A discussion paper on strengthening existing legal-institutional response mechanisms in connection with technology-mediated violence against women, led to a pre-consultation meeting organized in Bangalore in January 2017. The objective of this pre-consultation organized by IT for Change was to debate the key strategic directions for forging an effective legal-institutional response to technology-mediated violence against women in the Indian context, a problem that has assumed pandemic proportions in recent years. The discussion was attended by a group of feminist scholars and practitioners. This report summarizes the key threads of the discussion.
The initiative was undertaken as part of ‘Online freedom for all = No unfreedom for women’, a project that intends to trigger national-level policy dialogues on balancing the right to free speech online with women’s right to freedom from technology-mediated violence, in India and Bangladesh. The project, launched in January 2017, seeks to address key gaps in existing legal institutional frameworks on technology-mediated violence against women in the two countries. The project was initiated by IT for Change and the Women’s Rights Online network of the WWW Foundation.