There is a silent scream echoing across our digital spaces, from phone screens, chat rooms, comment sections, and private inboxes. It is the cry of women and girls whose lives are being broken, not by fists or stones, but by words, images, threats, and endless digital attacks. This is the new face of gender-based violence. It is invisible to many, yet devastating to its victims. And today, the burden of ending it belongs to us all.
As the world unites under the 2025 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, observed annually from November 25 (International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women) to December 10 (Human Rights Day), we are reminded that this is not just a campaign of awareness, but a global call to conscience and action. The 2025 global theme, “UNiTE to End Digital Violence against All Women and Girls”, confronts us with a brutal truth: technology, which was meant to connect and empower, is now being weaponized to violate, intimidate, blackmail, silence, and destroy.
Digital violence is not abstract. It is real. It is personal. It stalks young girls through their phones, humiliates women through leaked images, traps victims in cycles of fear through cyberstalking, and shatters families through relentless online harassment. Many suffer in silence, trapped between shame and fear, wondering who will believe them in a world that too often blames the victim.
In Nigeria alone, over 10,000 cases of gender-based violence were reported between January and September 2025. Behind every number is a face, a name, a shattered dream, a traumatized child, a broken mother, a silenced daughter. These are not mere statistics; they are wounded lives.
The Federal Government has acknowledged the growing danger of digital violence. The Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hajiya Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, has rightly called for stronger laws and policies to address this evolving threat. But laws alone cannot heal trauma. Policies alone cannot change hearts. Enforcement alone cannot rebuild shattered confidence. What we truly need is a national and global awakening, a moral uprising that declares with one voice: Enough is enough.
At the forefront of this awakening in Nigeria stands the Nigerian League of Women Voters (NLWV), which has remained unwavering, courageous, and resolute in its mission to champion an end to all forms of gender-based violence. Through persistent advocacy, community mobilisation, voter education, and strategic engagement with policymakers, the League continues to amplify the voices of women, defend their rights, and push the nation toward justice, equity, and protection for the most vulnerable. Their leadership reminds us that change is not a wish; it is a deliberate struggle.
Globally, the 2025 campaign places strong emphasis on technology-facilitated abuse, online harassment, cyber exploitation, and tech-driven harm, while urging governments, technology companies, institutions, and individuals to invest deliberately in prevention, safer digital spaces, platform accountability, stronger laws, and digital literacy. It also calls for the empowerment of survivors to safely share their stories without fear of stigma or retaliation.
The campaign stands on four powerful pillars that must move from paper to practice:
First, Awareness.
We must shine light into the dark corners where digital abuse thrives. Parents must understand what their children face online. Schools must teach digital responsibility. Religious institutions must speak boldly. Media platforms must educate relentlessly. Silence only strengthens the abuser.
Second, Digital Safety.
Technology companies must stop being neutral spectators. Their platforms must protect, not endanger. Reporting systems must be swift and humane. Harmful content must not be hidden behind algorithmic excuses. Safety must come before profit.
Third, Support for Survivors.
A woman who has been digitally violated needs more than sympathy. She needs safe reporting channels, legal protection, counselling, shelter, and dignity. She needs to know she is not alone. She needs a society that stands with her, not against her.
Fourth, Policy and Justice.
Perpetrators must no longer hide behind keyboards. Digital violence must attract real consequences. Justice delayed is justice denied. The fear must change sides.
This fight is not for women alone. It is a shared burden and a shared duty. It belongs to fathers who must protect their daughters, to mothers who must raise courageous sons, to youths who must reject toxic digital cultures, to faith leaders who must defend moral conscience, to lawmakers who must strengthen justice, and to citizens who must refuse to be silent bystanders.
Every time we ignore an abused woman online, we empower her abuser. Every time we laugh at a leaked image, we deepen a victim’s wounds. Every time we blame a survivor, we strengthen the chains of silence.
To end digital violence is to defend human dignity. It is to protect mental health. It is to safeguard families. It is to secure the future of our daughters and the conscience of our nation.
Let this 2025 16 Days of Activism not be another ceremony of speeches and hashtags. Let it be a turning point of action. Let it mark the year when Nigeria, and the world, chose to rise with courage, compassion, and conviction.
Digital violence thrives in silence.
Justice grows in unity.
Hope lives in action.
And if we must truly end this evil, then we must carry this truth in our hearts and our laws:
The burden is ours all.
The duty is ours all.
The time is now.
Hon Dame Blessing Nwagba, a two-term former member of Abia State House Assembly, and the APC senatorial candidate in Abia South in the 2023 general election, is the Abia State Coordinator of the Nigerian League of Women Voters
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