Rapid Online Support for Women in Politics

Two years ago, NDI held a series of discussions with women political leaders around the world and asked them what steps could be taken to address the gendered violence they face online. The effort validated that technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) is a global challenge and a threat to the full participation of women in politics. It also recognized that TFGBV is a personal challenge to every woman in political and public life. Political women don't have a centralized place to report the abuse they face, making technology companies aware of harms, or receiving the support necessary to keep them safe and able to continue their work. NDI is launching a new effort to change that.

This week at the UN General Assembly and at the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa, NDI leaders kicked off the development of the Rapid Online Support and Assistance Mechanism (ROSA), a first-of-its-kind rapid response tool. In early 2025, in coordination with pirth.org and Freedom House, ROSA will be available to support women in politics and public life who experience TFGBV. Pirth.org, a new, survivor-founded personalized resource and reporting platform designed to address online violence globally, and Freedom House, the leading provider of emergency financial assistance to at-risk human rights defenders globally, have joined NDI to create this new mechanism. Over the next three months, NDI will engage stakeholders to ensure the assistance mechanism is responsive to the needs of political women experiencing TFGBV globally while simultaneously enlisting the support of allies to make the mechanism globally available when launched.

U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues Geeta Rao Gupta kicked off the announcement of ROSA on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. At the event, Susan Markam, NDI's acting director of Gender, Women and Democracy, participated on a panel with Alex Robinson, Gender-based violence Technical Advisor at the United Nations Population Fund, Alicia Herbert, Special Envoy for Gender Equality for the UK government, Barbara Curran, Director General for Social and Economic Development for the government of Canada, and Nina Santos, Lead Expert on Information Integrity and Inequalities at Fundacion Multitudes.

In Dakar, Senegal, NDI's implementation of ROSA began immediately with a conversation led by Moira Whelan, NDI's director of Democracy and Technology, alongside representatives of Freedom House, pirth.org and Pollicy, an Africa-based feminist data collective, as well as political women themselves at the foremost convening of digital rights activists hosted by CIPESA.

When operational, the survivor-centered global mechanism will:

• Offer immediate practical assistance through a digital platform for women in politics and public life who experience TFGBV, as well as the opportunity to seek financial assistance where needed;

• Establish a Steering Committee of TFGBV survivors from around the world and experts on technology and TFGBV to guide NDI in developing the survivor-centered, evidence-based mechanism and share it with survivors in their own networks; and

• Enhance the connections between organizations working on gender-based violence, digital security, and civic technology.

The tool will build on NDI's decades of work, making the political space more inclusive. NDI first began to advocate to end all forms of violence against women in politics and public life through the launch of the #NotTheCost campaign in 2016. In 2019, NDI published the Tweets that Chill report, which provided evidence that TFGBV creates a "chilling effect" that drives politically active women offline and in some cases out of the political realm entirely. In the context of both concerns about rising authoritarianism and the global pandemic, NDI led programs to map the weaponization of online violence and gendered information manipulation against politically active women and developed guidance on how to counter its intentional use by state-based actors. In 2022, NDI published a multi-stakeholder list of interventions that technology companies, governments, CSOs, and the media can use to make meaningful progress to counter TFGBV, as well as creating a database of 573 interventions developed and implemented around the world.

By providing a comprehensive, coordinated response to the online violence faced by women in politics and public life around the world, ROSA is a critical next step in ending TFGBV and enabling the full participation of women in political life. NDI will continue to work on this vital issue and be responsive to the needs of women political leaders around the world.

Authors: Susan Markham, Acting Director of the Gender, Women and Democracy team and Moira Whelan, Director of the Democracy and Technology team

The new Rapid Online Support tool is made possible through the U.S. State Department's Office of Global Women's Issues Supporting Women in Facing Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (SWIFT) award as part of the White House's Women Leading Effective and Accountable Democracy in the Digital Age (Women LEAD) initiative.

Related Stories/Resources:

Ending Online Violence Against Women in Politics

Women's Political Leadership: A Founding Focus

Women in Tanzania Striding Towards Reform

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NDI is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental organization that works in partnership around the world to strengthen and safeguard democratic institutions, processes, norms and values to secure a better quality of life for all. NDI envisions a world where democracy and freedom prevail, with dignity for all.

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