“He cursed our mothers and fathers in the post, and I knew how deeply it would hurt my family if they saw it.”
That’s how Sara (a pseudonym) described her immediate reaction to a Facebook post written by a former member of her Resistance Committee. Following an internal dispute, he published photos of Sara and her female colleagues, slandering their reputations in a deliberate attempt at character assassination, alongside insults directed at their parents and families.
Sara and her friends are far from an isolated case. Social media platforms have long been weaponized through gender-based attacks, designed to trigger psychological trauma as well as intense familial and social pressure by exploiting deep-seated fears of public shame.
Technology-facilitated violence against women in Sudan builds on a long history of stigma and discrimination in both public and private life. Sudanese women have faced repeated digital targeting, defamation, and gendered hate speech designed to silence them and push them out of the public sphere.
While technology-facilitated violence against women in Sudan did not originate with the current war, the ongoing conflict has transformed the digital sphere into a parallel battleground for political, military, and social struggle, leaving Sudanese women facing a noticeably escalating phenomenon.
This cannot be understood in isolation from the broader context of discrimination and violence against women. The digital space continuously reproduces and amplifies existing social and political structures. With the outbreak of war, political, military, and ethnic divides have intertwined with gender biases, creating new and far more severe patterns of digital targeting that compromise women’s public participation, political stances, social identities, and even their personal presence on social media platforms.
Defining Technology-Facilitated Violence
UN Women defines technology-facilitated violence against women as “any act that is committed, assisted, aggravated, or amplified, in whole or in part, through the use of information and communication technologies or other digital tools, and that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, psychological, social, political, or economic harm, or other violations of rights and freedoms.” The UN notes that “this form of violence disproportionately affects women and girls, reproducing dominant gender norms and stereotypes through digital means of surveillance, control, and harm.”
Methodology
This report analyzes patterns of technology-facilitated violence against women in Sudan during the war by mapping its forms and execution mechanisms, identifying the groups most vulnerable to targeting, and exploring its ties to the political, military, and social contexts reshaped by the conflict. It also highlights the role of digital platforms in amplifying this violence and examines the pathways to protection and justice available to victims. Finally, the report concludes with actionable recommendations, including legislative and legal reforms, proposals for platform governance and technical responsibilities, as well as recommendations tailored for civil society organizations, humanitarian initiatives, and international donor agencies.
This report uses a multi-method research design combining quantitative and qualitative approaches to provide a comprehensive understanding of technology-facilitated violence against women in Sudan during the war. The quantitative component consisted of an online survey conducted in May 2026 over a two-week period, gathering responses from 89 participants. For the qualitative component, three in-depth interviews were conducted with female journalists and activists who experienced various forms of digital violence during the conflict.
The report also drew on the monitoring and analysis of violent content across social media platforms, including Facebook, TikTok, and other channels. This involved tracking posts, comments, hashtags, and digital campaigns aimed at targeting women, as well as analyzing prevailing discourse patterns, amplification and coordination mechanisms, and forms of privacy violations, defamation, and incitement.
Part One: What Participants Had to Say
The survey data was collected over two weeks in May 2026, with a total of 89 participants.
Gender breakdown shows high female participation, with women making up the vast majority at 79.8% (71 participants), while men accounted for 15.7% (14 participants). The remaining 4.5% (4 participants) preferred not to disclose their gender.
Figure (1): Gender Breakdown of Survey Participants
When it comes to location, 56.2% of participants (50 people) live outside Sudan, compared to 43.8% (39 people) residing within the country. This strong showing from the Sudanese diaspora alongside voices from inside Sudan underscores how digital experiences transcend borders, shaping the shared realities of conflict, displacement, and migration.
Figure (2): Geographic Distribution of Participants
In terms of age groups, those aged 25–34 made up the largest share of participants at 37.1% (33 people), followed by the 35–44 age group at 28.1% (25 people). The 18–24 and 45–54 age brackets saw equal participation at 12.4% each (11 people per group), while those aged 55 and older accounted for 10.1% (9 people). These results highlight that the majority of respondents belong to young and middle-aged demographics, the very groups most active on digital platforms.
Figure (3): Age Distribution of Participants
Regarding education level, the survey results show that the vast majority of respondents hold a university degree, accounting for 67.4% (60 people). Meanwhile, 29.2% (26 people) completed postgraduate studies, and only 3.4% (3 people) had a high school level of education. This indicates that the sample is predominantly highly educated, a factor that likely influences how respondents engage with digital safety issues and technology-facilitated violence.
Figure (4): Education Level of Participants
Survey Results
Has Digital Targeting of Women Increased Since the Outbreak of War?
The survey results reflect a widespread awareness that technology-facilitated violence against women has surged since the outbreak of the war. Social media platforms have shifted from spaces for connection and information sharing into battlegrounds where political, military, and social polarizations collide.
In this context, UN Women emphasized that the number of people exposed to violence has tripled since the war broke out, rising to over 12 million, the majority being displaced women and girls. Yet despite the sheer scale of these violations, many victims refrain from coming forward to report them.
Figure (5): Level of Digital Targeting of Women Since the Outbreak of War
On which platforms?
According to the analysis of the survey results, Facebook topped the list of platforms that respondents identified as the most prevalent for this type of discourse. TikTok also emerged as a growing arena for generating and circulating this content, highlighting the increasing role of short-form videos in expanding the reach of targeting and engaging a broader audience.
Eman (a pseudonym for a feminist and political activist) reinforces this trend, noting that attacks against women on TikTok often focus on their bodies and physical appearance rather than their opinions or stances.
Conversely, the messaging app WhatsApp stood out as a platform where this discourse spreads pervasively, taking advantage of the difficulty in monitoring content circulated within private channels. These findings align with limited existing research indicating that Facebook and WhatsApp are among the platforms most closely linked to the proliferation of violent discourse against women.
Figure (6): Social Media Platforms Witnessing the Widest Spread of Violent Discourse and Digital Targeting Against Women
What are the patterns of targeting?
Defamation, verbal abuse, and moral accusations emerged as the most prominent forms of violence identified by respondents. These patterns primarily target women’s social standing, seeking to undermine their credibility and status in society.
Survey results also revealed that respondents view the unauthorized publication of personal data or photos as another recurring pattern of violence.
In a related context, more direct forms of violence stood out, including threats and extortion. This indicates a shift in digital violence from character assassination and smear campaigns to active intimidation and control, aimed at silencing women and restricting their participation in the public sphere.
Figure (7): Prominent Forms of Technology-Facilitated Violence Against Women
Spontaneous or Organized Behavior?
More than half of the participants indicated that technology-facilitated violence against women occurs in an organized and planned manner, compared to a smaller proportion who viewed it as random. This reflects a broad awareness of coordinated digital campaigns targeting women through the systematic repetition of specific narratives or targeted incitement against specific figures, often leveraging digital networks to amplify harmful content and maximize its reach. These findings reinforce the importance of approaching technology-facilitated violence as an organized, structural practice that targets women on the basis of gender, political stances, or public visibility on social media platforms.
Figure (8): Participants’ Perceptions of the Nature of Technology-Facilitated Violence Against Women
Who Are the Most Targeted Women?
Survey results indicate that technology-facilitated violence heavily targets women engaged in the public sphere, with respondents pointing to political activists, singers, and female journalists at similar rates. This highlights a clear recognition of the link between women’s public participation and their risk of exposure to digital violence.
Respondents also noted the targeting of women belonging to specific ethnic or tribal backgrounds, which aligns with the heightened ethnic and tribal polarization intensified by the war. A smaller proportion of respondents pointed to the targeting of survivors of sexual violence.
Responses to open-ended survey questions reveal that the scope of targeted groups extends beyond traditional classifications. They shed light on escalating attacks against women with disabilities and LGBTQ+ individuals, resulting from intersecting forms of discrimination and marginalization. In a similar vein, Amal’s report shows that women with disabilities face severe violence, including ridicule and exploitation of their disability to degrade them.
Some responses also highlighted the vulnerability of women in informal occupations and those working outside union or institutional frameworks, owing to their lack of professional support networks and protective mechanisms. Furthermore, answers indicated that targeting is not necessarily tied to a specific political or professional affiliation, but can stem simply from women defying expected social roles or achieving a degree of public presence or success, making the targeting of “successful women” a recurring pattern in the public sphere.
Figure (9): Women Most Vulnerable to Digital Targeting
Part Two: What Did We Find on the Platforms?
This section of the report reviews the patterns of technology-facilitated violence against women monitored by the team during the preparation period of this report.
Defamation
Defamation has emerged as one of the most prominent tactics used against Sudanese women in digital spaces. For instance, Sudanese women and girls in Egypt faced a widespread campaign involving severe verbal violence. This campaign was accompanied by the stereotyping of Sudanese women in Egypt and arbitrary accusations aimed at inciting social hostility against them.
These defamation campaigns were not limited to Sudanese women in Egypt; they extended to those residing in the Gulf states, who faced, for example, unfounded accusations of prostitution.
Pictures (1) and (2): Stereotyping Content Against Sudanese Women in Egypt
Doxxing
The team documented numerous posts on digital platforms containing photos of women alongside their personal data. In some cases, this included full names, residential addresses, contact details, and other sensitive information. This pattern represents one of the most severe forms of digital violence, as it exposes the identities of survivors and subjects them and their families to direct security and social risks, such as threats, harassment, and stalking, alongside far-reaching impacts on their privacy and personal safety.
Picture (3): The Leak of a Woman’s Personal Data and Accusing Her of Collaborating with the Rapid Support Forces
The research team documented how women’s photos and personal data were transformed into shareable content by various social media accounts. Specifically, the TikTok account “Baroud” was actively engaged throughout 2025 and early 2026 in abusing and defaming women. The account deliberately promoted a negative stereotype of Sudanese women residing in Egypt, the UAE, and other countries by associating them with prostitution and leveling accusations aimed at damaging their reputations and inciting social hostility against them.
The team also noted that “Baroud” intentionally leaked personal details of several women, delving into their private lives, professional work, and personal relationships, as well as exposing their exact workplaces.
Pictures (4) and (5): Stills from Videos by “Baroud”
“My family’s support was my lifeline… but what about those who weren’t as lucky as me?”
With these words, one participant concluded her testimony regarding a digital defamation campaign targeting her on Facebook. One morning, Fatima (a pseudonym) woke up to the voice of a friend who had discovered her photos uploaded across a network of accounts and pages. The images were posted alongside details about her family and residential address, accompanied by a torrent of insults and accusations designed to incite social hostility against women.
At the time, Fatima was an influential Sudanese woman discussing various societal issues online. Although this form of violence was not new to her, what terrified her this time was the sheer volume of posts and the extent of personal data leaked about her and her family. Describing the impact on her online presence, she said: “I stopped posting anything on my accounts; fear made me choose silence.”
Accusations of Collaboration and Espionage
Women were dragged into the war dynamics as a third party suspected of passing military or intelligence information, including coordinates, troop deployments, and movements.
To track this trend, the research team reviewed numerous posts circulating across social media platforms, particularly Facebook and TikTok, that contained allegations against women of collaboration or espionage for one of the warring parties. The monitoring process relied on a set of keywords, including: (“female collaborators,” “RSF female collaborators,” and “Army female collaborators”), in addition to location-based phrasing such as “female collaborator of Kalakla” and other terms widely circulated within the context of the war.
The monitoring results revealed a widespread prevalence of content featuring photos or personal details of women, including references to their places of residence, accompanied by direct or implicit accusations of collaborating with one of the conflicting sides. In many cases, these allegations were broadly shared without credible evidence or references to formal legal proceedings or official investigations to support them, thereby compounding the risk of incitement against the targeted women.
Pictures (6), (7), and (8) Examples of posts accusing women of collaboration and doxxing their personal information
Women in Vulnerable Occupations
With the outbreak of the war, tea sellers were depicted as collaborators with the warring parties, particularly with the Rapid Support Forces. This stereotype contributed to fueling campaigns of incitement and targeting against them.
The targeting of tea sellers was part of a broader pattern of incitement campaigns against workers in vulnerable and informal occupations, a form of targeting in which authorities sometimes participated.
Pictures (9), (10), and (11): Posts accusing women tea sellers of collaborating with the Rapid Support Forces
Incitement to Sexual Crimes
Sexual crimes are weaponized in war as a deliberate, systematic strategy aimed at tearing the social fabric, subjugating local communities, forcing displaced populations into flight, and fracturing the social cohesion of groups designated as hostile.
This strategy has extended to using threats of sexual violence as an instrument of intimidation. For instance, the research team monitored a digital persona known as “Captain Shiraz” within Sudanese online spaces in early 2025. Allegedly affiliated with the Rapid Support Forces, Shiraz appeared in video clips alongside fighters, rallying them to the front lines. Her profile gained widespread notoriety after a video circulated in which she incited RSF fighters to advance toward the Northern State and commit sexual assaults against its women, framing the act as a means to sire a new generation of RSF fighters.
The danger of this rhetoric multiplies when delivered by influential figures among faction supporters, directly contributing to the normalization of sexual violence and depicting it as a legitimate or acceptable tactic in wartime.
Pictures (12) and (13): Video stills showing “Captain Shiraz” appearing in a video clip
Shared Hashtags and Inauthentic Behavior
The strategic deployment of hashtags stands out as a core tactic leveraged in violence campaigns against women. The research team noted that a substantial portion of the monitored content, specifically posts accusing women of collaborating with the Rapid Support Forces, was published under the hashtags #YouAreNotSafe and #Not #Safe.
The significance of this finding lies in the team’s prior documentation of these exact hashtags being weaponized in coordinated campaigns across social media platforms.
In earlier monitoring, observatory researchers verified the linkage of these hashtags to a network exhibiting Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB) on Facebook. This network weaponized photos and personal data of male and female civilians to level accusations of RSF affiliation or collusion, accompanied by calls for their tracking and arrest. Cross-referencing these findings with current monitoring revealed an aggressive over-saturation of these hashtags in posts targeting women with allegations of collaboration, directly facilitating content recycling and amplifying its reach.
Picture (14): The weaponization of the hashtag #YouAreNotSafe in targeted online campaigns against women
Whose side are you on?
The research team examined posts circulating across social media platforms – particularly Facebook – that contained moral slurs against female journalists, singers, and activists due to their positions regarding the warring parties. The team noted that targeting was concentrated against the most visible and prominent women who were conspicuously engaged in public discussions surrounding the war on social media.
Monitoring results revealed that female journalists were subjected to severe waves of violence as a result of their work linked to the warring sides. Journalist Aisha Al-Majidi, affiliated with the Sudanese Armed Forces, faced an extensive violence campaign that included moral accusations, defamation of honor, and the publication of content containing vulgar innuendos.
In the same context, numerous female journalists faced accusations of receiving classified information from military leaders, exposing them to moral abuse and derogatory characterizations, even from SAF supporters. This demonstrates that the militarization of digital discourse against women is not confined to attacks from opposing factions, but rather positions women against cross-cutting violence that transcends political alignments.
Picture (15): Abusive content targeting female journalists with character assassination
Monitoring findings also documented aggressive online attacks packed with derogatory claims. Attorney Nafisa Hajar, for instance, became the target of intense verbal abuse after publishing an article critical of a journalist.
Picture (16): Targeted online abuse directed at attorney Nafisa Hajar
Female artists and singers sit at the frontline of online targeting. During times of armed conflict, cultural figures are frequently co-opted into symbolic tokens onto which warring factions project their political agendas.
This dynamic played out vividly in the case of singer Nada Al-Qalaa. From the outbreak of the war, Al-Qalaa explicitly aligned herself with the Sudanese Armed Forces, releasing numerous tracks praising the military and its troops. That alignment quickly elevated her into a primary cultural symbol for the army.
As digital discourse grew increasingly militarized, Al-Qalaa was hit with a fierce wave of backlash, character assassination, and derogatory slurs. Following a video clip in which she performed a traditional Misseriya song and dance, she faced direct verbal assault packed with sexualized innuendo. The abuse quickly broadened to target women across Northern Sudan and the River Nile region under the pretext that she represented them.
In a similar vein, singer Insaf Madani faced severe online hostility following her appearance at the “Sudan Festival” in Dubai. The backlash was sparked by allegations that she chanted the name of the Rapid Support Forces commander during her performance. The campaign unleashed sexualized slurs that extended to her family, despite her firm denial of any political subtext in her lyrics.
These cases underscore the precarious reality facing female Sudanese artists. Trapped in a heavily militarized digital environment, they face intense pressure to take political stances and declare explicit loyalties, only to be met with relentless gendered violence regardless of the outcome.
Picture (17): Online backlash and targeted abuse against singer Insaf Madani
Political targeting extends beyond high-profile women. The research team tracked the personal profile of “Rania Hassan Al-Khidir,” created in 2019, which initially focused on routine family updates before expanding into humanitarian aid through fundraising and sharing urgent relief requests. Since the war broke out, her account became significantly more active, shifting focus in 2025 toward explicit support for officers and command staff of the Sudanese Armed Forces.
Yet this overt pro-military stance offered no protection against digital violence originating from within pro-SAF online circles themselves. The abuse ranged from targeted harassment and threats of physical assault to image manipulation and explicit sexualized innuendo.
Her profile focused heavily on tracking troop movements, celebrating high-profile defectors from the Rapid Support Forces, and commenting on officer dismissals within the army. This commentary triggered a harsh backlash from critics who viewed her posts as provocative and an affront to the military establishment. The response quickly devolved into verbal abuse and sexualized innuendo, fueled by allegations that senior commanders were providing her with political cover to attack rival officers. These claims escalated into calls for her arrest. She was also targeted by disinformation campaigns, including doctored photos and fake news linking her to Al-Nour Al-Gubba following his defection from the RSF.
This case highlights how technology-facilitated gender-based violence escalates during wartime, directly tracking a woman’s alignment with warring factions and the extent of her visibility in online commentary about the conflict.
Pictures (18) and (19): A post by Rania Al-Khidir paired with hostile online abuse targeted at her
Platform Tech and Business Models: Amplifying Digital Violence
Gaps in content moderation policies, enforcement, and oversight directly drive the spread of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) online. When automated systems and human moderators fail to promptly detect or remove direct threats, gendered hate speech, harassment, character assassination, and non-consensual sharing of personal data or images, harmful content remains live longer. This extended lifespan fuels wider circulation and compounds the psychological and real-world damage inflicted on victims.
Algorithmic Bias
Social media platforms are far from neutral arenas where gender-based and digital violence merely happen to take place; their technical architecture and profit models make them active partners in amplifying and spreading that violence. Recommendation algorithms are engineered to maximize engagement, systematically prioritizing controversial, violent, or abusive material that generates high interaction rates, amplifying its reach regardless of the harm it causes.
Researchers at Sudalytica previously documented how this engagement-driven framework turned into a systematic monetization scheme within the Sudanese context. Exploiting platform algorithms for direct financial gain, content creators ran live streams built on sexual defamation, doxxing, and blackmail targeting Sudanese women.
The Linguistic Gap
This structural vulnerability is compounded by severe gaps in Arabic and regional dialect content moderation. Major platforms trained their automated safety systems primarily on English-language data. Content posted in local dialects is often machine-translated before review, stripping away crucial cultural and contextual nuances.
The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) documented cases where human content reviewers were assigned to evaluate posts in dialects they did not understand, while the AI models powering automated moderation continue to suffer from a lack of Arabic training data compared to English.
Research by the Al Jazeera Media Institute highlighted a stark disparity in how platforms allocate content moderation resources across different geographic regions. This imbalance points to a clear commercial calculus rather than a purely technical limitation: English-speaking markets receive far greater investment in safety, reporting, and protection infrastructure than non-English markets.
In the Sudanese context, this language gap allows incitement and targeted harassment against women to linger online unchecked for extended periods. Abusive posts are frequently scraped, screenshotted, and recirculated across multiple platforms, making containment nearly impossible even if the original post is eventually taken down. Isolated content removals or temporary account bans remain band-aid solutions in the absence of sustained, context-aware moderation infrastructure.
The digital abuse Sudanese women endure, especially amid the ongoing war, is not a collection of isolated incidents. It is the direct output of an engagement-based business model that rewards sensationalism at the expense of user safety, while refusing to invest adequate resources into protecting non-English-speaking communities. Dismantling this ecosystem requires holding platform corporations accountable for design and monetization choices that perpetuate online violence.
Reporting Protocols and Protection Avenues
Avenues for reporting abuse and seeking support for survivors of technology-facilitated gender-based violence in Sudan span state frameworks, civil society organizations, informal community networks, and individual digital self-defense measures. However, this range of options does not equate to effective redress. Instead, it underscores a complex matrix of obstacles: severe barriers to justice, eroding trust in formal institutions, and acute security and social threats that force many survivors to abandon formal reporting in favor of alternative coping strategies.
The official apparatus tasked with providing protection and legal remedy comprises police units, cybercrime prosecutorial offices, the judiciary, specialized bodies like the Family and Child Protection Unit and the Combatting Violence Against Women Unit, and the Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC). Yet, despite this institutional architecture, real-world effectiveness remains severely limited, hindered by deep public distrust in the system’s neutrality and competence.
This institutional gap comes through clearly in survivor accounts. Ola (a pseudonym) recounted her hesitation after an arrest warrant was issued for her perpetrator, and her ultimate decision to drop the charges: “Our local police station was infamous for torture, someone was actually killed in custody there. We refused to be complicit in another crime.” She also highlighted law enforcement hostility and intimidation, describing how the investigating officer aggressively questioned her and her friends about their political activities: “When we entered the station, I was terrified we would be turned from victims into defendants.” A human rights lawyer interviewed for this study echoed those concerns: “Regrettably, the outcome of digital violence cases hinges entirely on the personal disposition of the individual officer rather than the letter of the law.”
These structural barriers have expanded under Sudan’s current war conditions, which have fractured judicial networks and paralyzed institutional support systems.
With the formal apparatus largely dysfunctional, feminist and human rights organizations, alongside broader civil society, have stepped in as the primary support line for survivors. This landscape ranges from local grassroots initiatives, such as the No to Women’s Oppression Initiative, the Ahfad University Women’s Research Center, and the SEMA Center, to neighborhood emergency response rooms and field mutual-aid groups, up to international bodies including UN Women and Amnesty International.
While these human rights and feminist organizations serve as the first line of defense for survivors, their capacity to deliver comprehensive support is heavily constrained. They operate under severe structural limits: scarce financial and logistical resources for direct services, restricted geographic coverage, specially in active conflict zones, and constant security threats facing frontline activists and human rights defenders.
Faced with these realities, many women are forced into self-reliant protection strategies. Some confront blackmail directly on digital platforms, while others rely on close-knit community networks for psychological first aid rather than pursuing legal remedies, fearing social stigma or retaliatory legal action. In a culture dominated by victim-blaming, the vast majority of survivors choose silence: they alter their display names, abandon accounts, or exit digital spaces entirely to escape targeting.
This reality aligns with findings from women’s rights initiatives such as the Hope and Work platform. Their documentation confirms that the fear of social ostracization, coupled with the absence of an independent judiciary, forces a significant proportion of women to waive their right to report. The prevailing consensus, that reporting yields no protection or accountability, but instead invites retaliation and public shame, makes silence a necessary strategy for survival.
Recommendations
Addressing the deep structural flaws and persistent challenges in countering technology-facilitated gender-based violence against women in Sudan requires comprehensive legislative, technical, institutional, and societal reforms. These measures are essential to establishing a secure digital environment that upholds women’s rights and guarantees accountability for perpetrators.
Legislative and Legal Reforms
Judicial and legal authorities must immediately undertake a comprehensive review and updating of cybercrime legislation. Laws must incorporate explicit, all-encompassing legal definitions for all emerging forms of TFGBV, particularly doxxing, malicious smear campaigns, character assassination, and online defamation, while establishing stringent penalties to dismantle the culture of digital impunity.
Standardized protocols for forensic investigation and technical examination must be established to govern the collection, verification, and preservation of digital evidence in compliance with international human rights and fair trial standards. This is vital for enabling domestic and international courts to prosecute perpetrators and those orchestrating coordinated disinformation campaigns.
Furthermore, specialized, ongoing training programs should be instituted for judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement officers handling cybercrime cases to deepen their understanding of gender-responsive approaches, survivor dignity, and the dynamics of online abuse while eliminating victim-blaming. Operating secure, confidential hotlines is equally critical to allow survivors to report incidents and access legal and protective aid without fear of stigma or retaliation.
Platform Governance and Tech Accountability
Major tech companies and platform operators must enact fundamental structural reforms to their business models and recommendation algorithms, prioritizing user safety and human rights over engagement metrics and profit margins. Content recommendation algorithms must be re-engineered to systematically cease amplifying posts and videos containing signals of hate speech, harassment, or defamation. Moderation policies must enforce decisive penalties, ranging from immediate suspension to permanent bans for accounts and organized networks engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior, blackmail, or targeted harassment.
Platforms must allocate adequate financial and technical resources toward expanding language moderation capabilities in Arabic and its regional dialects, including Sudanese Arabic. This requires investing in specialized human moderation teams equipped with deep contextual knowledge of local political and social dynamics, rather than relying exclusively on flawed machine translation and automated AI tools.
Additionally, tech companies must activate crisis-response protocols during armed conflicts to ensure the expedited review and removal of doxxing, sexualized threats, and physical violence before such content metastasizes across platforms. Sustained, structured collaboration with local feminist organizations and digital rights networks must also be embedded into the continuous review of community standards and platform policies.
Survivor Support and Community Empowerment
Civil society organizations, humanitarian initiatives, and international donors must coordinate efforts to build integrated local support networks. These hubs should offer survivors specialized psychosocial support and trauma-informed care to address the psychological fallout of extortion and public shaming. Specialized technical assistance must also be made available to help survivors secure their digital accounts, safeguard their privacy, preserve digital evidence safely, and navigate formal reporting channels.
Accessible, gender-responsive digital literacy and safety programs must be rolled out to build proactive risk awareness and mitigation strategies, especially among highly vulnerable groups such as displaced women in refugee camps and informal sector workers. Finally, broad advocacy campaigns and community coalitions must be mobilized to dismantle victim-blaming narratives, foster solidarity with survivors, and cultivate a safe, pluralistic digital space that safeguards women’s dignity under all circumstances.
