Amidst wars, genocide, political instability, entrenched repression and consistent funding cuts, women human rights defenders (WHRDs) across Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) continue to show up for their communities, defending fundamental rights in environments designed to silence them. The harms they face, from surveillance and doxxing to judicial persecution, forced displacement and economic precarity, do not stay in one space. They move between online and offline life in a continuum, while the protection available to defenders often fails to keep pace.
It was against this backdrop that the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), through its Safety for Voices initiative, took part in Bread&Net 2026 – the annual regional digital rights convening organised by SMEX in Beirut, Lebanon, from 14 to 16 October 2026 under the theme, “Realities Reimagined”. APC hosted two workshops that brought regional WHRDs and allies together to name the biggest challenges and gaps they face in their work.
This article reflects on what emerged from those conversations.
When online violence travels
The first session, “The evidence we need: Understanding tech-facilitated harms against WHRDs in SWANA”, took place on the first day as a hybrid workshop co-organised by APC and SMEX. It began from an observation that in a region marked by conflict and geopolitical crisis, defenders have little leverage over the platforms and institutions responsible for the harms they face, and the knowledge, support, and access needed to hold them accountable is still low.
Taking a feminist holistic protection and defender-centred approach, the session treated online abuse as inseparable from its consequences in defenders’ everyday lives. Digital attacks translate into psychosocial, professional, economic and physical harms, and affect defenders’ participation in public life.
Around 15 rights defenders from various SWANA countries joined the session in-person and online, and shared the experiences of continuum of digital and offline violence in their contexts, and how they observe this violence affecting various aspects of their own lives.
Designed by the co-facilitators Safaa and Islam Al-Khatib, the session employed an interactive engagement approach which included a presentation by Zeinab Ismail from SMEX on the types of online violence in the region. It was followed by guided discussions by facilitators with the participants on the experiences and challenges in seeking recourse for the violence. The conversations addressed key questions to understand which groups of human rights defenders are most vulnerable to technology-facilitated violence in the region, and what types of harms are the participants already aware of. The session also explored factors within various contexts that enable this harm.
A participant from Sudan shared that digital spaces have become a tool for violence used by the parties at war in Sudan. They said, “Amidst the war, the internet is being used for surveillance, tracking and launching attacks by both sides – whether the army or the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).” As a result, those most affected remain the people already living on the margins in the country.
The group examined selected harms through three questions: who has the power or responsibility to prevent, mitigate or remedy the harm; what responses exist and where the gaps are; and what evidence is needed to support stronger action and accountability.
The discussion then geared towards exploring the nature of harm and the tactics being employed by the hateful campaigns targeting defenders. The Sudanese activist said, “You will notice that Starlink has become the sole means of communication and financial transfers in many areas controlled by either the army or the RSF. Consequently, the use of this technology has turned into a systematic trap; individuals risk being accused of espionage – colluding with either the Army or the RSF – simply for using the internet.” They added, “The violence associated with this situation has expanded, affecting not only women human rights defenders but anyone who uses the internet.”
Their account points to a dynamic that ran through the session that in conflict settings, the line between online and offline harm disappears. Where access to communication and money depends on a single technology, using it can be read as a political act, with accusations of conspiracy carrying consequences far beyond the digital space. It also shows why defenders have so little leverage in these contexts, since the technology that connects them is controlled by a corporate actor and by armed parties – none of whom can be held accountable by the people. The activist’s observation that the harm extends to “anyone who uses the internet” points towards the fact that WHRDs experience these dynamics as part of a wider system of control, and that evidence gathered from their experience can reveal harms affecting whole communities. This aligns with what Sudanese feminists raised in APC’s 2025 Safety for Voices webinar, where doxxing, treason charges and prolonged internet shutdowns were described as tools to isolate and silence people.
Who defines protection?
Two days later, on 16 October, APC held the second online workshop, “Who defines protection in feminist movements?”, under the convening’s theme of reimagining collective power and movement building. Facilitated by Islam Al-Khatib and Sadaf Khan, it highlighted the challenges that WHRDs face in the form of surveillance, harassment, judicial persecution, militarisation, censorship, displacement and economic precarity; yet the language used to respond to them splits these experiences into separate categories of digital, physical and legal security, or psychosocial support. The response and support that is often available is offered in the language of “security” that reduces the experience to a technical one rather than political and social control. The result, the session argued, is that many defenders cannot name what they experience as violence and come to see it as an inevitable part of the work.
Drawing on the Feminist Holistic Protection framework developed by IM-Defensoras, and used in the Safety for Voices consortium’s work, the workshop asked what changes when we stop talking about security and start talking about protection. The session invited participants to interpret the framework against their own political contexts.
Many participants shared that WHRDs treat harassment and violence as part of their activism and often do not report it. They also pointed out that “security”, as governments, legislation and proposed responses use it, is framed in technical terms and routinely tied to “national security”, technical fixes and militarised contexts. There was consensus that a shift in language is necessary in a way that centres care, community ownership and lived contexts, and that recognises the physical, mental, and psychosocial impacts of violence on defenders’ personal and professional lives.
The two sessions were critical for understanding and documenting how WHRDs in the SWANA region experience and navigate realities marked by online and offline violence, what gaps and challenges exist in accessing support and recourse, and whether the language and approach used to address these challenges need to change. This is especially urgent in a region experiencing colonial and authoritarian violence, where defenders’ work grows more intense while support remains absent, posing a direct threat to their safety and well-being.
Defenders at the centre
These discussions also inform APC’s Safety for Voices initiative’s advocacy around the holistic protection of WHRDs, and sit alongside APC’s forthcoming special edition of Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) on WHRDs’ experiences and recommendations from across the Global Majority. They also emphasise on the need for sustained financial support that WHRDs and organisations working to support them must have access to, as they not only fund the work that defenders do, but also ensure that they can do this work safely.
For over three decades, APC has advocated for defenders’ right to work in a safe environment, free from authoritarian violence and repression. As technology has become an important tool for WHRDs’ activism, it has also become a channel for violence that reaches into their daily lives. Through these discussions and our engagement at Bread&Net, we aim to ensure that APC’s advocacy reflects defenders’ experiences as they live them, and to push for global reforms that put their holistic protection and interests before the political and economic interests of those in power.