11-16, 17:15–17:30 (Asia/Beirut), 4th Dimension
The audience will hear first-hand about the extremely toxic online environment for women in Pakistan and Asia from Nighat Dad, one of the region's best-regarded experts on digital and gender rights. Nighat will show that women all over the world are facing similar challenges, while drawing on her personal experience of fighting abuse in Pakistan. As a member of the Oversight Board for Meta she will also share information on what social media companies are doing to stop this issue and discuss what more must be done.
The session will address lessons learnt in combating gender-based online hate speech and disinformation that increasingly translates into real word harms and violence. As a long-time digital rights and gender-rights activist and campaigner, and a frequent victim of social media abuse, Nighat Dad will focus on her first-hand experience from Pakistan where she founded the Digital Rights Foundation. She will look at the sources and causes of online abuse, she will also look at global trends, drawing on her experience as a member of the Oversight Board for Meta, which helps Facebook and Instagram answer some of the most difficult questions around freedom of expression and human rights online and decides what key pieces of content Meta must take down, what to leave up, and why. She will discuss what more social media companies can and should be doing, while also highlighting the positive role civil society actors can play.
Her reflections will be tied into the broader issue of how online violence against women in politics poses a deepening challenge to democracy, serving as a key tool of illiberalism and democratic backsliding across the globe. Nighat will conclude by highlighting the need to counter the violence that women in politics face online in order to promote women’s equitable political participation and also ensure a more healthy democracy environment.
تندرج مداخلة نيغات ضمن الإطار العام لمسألة العنف ضد النساء العاملات في الحقل السياسي على الإنترنت، وكيف يشكل ذلك تحدّيًا متزايدًا أمام الديمقراطية ويؤدي إلى تراجع الليبرالية والديمقراطية حول العالم. تختتم نيغات الجلسة عبر التشديد على ضرورة مواجهة العنف الذي تواجهه النساء العاملات في الحقل السياسي على الإنترنت، من أجل تعزيز مشاركة النساء السياسية المتساوية وضمان بيئة أكثر ديمقراطية وسلامة.
Nighat Dad is a Pakistani lawyer and an inaugural member of the Oversight Board, which since 2020 has been working to better protect freedom of expression on Meta’s platforms by making principled, independent decisions about important pieces of content. She is also the founder of Digital Rights Foundation, a charity organisation focused on cyber harassment, data protection and free speech online in Pakistan and South Asia. As a feminist and pioneer for women’s rights activism in Pakistan, Dad has raised awareness of Pakistani patriarchy and illuminated her own experience as a women engaged in digital rights activism.