Gender and Sexual Diversity

“The Russian government’s dismantling of civic freedoms since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is a dramatic escalation of its sustained assault on fundamental rights spanning more than a decade” – HRW

Since 2021, Florida has issued laws and policies that censor and distort the curriculum and educational environment of K-12 classrooms in ways inconsistent with international human rights standards on education, access to information, and discrimination.

SMEX examines platform content moderation policies for sexual and reproductive health and rights in the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region.

On World Poetry Day, PEN International released this report, highlighting challenges for writers in global conflicts and emphasizing the need to safeguard freedom of expression, especially in war-torn regions.

“The international system that we rely on to protect human rights is under threat as world leaders look the other way when universal principles of human rights are violated.”

In this report, EFF explores a new approach to tackling online harms leaving behind strategies based on ill-conceived bills and censorship-driven solutions.

When PEN America and Meedan asked writers, journalists, and creators about their experiences reporting online abuse to social media platforms, thet heard again and again, over the past three years, about the deep frustration, exasperation, and harm caused by the reporting mechanisms themselves.

PEN America warns that social media blowback and societal outrage are imposing new moral litmus tests on books and authors, chilling literary expression and fueling a dangerous trend of self-censorship that is shrinking writers’ creative freedom and imagination.

The study showed that Indonesian female journalists have experienced various forms of sexual violence in the workplace and in the course of fulfilling their duties in the field.

The report examines the use of digital targeting by security forces and its far-reaching offline consequences – including arbitrary detention and torture – in five countries: Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia.

Lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ+) women and non-binary people around the world face violence from security forces, family members, and others, along with widespread discrimination that prevents them from building relationships, homes, and families, Human Rights Watch said in the report.

Research carried out by the IPC and the MFWA indicates that the challenges faced by women journalists in doing their work include harassment, sexual advances, threats, and prejudice.

The human rights crisis in Egypt has persisted and even worsened over the last three years, as confirmed by the mid-term report submitted by the Egyptian Taskforce for Human Rights{1} to the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism at the United Nations.

This report aims to capture the full complexity of how encryption affects children’s lives. It sets out principles for an approach to encryption that recognises and respects the full range of their rights.

A New Model for Global Leadership on Human Rights

In a country where the press routinely remains under threat and faces attacks from many fronts, the media in Pakistan operated on slippery grounds in 2022 with a flurry of cases against journalists, television channel closures, charged political rhetoric enabling attacks against the media, overreach by media regulatory bodies and the killing of two journalists, including he brutal murder of one journalist on foreign soil that shook the nation.

A record total of 533 journalists are currently detained worldwide, according to the annual round-up of violence and abuses against journalists published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). The number of those killed has increased again this year – to 57– while 65 journalists are being held hostage and 49 are missing.

This report documents cases of how repressive laws were used to curtail the right to speech, expression and assembly in Malaysia this past year.

Gender-based violence has seen a dramatic increase in the Palestinian digital space over the last several years, reveals this new report from 7amleh.

In partnership with the University of Sydney and University of Technology Sydney, Media Diversity Australia (MDA) has released this ‘report card’ on Indigenous and cultural diversity in television news, with insights into what has changed, what has stayed the same, and opportunities to lead the charge toward greater diversity.

A report published by the Gulf Centre for Human Rights to mark the International Day to End Impunity

The report captures growing anxiety among artists and creative practitioners across South, Southeast, East, and Central Asia around stringent security laws, the lack of unencumbered spaces for free expression, and the impact of authoritarian measures to crack down on artistic production and criminalize free expression.

With almost all independent media institutions eradicated, Cambodian people have been forced to rely largely on social media and other online platforms to access news and information.

Human Rights Watch documents a range of tactics that, when used together, form an ecosystem of repression, aiming not only to muzzle dissenting voices but to scare off all potential critics.

Efforts to Ban Gender and Sexuality Education in Brazil

The Centre for Independent Journalism has published a brief about the state of media in Malaysia, the impact of the pandemic, and its recommendations to the Malaysian government on upholding freedom of expression.

Maharat Foundation and Madanyat Association work with UN Women to monitor television and social media1 concerning violence against women in politics in the period prior to the 2022 parliamentary elections. This summary provides a quick overview of the findings during the months of February and March.

The government has repeatedly bent to pressure from powerful interest groups, including those who advocate the use of violence on the basis of religion, and in doing so has not protected freedom of speech and religion, and the rights of at-risk communities. Police investigations into targeted attacks have stalled, largely because those responsible enjoy political protection.

While the presence of women writers and columnists in literature and journalism continues to be a minority in these countries, this reality is changing: new generations of women writers, whether poets, short story writers, journalists or novelists, are making their voices heard more day by day.

The 2021 report recorded 51 recorded cases of harassment against 93 journalists (including 5 women); 32 journalists were arrested, 10 journalists face other legal actions and 18 experienced violence and harassment.

Ahead of upcoming parliamentary elections, Maharat Foundation examines Lebanon’s TV coverage of electoral campaigns, highlighting violations, and the marginalisation of women from the media space.

This report, supported by UNESCO’s Global Media Defense Fund, provides an overview of violence against women journalists and gender-based attacks on communicators in Brazil in 2021.

According to the RSF annual round-up published today, a record number of journalists – 488, including 60 women – are currently detained worldwide, while another 65 are being held hostage.

Between January and September 2021, 24 legislatures across the United States introduced 54 separate bills intended to restrict teaching and training in K-12 schools, higher education, and state agencies and institutions. The majority of these bills target discussions of race, racism, gender, and American history and appear designed to chill academic and educational discussions and impose government dictates on teaching and learning.

Journalists in most MENA countries continue to face all forms of repression, intimidation, and harassment, including the use of the judiciary to prevent them from carrying out their professional journalistic work. The Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) has documented many cases of journalists murdered or abused, most carried out with total impunity.

The space for free expression in Pakistan continues to shrink with the media facing attacks on all fronts. Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) has observed an alarming trend during 2021 where not only did physical attacks against the media continue with impunity but the state level push to restrict free expression also grew.

The media in Pakistan works within an increasingly repressive environment with the attacks on press freedom coming from all fronts. While physical attacks including abductions, manhandling, arrests and in some instances killings of journalists for their work continue, as online spheres such as social media platforms are of growing importance to the work of media professionals, journalists become the subject of attacks online.

No one has been held to account in 81% of journalist murders during the last 10 years, CPJ’s 2021 Global Impunity Index has found.

Ministerial Regulation 5 governs the functioning of private electronic systems operators (ESOs) accessible in Indonesia which include social media platforms, search engines, ecommerce platforms, games, and communications services.

The study indicates a noticeable increase in the use of hate speech among Palestinians on social media platforms, influenced by events and tensions in regional politics, as well as by global events generally. Hate speech is influenced by internal disturbances and changes in the Palestinian scene, particularly at the social and political levels, whether In the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, or in the 1948 territories.

The report describes the types of violence and threats journalists encounter, along with the nature and frequency of different types of violations.

• Almost half of women respondents had been sexually harassed at work (47%). • Women were twice as likely to experience sexual harassment at work than men. • Only 30% of cases of sexual harassment were ever reported to management.

The Slovenian government of Prime Minister Janez Janša is overseeing an increasingly systematic effort to undermine critical media, a coalition of press freedom organisations and journalism groups warn in this report.

Digital sex crimes are crimes involving non-consensual intimate images. These crimes are a form of gender-based violence, using digital images that are captured non-consensually and sometimes shared, captured with consent but shared non-consensually, or sometimes faked.

The study focuses on 7 topics:

• The media’s concerns regarding the parliamentary elections
• The demands of the October 17 Movement and television coverage
• Monitoring women’s representations in the media and their political participation
• Monitoring the priorities of traditional and alternative media
• The media’s interest in corruption issues
• The union and student elections and coverage by traditional and alternative media
• New influencers and media figures through social platforms

The 19th Annual South Asia Press Freedom report goes inside the key media issues of the Covid-19 pandemic and documents the stories of struggle, courage and resistance of a media industry in crisis and under attack on economic and political fronts in almost every country of the region.

The report reviews ten years of violations against media and media professionals (from March 2011 until the end of 2020), and presents the implications of the conflict for media freedom and the impact on the work of the media.

To mark International Women’s Day, RSF has published this report that reveals the extent of the dangers of sexist and sexual violence for women journalists, and its impact on journalism.

This study examines the impact of the gender digital divide on women in Pakistan during the coronavirus pandemic.

On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, celebrated on 25 November, BCHR issued this report which seeks to address the deterioration of the human rights situation in Bahrain, particularly concerning women.

Access to information is fundamental for women’s empowerment. States and other stakeholders should ensure women have full rights and facilities to access information as a mechanism to overcome gender inequality.

The global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented lockdown to protect citizens in almost all countries in the world is enormous. Apart from the economic, political and societal consequences, it exposes and exacerbates all inequalities that existed before and it discriminates more against those who were already marginalized.

The October 17 uprising in Lebanon – fueled by rampant corruption and the country’s worst economic crisis since the end of the civil war in 1990 – has sparked a newfound collective consciousness  where the rights and identities of marginalized groups are part and parcel of the protests.

Our series of interviews with privacy and gender rights activists across the world reflect nuanced and context specific experiences of the right to privacy.

In June 2018, IPI visited Poland as part of its Ontheline project, which aims to identify best newsroom practices for preventing and better responding to online harassment of journalists.

In this report RSF sheds light on the latest danger for journalists – threats and insults on social networks that are designed to intimidate them into silence.

A quantitative research study on online gender-based harassment in Pakistan

This report will explore the laws and institutions that are in place within Pakistan to deal with issues of online violence against women.

The Cyber Harassment Helpline was launched after the successful completion of the Hamara Internet (translates as “Our Internet”) project, and based on its findings in the “Measuring Pakistani Women’s Experience of Online Violence” report

Reports by Freedom Forum published every three months show a gradual improvement in the statistics for women’s presence in the media.

According to a report, women were underrepresented in Nepali media with only 9% in bylines and 13% as news sources in 2,397 news stories.

The Indonesian press has not been free from violence and abuse against journalists. There were more than 60 cases recorded from 2017 to March 2018, with at least 20 percent of the cases involving women journalists.

Despite state-sponsored repression and social stigma, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in the Middle East and North Africa are finding ways to speak out. They are telling their stories, building alliances, networking across borders, developing national and regional movements, and finding creative ways to combat homophobia and transphobia.

Covering women’s issues does not come without danger. A female editor was murdered for denouncing a sexist policy. A reporter was imprisoned for interviewing a rape victim. A woman reporter was physically attacked for defending access to tampons, while a female blogger was threatened online for criticizing a video game. For International Women’s Day, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) wants to turn the spotlight on violence against journalists covering these issues. This report does not address the status of women journalists, equal employment of women in journalism or sexist (or non-sexist) attitudes in the media. These issues have been widely covered and debated elsewhere. This report focuses specifically on threats and violence against both men and women reporters covering women’s rights.

Pakistan has been slow to recognize that violence, threats and harassment faced online by journalists reflects the violence they are exposed to offline. A nationwide survey of working journalists was conducted to ascertain their level of digital insecurity, to record their experiences and the protections they desired from the journalist community, their media organizations, and the government.

Although the internet has the potential to bridge the gender equality gap, it is still a hugely unexplored terrain or many Ghanaian women because of issues of access, affordability and knowhow.

A report on gender content monitoring found only 6% of bylines were women.

This “LGBT Censorship in Lebanon” report tackles the impact of censorship, unequal treatment and the arbitrariness of legislation on the daily lives of the Lebanese LGBT Community and more generally all LGBT-related content in Lebanon.

This report presents the outcome of an assessment of women’s participation in the Nepali print media as news source, news actors and news reporters identified in bylines. Women’s participation is still meager vis a vis Nepali media content

This report presents the findings of a three-month study focused on mapping, observing and analysing online harassment of journalists in Hungary. The study aimed to identify the types of harassment journalists are subject to, which journalists are typically harassed, who the harassers are, and how journalists cope with harassment.

In this special briefing for International Women’s Day 2017, Privacy International explores through the work of the Privacy International Network some areas of concern being addressed in relation to privacy, surveillance, women’s rights, and gender.

On current trends and threats facing Women human rights defenders.

This research report documents human rights issues faced by transgender women in Cambodia’s urban centres, and recommends actions to secure their rights to equality, dignity, health and security.

IFJ report highlights high levels of gender discrimination and violence against women in the media

Despite the difficult situation in Palestine, politically and socially, Palestinian female journalists have been active and engaged in press offices and field work, and they have proven merit, professionalism, and courage while covering events in the field fraught with serious attacks and life-threatening risks.