Through Their Eyes, In Their Voices
Journalists spend their lives reporting other people’s stories. They are the first ones on the
ground, observing, recounting and risking their lives to record history for us. In conflict zones
and repressive environments, these dangers are acute. But far less often do we get to hear
journalists own stories, the risks they face themselves in bringing us their stories, of confronting violence merely to tell the story of what is unfolding.
Across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, female journalists are increasingly
the targets of and also a bulwark against technology-facilitated violence against women
(TFVAW). For these journalists reporting from conflict zones or in fragile contexts, the pressures and dangers they face are multiplied.
This book is one attempt in enabling female journalists to tell their own stories, bringing
together first-hand accounts from repressive environments, zones of conflict and fragility,
where reporters are navigating the complexity of the digital information ecosystem to bring
stories to light. These accounts form a tapestry of resistance and reckoning - not detached
journalistic reports - but embodied testimonies, rendered through the eyes and voices of
women who know, with intimate precision, the terrain of TFVAW. Emerging from within
these narratives, the digital realm is not a neutral space of connection, but a volatile arena
of surveillance, exposure, and control intersecting with state power and sociocultural norms.
Research has shown that in the MENA region, nearly 67 precent of those surveyed reported
experiencing at least one form of online harm, higher than the 60 percent global average.
Women in the region are much more likely to report negative impact from online harms
compared to men, and these harms are more pronounced for women who work in the public arena – journalists, politicians and those in other public facing roles. Yet most countries
here also lack specific laws targeting online violence against women and have weak institutional frameworks hindering effective enforcement of existing laws.
So, from Gaza to Cairo, from Khartoum to Damascus, Baghdad and Algiers, the accounts
collected here bring these statistics into real life. These stories chart the recurring and sys-
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