A regional answer to a regional threat.
Digital violence against women doesn’t stop at borders – so neither should the response. This platform is the shared infrastructure of a regional movement: practitioners across the region, learning together, responding together, and building knowledge that lasts beyond any single project.
Violence against women has moved online - and the systems meant to respond haven’t caught up.
Violence against women is one of the most widespread human rights violations in the world. Today, much of it is technology-facilitated: abusers use apps and trackers to stalk, share intimate images without consent, send threats at scale, and deploy a fast-growing arsenal of AI-generated abuse and deepfakes. This is gender-based violence – the same power imbalance, moved onto new terrain. Perpetrators target women in public life with particular intensity — journalists, activists, politicians, public figures – because the goal is to silence them. When it works, everyone loses: women lose their voice, their work and their safety; societies lose the women it drives out of public life.
The harm is borderless and moves at the speed of the internet. The response is not. Across the Western Balkans, laws lag behind the technology, institutions lack shared procedures, and the professionals confronting this violence — in civil society, the media, the justice and social sectors — too often work without the tools, training or networks the problem demands.
This project exists to change that: to connect those professionals, equip them, and build a regional response that is survivor-centred, evidence-based and sustainable.
Three components, one regional response
A shared digital platform
One secure regional home for a community of practice, free online courses, a growing knowledge base, and a protected channel for documenting cases — the lasting infrastructure this work has been missing.
Regional cooperation
A network that turns six national efforts into one regional capacity. What works in one economy becomes a protocol others can use; threats spotted in one place become early warnings for all.
Cross-sectoral collaboration
Digital violence can’t be solved by one profession alone. The project brings civil society, media, the justice and social sectors, institutions and technologists into the same room — and the same standards of practice.
Led by a feminist organisation, backed by the UN
Fenomena Association
A feminist civil society organisation based in Serbia, working to end gender inequality and discrimination and to prevent violence against women and girls. Fenomena Association leads the project and convenes the regional community of practice.
UN Women
The United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. Through its Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia, UN Women co-leads the EU 4 Gender Equality programme under which this project is implemented.
UNDP
The United Nations Development Programme, the UN’s global development network. UNDP co-implements the EU 4 Gender Equality programme together with UN Women.
Built and rooted nationally, across the region
The community of practice is built and rooted nationally by partner organisations across the region.
Woman Forum Elbasan
National lead for Albania.
Mediacentar Sarajevo
National lead for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Kosovar Gender Studies Center
National lead for Kosovo.
SOS Hotline for Women and Children Victims of Violence Nikšić
National lead for Montenegro.
National Council for Gender Equality (NCGE), Skopje
National lead for North Macedonia.
Catalyst Balkans and Lavit Solutions
Communications/outreach and platform development.
Each partner supplies or approves its own 1–2-sentence description before publishing. Logos already on file.
Funded by the European Union
This project is implemented within the regional programme “EU 4 Gender Equality: Women’s Economic Empowerment and Ending Violence against Women,” funded by the European Union and implemented jointly by UN Women and UNDP.
The response to digital violence is stronger when it’s shared.
Join a regional community of practitioners building it together.