A/HRC/38/47 28. Women are both disproportionately targeted by online violence and suffer disproportionately serious consequences as a result. Their access to technology is also affected by intersectional forms of discrimination based on a number of other factors, such as race, ethnicity, caste, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, abilities, age, class, income, culture, religion, and urban or rural setting. These forms of discrimination are intersectional in that they are not only the result of a single particular individual characteristic but the result of the interplay between them, which can result in more severe consequences. Women who have multiple identities are often targeted online on the basis of a combination of these factors, including racial discrimination and hate speech. Some groups of women, such as women human rights defenders, women in politics, including parliamentarians, 17 journalists, 18 bloggers, 19 young women, women belonging to ethnic minorities and indigenous women, 20 lesbian, bisexual and transgender women, 21 women with disabilities and women from marginalized groups are particularly targeted by ICTfacilitated violence (see A/HRC/35/9). 29. Women human rights defenders, journalists and politicians are directly targeted, threatened, harassed or even killed for their work. They receive online threats, generally of a misogynistic nature, often sexualized and specifically gendered. The violent nature of these threats often leads to self-censorship. Some resort to the use of pseudonyms, while others maintain low online profiles, an approach that can have a detrimental impact on their professional lives and reputations. Others decide to suspend, deactivate or permanently delete their online accounts, or to leave the profession entirely. Ultimately, the online abuse against women journalists and women in the media are a direct attack on women’s visibility and full participation in public life. 22 The anonymity of perpetrators further heightens the fear of violence, resulting in a sense of insecurity and distress experienced by the victims. In addition to the impact on individuals, a major consequence of online and ICT-facilitated gender-based violence is a society where women no longer feel safe either online or offline, given the widespread impunity for perpetrators of gender-based violence.23 Online violence against women not only violates a woman’s right to live free from violence and to participate online but also undermines democratic exercise and good governance, and as such creates a democratic deficit. 3. Manifestations 30. While many forms of online violence are not completely new, they take many forms and target women and girls in multiple and different ways by owing to the specificity of types of ICT, such as fast spreading (“viral”) and global searchability, and the persistence, replicability and scalability of information, which also facilitates the contact of aggressors with the women they target, as well as secondary victimization. 24 Technology has transformed many forms of gender-based violence into something that can be perpetrated 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 8 Inter-Parliamentary Union, “Sexism, harassment and violence against women parliamentarians”, Issues Brief, October 2016. See Human Rights Council resolution 33/2, in which the Council condemned unequivocally the specific attacks on women journalists in the exercise of their work, including sexual and gender-based discrimination and violence, intimidation and harassment, online and offline. OSCE, New Challenges to Freedom of Expression: Countering Online Abuse of Female Journalists (2016), p. 5. See Association for Progressive Communications, “Erotics: Sex, rights and the internet”, 2011; Jane Bailey and Sara Shayan, “Missing and murdered indigenous women crisis: technological dimensions”, Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, vol. 28, No. 2 (2016). Witness Media Lab, Capturing Hate: Eyewitness Videos Provide New Source of Data on Prevalence of Transphobic Violence (2016). See Office of the Representative on Freedom of the Media of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), New Challenges to Freedom of Expression: Countering Online Abuse of Female Journalists (OSCE, Vienna, 2016), and Committee to Protect Journalists, Attacks on the Press, 2016 Edition, Gender and Media Freedom Worldwide. See Internet Governance Forum, best practice forum on gender access, 2016. See Danah Boyd, “Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications”, in Networked Self: Identity, Community and Culture on Social Network Sites (Routledge, New York, 2011), pp. 39–58.