Locations16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence
Unite to end digital violence against all women and girls
November 25, 2025
Rights-based digital governance is needed to protect women and girls both online and offline.
Photo: UNDP India
Digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) hold immense potential for human development and for progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, but they are also fueling new risks that disproportionately harm women and girls.
From deepfakes to coordinated online harassment, digital violence is exacerbating the existing patterns of violence and creating new forms of abuse, and it’s accompanied by increased conflict and fragility, the climate emergency, shrinking civic space and eroding gender equality and the rule of law.
Urgent, coordinated action is needed to protect rights, strengthen accountability and safeguard democratic values.
The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence is a key moment to reaffirm that gender-based violence, both online and off, is a key challenge that needs to be at the heart of governance, rule of law, digital safety and gender equality.
Digital transformation
This year’s campaign comes at a pivotal time when digital transformation is reshaping economies, societies, governance and development systems.
It aligns with the renewed global commitments generated with the Beijing+30 Political Declaration, the Global Digital Compact, the UN Convention against Cybercrime, that sets us on a path to prepare for the 70th Commission on the Status of Women in 2026, focusing on justice for all women and girls.
Digitalization contains promise and peril. It can transform lives and economies, but it also digs deeper traps for women and girls and reinforces deep-seated power imbalances.
UNDP spotlights the urgent need for rights-based digital governance, stronger institutional responses, and increased investment to protect women and girls in all spaces.
Digitalization has the potential to transform women's lives, but without guardrails, it can exacerbate existing patterns of violence and create new forms of abuse.
Photo: UNDP
A global problem
The risks are high all over the world. In Arab States 60 percent of women internet users have experienced online violence. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, over 50 percent of women have faced technology-facilitated abuse. In sub-Saharan Africa 28 percent of women reported online violence.
It is also common in high income countries. In Denmark, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdome and the United States, 23 percent of women aged 18 to 55 reported online abuse or harassment.
This is not a marginal or niche issue: it bleeds into every aspect of our lives, attacking human rights and economies, silencing women in public life and undermining democracy.
Women politicians, journalists and human rights advocates face high levels of digital abuse, with 44 percent of parliamentarians receiving death threats or sexual violence threats and 73 percent of journalists reporting online violence.
Risks are even higher for women of colour, LGBTQI+, and women with disabilities.
Yet ending digital violence against women and is an economic imperative.
Online abuse pushes women out of digital spaces, limiting their skills, access to markets and higher-value jobs. The cost is immense: in Malawi, 76 percent of low-income women entrepreneurs report income loss linked to digital violence and in Australia, online harassment costs $3.7 billion.
Danger breeds danger
Women who live in dangerous or fragile places are even more at risk. Seventy percent of women living in humanitarian contexts have experienced violence, double the overall rate.
In Uganda, 75 percent of urban refugee women report online abuse. In Syria, displacement amplifies digital harm. Women’s organizations, on the frontlines of conflict prevention and response for gender-based violence survivors, face chronic underinvestment.
Ensuring women are safe is the first step of economic development, and it can bring enormous benefits. Closing the gender wage gap could add $172 trillion to global wealth.
Urgent investment needed
To stop digital and online violence we must first understand it. UNDP calls for urgent investment in research and real-time data to uncover how abuse manifests and who it targets.
Governments must integrate gender-based violence measures, online and offline, into economic planning and digital transformation strategies, supported by gender data and analysis.
Through initiatives like Equanomics UNDP works with 28 countries to embed gender equality in fiscal policies, driving inclusive growth and shared prosperity. Tools such as eMonitor+ track hate speech and information integrity, to enhance evidence-based policymaking and reform.
Given its profound psychological, economic, civil and political consequences, digital violence must also be recognized in law as a human rights violation.
While 117 countries have adopted measures to address digital violence, technology is advancing faster than laws and institutional capacity. This gap leaves women and marginalized groups critically under-protected.
Through the Spotlight Initiative, UNDP has partnered with other UN agencies on whole-of-government approaches which have passed more than 540 laws related to gender-based violence.
Law enforcement, multisectoral coordination and quality services are the missing pieces. Weak enforcement, stigma, and fragmented institutions mean perpetrators operate with impunity. Less than 1 in 10 women seek legal help after experiencing violence. UNDP is driving people-centred justice in over 20 countries, supporting law enforcement and civil society.
But more needs to be done. Reforms must include robust enforcement capacity and institutional coordination, dedicated financial resources and clear pathways to justice. UNDP supports countries in advancing these priorities through comprehensive legal reviews, national strategies and policy development.
Costa Rica is one of more than 100 countries that have adopted measures to address technology-facilitated violence against women and girls.
Photo: UNDP Costa Rica
Make digital spaces safe for all
The evidence is clear: the new violence women face online is a mirror to what they already experience elsewhere.
In their lifetimes almost 1 in 3 women will be attacked physically or sexually. And this alarmingly high rate has stayed the same over the last decade. Some 640 million women have experienced violence from an intimate partner. A woman or girl is killed by somebody they know every 10 minutes.
These brutal figures must be a call to action.
Embedding gender equality and human rights across the entire lifecycle of digital systems is essential to ensure technology fosters inclusion rather than enabling violence. UNDP supports governments and partners in adopting rights-based digital governance, to build robust standards for transparency, algorithmic accountability and effective moderation to prevent gender-based violence and make digital spaces safe for all.
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