On the occasion of the 2025 global 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, under the theme:
“Accelerating Equality in Haiti in the Digital Age: Preventing Online Violence and Promoting Access to Technology for All”, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Haiti, Carlos Ruiz Massieu, emphasizes that while digital technology is a tool for progress, it has also become a vector for new forms of violence.
He highlights that cyberviolence particularly affects women and girls, and that misogynistic content is becoming normalized. This form of violence, which begins online, can then spread offline in the form of harassment, assault, or even femicide.
The Special Representative stresses that this violence aims to intimidate, humiliate, exclude, and restrict women’s access to decision-making and leadership spaces, thereby weakening democracy itself, since “a democracy without the full participation of women is not complete.”
In response to this scourge, the Special Representative calls for a collective mobilization to make digital spaces a tool for building a Haiti where women, men, girls, and boys can live, create, learn, and participate without fear, and where “every voice matters, and no woman is silenced.”
