| APrIGF 2022 Session Proposal Submission Form | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part 1 - Lead Organizer | |||||
| Contact Person | |||||
| Ms. Katherine Townsend | |||||
| Organization / Affiliation (Please state "Individual" if appropriate) * | |||||
| World Wide Web Foundation | |||||
| Designation | |||||
| Director for Policy | |||||
| Gender | |||||
| Female | |||||
| Economy of Residence | |||||
| United States | |||||
| Primary Stakeholder Group | |||||
| Civil Society | |||||
| Part 2 - Session Proposal | |||||
| Session Title | |||||
| Ensuring a Web Free From Violence | |||||
| Session Format | |||||
| Panel Discussion | |||||
| Where do you plan to organize your session? | |||||
| Onsite at the venue (with online moderator for questions and comments from remote participants) | |||||
| Specific Issues for Discussion | |||||
| Women and girls are experiencing a surge of violence and abuse online and the digital world has become a new front in the assault on the freedom and power of women. Being a woman online means being disproportionately at risk of abuse. When you’re a woman of color, and a Black woman in particular, LGBTQ+ or from other marginalised organizations — the abuse is often far worse. Globally 38% of women have reported being personally subject to online violence according to the latest numbers from the Economist Intelligence Unit. This rises to 45% for Gen Zs and Millennials. This is consistent with a Web Foundation survey which found 52% of young women and girls had experienced abuse online. This abuse isn’t less harmful because it happens behind a screen. Impersonation, defamation, threats of physical and sexual violence, the non-consensual sharing of images – all of these can have devastating consequences for the reputations and the physical and mental health of those targeted. It can cost women their jobs and damage relationships.When women have less space online, they have less space in newsrooms, boardrooms and the halls of political power. Technology Platforms have a powerful role to play and have made commitments to update and improve their work, but the progress advances slowly and there is much more work that remains. This session will address the extend of the broad society impact of violence online, the changes that are necessary among platforms, governments, and other large organizations, and the roles that each of us can play to ensure a safer, secure, more creative and collaborative online world. |
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| Describe the Relevance of Your Session to APrIGF | |||||
| The issue of countering online gender based violence is most relevant to Trust including: privacy, data governance, tech regulation, surveillance, multistakeholderism, digital rights, and cyber norms. Online gender based violence is a global concern that currently have disproportionate impact on those most vulnerable. Without the assurance that women and other minoritized groups will have a safe and secure experience online, many choose to remain offline, depriving the world of their creativity, their leadership, their ingenuity, and their voice. The Web Foundation have been convening multistakeholder collaboration since 2020 to tackle violence online and are working with UN Tech Envoy and UN Women as part of the commitments to Generation Equality Forum to ensure that recommendations made to protect rights online are not empty promises but can and will be fulfilled. The Web Foundation has taken three key approaches, and welcomes any participants to join as this work continues: 1. Build out a database of companies and governments that have made commitments to counter violence, particularly gender based violence online and track their impact. 2. Assemble a global database of reporting on harassment and violence online. One currently does not exist and the parameters to do this well are complex and require significant partnerships and multi stakeholder collaboration. 3. Convene a global network of feminist technology organizations, GBV actors, and privacy experts to be able to provide meaningful feedback and engagement with technology platforms as they propose new product and policy changes. All of this work is ongoing and will remain so, and we welcome any of the participants of IGF committed to this mission to share with us in this work. |
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| Methodology / Agenda (Please add rows by clicking "+" on the right) | |||||
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| Moderators & Speakers Info (Please complete where possible) | |||||
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| Please explain the rationale for choosing each of the above contributors to the session. | |||||
| These moderators and speakers are selected for the range of the expertise, personal experience, capacity to run engaging, dynamic, and interactive workshops: Katherine Townsend is the current Director of Policy for the Web Foundation convening global programs to ensure the web is open, secure, collaborative, accessible, and trusted. She has led the team for countering online gender based violence as well as many other interventions from the Web Foundation. She will join in person. Nnenna Nwakanma is the Chief Web Advocate for the Web Foundation, is a passionate speaker, a fierce advocate for the web, and has been working for global women’s rights for decades. She along with Katherine Townsend have been convening global working groups along with UN Women and the UN Tech Envoy to gather firsthand testimonies and data to drive the work forward on commitments from the Generation Equality Forum and ensure that countering online gender based violence and feminist tech issues overall are included in the Global Digital Compact. Hera Hussain is an entrepreneur and global expert in tools to counter violence online and provide services for women and other minoritized groups who are survivors of offline harassment and violence. She is the founder of Chayn which offers the first and currently only global platform for survivors of violence to access resources, counseling, legal services, and a network of support online. Lucia Gamboa is a Senior Public Policy Manager at Twitter and has been leading work on Twitter Circles designed to counter the proliferation of violence and harassment online. Her Excellency Sarah Bint Yousef Al Amiri is a proposed speaker to contribute a government perspective on the role of the state in ensuring women and other minoritized genders have a free, open, and safe experience online. |
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| If you need assistance to find a suitable speaker to contribute to your session, or an onsite facilitator for your online-only session, please specify your request with details of what you are looking for. | |||||
| No assistance is required but additional speakers and facilitators with expertise in countering violence online are welcome | |||||
| Please declare if you have any potential conflict of interest with the Program Committee 2022. | |||||
| No | |||||
| Are you or other session contributors planning to apply for the APrIGF Fellowship Program 2022? | |||||
| No | |||||
| Number of Attendees (Please fill in numbers) | |||||
| Consent | |||||
 I agree that my data can be submitted to forms.for.asia and processed by APrIGF organizers for the program selection of APrIGF 2022. |
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