Last month, National Council of Women’s 18-30 network member Sian Clarke attended the UN Women Beijing+30 Action Agenda Meeting. The aim of the meeting was to prepare for the commission on the Status of Women 2026 which will cover Access to Justice and Ending Digital Violence.
Kalliopi Mingeirou, Chief of UN Women’s Ending Violence against Women programme, introduced this year’s campaign theme: “Unite to End Digital Violence Against All Women and Girls.” She highlighted the rapid growth of the “manosphere” and AI-generated misogynistic content, warning that online radicalisation increasingly threatens not only women and girls but also wider social stability. The campaign will extend beyond its traditional 16 days of activism, forming part of a broader, long-term roadmap to tackle technology-facilitated gender-based violence.
Ongoing initiatives include developing guidance on addressing online gender-based violence, and completing studies on the manosphere in Brazil and South Africa, with a goal to expand research into Western contexts.
These concerns closely align with NCWGB’s advocacy for safer digital spaces and the organisation’s continued engagement with the UK’s Online Safety Act, which aims to curb online misogyny, intimate image abuse and other technology-driven harms.