UN Women – Cyber Violence and Strategic Response

A deliberation organized by UN Women and IT for change with representatives from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY)

Panel discussion was around rights of Women to access the internet without fear of Cyber Violence and how collaborative efforts between legislators, law enforcement , civil society, lawyers and judges including international co-operation will help address this issue.

The 10 key issues discussed were :

(a) definition of Cyber violence which includes doxxing, revenge porn, cyber stalking, sextortion, bullying ;

(b) how the present legislation in India falls short of addressing these various forms of violence ;

(c) Co-operation from intermediaries such as facebook and google as most of the evidence is in its exclusive custody ;

(d) definition of intermediary liability for content as well as non-cooperation ;

(e) urgent and timely response from intermediaries for take down and stay down requests;

(f) jurisdictional issues for cross border crimes ;

(g) concentrated multi stakeholder efforts to prevent , protect and redressal of complaints

(h) an urgent need for a substantive criminal law.;

(i) victim support