Invisible violence, lasting impact: Technology-facilitated gender-based violence in the MENA region

Online, the ugliest parts of our society don’t disappear; they multiply. Violence, coercion, and exploitation that exist in the physical world are only magnified in the online world and engineered to spread faster, cut deeper, and linger longer. Nowadays, where technological advancements are being made more rapidly than we can even comprehend, it feels that the internet can remember everything except holding itself accountable.

Technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TfGBV) is one of the many harms that has found a home in our phones, particularly across the MENA region. It refers to acts of violence carried out or amplified through technologies against someone based on their gender. It encompasses forms of violence such as blackmail, image-based abuse, doxxing, cyberbullying, harassment, cyberstalking, online grooming, hate speech and online impersonation.

Perpetrators can range from ex-partners, friends and family members to strangers and bots. Survivors often include women with public profiles, such as journalists, activists, politicians, bloggers, and TV presenters, as well as women outside the public eye. 

I spent one year investigating how TfGBV takes place in Yemen. After just a couple of interviews with survivors, the patterns were striking. The tactics rooted in misogynistic norms used to pressure survivors; the stigmatisation of women by their families and the authorities; weak legal frameworks; and most of all, deep psychological, social and financial impacts that linger for years. 

These patterns are not unique to Yemen. Similar dynamics can be seen in how TfGBV manifests across the MENA region, including in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and the UAE. While each country has its own complexities, zooming out reveals a troubling reality: misogynistic norms accelerate through digital spaces, while legal frameworks across the region are struggling to keep pace.  

Perpetrators weaponise these gendered norms to their advantage. They calculate the consequences a woman might face if an “inappropriate” image of her circulates online, and in conservative societies, even photos where she is fully covered can carry devastating implications. In many parts of the world, women are burdened with the impossible, lifelong task of carrying their family’s “honour,” and the slightest questioning of that honour fuels TfGBV.  

As Yara AlRafie, Program Officer at the Jordan Open Source Association (JOSA), a non-profit organisation based in Amman, notes, “When trying to discredit a man, you attack their work, you don’t attack their private life, family, what they wear or do. This is how society discredits women.” When reporting TfGBV to a family member or the authorities, many women told me they were met with responses such as: “Why do you even have photos of yourself?” “You shouldn’t have social media”, “You brought this on yourself.” It is this stigmatisation and shame that prevent women from reporting TfGBV to both their families and the authorities.  

Coupled with weak legislation and inadequate legal mandates to prosecute such crimes, TfGBV effectively exists within a vacuum that often leaves survivors without any form of justice. Across the MENA region, measures to address TfGBV operate within a patchwork of laws, if any, such as national constitutions, penal codes, domestic violence and cybercrime laws. Most of these laws are designed for traditional offences outside the digital world, and do not stipulate specific forms of TfGBV or online violence. Cybercrime laws, such as the draft Law on Cybercrimes in Iraq, can have counterintuitive consequences, restricting the very freedoms of survivors they are meant to protect, including free speech.  

This fragmented legal landscape leaves room for inconsistent implementation, with cases of TfGBV falling through the cracks. According to Kristin Perry, Senior Policy & Advocacy Advisor at SEED, a women-led organisation based in Erbil, meaningful action on TfGBV must start with robust legislation and institutions equipped with clear legal mandates to investigate these crimes. “We can see that social interaction is increasingly moving into the online sphere, but legal protections need to catch up. Digital governance is critical to address the challenges of our present and future. As it stands now, there are serious gaps”, Perry highlights.  

Although TfGBV can occur almost instantaneously within digital environments, its impacts cascade across nearly every aspect of a survivor’s life, who are blamed and shamed by their families and communities for being a target. This often forces women to retreat from public spaces and creates a “chilling effect”, where women are discouraged from speaking, participating or expressing opinions within both online and offline spaces due to fear of further attacks.  

The repercussions are twofold: women whose work and livelihoods depend on digital platforms are silenced, and society loses both present and future voices crucial to shaping public discourse on critical issues. “Although TfGBV often targets female activists, journalists and human rights defenders, it also targets young girls because if they ever want to speak up or write about any issue, they know they will become a target”, Al Rafie shares. 

The psychological impact is also profound and can linger for years. According to a study conducted by JOSA, TfGBV survivors in Jordan reported anxiety, fear, emotional distress, isolation, sleep disturbances, eating disorders, and even suicidal thoughts. Country-level reporting across the region reveals similar patterns of deep psychological impact. 

After assessing all these patterns, gaps and trends, the question remains: how do we fight back against a threat that spreads faster than justice in our region can follow? As a starting point, Perry rightly urges that we stop artificially segmenting TfGBV as a “women’s only issue”, as societies often do with many gender-related problems. Women make up half of the human population, and to compartmentalise TfGBV in this way is to deny the full scope of its harm and the collective effort required to end it. 

Until then, activists, human rights defenders, researchers and civil society organisations will keep documenting, exposing and pressuring governments to act. TfGBV thrives in silence, and only by raising our voices and reclaiming the spaces meant to connect us, not destroy us, can we begin to dismantle it.