Speech: Every space, on or offline, must be one of safety, dignity, and equality, for all women and girls
Remarks by UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous at the official United Nations commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, 25 November 2025, UN Headquarters.
[As delivered.]
Digital technology has opened a new frontier for an old injustice.
Digital spaces that should strengthen inclusion and connection instead too-often drive misogyny, hate speech, extremism, and their outcome is abuse and real-world harm. We just heard first hand, from Mona, how this devastates lives. Mona, you have inspired us all with your courage and also with your activism. We have also heard from our dear President of the General Assembly about personal and professional encounters with violence against women.
In some parts of the world, more than 50 per cent of women report having experienced online violence. While studies on this still are not uniform, we have data from the European Union, for example, where one in 10 women report having experienced cyber-harassment since the age of 15. In the Arab States, 60 per cent of women internet users in the region report that they had been exposed to online violence in the past year. And in the Western Balkans and Eastern European countries, more than half of women present online in the region have experienced some form of technology-facilitated violence in their lifetime.
They are not alone. Women and girls everywhere, including some of us here on this podium, whether in public or private life, politics, sport, entertainment, or media, live with its constant threat. Many of us here today have extensive personal experience of it as well.
Behind every statistic is a woman silenced, a girl discouraged, a society diminished. When women are driven from digital spaces, we are all denied their voice, leadership, and contribution.
Feminist movements and digital rights defenders have sounded the alarm, advocated, built survivor networks, and pressed for better. Their work is making a difference: two thirds of countries now report targeted actions on digital violence.
UN Women’s global programme on digital violence, supported by Spain, works globally to turn data on digital violence into action and advocacy into policy. We support services, prevention efforts, and new legal and policy frameworks, all while ensuring the central role of women’s rights organizations as they face a backdrop of ever-greater complexity and pushback.
Our ACT to End Violence against Women Programme, supported by the European Union, directly funds 60 women’s rights organizations around the world in their work. The ACT AI School is equipping more than 150 civil society organizations with tools for digital safety, resilience, and AI competencies. And, through the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women, we are backing frontline civil society organizations who deliver essential services and advocacy. Also, through the Spotlight Initiative, we are demonstrating the power of coordinated, system-wide action to break the cycle of violence against women, both online and offline.
The challenges are formidable. Survivors face disbelief. Abusers enjoy impunity. Implementation of remedial or protective measures lags behind. Women’s organizations are denied the resources they need and deserve, while enormously wealthy tech platforms operate with limited oversight.
But we are formidable too. We have the solutions to rise to those challenges.
First, we must recognize digital violence as real violence. Name it, measure it, reject it. In doing so, we must work with young people, with women and men, boys and girls, in addressing harmful norms, in rejecting patterns of abuse, and in changing harmful perceptions of masculinity.
Second, we must hold justice systems and technology companies accountable. Justice systems must keep pace with technology, and technology companies must be accountable for women’s safety.
Third, we must invest in prevention and response. The cost of violence against women is immense, the cost of prevention far less, yet crucial work remains chronically underfunded.
The 70th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70) will be here soon. Member States will consider access to justice as the priority theme, and, critically, this will include justice for women and girls and young people in the digital space.
CSW70 provides an invaluable opportunity to strengthen the rule of law and justice systems for women and girls, including through securing global commitment to comprehensive legislation, services, accountability measures including for platforms, and more. It will be a chance to make technology an enabler of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, as it should be.
Digital violence is not an inevitability, nor an inescapable price of progress. It is instead a perversion of progress, an abuse of the products of human vision and ingenuity.
We should all be outraged that tools that should connect and unite us are misused to intimidate and silence women and girls to the detriment of us all. Our refusal to accept that, ensures change. That change is delivered through the solutions in our hands. Every space, on or offline, must be one of safety, of dignity, and of equality, for all women and girls. We will continue to work with you to deliver that, for every woman and every girl, for every boy and also for all young people, everywhere and always.
Thank you.
