During the 63rd session of the Human Rights Council (HRC63), APC co-hosted a side event to launch the report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Protecting human rights defenders in the digital age",on 15 September 2026, together with the Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations Office, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Access Now, Privacy International and the Myanmar Internet Project. The event brought together defenders who contributed to the report’s consultations to discuss key challenges and recommendations, as well as to identify areas for cooperation. Subsequently, on 18 September, APC and the OHCHR’s Civic Space Unit hosted a closed-door meeting which provided a space, following the presentation of the report, for human rights defenders, delegations, UN teams and civil society organisations to discuss the gendered risks created by digital technologies, while identifying best practices and responses. This blog presents key highlights and reflections drawn from these moments and the report, together with recommendations going forward.
The updated HRC resolution on human rights defenders, led by Norway in 2025, reflects the range of threats that human rights defenders (HRDs) face in the digital age and the disproportionate impacts on women human rights defenders (WHRDs). Online violence and harassment, intimidation, smear campaigns, threats and doxxing are all used to silence and discredit them, deter their political participation, and isolate them from their movements and communities. The “Protecting human rights defenders in the digital age” report takes an important step forward by addressing the gendered and discriminatory violence faced by women and LGBTQIA+ defenders and the specific risks they face, including in conflict settings.
The recent conversations around this subject during HRC63 unpacked the real people behind the WHRD acronym: they are young women, journalists, trans and queer activists facing increased legal and physical risk in conflict-affected settings such as in Myanmar after the coup in 2021. They are rural women, activists, journalists, politicians or even women involved in election monitoring in Uganda. They are women from Indigenous and traditional communities from the Global South. They are feminist activists in Lebanon whose personal details are exposed because they participate in protests. They are women and gender-diverse people who are sometimes forced to become refugees and migrants because of their work.
The technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) faced by WHRDs must be recognised as targeting defenders because of who they are and what they do. They are targeted because of their identity as defenders and because they demand justice and an end to impunity, and challenge repression and extractive industries, among others. Online abuse can be particularly harmful for women who are already facing other kinds of marginalisation based on their gender, race, class, caste or other factors.
For instance, recent research supported by APC documents the gendered nature of campaigns against environmental and climate defenders and how these attacks create a chilling effect on their communities, mostly Indigenous and traditional communities. These attacks and campaigns often intersect with racist, transphobic, xenophobic, and in certain contexts, religious or caste-based content. Artificial intelligence (AI), at the centre of many of this HRC session’s discussions, can exacerbate these threats and aggravate harms against defenders. AI tools can enable new and more sophisticated forms of TFGBV; they can be weaponised to spread manipulated narratives that discredit WHRDs. In some contexts, including in conflict-affected settings, AI-enabled surveillance threatens the existence and work of feminist activists.
Against this already alarming picture, it is also important to recall that digital attacks do not arrive in isolation: violence against WHRDs is structural, rather than a series of isolated threats. The digital attacks are often paired with weak or repressive legal frameworks and criminalisation. At the end of the day, digital violence is part of an online-offline continuum that seeks to silence dissent and restrict civic participation. The flip side of the coin is that the solution to the problem must also be structural. The responses to threats against HRDs and WHRDs must be multifaceted and shared across actors; no single institution or measure will be enough on its own. This also means that protection communities and digital rights groups should work more closely together.
As an upcoming position paper, Feminist holistic protection for WHRDs, states, digital safety cannot be reduced to technical fixes or individual practices. It requires structural change, collective protection and accountability from states, corporations, donors, civil society and technology communities.
What should a holistic approach really look like?
Digital violence requires legislative and institutional responses, but we also see that cyber- and internet-related frameworks, for instance, with broadly drafted provisions, can sometimes do more harm than good: they can be misused to silence and criminalise the people they are meant to protect.
APC’s work shows these differentiated impacts of, for example, cybercrime laws, on WHRDs and LGBTQIA+ defenders and their activism. Surveillance and privacy breaches create particularly unsafe, hostile environments for feminist and sexually and gender-diverse activists, and contribute to violence and harassment against these groups. These growing risks are often enabled by broad national security and anti-terrorism laws that weaken encryption and undermine privacy protections and weak data protection frameworks.
All of this showcases the urgent need to move beyond individualised, tool-focused and reactive approaches to building capacities and creating conditions for WHRDs to conduct their work in improved situations of well-being and security.
In this regard, the OHCHR’s report sets out important recommendations for states at this time, such as carrying out human rights impact assessments before adopting digital governance frameworks, as well as periodic reviews of digital governance frameworks, involving defenders and concerned communities, to assess their impacts on human rights defenders and the implications for civic space and rights.
Based on APC work, we recommend that cybersecurity and cybercrime frameworks should go a step further and adopt gender-intersectional approaches both in how they are designed and in how they are evaluated, with meaningful participation from defenders themselves. Specific gender impact assessments should be carried out before legislation is approved, not after harms emerge.
Regulating the surveillance market is another key point moving forward, since HRDs, and women in particular, are the first targets of spyware, and tech keeps advancing, especially with AI lowering the cost of entry and becoming a structural risk.
While platforms are central to the debate, platform behaviour also escalates risk and censorship. In Lebanon, for instance, feminist activists face challenges due to algorithmic biases that marginalise their content and increase their risk of online harassment. Companies have been inefficient in responding to online attacks, especially when women defenders are targeted, and a central question is how to ensure that companies are not using excuses and are held accountable. The experiences of those defending lives on the ground should also inform an effective approach to platform accountability.
Defenders also need recognition as a group requiring institutional protection. Gendered harms affect defenders in distinct ways, but beyond that, WHRDs need to be recognised as a group requiring dedicated institutional support, because they are targeted both for their work and for their identity as defenders. Research by APC and partners shows that there is also a need for the understanding of who a WHRD is to evolve. In situations of crisis and conflict, for instance, women who are not formally part of movements and organisations take part in human rights defence but often fall outside the support structures created for WHRDs, despite facing many of the same risks,
Finally, protection must be holistic. It cannot stop at legal and physical safety. It must include psycho-social support and other forms of accompaniment that reflect the full impact of these attacks. Formal and informal solidarity networks, feminist rapid response funds, funding to strengthen collective protection capacity, and defender-led accompaniment structures are among the most effective protection mechanisms available – and they should be strengthened.
Moving forwards, we will continue to work with members and partners to advocate for steps in this direction, calling on states, companies and the donor community to adopt holistic, feminist and intersectional approaches for the protection of defenders. For instance, at the upcoming 81st session of the UN General Assembly, the now triennial resolution on human rights defenders will be introduced by Norway, providing an important opportunity to strengthen the protection of HRDs in digital environments by introducing commitments for both governments and technology companies on a range of digital issues, including surveillance, AI’s exacerbated risks and harms, and TFGBV.
Verónica Ferrari is the global policy advocacy lead at APC. In this role, she leads APC's engagement and strategic advocacy efforts in key global digital policy processes, including UN cyber-related processes and the UN Human Rights Council.