite interestingly, we found out that quite a big proportion tend to be minors. So it’s oftentimes children on the internet behaving badly… So the question becomes then, how do we actually reach and teach younger people about how do you behave in online spaces? Because I think as humans, we’re taught so much how to behave in public… But that’s not the case once you build an account online.

Speaker

Neema Iyer

Reason

This comment fundamentally shifts the narrative from victim-blaming to understanding perpetration patterns. It challenges the typical focus on adult perpetrators and introduces the concept that online spaces lack the social conditioning mechanisms that exist in physical spaces. This insight suggests entirely different intervention strategies.

Impact

This observation redirected the conversation toward prevention and education rather than just response and punishment. It influenced later audience questions about enforcement versus other approaches, and sparked discussion about how to create accountability in digital spaces where traditional social norms don’t automatically apply.

And the huge emphasis on detection and incarceration, in fact, is hindering approaches to actually preventing this kind of behavior online.

Speaker

Ayesha Mago

Reason

This comment challenges the dominant punitive approach to addressing online violence, suggesting that current strategies may be counterproductive. It introduces a critical perspective on criminal justice responses and opens space for alternative approaches focused on prevention and rehabilitation.

Impact

This insight prompted several audience members to question criminalization approaches, including the audience member who asked ‘should we advocate for criminalization, and what other options are there?’ It shifted the discussion toward more nuanced approaches to addressing perpetration.

So, it’s very uncomfortable to continuously be advocating for digital inclusion when there’s a whole population that is endangered by being included online specifically.

Speaker

Oni Kamakwakwa

Reason

This comment exposes a fundamental tension in digital rights work – the conflict between promoting digital access and acknowledging that digital spaces can be dangerous for marginalized groups. It challenges the field to grapple with this uncomfortable reality rather than treating inclusion as an unqualified good.

Impact

This observation deepened the complexity of the discussion by highlighting how safety and inclusion can be in tension. It connected to earlier points about women politicians avoiding social media and reinforced the need for safety-first approaches to digital inclusion.

My question is around how we work over that, over not having recognition even in the countries, and how we do or how we help or we move the idea of being recognized in the digital world, if we don’t have safe spaces even in the countries that are supposed to protect us.

Speaker

Santiago Danibia

Reason

This question from a trans man highlights how offline marginalization compounds online vulnerability. It challenges the discussion to consider how digital safety intersects with broader systems of recognition and protection, particularly for trans communities facing legal erasure.

Impact

This question prompted Ayesha Mago to acknowledge the complexity of the issue and emphasize how critical online spaces become for criminalized communities, even when dangerous. It added intersectional depth to the conversation and highlighted how online safety is particularly crucial for those without offline protections.

However, there is no knowledge of how to enforce it, including within the judiciary as well… But the reality of it is that we have women who continuously get harassed, including serious cases of revenge porn, where even the police are laughing at the incidents because they don’t realize that… this is how we expect judiciary clusters to actually respond to these cases.

Speaker

Oni Kamakwakwa

Reason

This comment exposes the gap between policy and implementation, showing how even good laws fail without proper understanding and training. The detail about police laughing at cases illustrates how deeply embedded attitudes undermine legal protections.

Impact

This observation grounded the theoretical discussion in practical realities of implementation. It highlighted that having laws isn’t enough and that cultural change within institutions is necessary for meaningful progress.

Overall assessment

These key comments fundamentally shaped the discussion by challenging conventional approaches and revealing systemic complexities. The conversation evolved from a focus on documenting harm to understanding structural barriers, from punitive responses to prevention strategies, and from simple solutions to nuanced intersectional analysis. The most impactful comments introduced paradoxes – such as digital tools being both empowering and dangerous, or inclusion efforts potentially increasing harm – that forced participants to grapple with uncomfortable tensions in the field. The discussion became increasingly sophisticated as speakers built on each other’s insights, moving from individual experiences to systemic analysis and from single-sector solutions to multi-stakeholder approaches. The audience participation was particularly valuable in bringing diverse perspectives that deepened the complexity of the conversation and highlighted implementation challenges that pure research or policy discussions might miss.

How do we actually reach and teach younger people about how to behave in online spaces?

Speaker

Neema Iyer

Explanation

This is important because research shows that a significant proportion of TFGBV perpetrators are minors who learn bad behavior in peer spaces online, where there are no clear rules or consequences unlike in physical public spaces.

Where does this ideological radicalization happen to young people?

Speaker

Neema Iyer

Explanation

Understanding the pathways of radicalization is crucial for developing effective prevention strategies targeting young perpetrators of online violence.

What is the role of masculinity’s ideology in TFGBV?

Speaker

Neema Iyer

Explanation

This research gap is important because while there’s extensive feminist research on TFGBV, there’s insufficient exploration of masculinities and their connection to perpetration.

What are the perpetrator pathways and what does reformation look like?

Speaker

Neema Iyer

Explanation

Understanding how people become perpetrators and how they can be reformed is essential for developing effective intervention and prevention programs.

What goes on in gaming platforms like Roblox and Fortnite regarding TFGBV?

Speaker

Neema Iyer

Explanation

This is a significant research gap as many children use these platforms, but research has focused primarily on traditional social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Do you have any planned research regarding this agenda in Bangladesh?

Speaker

Onu from Bangladesh

Explanation

This represents a geographic gap in current research coverage and potential for expanding TFGBV research to underrepresented regions.

How do we define tech-facilitated abuse and its bounds, especially when harm translates from online to offline?

Speaker

Digital Health and Rights Project representative

Explanation

Clear definitions are crucial for research, policy development, and intervention strategies, especially given the interconnected nature of online and offline harm.

Should we advocate for criminalization of TFGBV, and what other options are there?

Speaker

Digital Health and Rights Project representative

Explanation

This is important because research shows that emphasis on detection and incarceration may actually hinder approaches to preventing online violence.

How can the process of creating datasets and machine learning models for OGPV detection be replicated across countries or languages?

Speaker

Denny from Tatl

Explanation

This addresses the critical gap in detection tools for non-English languages and could improve global capacity for identifying and responding to TFGBV.

Where can the technical community or private sector tech companies engage with traditional women’s rights spaces?

Speaker

Mia Marzot from Oxfam

Explanation

Breaking down silos between technical and women’s rights communities is essential for comprehensive approaches to addressing TFGBV.

How can increasing digital violence be reduced and who can take responsibility, especially in countries without protective policies?

Speaker

Mohammed Aded Ali from Somalia

Explanation

This addresses the urgent need for prevention strategies and accountability mechanisms, particularly in contexts with weak regulatory frameworks.

How do we help trans people gain recognition in the digital world when they don’t have safe spaces even in countries that are supposed to protect them?

Speaker

Santiago Danibia

Explanation

This highlights the intersection of legal recognition, safety, and digital inclusion for marginalized communities, particularly trans individuals.

How do we make sure that standards for digital inclusion identify online safety as an impediment to inclusion?

Speaker

Oni Kamakwakwa

Explanation

This is crucial because promoting digital inclusion without addressing safety concerns can actually endanger vulnerable populations.

How do we get past the hurdle of enforcing cybersecurity laws and policies, including within the judiciary?

Speaker

Oni Kamakwakwa

Explanation

This addresses the critical gap between policy development and implementation, where good laws exist but enforcement mechanisms and knowledge are lacking.