New measures designed to tackle online violence against women and
girls are announced today at the start of this year's 16 Days of
Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.
The project, called Safe Online: Preventing
Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) and to be
backed by more than £27m of UK-government funding, will help to
support survivors of online violence and abuse, gather data to
strengthen our understanding of this emerging threat, and
minimise women's exposure to harmful content by working with
national regulators.
85% of women globally have witnessed or experienced online abuse
and violence, including harassment, stalking and hateful
misogynistic content. Today's announcement shows the UK is
determined to work globally to counter this threat to women and
girls.
Minister for Development has also announced three
new partnerships with women's rights organisations today, to
examine how media and technology can prevent violence against
women and girls - rather than facilitate it.
CREAW in Kenya, Soul City Institute and Reach Digital Health in
South Africa will work in partnership with the UK government's
What Works to Prevent Violence programme to scale-up approaches
on the most effective ways to prevent violence against women and
girls. Working closely with local women's rights organisations,
the programme will pioneer new violence prevention approaches and
scale-up approaches proven to be effective in countries such as
Uganda, Eswatini, Somalia and Pakistan.
Backed by £67.5 million, the programme represents the first
global effort to systematically scale-up violence prevention
efforts and is the largest investment by any single donor in
preventing violence against women and girls globally.
This government is clear that violence against women and girls is
unacceptable, with today's announcements building on previous
action taken to tackle this issue. The UK recently announced £5m
of funding to tackle child marriage at the Violence Against
Children conference in Colombia and published a new report
examining the links between violence against women and climate
change at COP29 in Baku.
Alongside our partners, the UK's support to end violence against
women globally has contributed to:
-
A 15% reduction in the global prevalence of child marriage
over the last decade, averting 25 million marriages.
-
Pioneering approaches that have successfully reduced rates of
GBV in less than three years.
-
Protecting over 160,000 girls under 14 from undergoing female
genital mutilation in just one year.
The Minister of State for Women and Equalities and Minister of
State for Development, said:
This government is committed to tackling the epidemic of misogyny
and violence against women and girls, which destroys lives and
scars communities.
This violence does not stop at our border - nor should our action
to stop it.
Increasingly, online spaces are being used to perpetrate violence
rather than prevent it- and so we need to work together to
understand this abuse and what works to stop it.
Today, Lord Collins, in his first engagement since being
appointed the Prime Minister's Special Representative for
Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict (PSVI) will also attend
the International Alliance on PSVI Conference in Colombia.
He will commit the UK to work with partners to drive
international action to tackle conflict-related sexual violence
(CRSV), which disproportionally affects women and girls around
the world.
The International Alliance on PSVI was launched by the UK in 2023
and remains the only group focused specifically on strengthening
international action to tackle CRSV and support survivors.
The Prime Minister's Special Representative for Preventing Sexual
Violence in Conflict and Minister of State for Africa, Lord
Collins said:
There are more countries in the world today engaged in conflict
than at any time since World War II and a 50% increase in
incidences of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) globally in
the last year.
As the Prime Minister's Special Representative for Preventing
Sexual Violence in Conflict, I am determined to drive forward the
UK's leadership on this issue, working with partners in Colombia
and around the world to reduce conflict-related sexual violence,
support survivors and bring perpetrators to justice.
Notes for editors:
- International Day for the Elimination of Violence against
Women is taking place on 25 November 2024.
- 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence is taking
place between 25 November – 10 December 2024.
- The What Works to Prevent Violence: Impact at Scale programme
is a £67.5 million programme working to pioneer and scale-up
effective approaches to ending GBV. The first phase of the
programme showed that we can reduce violence in homes, schools,
and communities by 50% in under 3 years. The programme has
recently awarded three new grants to women's rights
organisations:
- To CREAW in Kenya, in order to pioneer the use of media
in preventing violence.
- To Soul City Institute in South Africa, to pioneer the
use of mass media in preventing violence.
- To Reach Digital Health in South Africa, to pioneer the
use of technology such as chatbots in preventing violence.
- Further information on the £5m funding to help tackle child
marriage can be found here
- A link to the report on climate change and gender-based
violence can be found here
