Campaign launched to raise awareness about women’s digital safety

AMMAN — In conjunction with the UN System’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, the Salamat digital safety programme launched a regional campaign titled “Safe Internet is my Right”.

Salamat is part of the SecDev foundation, which is a Canadian think-and-do tank that “works to help communities pursue digital opportunities, safety and citizenship,” according to the foundation’s website.

The focus will be on all types of violence practised on the Internet against women and girls. The campaign aims to address the facts of the issues and offer solutions to provide a “safe communication environment” for the targeted groups, according to a statement issued by Salamat on Wednesday.

“Girls and women are increasingly exposed to threats and attacks on the Internet due to a severe lack of knowledge and inability in dealing with these matters properly,” Salamat said.

 “The campaign will raise awareness about the concepts and procedures needed to deal with this issue,” it added.

The campaign’s activities will be available on Salamat’s website and social media as well as those of the Sisterhood is Global Institute (SIGI), the Karak Castle Centre for Consulting and Training, and the Jordan Open Source Association.

Bayan Amera, a fitness coach with dozens of thousands of followers on social media, said that she has been the target of fake accounts that use her picture to tarnish her reputation or lure young women into talking to the men behind these accounts. 

“Most of these accounts are run by men who use the pictures to create fake accounts and talk to young women, as women are usually more interactive with other female accounts,” said one of Amera’s followers.

By clarifying the concept of digital safety and introducing the definition of cyberbullying, online blackmail, threats and defamation, the campaign hopes to present the “best ways to deal with these issues and the various methods of reporting them to either the application itself or to the competent authorities”.

 Digital violations can take the form of extortion, threats, theft of personal information or pictures via the Internet as well as phone and computer hacking.

Sara Qudam, an activist on Twitter, said that there are several Jordanian influencers who closed their accounts permanently after being subjected to intensive bullying and death threats.

Salamat pointed out that there can be a “serious psychological damage resulting from long-term cyber violence, which may accompany the survivor throughout her life”.

“Men have a role to play in stopping this type of violence and to support women who are victims of it by alerting them to the possibility of receiving technical, legal and psychological support through the Salamat team in Jordan and its local partners, among which is the government’s cybercrime unit,” added the campaign’s statement.

In a survey that took the form of individual interviews with targeted women, more than 54 per cent said they did not know what the concept of digital safety was, while almost 56 per cent said they were aware that they could report any threats or attacks to the cyber crimes unit.