The Fiji Women’s Rights Movement (FWRM) has called for the acknowledgement of gendered crimes in relation to cyberspace infringements. During a submission on the proposed ratification of the Budapest Convention in Suva yesterday, FWRM executive director Nalini Singh informed members of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence that the Cybercrime Convention was intended to combat cybercrime locally and across borders.
“FWRM submits that the issue of cybercrime should not be looked at from a gender neutral perspective but rather should be gender-analysed so that we can know exactly how cybercrime is committed and against whom by who,” she said.
“With 64 per cent of Fijian women having ever experienced physical and/or sexual gender-based violence from their intimate partner or spouses, we humbly submit that this will most likely cross over into cyberspace whereby we see crimes against women and girls being perpetrated online.”
Ms Singh also noted that proper dissection of statistics and figures as to how cybercrimes occurred could help the state to provide gender responsive prevention strategies.
“Having data disseminated by most basic elements, which is by sex, for a period of time we have not been able to get that.
“Even with the police annual report that we looked at in some of these categories data is not disseminated and why we are calling for this, at least on a basic level, is that we do need to know the profiles of who the victims are and who the perpetrators are.
“This will then help those institutions who are responding and these issues need to be brought out in an appropriate way.”
