In the margins of the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York in March 2026, the Council of Europe co-organised a high-level side-event-on Policing the Pixel: Gender, Tech, and Justice together with the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Moldova to the United Nations, under the Moldovan Presidency of the Committee of Ministers. The event was broadcast and is available on the event’s page.
This event addressed the alarming rise in technology-facilitated violence against women and girls (TFVAWG), a phenomenon increasing in both scale and severity but remaining largely underreported and under-prosecuted. As digital technologies become central to daily life, online violence continues to reflect and reinforce systemic gender inequalities, silencing women in public, social, and political spaces, and ultimately threatening the core of democratic systems.
The event looked at how to bridge the gap between cybercrime expertise and the understanding of violence against women and girls, including migrant, refugee and asylum-seeking women and girls. It explored promising practices, such as the creation of specialised investigative units and improved international cooperation for cross-border data access in line with Council of Europe standards. It also discussed how AI can help to detect technology-facilitated violence against women and girls and technology such as hashing photos to facilitate their take down throughout all platforms. It was agreed that effective collaboration between law enforcement and tech platforms and that standardised engagement of all platforms, no matter what their size, with all law enforcement agencies. It also emphasised the benefits of gender-responsive policing and how to achieve it and the idea of moving beyond traditional concepts of “safer only spaces” to “caring online communities”. These steps are essential for strengthening accountability, improving digital evidence management, avoiding secondary victimisation and ensuring survivors’ access to justice.
The event was attended by political leaders, international partners, police and tech industry representatives as well as civil society. It was opened by Doina Gherman, Vice-President of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova and Alain Berset, Secretary General of the Council of Europe. The conversation contributed to the Council of Europe’s New Democratic Pact for Europe on how to harness technology for good.