16 Days of Activism 2025: Ending Digital Violence Against All Women and Girls | RECONOMY Snippet

Each year, the world marks the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence from 25 November to 10 December. This year’s theme – End Digital Violence Against All Women and Girls – highlights one of the fastest-growing threats to safety, dignity, and equality. As our lives move increasingly online, so too has violence. The internet, once celebrated as a space of connection and innovation, is being weaponized to stalk, silence, and harm women and girls.

What is digital violence?

Digital violence refers to harmful acts committed through online platforms, digital tools, or technology. It takes many forms, including:

• Cyberbullying, trolling, online threats and harassment often gendered and sexualized through persistent unwanted messages or content.
• Hate speech and disinformation, particularly targeting women leaders, activists, and journalists.
• Doxxing, where private personal information is published to intimidate.
• AI-generated deepfakes, including sexually explicit images and manipulated videos.
• Online stalking or surveillance to track and control women’s movements.
• Grooming and sexual exploitation, particularly targeting underage girls.
• Catfishing and impersonation designed to deceive or exploit.
• Misogynistic networks such as incel forums and manosphere groups that normalize hate and violence.
• Image-based abuse such as the non-consensual sharing of intimate images.

These acts are not confined to cyberspace. They spill over into real life fueling coercion, intimidation and physical assault. Survivors often carry the trauma long after the digital traces remain online.

Why it matters

Digital violence disproportionately targets women and girls, and the effects are magnified for those with public visibility: activists, journalists, women in politics, human rights defenders, and young women building their presence online. Women from marginalized groups – due to race, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity – face even higher risks and intensified abuse.

Beyond individual harm, digital violence corrodes democracy, silences women’s voices, and weakens social trust. When women self-censor or leave public platforms out of fear, entire societies lose out on their leadership, creativity, and contributions.

What can be done? The 3Rs: Respond, Report, Remove

The UNiTE Campaign calls on governments, tech companies, and individuals to take concrete action and we suggest to focus on the following 3Rs:

1. Respond – Build survivor-centered responses. This means laws and policies that recognize digital abuse as real violence; services that provide psychological, legal, and technical support; and workplace and institutional policies that protect women online.
2. Report – Encourage transparent, accessible, and safe reporting mechanisms. Survivors and bystanders alike should be able to flag abuse without fear of retaliation. Tech platforms must strengthen accountability by publishing data on online abuse, including how many reports lead to action.
3. Remove – Remove harmful content swiftly. Tech companies must invest in smarter moderation tools that do not replicate bias, while respecting freedom of expression. Harmful images, doxxed data, deepfakes, and abusive accounts should be taken down promptly and consistently.

A call to technology companies

Technology companies sit at the frontline of this struggle. Their platforms host both the innovation and the abuse. With immense power comes responsibility. Tech companies can and must:

• Invest in AI and human moderation that detects abuse in multiple languages, including minority languages.
• Collaborate with women’s rights groups to design safety tools that reflect real survivor needs.
• Ensure strong data privacy protections, preventing stalkers and abusers from exploiting personal information.
• Develop rapid response systems for doxxing, deepfakes, and image-based abuse.
• Commit to transparency reporting and external audits of how abuse is handled.

A call to individuals

Ending digital violence also requires cultural change. Every individual can play a role:

• Believe and support survivors. Do not blame them for being online or visible.
• Do not share harmful content, even as a warning. Every click extends the harm.
• Call out misogyny and hate speech, whether in your community or online spaces.
• Educate yourself and others about safe digital practices, privacy, and respectful online behavior.
• Join the UNiTE campaign to raise awareness and pressure institutions for change.

The way forward

Digital spaces should be places of opportunity, learning, and connection. They should not be arenas where women and girls are systematically attacked. By applying the 3Rs – Respond,  Report, Remove – we  can transform the digital landscape into one that is inclusive, safe, and empowering.

As the 16 Days of Activism reminds us: violence against women and girls, in any form, is not inevitable. It can be prevented. It must be prevented. Together, governments, companies, and individuals can end digital violence and ensure that every woman and girl can live, speak, and thrive – online and offline – free from fear.

You can learn more here.

Authors

Nataliia Koshovska

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