FEATURE19 August 2022

Halting the harassment: Online abuse

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Colette Doyle

Asia Pacific Features Impact Trends Youth

Cases of online abuse against females have hit an all-time high in recent years. Colette Doyle finds out how the BBC Media Action team in Nepal carried out research into this troubling phenomenon.

young girl looking at her mobile phone

Online access has had a democratising influence across the world, but the rapidly increasing number of internet and social media users has come at a price, and there has been a corresponding rise in cases of online abuse and violence against women and girls. This can take the form of physical threats, stalking, ‘sex trolling’ and sexual harassment, as well as what has become known as Zoom bombing.

In the South Asian nation of Nepal, digital adoption is high: in January this year, there were around 14 million social media users, up by two million since January 2020. Meanwhile, 5, 574 online harassment cases were reported to the country’s Cyber Bureau between 2016 and 2020.

With funding support from the British Embassy in Kathmandu, the BBC Media Action team implemented a project called Promoting Gender Equality and Women’s and Girls’ Rights, which ran from last October to this March. It aimed to put in place a robust strategic communication framework to inform ...