In the May 2023 meeting of the Regulatory Working Group of the Coalition against Online Violence, Malavika Rajkumar and Merrin Muhammed Ashraf presented comments on the 2018 UNHRC Resolution on Violence against Women and Girls in the Digital Contexts, highlighting certain gaps and deficits in the objective and language of the Resolution that need to be addressed in order to be an effective instrument in the fight against technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV). Their submission stressed on 5 key issues - limitations of the terminology "gender-based violence against women and girls in digital contexts"; inadequate focus on violence against girls; lack of recognition of the problems of sexist hate speech and gender trolling; lack of clear focus on platform accountability; and inadequate focus on improving the redressal mechanisms of digital platforms. Read the detailed submission here.
The input has been prepared by Malavika Rajkumar and Merrin Muhammed Ashraf with comments from Anita Gurumurthy.