This book analyses gender-based offences on the Internet from the perspective of international human rights law, interwoven with rights theories and feminist legal theories. It investigates whether international human rights law is applicable in regulating harmful online conduct and speech, with a focus on sexual violence, various forms of harassment, sexist hate speech and harmful pornography. This involves assessing whether gender-based online offences are considered violations of international human rights law and – if they are recognised as such explicitly or by way of interpretation – the extent of state obligations. The book reviews a range of international law sources, such as selected international human rights law treaties, case law, soft-law documents and academic scholarship. The application of general human rights law provisions to the online sphere is evaluated by considering the online/offline coherence of provisions as well as potential gaps, inconsistencies and disadvantages that exist in the regulation of online gender-based offences. The makeup, aim and effect of social spheres, areas of law and legal principles are thus assessed in relation to gender and the Internet. Aspects discussed include the architecture of the Internet, the structure of public international law, the harm principle as employed in domestic law and international human rights law, and the scope of particular rights, mainly involving the freedom of expression and the right to privacy. Working from the premise that the transposition of international human rights law to the Internet must ensure the former’s functionality and effectiveness, the book argues that a contextual application of rights is called for. This requires assessing what is harmful online – including the effects of online speech and conduct - and what are effective means of regulating liability on the Internet. In turn, such assessments require a gender-sensitive approach.

This book addresses sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) against women from an international law point of view. It identifies the reasons behind SGBV against women with a specific focus on cultural practices that try to justify it and highlights the legal challenges related to the topic for both national and international justice systems. The seven chapters of the book are: i) Introduction ii) SGBV a global concern; iii) International legal protection; iv) Role of international institutions; v) Role of cultural factors and vi) Challenges vii) Conclusions. In the light of concerted global efforts to bring to an end, or at least severely contain SGBV against women, the book provides a future roadmap to the United Nations system, States, international institutions, multidisciplinary scholars, civil society organizations and other global actors. The book contains a Foreword by Peter Maurer, President of International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online This handbook features theoretical, empirical, policy and legal analysis of technology facilitated violence and abuse (TFVA) from over 40 multidisciplinary scholars, practitioners, advocates, survivors and technologists from 17 countries

Violence against women remains one of the most pervasive human rights violations in the world today, and it permeates every society, at every level. Such violence is considered a systemic, widespread and pervasive human rights violation, experienced largely by women because they are women. Yet at the international level, there is a gap in the legal protection of women from violence. There is currently no binding international convention that explicitly prohibits such violence; or calls for its elimination; or, mandates the criminalisation of all forms of violence against women. This book critically analyses the treatment of violence against women in the United Nations system, and in three regional human rights systems. Each chapter explores the advantages and disadvantages coming from the legal instruments, the work of the monitoring systems, and the resulting findings and jurisprudence. The book proposes that the gap needs to be addressed through a new United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence against Women, or alternatively an Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. A new Convention or Optional Protocol would be part of the transformative agenda that is needed to normatively address the promotion of a life free of violence for women, the responsibility of states to act with due diligence in the elimination of all forms of violence against all women, and the systemic challenges that are the causes and consequences of such violence.

In Gender-Sensitive Norm Interpretation by Regional Human Rights Law Systems Maria Sjöholm examines the jurisprudence on gender-based harm in the European, Inter-American and African regional human rights law systems from the viewpoint of feminist legal methods and theories. By offering indicators relevant for gender-sensitive norm interpretation, Maria Sjöholm identifies inconsistencies in the current regional legal frameworks with regard to the protection of women concerning such violations as domestic violence, human trafficking, sexual violence, forced sterilization and restrictions on other reproductive rights. The book offers an in-depth account not only of the manner in which such harm has been recognized through integration in general human rights law treaties, but also the categorization of such as particular human rights norms by regional human rights courts and commissions.

Daniel Solove presents a startling revelation of how digital dossiers are created, usually without the knowledge of the subject, & argues that we must rethink our understanding of what privacy is & what it means in the digital age before addressing the need to reform the laws that regulate it.

Intimate image abuse is a recent, endemic phenomenon which raises multiple legal issues and presents a significant challenge for the traditional institutions of law and criminal justice. The nature of this phenomenon requires considering the traditional complexities of regulating privacy, sexual offences, and cybercrimes, alongside the social and cultural issue of what may be considered 'intimate', 'private', or indeed 'sexual'. Since the harm experienced by victims of intimate image abuse is particularly serious and involves disparate legal interests, criminal law has been invoked as one of the solutions, but it is unclear what its role and limits should be. The law's approach should avoid any moralistic attitude, trying to achieve a balance between sexual autonomy and the protection of sexual privacy. At the same time, the needs of criminalization must be balanced with the traditional principles of criminal law. Criminalizing Intimate Image Abuse strives primarily to generate new conceptual and theoretical frameworks to address the legal responses to this phenomenon, by bringing together a number of scholars involved in the study of intimate image abuse over recent years. This volume compares the solutions developed in different legal systems. The perspective is mainly focused on the comparison between the Anglo-American criminalization model and that of continental Europe, but there are also overviews of the criminalization trends in Asian and Latin American countries. Once the criminalization of intimate image abuse, as well as its theoretical and practical limits, have been established, the analysis focuses on possible new legal strategies, complementary or alternative to traditional criminal justice, such as restorative justice. Finally, in order to achieve an effective safeguard for victim-survivors, the book deals with the role of Internet Service Providers and bystanders in preventing intimate image abuse.

This book introduces Cyber Justice as a viable approach for promoting good governance based on human rights norms in the internet. The author defines cyberspace as a borderless public space without common rules or government control mechanisms that protect and foster people’s activities within that space. In light of the growing scope of communications and interactions in the internet, the author shows how human rights and governance regimes can be adapted to cyberspace in order to ensure more accountability, transparency and interaction among those who use the internet and those who manage and provide internet services. This book will be of interest for scholars and policymakers interested in establishing governance regimes for cyberspace that will enjoy the support and trust of all users.

In a digitally connected world, the question of how to respect, protect and implement human rights has become unavoidable. This contemporary Research Handbook offers new insights into well-established debates by framing them in terms of human rights. It examines the issues posed by the management of key Internet resources, the governance of its architecture, the role of different stakeholders, the legitimacy of rule making and rule-enforcement, and the exercise of international public authority over users. Highly interdisciplinary, its contributions draw on law, political science, international relations and even computer science and science and technology studies.