How do you describe the links between ICTs and VAW including sexual violence?

FM: There is a very concrete link between ICTs and VAW. Many harassments happen through the use of telephones. Men give a phone to their wives to monitor their wives' activities; men bribe telecom service employees to gain access to their wives or girlfriends' call list. Other forms of violations of the right to privacy take place, such as the government tapping the lines of civil society organizations or political activists; or cutting activists' connections, as they did after the elections. They did this to prevent people from monitoring the results and sharing election-related information with each other.

More and more photo montages of famous people are being circulated, with the victims in compromising situations. It is difficult to explain to the public that those are not real pictures. I would add to this long list the fact that we have more than 300 radios and TV stations. Most of them are not run by professionals and they are just broadcasting hate speech, stigma and discrimination against women who don't conform with what they call "African or Christian values."

Some religious radio stations send out messages that if women are raped, it is because they provoked it. They also discourage women from speaking out. They tell women to remain silent because god is fighting for them. I have also come across some hate speech broadcasts, but fortunately they are not too many. These kind of media practitioners compensate for the lack of relevant content by just giving the microphone to any caller who can say anything he or she wants to say without worrying whether they are violating other people's dignity and right to privacy.

SN: To add to what Francoise said, ICTs can exacerbate VAW since they are used to send obscene messages to women and girls. To make matters worse, if men have access to emails and phones of their wives or girlfriends, which is often the case, and find they have been communicating with other men, this creates suspicion and can lead to physical violence. It is also quite common for men to change their wives or girlfriends' SIM cards every now and then to ensure that they don't have other lovers. It is also common that pictures of naked girls are circulated via bluetooth in mobile phones among young male students. Access to porn movies and pictures in Internet cafes has also resulted into young people imitating what they see, which in turn can result in incest.

Another dimension of the link between ICTs and VAW is due to mobile phones becoming status symbols. Mobile phones have become objects of desire and status symbols and it is no longer rare to hear about young women agreeing to provide sexual services in exchange for a cell phone. There are also reported cases of young women who use the Internet to find partners in Western countries and are sometimes lured into prostitution.

As Francoise also pointed out, the audiovisual media can perpetuate stereotypes that normalize violence against women and girls, particularly domestic violence.