Women human rights workers face increasing aggression

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Seven in 10 women human rights defenders, activists and journalists have experienced online violence in the course of their work, according to a new UN report.

Produced through the UN Women’s ACT to End Violence against Women program and supported by the European Commission, “Tipping point: The chilling escalation of violence against women in the public sphere” draws on a global survey of women from 119 countries.

Along with online threats and harassment, more than 4 in 10 have experienced offline harm linked to online abuse — more than twice as many as in 2020, the researchers found. This can range from verbal harassment right up to physical assault, stalking and swatting.

“These figures confirm that digital violence is not virtual — it’s real violence with real-world consequences,” said Sarah Hendricks, director of policy, programme and intergovernmental division at UN Women.

“Women who speak up for our human rights, report the news or lead social movements are being targeted with abuse designed to shame, silence and push them out of public debate. Increasingly, those attacks do not stop at the screen — they end at women’s front doors. We cannot allow online spaces to become platforms for intimidation that silence women and undermine democracy.”

And AI is only making things worse, with almost 1 in 4 women human rights defenders, activists and journalists having experienced AI-assisted online violence, such as deepfake imagery and manipulated content. This is most often the case for writers and public communicators who focus on human rights issues, such as social media content creators and influencers, for whom the figure reaches 30%.

“Gender-based online violence is not a new phenomenon, but its scale certainly is,” said report co-author Lea Hellmueller, associate professor in journalism at City St George’s and associate dean for research in the School of Communication and Creativity.

“AI tools enable the production of cheaper and faster abusive content, which is detrimental to women in public life — and beyond,” Hellmueller added.

Tech firms are partly responsible, the researchers said, with the report calling for better tools to identify, monitor, report and fend off AI-assisted online violence. The researchers also want to see more legal and regulatory mechanisms to force tech firms to prevent their technologies being deployed against women in the public sphere.

“Our next steps include publishing data from the survey about the opportunities for, and barriers to, law enforcement and legal redress for survivors of online violence,” said Julie Posetti, chair of the Centre for Journalism and Democracy at City St George’s, University of London, one of the authors of the report. “We will also focus on creative efforts to counter gender-based online violence and policy recommendations to help hold the Big Tech facilitators of this dangerous phenomenon accountable.”