25th May 2026
8 mins
How the global anti-rights movement is targeting women’s rights in Africa through family laws
In our increasingly digital world, women and girls face distinct and escalating threats to their rights, safety, privacy, and freedom, creating complex and multi-jurisdictional challenges that existing legal systems are ill-equipped to handle.
The rapid advance and adoption of digital technologies is opening up new frontiers every single day, including sadly for gender-based violence and discrimination amplifying women’s and girls’ vulnerability to traffickers, coercers, exploiters, and other forms of misogynistic abuse that are rarely, if ever, confined to the ‘virtual’ space.
The pace of change in this area is further exposing the inadequacy of existing laws and policies, everywhere in the world. Ensuring that women’s and girls’ rights and protections are fully extended and upheld in the digital realm will help create a safer, more inclusive world, where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
A world where women and girls have rights, safety, privacy, and freedom, in digital and physical realms.
Five governments and five regional and international bodies to adopt intersectional feminist-informed digital rights laws and frameworks grounded in international human rights law and standards.
50m women and girls will stand to benefit from increased legal protection and access to justice under international law with regard to digital rights.
“It’s for every woman or girl who’s ever been abused, felt threatened, or excluded in the digital world. Because we should all be able to use, build, and benefit from tools like the internet and AI, without having to fear them.”
Legal innovation and reform
Drawing on intersectional feminist legal analysis and international human rights standards, we will continue to develop and promote model laws and policy frameworks, as well as national, regional and international legislation that responds to the realities of tech-facilitated discrimination and harms.
Global collaboration and influence for regulation
As co-leaders of the Alliance for Universal Digital Rights (AUDRi) with Women Leading in AI (WLiAI), we will develop strategic partnerships and coordinate collaborative action to secure rights and regulation in international, regional, and national digital governance, based on AUDRi’s 10 Feminist Principles for the Digital Realm.
In particular, we will seek to influence the UN and regional treaty bodies to ensure the gender principle of the Global Digital Compact is integrated into treaty mechanisms.
Accountability and survivor-centred solutions
Using research into women’s and girls’ lived experiences, we will advocate for governments to develop or amend laws to prevent or respond to TFGBV and tech-facilitated bias and discrimination, creating tools to track progress, expose gaps, and ensure that women’s and girls’ experiences shape policy and justice outcomes.
Campaigns with specific outcomes relating to this priority are:
End technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV)/Online Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (OSEA)
Ensuring that women’s and girls’ rights are protected in the digital realm, including their right to safety and protection from TFGBV/OSEA and their access to justice.
Understanding and disrupting online pathways to misogyny and hate crimes against women and children
Ensuring that governments and technology companies collaboratively address and counter the misogynistic and anti-gender backlash by implementing specific actions informed by recommendations from legal, gender, and digital rights experts.
Alliance for Universal Digital Rights (AUDRi)
Ensuring that governments and regional and international bodies adopt intersectional feminist-informed universal digital rights grounded in international human rights law and standards, uphold the rule of law in the digital space, and are held accountable.
In partnership with members of the Christchurch Call Advisory Network (CCAN), gender transformative men’s groups, and others, we will study the digital systems that lead to misogyny and technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV), engaging with governments, civil society and, where possible, tech companies to expose and interrupt pathways between behavioural targeting, disinformation, radicalisation, and violence.
Tell us what you think about our approach to securing digital rights, safety, privacy, and freedom, and where you think you can make a difference.
Securing rights. Transforming futures.