In this week’s Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) Tracker, we spotlight this year’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence under the theme “UNiTE to End Digital Violence Against All Women and Girls”, This year’s theme hits closer to home than we often admit.
Digital spaces, once imagined as great equalisers, are becoming increasingly dangerous for women and girls in Nigeria. And while the physical world still holds many threats, the online world is quickly catching up.
What’s worrying is how normalized it has become. Girls at secondary school level being bullied off social media. Women journalists facing vicious cyber harassment. Survivors of offline violence being shamed publicly online. Deepfakes, blackmail, non-consensual sharing of images, all growing faster than our ability to protect victims. And in that sense, this year’s theme is not symbolic but a warning.
A GESI Lens on Digital Violence
Digital violence is not “just an online problem.” It is a structural inclusion problem. It affects women and girls whose digital footprints make them easy targets, persons with disabilities who rely on online platforms for access and community but face higher risks of manipulation, young women navigating school, work, or activism online and low-income girls using public cybercafés with zero safety nets.
Digital violence silences voices. It limits mobility. It forces women out of civic spaces. It erodes confidence and participation in public life. In other words, it is a GESI issue at its core.
Why This Matters Now More Than Ever
Nigeria is experiencing a dramatic shift in how people use technology: from social media to fintech to e-learning. But the laws, systems, and digital protections have not caught up. A woman can be harassed for years online with no clear reporting pathway. A girl can be threatened into silence with digitally manipulated images. And most cybercrime frameworks were never designed with gender in mind. This is why the conversation must move beyond awareness to accountability and policy action.
A Legislative Gap the GESI Tracker Must Continue to Expose
So far, the National Assembly has touched on online safety indirectly through motions and broader cybercrime bills, but Nigeria still lacks a gender-responsive digital safety law.
The most recent step forward is the Child Online Access Protection Bill, which just passed its third reading in the House of Representatives. While it focuses on children broadly, it opens the door for stronger digital protection frameworks. Women and girls deserve the same deliberate protection, not as an afterthought, but as a standalone priority.
If lawmakers treat digital violence the same way they treat physical violence, we may begin to see real progress.
How Other Countries Protect Women and Girls Online And Where Nigeria Still Falls Short
As conversations around digital violence grow louder, it helps to look outward and see how other countries are dealing with the same problem. Some have already built strong systems to protect women and girls online, and the contrast is a bit sobering.
In countries such as Australia, the eSafety Commissioner operates almost like a digital emergency service, requiring platforms to remove harmful content and treating online abuse as a public safety issue. Through its “eSafety Women” initiative, the Commissioner provides support, resources, and training aimed at helping women who experience technology-facilitated abuse. The United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act does something similar, requiring tech platforms to assess risks to women and girls and remove abusive material quickly.
Even the European Union goes further with its Digital Services Act, which aims to create a safer digital environment by imposing obligations on digital services, including measures to address illegal content and gender-based violence online.
These countries are not perfect, but they have done something Nigeria has not: they have accepted that digital violence is gendered, and have built laws and institutions to reflect that reality.
Nigeria, by comparison, still leans heavily on the Cybercrimes Act of 2015, a law that treats online abuse as a generic cyber-offence rather than a gender-based harm. There is no dedicated agency focused on online safety for women and girls, no requirement for tech platforms to protect vulnerable users, and no fast-track reporting or takedown pathway for survivors. Even when the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act applies, enforcement is inconsistent and often offline-focused, leaving a gap between legislation and lived experience.
The result is a kind of invisibility. Women and girls experiencing online threats, stalking, sextortion, deepfake circulation, non-consensual image sharing, cyberbullying, and digital blackmail often face a system that does not quite know what to do with their cases. Police lack clear guidelines. Platforms are not legally compelled to act. Survivors carry the burden of proof in a system built for another era.
And this is exactly where the GESI lens becomes essential. Because protection in the digital age is not just about prosecuting cybercriminals, it is about recognizing digital spaces as extensions of real life, where gender-based violence also plays out. Other countries have begun to make that shift. Nigeria can too.
What Needs to Happen Next
If Nigeria is serious about ending digital violence, several things must shift:
- Gender-responsive cyber laws, not generic frameworks that overlook how uniquely women are targeted.
- Clear reporting pathways for victims and survivors, with real penalties for offenders.
- Tech accountability, where platforms used in Nigeria are required to enforce safety standards.
- Digital literacy for girls, especially those in low-income and rural communities.
- Budgeting for digital safety, so that online protection is not treated as an optional extra.
- Better data, because we cannot solve what we are not tracking.
Ending digital violence is not a campaign theme but a governance responsibility.
Closing 2025’s 16 Days of Activism and Opening the Next Chapter
As the curtain falls on the 2025’s 16 Days of Activism, the real work begins. GESI Tracker will continue to monitor how digital violence appears in motions, bills, committee discussions, and budget allocations across the National Assembly.
But the message is simple: women and girls cannot be empowered if they are not safe offline or online.
Digital spaces are now part of everyday life. Protecting them is not optional. It is fundamental to gender equality and social inclusion. And as Nigeria pushes forward, the hope is that digital protection becomes a core GESI priority, not just a once-a-year conversation.
