25N: Objective, fight against vicarious and digital violence
Every November 25, the world remembers one of the most widespread and persistent human rights violations: violence against women. This year the Ministry of Equality has presented a new institutional campaign, “The treasure hunt” focused on vicarious violence as an extreme form of gender violence. Based on text by writer H. Casciari, actress Ester Expósito narrates the cruelty of these crimes in this video.
The figures are painfully eloquent: since 2013, 65 minors have been murdered by gender violence. Of them, 38 minors were murdered by vicarious violence, that is, by their fathers or their mothers' partners or ex-partners, to harm them. The other 27 are minors murdered in the same act as the mother, or minor women murdered by their partners.
The Ministry estimates that 1,400 children are used to harm their mothers. These situations of violence usually appear or intensify during breakup processes.
The Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo, has highlighted Spain's pioneering role in relation to vicarious violence, with the promotion of a draft organic law of measures on vicarious violence. For her part, the Government delegate against gender violence, Carmen Martínez Perza, has assured that the campaign seeks firm social rejection of the aggressors.
In addition, the Ministry of Equality has a campaign in force that, following the lead of the United Nations, focuses on a scenario of violence against women that, although intangible, has become a minefield for millions of women and girls: the digital space.
“Digital violence. is violence” is the motto of this campaign, whose objective is to make visible the multiple forms of sexist violence that are carried out on the Internet and on social networks and which seeks to raise awareness in society about the seriousness of this problem, encourage its prevention and promote effective reporting. Because what happens on the screen has real consequences in women's lives.
The misuse of intimate images, cyberbullying and online threats, the falsification of images using artificial intelligence, hate speech and misinformation, the publication of private information, identity theft or grooming and sexual exploitation in online are some examples of how this digital violence is exercised.
The figures are alarming: one in three women in the world has suffered physical or sexual violence at least once in their life, and between 90% and 95% of videos deepfakes show sexual images of women.
This day also marks the beginning of the United Nations global campaign “16 days of activism” (November 25–December 10), which concludes on International Human Rights Day, whose motto this year is “UNITE to end digital violence against women and girls”.
Behind every piece of information there are truncated lives, interrupted dreams and silenced voices, but days like this remind us that violence is not inevitable: it can and must be eradicated. The challenge, therefore, is twofold: recognize that digital violence is violence and act so that technology is a force for equality, not oppression. Because every woman and every girl deserves to live without fear, in the real world and in the virtual one.
