"We Cannot Fight This Alone": The Global Demand for a Coalition Against Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence
What we heard when we asked the world's grassroots organisations about technology-facilitated gender-based violence, and why it confirms the urgent need for PREVENT.
When The Lotus Flower boarded a plane to Women Deliver, we carried with us a question: what would it truly take to protect women and girls from technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV)? We were there to call for a global coalition we call PREVENT (Protection, Response & Elimination of Violence Enabled by New Technologies), designed to give women’s rights organisations a central hub to pool data, share insights and resources, and speak out with one collective voice.
Taban hosted a panel discussion with Tonni Brodber, Head of Secretariat of the Women's Peace and Humanitarian Fund, Patty Kinnersly, CEO of OurWatch, and Ivana Mondelo, Strategic Communications Coordinator at DataGénero. Together, they explored how TFGBV is escalating faster than governments can regulate and platforms can be held accountable, and what that means for the women's rights organisations facing the escalation of harm on the front line.
A Borderless Crisis
We then asked the women in the room to describe what TFGBV looks like in their communities.
The Rise of AI & Deepfakes
Across nearly every context, AI-generated harm emerged as the defining new threat. This included Nudify apps, deepfake abuse circulating inside high schools, a surge in AI-generated violence targeting women in leadership and LGBTIQ+ communities. Advocates working on consent education named AI deepfake pornography and sextortion as central to their active casework, with particular alarm at how normalised location-tracking tools have become — one questioned how young people don’t recognise these technologies as instruments of surveillance and control.
In Hong Kong, multiple organisations described image-based sexual violence as the defining TFGBV issue: upskirting, non-consensual distribution of intimate images, and AI-generated content circulating on illegal platforms that profit freely while victims receive almost no government support. Local civil society groups have set up their own image take-down services because the government has failed to act.
"The language of the internet itself is becoming sexist and transphobic — and this is even worse through an intersectional lens."— Participant
Compounding Vulnerabilities for Marginalised Groups
Some communities face multiple, layered exposures. Advocates working with migrant and refugee communities in New Zealand described clients only just beginning to name TFGBV as a problem they face. In Thailand, participants highlighted the particular exposure of Indigenous communities: limited digital literacy, absent school regulation, and feminist and LGBTIQ+ activists disproportionately targeted. Researchers in Australia pointed to the intersection of misogyny, lateral violence, and racism in Aboriginal communities.
One of the most striking contributions came from a representative working in humanitarian contexts, who reframed the entire conversation: in many conflict-affected settings, — husbands, brothers — control the phone. TFGBV does not require the victim to be online. The digital divide is itself a form of control.
TFGBV is also a workplace issue. Healthcare workers in Australia described online sexual harassment of staff by patients and their families — a dimension of the crisis that almost never reaches policy discussions.
"We need an organised transnational response to the organised, transnational authoritarian movement that is weaponising gender and using TFGBV as a central organising mechanism."— Participant
TFGBV as a Political Weapon
Perhaps the most urgent framing came from democracy advocates, who described with precision how TFGBV has become a central organising mechanism for authoritarian movements globally — a deliberate strategy to silence women in public life, drive them from digital spaces, and degrade democratic participation. Participants working on electoral integrity in Latin America described coordinated technology-facilitated attacks deployed during election campaigns. Activists doing street-level gender justice work described relentless online harassment, cyber-stalking, and doxxing simply for doing their work.
The Gaps We Must Bridge
We also asked: what is the biggest gap your organisation faces in responding to TFGBV?
No Shared Data or Evidence Base
The most cited gap. Organisations are working without adequate evidence — unable to understand the scale of harm, unable to persuade funders or governments, and unable to learn from peers. Participants from London, the Middle East, and across Asia all named data scarcity.
No Collective Voice or Advocacy Infrastructure
Working in isolation, unable to build the coordinated pressure needed to move platforms and governments. Participants from Ghana, Indonesia, and beyond named the absence of coalition as their primary gap, making it nearly impossible to even criminalise TFGBV without coordinated pressure.
Technology Platforms Not Held Accountable
Participants named platform impunity as a defining failure. Companies profit from the infrastructure enabling TFGBV while victims receive little recourse. Frontline workers and activists are almost entirely absent from conversations about protective solutions.
Government Inaction & Lagging Legal Frameworks
Across almost every context, laws trail dangerously behind technological advancements and realities. In multiple countries, the rise of extreme-right men's rights politics was named as an active force blocking regulation.
Funding scarcity at the Grassroots
For most organisations in the room, this work is being done with almost nothing. Participants from Ghana described TFGBV taking young women's lives with no resources to respond. Communities in the Pacific are only just recognising the scale of the problem with nothing yet in place to address it. Funding was named as a first need by groups across Hong Kong, Africa, and the Americas.
When we asked what a global coalition could offer, these organisations are looking for:
Shared Data Repository A living evidence base — case studies, impact data, and cross-border findings — that gives organisations the ammunition to make their case to funders, governments, and platforms.
Collective Advocacy Engine Coordinated campaigns targeting tech companies and governments, combining the weight of evidence from dozens of organisations into pressure that cannot be ignored.
Global Community of Practice A living space to share strategies, tools, and hard-won lessons across borders — so that no organisation has to solve alone what others have already worked through.
Capacity Building & Resources Practical training, toolkits, and resource mobilisation to strengthen frontline organisations in low-resourced settings — and to protect the activists doing this work.
Funding Access & Visibility Amplifying grassroots voices to funders, opening joint funding pathways, and ensuring that the organisations closest to the problem are resourced to respond to it.
Frontline Safety Support Filling a critical blind spot: developing and sharing protective strategies to keep frontline workers and activists safe online, not just chasing the problem after harm occurs.
"We are looking for shared experiences, lessons from different angles, joined-up advocacy, and funding opportunities." - Participant
Stay tuned for more as we build out the PREVENT Community of Practice!