Faced with avalanche of online violence against women, UN calls for response and protection
New York, US (PANA) - The internet has become a training ground for hatred against women through the "machosphere", the global ambassador for the Spotlight Initiative warned on Tuesday at a meeting on the sidelines of the UN general debate in New York, calling for the urgent establishment of a legal framework to regulate the internet.
"How can we explain the existence of a Facebook forum bringing together 32,000 men, where each shared—without consent—intimate photos of their partner for others to rate? What does such an act reveal about the place these men give to women in their lives and, by extension, women in our society?" said the champion of the United Nations Spotlight initiative, which aims to end violence against women and girls.
According to the Mexican actress, the emergence of artificial intelligence is accompanied by an "avalanche" of new forms of digital violence, ranging from extortion to image-based violence, from the disclosure of personal data to cyberbullying, from sexual harassment to grooming for sexual assault (child grooming), to name a few.
"In the past 12 months, 300 million children have been victims of online sexual exploitation and abuse," she said.
There has been an exponential growth in groups opposed to women's rights, as well as the emergence of new technologies that reinforce misogynistic thoughts and actions, "so much so that today, an overwhelming number of young boys do not believe that gender-based violence is real and exists".
Ms. Suarez believes that "technology intermediaries must be required to proactively detect, assess and direct the behaviour of their users, who must be subject to legal sanctions, if necessary".
UN News reported that she stressed that the violence women and girls experience online has exactly the same impact as the violence they experience offline: its impact and consequences are of the same magnitude.
Gender-based violence doesn't just affect women and girls, Suarez points out. It also imposes a rigid image on men, where doubting, crying, or showing fragility is perceived as a lack of masculinity.
According to studies cited by Equimundo, a Spotlight partner initiative that combats gender-based violence and works for positive masculinity, 40% of young men have experienced homophobic harassment online, and many young men are victims of sextortion.
"The majority of men do not commit these acts, but many remain silent," said Gary Barker, CEO of Equimundo.
According to him, it's in chat rooms, gaming platforms, TikTok, YouTube—all these gathering places for young men called the "machosphere"—that they witness this violence, see their peers responsible for it, without taking action to stop it.
"Most of the time, boys don't go online looking for misogyny. Misogyny finds boys online," Barker says.
According to a recent Irish study, in the English-speaking machosphere, regardless of the content he searches for, a young man connected to the Internet receives a misogynistic message within just 23 minutes, once the sophisticated algorithm has identified his age and gender.
Mr. Barker remains optimistic, however: "23 minutes is a lot of time for us to figure out what needs to be done."
“We deploy bots to replace misogynistic messages with positive content, and mobilise numerous influencers—often unknown—including many young men who are committed to fighting misogyny. We invest in them so that they spread constructive messages.”
The world of video games is also a space in which Equimundo is involved.
"We invest in these spaces by collaborating with certain creators, who, although sometimes improvable, agree to open their platforms to us. Together, we develop games where young men can promote positive and healthy masculinity."
Ms. Suarez welcomed the presence of two young boys in the room.
"We need men to join this fight and, as a society, we need to put in place education that speaks directly to men," she concluded.
-0- PANA MA 24Sept2025
