Sikhonzile Ndlovu, LWF Senior Advocacy Officer for Gender Justice, speaks at the launch of a training manual for interfaith leaders in the front line of the struggle to end early, forced and child marriages. The event was part of the 16 Days campaign organized by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania. Photo: ELCT
Webinar explores ways of responding to online abuse, threats, harassment and exclusion of women and girls
(LWI) - Digital technology has become a vital part of our daily lives, essential for communication, education, business, and community life. But alongside the benefits, it also brings new threats to women and girls, mirroring and often amplifying offline gender-based inequalities. That’s why the 16 Days campaign this year is focused on confronting and combatting digital violence which creates real-world consequences for many women and girls around the globe.
"Action must begin at home, in schools, in churches and in our communities,” said Sikhonzile Ndlovu, The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Senior Advocacy Officer for Gender Justice and organizer of a 2 December webinar discussing ways of strengthening responses across the global communion of churches. “Technology-facilitated gender-based violence is one of the fastest growing forms of abuse,” she noted “and faith communities can play a critical role in preventing harm, supporting survivors, advocating for strong legal protection and cultivating safe online spaces.”
The webinar opened with insights from the World Association for Christian Communication which will shortly launch the latest edition of its global media monitoring project, focusing this year on issues including technology facilitated gender-based violence. Sarah Macharia, who leads an expert advisory group which authored the report, highlighted the lack of news coverage of this phenomenon, which has a direct effect on vulnerable women and girls. “When there is more media coverage, survivors are encouraged to act, with more calls to helplines and more reporting to the police,” she explained.
Consequences include school dropouts, early marriages, women withdrawing from work or public life, and limited opportunities for girls
Ameera Khames, country director for LWF Jordan and Syria
Panelists from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Nordic region shared perspectives on the impact of digital violence in their contexts. Yine Yenki Nyika, co-founder of the GoGirls ICT Initiative which partners with LWF in South Sudan, reflected on the way that social media has played a central role in fueling conflict in her country. She cited recent cases of online platforms which are also being used to attack women leaders, activists and change makers who are accused of “destroying society in South Sudan.”
While internet access remains low in comparison to other countries, she noted that it is improving rapidly, with men mostly owning smartphones and other devices used by family members. “South Sudan is a very patriarchal society,” she said, so when her organization began rolling out its digital inclusion programs, it was vital to start with family visits to explain the importance of technology to improve the lives of women and girls.
Ameera Khames, country director of the LWF's programs in Jordan and Syria, spoke of an alarming rise in digital violence which mainly targets women and girls. The most common form, she noted, is image-based abuse and digital blackmail, but also online harassment, account hacking, release of personal information and grooming of teenage girls. The consequences, she said, include “school dropouts, early marriages, women withdrawing from work or public life, and limiting of opportunities as families restrict internet usage for girls.”
Need to accelerate responses to “hidden wounds”
Similarly, Bishop Izani Bruch of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chile said there has been a sharp increase in reports of digital violence, including the publication of non-consensual images, but also harassment and threats against women in the public arena, including a candidate in recent presidential elections. For survivors, the consequences include “constant fear, loss of confidence, withdrawal, isolation and even suicide,” yet churches and wider society are only just beginning to address the impact of these “hidden wounds,” she said.
Rev. Jussi Luoma from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland noted that women in political or other public roles also experience a lot of digital harassment in his country, where long distances and cold winters mean that people spend a large amount of time online. Despite its reputation as a leader in gender equality, he said, Finland has one of the highest levels of domestic violence in Europe and this coercive behavior may happen both in person and online. The country also has many cases of grooming, harassment, and stalking, with the perpetrators being largely men, even in cases of male victims, he said.
Discussions also focused on ways of responding to the challenges, with participants stressing the need for families and local communities to be part of the solution. Nyika noted that South Sudan has just passed a new law to combat cybercrime yet, she said, “we don’t have the right infrastructures to bring perpetrators to justice.” In Chile too, Bishop Bruch said the country has a 2024 law but “our culture impedes people from reporting as they experience social stigma and shame.” In Chilean society, she said “people also distrust processes and institutions which are very slow, so victims suffer in silence.”
Our Christian understanding of human dignity and equality is the strongest factor behind our advocacy work
Rev. Jussi Luoma from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland
Khames underlined the responsibility of social media companies “to ensure that their platforms don’t become places of harm.” She spoke of the need for investment in Arabic speaking moderators and other languages, as well as round-the-clock response teams and the pro-active detection of high-risk behavior. Policies should “not only be designed in Silicon Valley but need to respond to local contexts,” she insisted.
But she also highlighted the need for communities to be part of the solution, “starting with parents, caregivers and community leaders. They influence how youth use technology, so we need to educate them to move from fear to support and build shared responsibility,” she said. LWF centers are among the “trusted spaces” where cyber security sessions are being run for families, enabling parents to become partners in the work for online safety. Young people are also being trained as peer-to-peer “digital safety ambassadors to identify risks and promote responsible behavior,” she added.
Luomo, an LWF Council member, spoke of the role of churches and faith-based organizations in pushing for greater protection of vulnerable women and girls online. “As a global communion of churches,” he said, “we can provide input from our member churches to the global level, as well as sharing policies from the global to the local level.” He pointed to the need for “men in positions of power or in public roles to take a courageous stand” against digital violence, reiterating that “our Christian understanding of human dignity and equality is the strongest factor behind our advocacy work.”
