Digital bodies, territories in dispute.

Women defenders in Mesoamerica face increasingly complex contexts, where the rise of digital attacks and the dispute for digital space are ever present. Between 2020 and 31 October 2024, our Mesoamerican Registry of Attacks against Women Defenders documented 7,406 digital attacks in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua. This accounts for one in four of all attacks registered in the period. The most frequent types of digital attacks were harassment; disseminating false information; smear campaigns; challenging or questioning women defenders’ or their organizations’ morality, credibility, or leadership; and threats. The vast majority of attacks were perpetrated through social media. The women defenders most attacked through digital channels are those who defend the right to truth, justice, and reparations; the right to political participation and to participate in decision-making spaces; and those who work for the right to information and freedom of expression.

This reality and its impact on our lives and struggles, and on our movements, were exposed during the COVID-19 syndemic when, due to imposed isolation strategies, the digital sphere suddenly became crucially relevant for defending human rights. In response, States and de facto powers dedicated significant resources and efforts to silence women defenders’ voices and their presence in digital spaces. This violence is no more than an extension of the repression that we have historically suffered.

IM-Defensoras has taken a critical and feminist approach to reflect on the reality facing Mesoamerican women defenders in the digital sphere. And so, towards the end of 2023, we began a process to collectively build knowledge – a participatory research effort that, based on the experiences of women defenders in their territories, allowed us to recognize the digital sphere as a territory in dispute, and to identify feminist holistic protection strategies to confront this.

The process involved simultaneous research efforts in Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Mexico, and included interviews with women defenders and digital security experts in the region, surveys, legal analysis, and literature reviews. By working together with the networks in each country and with the support of feminist experts in protection and digital care, we were able to identify and understand the different ways that women defenders in Mesoamerica relate to technology.

We identified the methods used by those who exercise digital violence against women defenders, and the threads that connect these attacks with the violence we experience in the physical sphere. We also explored the effects of this violence on our bodies, families, communities, territories, movements, and struggles. In addition, the analysis of legal and regulatory frameworks in each country allowed us to understand how these have become instruments to silence human rights defenders.

This collective work will contribute to strengthening Feminist Holistic Protection (FHP) strategies by bringing in a specialized perspective from the intersection of digital technologies, feminisms, and human rights defense; understanding the digital territory not as an isolated space, but rather as a continuum of our lives as women defenders that provides an opportunity to broaden our presence, voices, and demands.