UN WOMEN UK ON ACTION AGAINST ONLINE ABUSE
Imagine receiving a message from a stranger that contained chillingly accurate details about your daily routine. Or consider the shock of discovering that your footage has been digitally altered into explicit content and splashed across the internet.
These are not hypothetical scenarios of digital abuse — they are a frightening reality for millions of women and girls navigating the digital world today.
What starts as online abuse can swiftly spiral into danger that extends beyond screens and borders, making it impossible for many women to feel safe at home, work, or in public spaces.
No one should have to live in fear just for existing online. The digital world should be a safe space for everyone. It should be offering connection and empowerment but instead digital violence is spreading at alarming speed fuelled by artificial. intelligence, anonymity, and the absence of effective laws and accountability.
Women in the UK are 27 times more likely than men to be harassed online
1 in 2 girls aware of sexist abuse on social media in the UK say this has restricted what they do or aspire to
29% of women in the UK reporting online abuse did not receive a response to their report
UN Women UK urges the UK Government and the private sector to:
- Hold perpetrators accountable through better laws and enforcement.
- Make tech companies step up by hiring more women to create safer online spaces, removing harmful content quickly, and responding to reports of abuse.
- Support survivors with real resources by funding women’s rights organisations and movements.
- Invest in prevention and culture change through digital literacy and online safety training for women and girls and programmes that challenge toxic online cultures. It’s time to reclaim our digital spaces and demand a future where technology powers equality.
- Gender-based violence affects women to different degrees or in different ways, we need to tailor our responses. Now is the time to unite and end violence against women for all.
Let us pray
God of compassion,
hold close the women and girls wounded by words and cruelty online.
Surround them with courage, dignity, and the assurance that their worth is unshaken.
Restore their joy, renew their strength, and guide communities to speak with kindness, so that the digital world may become a place of safety and respect.
God of justice,
move us to act with wisdom and resolve. Teach us to challenge harmful speech, to build platforms of accountability, to educate with empathy, and to stand alongside those who are targeted. May our vigilance and solidarity help prevent further abuse,
and may our voices together create spaces of safety, truth, and care.
May it be so AMEN
