Digital violence is rising sharply across the world, yet almost half of all women and girls still lack legal protection from online abuse, UN Women has revealed as it launches the 2025 edition of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence (GBV).
The organisation warns that the digital space, once seen as a platform for empowerment, has increasingly become a dangerous environment where women face harassment, intimidation, and exploitation at unprecedented levels.
Fuelled by artificial intelligence, anonymity, and weak accountability mechanisms, online abuse now reaches every corner of the internet and affects millions globally.
Fewer than 40 per cent of countries have laws addressing cyberstalking or cyberharassment, leaving 1.8 billion women and girls without legal safeguards. This gap has allowed digital violence to spread rapidly, taking the form of cyberstalking, online harassment, doxing, non-consensual image sharing, deepfakes, and gendered disinformation.
Women in leadership, politics, journalism, and business are increasingly targeted, with one in four female journalists reporting online threats of physical violence, including death threats meant to silence or push them out of public life.
UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous warns that digital abuse must be treated with urgency, noting that what begins online often escalates into real-world harm, including physical violence and femicide.
Emphasises that laws must evolve in tandem with technology to ensure women’s safety both online and offline. Weak legal protections, she says, continue to leave millions vulnerable while perpetrators operate with impunity, undermining global progress toward gender equality.
While reporting remains low and judicial systems are still ill-equipped to address technology-facilitated violence, several countries are beginning to reform outdated laws.
Progress can be seen in the UK’s Online Safety Act, Mexico’s Ley Olimpia, Australia’s Online Safety Act, and the EU’s Digital Services Regulation.
By 2025, a total of 117 countries had initiated efforts to address digital violence, although these initiatives remain fragmented in the face of a phenomenon that transcends borders and platforms.
UN Women is now calling for stronger global cooperation to enforce ethical and safety standards on digital platforms and artificial intelligence tools.
The agency also urges increased funding for women’s rights organisations supporting survivors, stronger laws to hold abusers accountable, and greater responsibility from technology companies.
This includes hiring more women in technology roles, removing harmful content more quickly, and responding promptly to reports of abuse. Investments in digital literacy, online safety training, and cultural change programmes are also seen as critical to prevention.
Feminist movements, which have driven global recognition of digital violence as a human rights threat, now face shrinking civic space, unprecedented funding cuts, and pushback that risk undermining years of advocacy.
UN Women highlights initiatives such as the EU-funded ACT programme as crucial in sustaining feminist organising and strengthening global responses to digital abuse.
To support policymakers and law enforcement, UN Women has released two new tools: a supplement to the global handbook on violence against women legislation focusing on technology-facilitated abuse, and a new guide for police on responding to digital violence.
These resources aim to equip governments with practical measures for prevention, protection, and justice.
The 16 Days of Activism campaign, observed annually from 25 November to 10 December, connects the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women to Human Rights Day.
This year’s focus on digital violence highlights one of the fastest-growing and most complex forms of abuse. UN Women stresses that until digital spaces are safe for all women and girls, true equality will remain out of reach.
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