* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The internet can accelerate a more peaceful world for women – or chip away at their rights. Twenty years since the world recognized women’s right to peace, it’s up to us to decide what’s next
Mohammad Naciri is the Regional Director of United Nations Women for Asia and the Pacific
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented acceleration in the shift to take activism virtual. Having long navigated restrictions on mobility, women peacebuilders and human rights defenders have been quick to adapt to digital activism in the context of the pandemic. Across the Asia-Pacific region, women have demonstrated their ability to take activism from their neighbourhoods to the web, questioning oppressive power structures and calling out human rights violations.
But online activism isn’t without risk for women. Online threats have led to physical ones, demonstrating the real-world consequences of online activity.
Women journalists in Pakistan, reporting on their government’s response to COVID-19, say they have been targeted through their social media accounts for their reporting. "Women in the media are not only targeted for their work, but also their gender. Our social media timelines are then barraged with gender-based slurs, threats of sexual and physical violence,” reads a joint statement condemning what reporters call a coordinated campaign of harassment. As a result, many women in the media now self-censor or stop engaging altogether.
Misogynistic hate speech against women remains prevalent online, and with impunity. Women at every level – ordinary citizens to celebrities and politicians – face online harassment. During the COVID-19 lockdowns and quarantines, tweets from India, Indonesia and the Philippines containing misogynistic language doubled week over week in May.
This is cause for alarm, as misogyny and violence against women are two of the strongest proxy indicators for support for violent extremism, an issue the Asia-Pacific region continues to grapple with.
In Afghanistan, where public spaces remain hostile and even deadly for women, some have tried taking their voices online to highlight the dangers of returning to old norms as the world watches the Taliban push for power. One prominent Afghan woman activist regularly receives direct messages on Twitter containing explicit threats aimed at silencing her voice, including from the Taliban, who have threated to kill one Afghan National Police officer for every tweet she publishes.
A more subtle but still insidious threat to women’s rights is unchecked artificial intelligence. Facial recognition systems have been shown to misidentify women or people with darker skin, with developers of these systems acknowledging that systems more accurately identify those that are male or white.
Still, surveillance systems using AI technology are being rolled out in countries in the region like China, Cambodia, and Pakistan, including in response to COVID-19, and used to inform law enforcement. With a significant gender and racial margin of error, these systems have the very real potential to result in arbitrary arrests and detention.
As cyberattacks grow in sophistication and frequency – including cyberattacks against critical infrastructure, hospitals, and research facilities during COVID-19 – global superpowers are building cyberweaponry, poised to wage ideological battles over the future of the internet.
In the face of these threats, the lack of women working in cybersecurity leaves our digital world at risk, blindsided by a lack of inclusion and diversity: only nine per cent of cybersecurity professionals in Asia-Pacific are women, with just one per cent in senior cybersecurity positions globally.
Faced with the dark side of digital, women activists have stepped into the space to push back against techno-authoritarianism and navigate the collision of digital technologies and human rights.
So as drivers of conflict and modalities for peace move online, we must draw on the principles enshrined in the Women, Peace and Security Agenda first introduced twenty years ago by the UN Security Council. This landmark resolution recognised for the first time the integral role that women play in international peace and security.
As we look ahead to the next decade of digital peacebuilding, in a hyperconnected world where a single digital move can instantly disrupt peace and security, we must stand with women as they protect us against the misuse of digital tools for oppression, discrimination, and surveillance.
Through all this, one truth remains steadfast, both online and offline: without women, there can be no peace.
