Indian Penal Code

Drawing from IT for Change’s work, this submission provides an overview of legislative and judicial developments in India with respect to online violence against women. It offers an analysis of the government’s…

Unmasking the web

“#MeToo” – the spontaneous and unstructured campaign, exposed the underbelly of sexual harassment. This campaign would not have had the results it did were it not for the Internet. However, this very same domain with its limitless reach becomes one of the most vicious weapons in perpetrating violence. Sexual harassment…

It’s the end of an era for online activism. We have lost our safe, small, intimate spaces of digital publishing to corporate giants, state-run troll armies, and idiotic online commentary. We must recognize that the politics and policing of this space have shifted under our fingertips and that we must re-strategize how we are going to play the…

This position paper looks at the issue of intermediary filtering in the context of two Supreme Court cases. The first was a petition filed by activist Sabu Matthew George in 2008, asking for a ban on advertisements on search engines related to pre-natal sex determination. The second case was a suo-moto PIL taken up by the Court in 2015, in…

The purpose of this issue paper is to lay out the key legal, institutional, and ethical issues concerning technology-mediated Violence against Women (VAW), to raise critical questions for further deliberation and action. This paper draws upon secondary literature in this area, and inputs from Indian feminist scholars and practitioners working…

First published in LSE’s Women Peace and Security blog, this article discusses the need for a feminist jurisprudence on violence against women. Laws on online VAW draw from foundational ideas that have informed interpretations of gender-based (in) justice, recognizing the immersion of human society in digital experiences. There is a presence of…

IT for Change contributed to the 'Call for submission on online violence against women' by the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Ms. Dubravka Šimonović as part of the Online Freedom for All = No Unfreedom for Women - Project on Technology-Mediated Violence Against Women.

The paper provides a state of play of the legislative,…

IT for Change made a submission to the Call for Comments on the draft update of General Recommendation No.19 (1992) on gender based violence against women, issued by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Our suggestions stress the need to account for the equivalence of the effects of offline and technology-mediated…

A pre-consultation meeting was organised in Bangalore in January 2017 to review our discussion paper, 'Technology-mediated Violence against Women in India: How can we strengthen existing legal-institutional response mechanisms?'. A group of feminist scholars and practitioners came together at this meeting to debate the questions raised by this…

World-over, technology-mediated violence against women is growing to be a serious social problem. Women’s full and free participation in digital spaces presupposes a safe online environment, but going online seem to be fraught with the risk of violence for women. Governments, especially in countries in the global South, are yet to bring their…