4. Findings
Women are left to deal with this alone.
FGD — Civil society actors
In terms of where people report, the clearest pattern is
that reporting is more likely to happen within personal or
civil society support circles than through official channels.
Several survivors described selective disclosure to trusted
individuals: one woman reported sharing only with her
husband and not wider circles, while another noted that
discussing cyberbullying with family or friends can itself
generate stigma. In parallel, some survivors and journalists
described seeking support through hotlines or organizations, or relying on networks to mediate reporting, e.g., one
journalist described that through a human rights network,
reporting may be filed via friends to secure the right to a
safe online environment. These accounts point to a preference for buffered, relationship-based pathways when
support is sought.
By contrast, platform reporting appeared in the data
mainly as an extension of individual coping (block/report/
delete) but was repeatedly framed as limited in effect.
Journalists described actions such as blocking accounts,
reporting profiles, closing/freezing accounts, and permanently deleting obscene comments, indicating that
platform tools are used primarily for immediate harm
reduction rather than justice. FGDs conveyed skepticism
about what reporting achieves in practice; youth activists
explicitly questioned what happens after reporting and
concluded: “There is no real benefit or response to reporting.” (FGD — Youth activists). This helps explain why many
participants described disengagement or retreat from
public interaction as the more “reliable” protective step.
Reporting to authorities or pursuing legal complaints was
described as rare and widely seen as unsafe or unclear. A
legal KII stated plainly: “I haven’t heard of any girls or
women using legal complaints to protect themselves.”
(KII — Legal). Another legal KII emphasized the perceived
lack of safe, reliable pathways by noting:
There is no clear legal text, no clear
enforcement bodies, and I cannot guarantee
that these complaints will be safe.
KII — Legal
Journalists reinforced the practical barriers from an
operational perspective, describing gaps in mechanisms
and difficulties in identifying or apprehending owners of
defamatory pages. Taken together, these accounts portray
low formal reporting not as passivity, but as a response to
limited trust and limited expected return.
Participants’ motivations for not reporting clustered
around risk and predictability. In FGDs, women described
fear of scandal and social stigma, and the expectation
that complaints may backfire or worsen exposure; they
also noted secondary victim-blaming, including accusations that women “caused” the harm by being visible or
by sharing content. Survivors echoed this logic through
selective disclosure and reluctance to widen awareness
of incidents, particularly where reputational harm can spill
into family and community consequences. Men’s accounts
showed some overlap but also a different balance of perceived risk: one male survivor described never involving
acquaintances or family because it “only complicates matters further” (Survivor IDI — Man), and another described
legal support as ineffective or pointless beyond the idea
of justice, suggesting that reluctance can be driven both
by stigma concerns and by low expectations of remedy.
Patterns also differed by role and exposure. Journalists
and activists described higher likelihood of using professional coping and semi-formal pathways, blocking/
reporting, tightening digital security, using networks for
advice, and, in principle, considering lawsuits where possible. Survivors without institutional backing more often
describe silence, selective sharing, and retreat as the
safest options. Across groups, the same structural reality
kept resurfacing: when response pathways feel weak and
consequences feel high, reporting becomes a calculated
decision, and many default to withdrawal from high-risk
spaces or regrouping within trusted, like-minded networks
as a form of protection.
4.7.2 Structural impunity
The lack of trust in legal and institutional responses
reflects a broader environment of structural impunity, and
this was explicitly articulated by participants rather than
inferred. KIIs respondents stressed that survivors rarely
use legal complaints and that pathways are unclear and
unsafe, signaling low confidence in formal remedies: “I
haven’t heard of any girls or women using legal complaints
to protect themselves,” and “There is no clear legal text,
no clear enforcement bodies, and I cannot guarantee
that these complaints will be safe” (KII — Legal). Media
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