Across conflict zones and fragile democracies, technologies once imagined as tools of empowerment and exploration now serve as instruments of surveillance, repression and even killing. This edition of GenderIT presents a series of investigations exploring how technology, whether simple or advanced, is weaponised against women human rights defenders (WHRDs) in conflict-affected states of Ethiopia, Kashmir, Lebanon, Pakistan, Sudan and Venezuela. The similarities in the patterns of technology-facilitated violence, across these states, are not incidental. These are intentional and structured through state policies, security doctrines and corporate designs driven by profit and capitalist greed. Armed actors then take these systems further, deploying them as tools of intimidation, oppression and direct violence.
This edition examines how technologies are weaponised across conflict-affected countries to surveil, silence and harm women human rights defenders. Drawing from cases in Ethiopia, Kashmir, Lebanon, Pakistan, Sudan and Venezuela, it highlights how digital tools become instruments of repression, deepening gendered risks, and exposing the failures of accountability frameworks.
Editorial - Beyond the algorithm: Weaponised technologies and human rights under digital siege
Weaponised surveillance: Ethiopia’s digital war on women human rights defenders: Surveillance in Ethiopia has evolved beyond a mere function of the state; it has become a central strategy of governance.
How India weaponises Kashmiris against Kashmiris: In one of the world’s most densely militarised zones, surveillance is not just omnipresent, but is forcefully outsourced to its very own residents—deepening gendered repression and placing women defenders under a digital microscope.
Navigating war: Women human rights defenders in Lebanon after strikes on journalists and Hezbollah: With technology weaponised against them, Lebanon’s women human rights defenders are finding creative ways to support an estimated 520,000 women and girls displaced by war.
A centuries-old Indigenous trans community in Pakistan is being attacked by global anti-trans hate: A community once linked to saints is being violently attacked locally with language and tech borrowed from US anti-trans activists.
More than a blackout: How RSF’s digital warfare targets Sudan’s women defenders and activists: From women’s centres gone dark to mass displacement and starvation, the human toll of Sudan’s digital siege has been devastating and unreported – yet there is fierce determination from women on the ground to organise and stay connected.
For women activists, Venezuela is a laboratory of repression, but also resistance: In a web of chaos and control, where media, technology and legislation are weaponised to carry out mass surveillance, criminalise dissent, cancel passports and restrict news, women human rights defenders lead and participate in creative ways to resist.