UN Women strategy: Preventing and eliminating technology-facilitated violence against women and girls

Technology and digital tools are transforming everyday life, opening new opportunities for women and girls—but they are also being weaponized to harass, threaten, and silence them online. Technology-facilitated violence against women and girls (TF VAWG) is now a defining challenge for gender equality, closely linked to violence offline and shaped by deep-rooted discrimination.

This publication sets out UN Women’s approach to tackling this growing threat. Aligned with the UN Women Strategic Plan 2026–2029, this strategy positions TF VAWG as a core concern across all areas of UN Women’s work and explains how it fits within the wider violence-against-women continuum.

The strategy outlines a human rights–based, gender-responsive and -inclusive vision for safer digital spaces. It identifies key drivers and gaps—from harmful gender norms and under-regulation of technology, to limited data and services—and organizes UN Women’s response into five pathways for action:

• strengthening norms and standards;
• expanding data and evidence;
• transforming social norms and digital ecosystems;
• improving survivor-centred and justice-focused responses; and
• amplifying women’s voice, agency, digital resilience, and leadership.

Providing clear directions for global, regional, and country-level action, this strategy is a roadmap for UN Women and its partners to prevent and eliminate TF VAWG and to ensure that digital transformation advances, rather than undermines, the rights of women and girls.