On July 25, 2023, the Yemeni Women’s Voices Platform organized an event via Zoom on digital security against cyberbullying, to which it invited a number of female experts and attendees in order to learn about digital security mechanisms and means and use them in combating cyberbullying.
The event included a number of tips provided by the two experts to young girls and women in Yemen who suffer from many forms of cyberbullying. This activity was facilitated by journalist Sakina Mohammed.
Summary of the Session
Speakers highlighted a wide range of challenges Yemeni women face at the level of digital security, and how this is exploited by cyber bullies and blackmailers.
These discussions focused on digital gaps that increase over time, renewal of technologies and lack of keeping pace with newer updates and applications, resulting in a state of digital insecurity, thus reflecting on the most important aspect of women, as the situation goes beyond the safety phase to directly affecting women's psychology by using poor methods of cyberbullying.
The current situation in the country, the difficulty of providing internet makes security gaps more common and expose many to digital risks. Women are at the forefront of digital illiteracy, which is connected to poor internet connection. The discussion centered on the need to raise digital awareness, motivate women and provide more awareness and educational resources not only for women but for society as a whole. The risk to women does not come solely from women, cyberbullying is a widespread problem for which women remain more vulnerable.
The journey towards the empowerment of Yemeni women includes giving them safety at all levels, accepting them as an important figure at the social level, addressing the challenges they face and standing with them in their empowerment against digital imbalances that are used to marginalize them and discourage them to continue, ultimately creating a resilient and capable society.
The discussion then moved on to the two experts' review of their materials that we attended, as Dr. Angela Al-Mamari, Assistant Professor of mental health department at Taiz University, began her presentation by talking about the causes of bullying, which centered on the theory of difference in opinion and trends, conspiracy theory, cultural and intellectual background, wrong upbringing, in addition to the lack of an effective system to confront bullying.
After that, Dr. Al-Mamari's talk focused on the places where bullying occurs, as social media comes at the top of the list, followed by places of study, work, public places and home. During her talk, she discussed a number of bullying images that occur, and how they start and escalate frequently until they reach the peak of unacceptable bullying, which negatively reflects on the affected person's psychology.
There has also been extensive discussion on the widespread prevalence of cyberbullying online in general, the violation of privacy and direct abuse of the victim, and its psychological and social impact, which has evolved into a sense of isolation, insecurity and loss of trust.
While the presentation of the digital specialist Eng. Nour Khaled focused on the role played by digital security in the fight against cyberbullying, she talked in the same context about what digital security is, assessing the risks that women may be exposed to while dealing with devices and smartphones, and reviewed the forms of cyberbullying, and how to adapt and exploit digital devices to reach these forms.
In her speech, Eng. Noor Khalid pointed out that women are the most vulnerable group to digital attacks and cyberbullying because they are silent and do not show any reaction when they are subjected to any form of bullying, and attributed the reason for this to the social violence that may result greater than the violence they may be exposed to digitally and up to physical violence.
At the end of their talk, Dr. Angela Al-Mamari and Eng. Noor Khaled provided some important tips to the participants in the event to ensure minimal digital security and mitigate and limit attempts of cyberbullying.
The two experts stressed the need to involve the community in the process of monitoring bullying cases, working to promote awareness about the effects of cyberbullying and its risks, encouraging reporting of bullying, providing support for this, passing laws and legislation to protect those affected from cyberbullying, in addition to strengthening psychological and social support services for the affected individuals.
They also drew attention to the importance of digital awareness and learning data protection skills in a way that does not lead to a violation of your privacy and the resulting bullying and blackmail.
As they were also invited to provide models and success stories of survivors who were able to face digital challenges and the resulting bullying and blackmail to tell their inspiring experiences and enhance the safety of women in society and give them the opportunity to reproduce the experience again.