Geneva, Sep 25 (IANS): Drawing attention to the real-world consequences of digital abuse, Tarangini Sharma, a 14-year-old youth advocate with Rajasthan Samgrah Kalyan Sansthan (RSKS India), spoke about stronger safeguards against abusive deepfakes and non-consensual intimate imagery during her intervention at an Interactive Dialogue with the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee at the ongoing 63rd Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Switzerland’s Geneva.
Sharma highlighted that digital violence does not remain behind a screen and can follow a woman into her classroom, workplace, home and public life.
Welcoming the Advisory Committee’s work on technology-facilitated gender-based violence against women and girls, Sharma said the international response must now move beyond recognising digital harm to building systems capable of preventing it.
“No woman should ever have to choose between using technology and protecting her dignity, safety and life,” Sharma told the Council during her virtual intervention. She drew attention to the real-world consequences of digital abuse: fabricated images capable of disrupting a girl’s education, doxxing that can drive women from public life, and cyberstalking that may escalate beyond the digital sphere.
She emphasised that survivors often confront fragmented legal protections, slow platform responses and reporting mechanisms that can add to their trauma. Her message to the Council was direct: digital safety must be designed into technology from the beginning.
Sharma called for survivor-centred global standards requiring safety-by-design from digital platforms and AI developers, rapid multilingual reporting supported by trained human reviewers, stronger safeguards against abusive deepfakes and non-consensual intimate imagery, and independent gender-impact audits of algorithms.
In her intervention, she further urged States to establish specialised cyber-violence units, strengthen cross-border preservation of digital evidence, and guarantee survivors timely legal, psychosocial and emergency assistance.
Putting inclusion at the centre of her intervention, Tarangini Sharma proposed a global innovation fund to support women-led organisation’s developing accessible safety solutions for rural women, women with disabilities and women participating in public life.
“Technology must expand women’s freedom not multiply the reach of perpetrators,” she stressed while challenging the international community to turn principles into measurable action and asking whether future standards would carry clear timelines and accountability indicators.
“Innovation must move forward, but women’s safety, dignity and freedom must move forward with it,” Sharma concluded.
