Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence: Beyond Awareness
- Matrisse Initiatives
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
The internet has changed how violence happens. Our response must change too.
There was a time when gender-based violence was largely discussed in terms of what happened in homes, workplaces, schools and public spaces.
Today, violence can follow someone into their bedroom through a smartphone.
It can arrive as a threatening message, a manipulated photograph, a fake social media account, persistent online harassment, cyberstalking, sexual blackmail, intimate-image abuse or an AI-generated deepfake.
The technology may be digital.
The harm is very real.
And that is why technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) can no longer be treated simply as an awareness or digital-literacy issue.
We need to move beyond awareness and towards prevention, protection, response and accountability.
What is Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence?
Technology-facilitated gender-based violence describes violence, abuse, harassment or intimidation that is enabled, amplified or carried out through digital technologies.
It can include:
Cyberstalking and persistent online harassment
Threats and intimidation through digital platforms
Non-consensual sharing of intimate images
Sexual extortion and cyber blackmail
Impersonation and fraudulent accounts
Doxxing and exposure of private information
Online hate and targeted abuse
Technology-enabled coercive control
AI-generated sexual or humiliating content
Deepfakes and synthetic media used to harm someone's reputation
Digital attacks intended to silence activists, journalists or public voices
The list is evolving because the technology is evolving.
Generative AI has made it possible to create convincing synthetic images, audio and video at a speed and scale that were previously difficult to achieve.
This creates a new safeguarding challenge.
But isn't this mainly a problem affecting women?
Women and girls remain a critical focus because gender inequality and unequal power structures can make them particularly vulnerable to certain forms of technology-facilitated violence.
However, TFGBV is not exclusively experienced by women.
Men and boys can experience cyberstalking, sexual extortion, blackmail, impersonation, harassment and other forms of technology-enabled abuse.
People can also face digital violence because of their age, disability, occupation, public profile, activism or other characteristics.
The important point is therefore not to create a hierarchy of suffering.
It is to understand how technology can be used to exploit vulnerability and reproduce existing inequalities.
A gender-responsive approach does not mean ignoring everyone else.
It means understanding how gender shapes risk while ensuring that protection and digital rights remain inclusive.
Awareness is necessary. It is not enough.
For years, much of the digital-safety conversation has centred on awareness:
Don't share your password.
Turn on two-factor authentication.
Be careful what you post.
Don't click suspicious links.
All of these messages have value.
But they can unintentionally place too much responsibility on the individual.
What happens when the person has already been targeted?
What happens when an intimate image has been distributed thousands of times?
What happens when an abuser creates multiple accounts after being blocked?
What happens when a person is being threatened with the release of an AI-generated sexual image?
What happens when reporting mechanisms are confusing, inaccessible or ineffective?
And what happens when the person does not know where to turn for legal, psychosocial or other support?
Telling people to be careful is not the same as creating a safe digital environment.
The shift from awareness to safeguarding
At the Centre for Human Development (CHD), our approach is increasingly centred on this distinction.
Digital safety must become part of a wider safeguarding ecosystem.
That means connecting:
Awareness → Prevention → Protection → Reporting → Response → Referral → Evidence → Policy → Accountability
Each part matters.
1. Prevention
People need practical digital-safety knowledge before harm occurs.
This includes digital literacy, privacy awareness, cybersecurity education, understanding online risks and knowing how to recognise manipulation or coercion.
2. Protection
Technology systems themselves must be designed with safety in mind.
Privacy cannot be an afterthought.
Data protection, secure authentication, access controls, encryption and responsible technology governance are part of safeguarding.
3. Reporting
A survivor should not have to become a cybersecurity expert to report abuse.
Reporting mechanisms need to be accessible, understandable, confidential and designed around the needs of the person experiencing harm.
4. Response
A report is only meaningful if something happens afterwards.
Organisations need clear incident-response procedures, escalation mechanisms and defined responsibilities.
5. Referral
Digital abuse can have psychological, social, legal, financial and physical consequences.
Effective safeguarding therefore requires pathways to appropriate support—not simply a “report” button.
6. Evidence
We cannot design effective policy around assumptions.
We need responsible data collection, research and analysis that helps us understand what is happening, who is affected, where gaps exist and what interventions work.
7. Policy and accountability
Evidence must ultimately inform institutional practice, platform responsibility and public policy.
Where does Artificial Intelligence fit?
AI creates both new risks and new opportunities.
The risks are becoming increasingly visible.
AI can potentially be used to:
Generate manipulated images
Produce convincing impersonation
Scale harassment
Automate fraudulent communications
Create synthetic sexual content
Amplify misinformation
Make existing forms of abuse faster and harder to detect
But the same technology can also contribute to safeguarding.
At CHD, our emerging digital-safety work explores how responsible AI can support reporting, digital-rights education, risk identification and evidence generation, while maintaining human oversight and strong privacy protections. CHD's proposed Digital Safeguards research, for example, combines grassroots data collection, policy analysis and an AI Safety Toolkit designed to support digital reporting and literacy.
The Matrisse App and AI Safety Toolkit are being developed around this broader principle: technology should reduce vulnerability rather than create new vulnerabilities. Current project planning includes digital-safety education, secure data collection and survivor-centred approaches across Oyo, Osun and Ekiti States.
But there is an important caveat.
AI should never replace human judgement in safeguarding.
An AI system may help identify patterns or provide information.
It should not determine whether someone deserves protection.
It should not make sensitive safeguarding decisions without appropriate human oversight.
And it should never become another mechanism through which vulnerable people's personal information is unnecessarily collected or exposed.
Data sovereignty is also a safeguarding issue
There is another part of this conversation that receives far less attention:
Where does the data go?
When someone reports abuse, they may disclose highly sensitive information.
That information could include their identity, location, communications, photographs, relationships or details about the perpetrator.
If safeguarding systems collect this information without adequate protection, the response itself can create additional risk.
This is why digital safeguarding has to intersect with:
Data protection
Privacy
Cybersecurity
Access controls
Secure infrastructure
Data minimisation
Responsible data retention
Ethical research
Human rights
CHD's digital-safety programme design therefore places significant emphasis on secure infrastructure, local data governance and de-identified incident data alongside community education and policy engagement.
A safeguarding system that exposes survivors is not a safeguarding system.
The organisational responsibility
This is where the conversation needs to become uncomfortable.
Digital safety cannot depend entirely on individual users.
Organisations have responsibilities too.
Every NGO, school, university, health institution, government agency and community organisation increasingly needs to ask:
Do we have a digital safeguarding policy?
Do staff know what to do when an incident occurs?
Who receives a report?
Who is authorised to access sensitive information?
What happens when an employee or programme participant experiences online abuse?
How do we protect digital records?
What happens if an AI system produces an unsafe or discriminatory outcome?
How do we document, learn from and prevent repeat incidents?
These are governance questions—not merely IT questions.
From technology adoption to responsible technology
There is a tendency to celebrate digital transformation because of what technology can make possible.
But development organisations should be asking a second question:
What could go wrong—and who could be harmed?
That question changes the way we design programmes.
It encourages organisations to conduct risk assessments before deployment.
It encourages survivor-centred reporting.
It encourages privacy-by-design.
It encourages human oversight of AI.
It encourages accessible systems.
It encourages meaningful community participation.
And it forces us to recognise that digital inclusion without digital safety can reproduce inequality rather than reduce it.
What should organisations do now?
Moving beyond awareness does not necessarily require expensive technology.
It begins with good governance.
Five practical steps
1. Map digital risks
Identify where staff, programme participants, partners and communities could experience technology-enabled harm.
2. Establish clear safeguarding protocols
Define how incidents are reported, assessed, escalated and referred.
3. Strengthen digital literacy
Give people practical knowledge—not just awareness messages.
4. Build privacy and security into programme design
Collect only the information that is necessary and protect it appropriately.
5. Govern AI responsibly
Before introducing an AI system, consider safety, bias, privacy, transparency, accessibility, human oversight and accountability.
We need a different conversation
The goal should not be a world where people are told to simply “be careful online.”
The goal should be a world where people can participate online without having to trade their safety for access.
That requires governments, technology companies, civil society organisations, researchers, communities and users to share responsibility.
It requires better evidence.
Better systems.
Better policies.
Better technology.
And, perhaps most importantly, better governance.
At CHD, we believe the future of digital safety lies at the intersection of human rights, gender equality, responsible innovation, community participation and evidence-based policy.
Our work is moving towards that intersection—combining research, digital safety education, technology, secure data practices, community engagement and policy advocacy. CHD's wider digital-safety framework places these elements within a results pathway linking governance and cybersecurity to survivor-centred reporting, evidence-informed decision-making and stronger digital ecosystems.
Because awareness can tell us that violence exists.
Safeguarding asks what we are going to do about it.
And that is the conversation we need to have now.
A final thought
Technology is not neutral when power is not equal.
The same platform that gives someone a voice can give another person a mechanism to silence them.
The same AI that can help someone access information can also be used to manufacture abuse.
The same data that can help researchers understand a problem can become dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands.
So the question is no longer:
“How do we teach people to stay safe online?”
It is:
“How do we build digital environments, institutions and technologies in which people are safer by design?”
That is the shift from awareness to action.
And it is one we cannot afford to postpone.
CHD perspective
CHD's current digital-safety positioning brings together its longstanding work in gender equality, human rights, research, governance and community development with a growing focus on digital rights and technology-facilitated violence. Its organisational evidence identifies digital safety, TFGBV prevention, digital rights advocacy, community-centred digital inclusion and ethical technology as emerging areas of comparative strength.
Comments