About
Since 2005 APC been working to strengthen the capacity of women’s rights activists and organisations to use technology tools in their work to end violence against women and to respond to the growing incidence of technology-related violence against women . In 2006, the Take Back the Tech campaign was launched to call on all users of information and communication technologies ICT) – especially women and girls – to take control of technology and strategically use any ICT platform at hand (mobile phones, instant messengers, blogs, websites, digital cameras, email, podcasts and more) for activism against gender-based violence. From 2009 to 2011, this work was further developed to deepen knowledge and actions around these issues. The results of the "Take Back the Tech! To end violence against women” project demonstrated the need to use new tools to ascertain and find solutions to the type of violence women face online.
Through
this ongoing work, we found that the most common cases of
technology-related VAW documented include cyberstalking, sexual
harassment, surveillance, privacy violations and the unauthorised use
and manipulation of personal information including images and videos. We
found that while these violations are increasing, women and girls who
fall victim do not know what to do to stop the abuse, what charges they
can report, who they should report to and what help they can get. In
many countries policies, regulations or services that respond to these
new forms of violence do not exist or are inadequate. The report "Voices from digital spaces" elaborates on these issues in great detail.
Violence
is taking place online. Monitoring efforts by governments in many parts
of the world on cases of violence against women often omit this
critical and growing form of violence. Without documentation, they
remain unrecognised, excluded from or little understood in the concerted
efforts to end the persistent reality of violence against women all
over the world.
Map it!! Join this initiative!
The call to document is a call to bear witness. It is to make the invisible visible. Take Back the Tech!
calls women and girls to take control of technology to tell our own
stories, create our own testimonies, represent ourselves and shape our
own narratives about the violence that women and girls face all over the
world.
It is about demanding the world see what it doesn’t want
to see, or only see from the lens of the sensational or horrific. And to
hold witnesses accountable for being implicated in creating a world
where violence against women perpetuates.
We are calling for
connections, between women who think their stories are isolated,
insignificant or anomalous, to seeing a global picture of the violence
that women all over the world are facing, simply because we are women,
and that each story matter. Because each story is part of a whole that
we create together, as people who see, who act, who tell, who respond,
who reinforce, who subvert, who disrupt, who transform.
This initiative is about a feminist way of knowing, of representing, of bearing witness. And of demanding and creating change.
It is part of the Take Back the Tech! Campaign and a new project “End Violence: women's rights and safety online”.
It is a collaborative effort that calls on organisations and individual
campaigners in different parts of the world to document, tell stories
and build a body of evidence on violence against women that takes place
online, or through the use of ICTs like mobile phones and the internet.
The
stories will be used by campaigners to advocate for recognition and
redress for technology-related violence against women at local, national
and international levels. They will also inform efforts to strengthen
the capacity of women and girls to address and deal with violence
against women that they might face online, and the work of women's human
rights defenders and internet rights advocates on the issue of violence
against women.
The map is initiated by the Association for Progressive Communications,
and built by the following organisations and collectives, also in
charge of their country maps. These country maps aggregate simultanously
to the global one
- One World Platform for Southeast Europe (OWPSEE), Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia https://ba.takebackthetech.net/
- Colnodo, Colombia https://co.takebackthetech.net/mapit/
- Si Jeunesse Savait, Democratic Republic of the Congo https://cd.takebackthetech.net/mapit/
- KictaNet, Kenya https://ke.takebackthetech.net/mapit
- Bytes for All, Pakistan https://pk.takebackthetech.net/mapit
- Foundation for Media Alternatives (FMA), Philippines https://ph.takebackthetech.net/mapit
- Erika Smith, APC https://mx.takebackthetech.net
MAP
IT! We invite you to join and report cases in your own countries or
that you know of in other areas of the world to help us to build strong
evidence to work for the elimination of online violence against women!
This project is possible thanks to the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Funding Leadership and Opportunities for Women (FLOW) Fund