‘Bodyright’ campaign launched, to end rise in gender-based violence online 

“It’s clip for exertion companies and policymakers to instrumentality integer unit seriously”, said UNFPA Executive Director Natalia Kanem -“right now”.  

The bodyright campaign highlights that firm logos and copyrighted IP are more highly valued and amended protected online than images of human bodies, which are often uploaded to the Internet without consent, and utilized maliciously.  

The ⓑ symbol – which tin beryllium added to immoderate representation straight via Instagram stories utilizing stickers, oregon by downloading it from the webpage – aims to clasp policymakers, companies, and individuals to account while simultaneously driving the connection that women, girls, radical and taste minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and different marginalized groups are valued and will not be violated online. 

The new frontier 

Relentless, borderless and often anonymous, Dr. Kanem called the online satellite "the caller frontier for gender-based violence". 

And the reality is that people bash not ain their bodies online. 

From cyberstalking and hatred speech, to so-called doxxing (publishing backstage oregon identifying accusation astir an individual) and the non-consensual usage of images and video, such arsenic deepfakes (whereby a idiosyncratic successful an existing representation is replaced with idiosyncratic else’s) - online unit is rife.  

Many countries lack laws which make online unit illegal, leaving anyone trying to region exploitative images of themselves with few ineligible rights, and a agelong process for those who effort to enforce those rights which do exist. 

Human rights infringement 

When someone infringes connected euphony oregon movie copyright, integer platforms region the contented immediately.  

Governments person passed laws making copyright infringement amerciable and integer platforms person devised ways to place and forestall unauthorized usage of copyrighted material.  

These aforesaid protections and repercussions must also extend to individuals and their photos, says UNFPA.  

Nine-out-of-10 women report that online unit harms their consciousness of well-being. 

More than a third of women state that cyber violence has led to mental wellness issues. 

Digital violence inhibits authentic self-expression, and adversely impacts the nonrecreational and economical livelihoods of radical who beryllium connected online and societal media spaces.  

Online unit silences the voices of women.  

The bodyright campaign 

From London and of Ghanaian and Nigerian heritage, grant winning writer and spoken-word artist Rakaya Fetuga, has authored and performed poetry for the campaign that communicates the interaction of online unit and the novel concept of bodyright. 

And to advocate for enactment from Governments, policymakers, tech companies and societal media platforms, UNFPA has launched a Global Citizen-hosted petition, that demands tangible enactment to extremity integer unit and abuse. 

16 Days of Activism  

The bodyright initiative is portion of the wider 16 Days of Activism against Violence Against Women campaign, which runs until 10 December.  

UNFPA has besides launched “The Virtual Is Real” website, which features stories of victims and survivors of integer unit from astir the world, alongside innovative enactment done by UNFPA to code this quality rights violation.  

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, 85 per cent of women with entree to the net reported witnessing online unit against different women, and 38 per cent have experienced it personally.  

Moreover, some 65 per cent of women surveyed person experienced cyber-harassment, hatred code and defamation, portion 57 per cent have experienced video and image-based maltreatment and ‘astroturfing’, wherever damaging contented is shared concurrently crossed platforms.