Together with the Human Rights Coordinating Body of Paraguay (CODEHUPY), we submitted an alternative report to the CEDAW Committee on technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) in Paraguay, ahead of the Committee’s 93rd session (October 5 to 30, 2026). The document is based exclusively on our own research: over a decade documenting the intersection of technology and human rights in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The CEDAW Committee’s General Recommendation No. 35 already established that gender-based violence against women also occurs in digital environments, and that the Convention fully applies there. Our research confirms something we’ve been saying for years: in Paraguay, digital violence isn’t a separate phenomenon. It’s a continuum of the abuse that women, adolescents, and girls already face in physical spaces, now intensified by information and communication technologies (ICT).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here are the report’s key points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Law No. 5777\/16 was an important step forward when it introduced the concept of “telematic violence” in Article 6, subsection L. The problem is that, eight years later, the definition is still limited almost entirely to the non-consensual distribution of intimate images. Left out of its scope: online harassment, threats, unauthorized access to devices and accounts, identity theft, geolocation-based stalking, hate speech, doxing, and technology-facilitated sexual exploitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since 2018, together with other organizations across the region, we’ve built a catalog of 29 types of technology-facilitated gender-based violence. In practice, Paraguayan law recognizes only a fraction of that universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two bills are still pending in Congress: one from 2021 on political gender-based violence, and one from 2023 on universal cyberharassment. The latter is concerning: it frames prevention through prior-censorship mechanisms on the internet, which conflicts with the freedom of expression protected by both the Constitution and the American Convention on Human Rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Women journalists.<\/strong> We surveyed 107 women communicators: 78% had experienced digital violence in the past five years, and 63% linked it directly to their gender. We identified 253 cases of digital violence. The starkest finding: 98% of respondents never filed a formal complaint, and 92% of those who did rated the judicial response as insufficient or nonexistent. The case of Mercedes “Menchi” Barriocanal ended in a conviction upheld by the Supreme Court, but we note that this favorable outcome is exceptional and largely resulted from the case’s media visibility, not from a systematic state response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We also documented the distorted use of Law 5777\/16 as a form of prior censorship: in the cases of journalists Mabel Portillo, Letizia Medina, Alfredo Guachir\u00e9, and Fredy Chamorro, public officials invoked the law to obtain injunctions barring journalists from referring to them, without courts applying the three-part test required under Inter-American case law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Human trafficking and sexual exploitation.<\/strong> Together with Grupo Luna Nueva, we documented how Facebook and WhatsApp are used to recruit victims through fake job offers and, in the case of girls, boys, and adolescents, grooming techniques. Of 201 women assisted by the Ministry of Women between 2020 and 2024, at least 24 were recruited through those two platforms. The current legal framework (Law No. 4788\/2012) is still built around “physical” trafficking and doesn’t account for modalities like cybertrafficking or sextortion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Electronic ankle monitors.<\/strong> The SIMDEC system, in operation since December 2024, depends heavily on electrical infrastructure and connectivity, lacks a data protection impact assessment, and is opaque in its governance. One troubling finding: the Empower app shifts the burden onto victims themselves, requiring them to maintain battery life, connectivity, and constant availability, and most alerts generated by the system don’t correspond to actual violations but to technical failures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Biometric surveillance.<\/strong> The rollout of facial recognition cameras on streets, in stadiums, and in clubs raises specific gender-related risks: it can deepen surveillance over the bodies of women, girls, boys, adolescents, and LGBTIQ+ people, affecting their privacy, freedom of expression, and presumption of innocence. We’re calling for human rights and gender impact assessments before any biometric technology is deployed, not after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Judicial impunity.<\/strong> The case of Bel\u00e9n Whittingslow is emblematic: since 2013, she suffered systematic sexual harassment via WhatsApp from her university professor, with over 1,600 messages and images as evidence. Prosecutors dismissed the investigation, characterizing the conduct as “flirting or courtship.” She is now seeking refugee status in Uruguay, and together with CEJIL we brought her case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In our own case, a criminal complaint against anonymous accounts that made death threats against our executive director, Maricarmen Sequera, was dismissed because the judiciary took more than six months to activate the international request needed to obtain data from X. By then, the accounts had been deleted and the evidence was gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cybersecurity for human rights defenders.<\/strong> 76.2% of the human rights defenders we surveyed had never received digital security training, and 94.6% of their organizations have no protocols or incident logs. Women defenders also face greater exposure to technology-facilitated gender-based violence. We maintain that cybersecurity can’t fall on individuals alone. It requires structural, institutional responses grounded in human rights, not a security-driven or militarized approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The report includes concrete questions for the dialogue between the Committee and the Paraguayan state. For example: what measures does the state plan to expand the definition of “telematic violence,” and will it make the non-consensual distribution of intimate images a public criminal offense, so that victims’ access to justice doesn’t depend on their ability to pay for private litigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among the recommendations we’re proposing to the Committee:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A law that fell short<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
What we documented, case by case<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Women in politics.<\/strong> We interviewed 20 legislators, ministers, judges, and councilwomen and identified eight types of digital violence and twelve profiles of aggressors, ranging from political parties to organized crime groups. Participants described an “ecosystem of violence” combining attacks on their appearance, age, sexuality, and family life, compounded by indigenous background, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status. Fear, anxiety, and self-censorship were common responses; several interviewees linked these attacks to the risk of leaving politics altogether, and to documented suicidal ideation.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat we’re asking the Committee<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Access the full document here<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n