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By Sami Zaptia.

London, 11 March 2021:

In a newreportreleased Wednesday, Lawyers for Justice in Libya (LFJL) call on the Libyan authorities to act immediately to stop the widespread and dangerous pattern of online violence against women (OVAW) in the country.

The report exposes the full scale of online harassment, threats, misogyny, text-based abuse, image-based sexual abuse, the use of deep fake pornography, doxing (publication of personal information such as a private address) and cyberstalking suffered by women in Libya. The report shows that this violence, which started following the 2011 uprising and its ensuing armed conflicts, goes unchecked by the authorities, leaving women to be intimidated, silenced and forced out of public spaces.

LFJL carried out a detailed survey of 163 respondents, documenting their experiences online. Ninety six percent of respondents saw OVAW as a serious problem in Libya and over two thirds of them had been the victims of attacks themselves, with the primary targets being women expressing views online, activists, human rights defenders and women working in political affairs.

The impact is significant, as many women prefer to withdraw from public space due to the attempts to undermine, defame and slander them, not to mention death threats, said political activist Abeir Imneina.

Following the 2011 uprising, women in Libya have increasingly used social media to engage in online activism, but an intense backlash against them as the conflict in the country intensified has led many to self-censor or stop their public activism altogether to protect themselves and their families. Numerous victims told LFJL that online violence had had negative psychological effects on them, such as anxiety, panic attacks, a sense of powerlessness and poor sleep and concentration, but it doesnt always end there.

Tragically, far too often in Libya online abuse has been followed by physical attacks includingenforced disappearancesand brutalkillings, committed in broad daylight, said LFJL Research Fellow Dr Olga Jurasz. Over 80% of survey respondents said that online violence against women was just as serious as offline violence.

While it is often difficult to identify perpetrators, 60% of respondents believed that OVAW in Libya is committed by state actors and affiliated militias, as well as private actors, with the sole aim of silencing women. As OVAW can result in significant mental suffering, when committed by state agents or their affiliates it may amount to torture in some cases.

Despite the scale of the problem, Libya does not have laws which specifically criminalise online or offline violence against women. Since 2011, several draft laws have been proposed to tackle violence against women, but all of those seen by LFJL fall short of international law and standards. For example, they did not cover violence committed online, did not address womens right to personal integrity, focused primarily on physical pain inflicted on the victim with disregard to psychological suffering, and did not ensure access to safety or redress for victims.

The Libyan authorities have also failed to carry out effective investigations under provisions of the Penal Code, which criminalise violence more broadly and could be used to hold perpetrators accountable, despite women reporting incidents to the police and prosecutors. This sends a clear message to the public and perpetrators that online violence against women will go unchecked.

Online violence is a weapon used to silence women, undermining respect for human rights and the rule of law, said Marwa Mohamed, LFJLs Head of Advocacy and Outreach. This issue needs to be given the attention it deserves. Libya must pass a law on gender-based violence, including online violence against women, and prosecute perpetrators in line with its international obligations under key human rights treaties.

While 76% of survey respondents said that social media platforms should also take responsibility for the issue, most had not reported such incidents or were not aware of the existence of complaints mechanisms. Where respondents had reported incidents, they also had to get groups of other users to report the issue before platforms would carry out investigations and delete abusive accounts. Several respondents told LFJL that one or two people reporting an abusive account would usually not prompt social media platforms to conduct investigations.

Social media platforms must do more to tackle abuse on their platforms, said Mohamed. As a first step, social media platforms must commit to the eradication of online violence against women by adopting a human rights-based approach, ensuring that data evidencing online violence against women is made available for use in investigations and legal proceedings aimed at establishing accountability.

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Urgent Action Needed to Address Shocking Levels of Online Violence Against Libyan Women: LJFL | - Libya Herald

By Sami Zaptia.

(Photo: TLBC).

London, 9 March 2021:

The Tripoli Chamber of Commerce announced yesterday that it will participate in the Tunisian-Libyan Economic Forum on 11 March in the city of Sfax.

The event is organized by the Tunisian-African Business Council and more than 200 Tunisian and 100 Libyan business leaders will participate in it. They will be from the construction, trade, industry and services sectors.

The Tripoli Chamber reported that a number of ministers, deputy ministers, heads of government institutions and heads of chambers of commerce from various Libyan regions will also be present.

The forum, which will convene under the slogan We meet hope and challenge to build an integrated economy, will address a number of problems and difficulties facing businesses in the two countries and impede partnership relations, including the transport sector, logistical support, cash situations, flexibility of banking sector services with institutions and facilitation procedures by the concerned official institutions.

3rd Tunisian-Libyan Economic Forum, Sfax 11 March | (libyaherald.com)

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Tripoli Chamber to participate in the Tunisia-Libyan Economic Forum: 11 March, Sfax | - Libya Herald

Id never thought much about Wikipedia until its pages started appearing high up in Google searchesand not just Google. If you ask Siri or Alexa a question, chances are the source of your answer will be Wikipedia too. Hundreds of AI platforms use Wikipedia data; machine learning trains on it. So if women are missing there, they will be missing elsewhere as well.

Women in science went missing long before Wiki, of coursein press coverage, top billing at meetings, appearance on panels. They werent much on my radar either when I first started writing about science decades ago and showed up for the March meeting of the American Physical Society. The March meeting is nerd mecca: Close to 10,000 physicists gather to present findings in condensed matter, which is everything from quantum computers to lasers to smart materials. AI and nano everything.

A friendly Black woman noticed my obvious confusion and helped guide me through the maze of talks, panels, sessions. She was Shirley Ann Jackson, who I later learned was the first Black woman to get a doctorate in theoretical physics from MIT (where, she said, she was mistaken for a maid). She took me to the reception for women in physics. I was seriously wowed. A lot more physicists were women (and vice versa) than I ever imagined. Where had they been? Where had I been?

Decades later, I had a similar wake-up call at an exclusive meeting in Aspen of top physicists in what was then known as string theorytackling the most fundamental questions of space, time, energy, stuff. I expected that a lot of the material would be exotic and unfamiliar. What really seemed exotic and unfamiliar were the three Black men among the small elite group.

For most people, the description theoretical physicist doesnt immediately conjure an image of a Black person. (Neil de Grasse Tyson is great, but one example doesnt count, and hes not a part of this particular tribe anyway.) After the Aspen meeting, my ground truth shifted. I could picture Black men as theoretical physicists no problem because Id met them, interviewed them, hung out.

Then it struck me: Just about every female physicist I know, and every Black physicist I know, are people I met in person. I hadnt even noticed their absence until their presence hit me in face.

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My portals arent so diverse. Which is why Wikipedia in the age of corona had me worried.

A lot of people say they use Wikipedia only as a starting point, a first reference. After all, everyone knows that its crowdsourced. Its proudly non-expert. A community of editors ultimately arbitrates whats in, whats out, what matters, whats true. Because there are so many of them (250,000 edits a day, according to one source), the idea is truth will out.

Yet Wikipedias top ranking on Google gives it credibility and authority that misrepresents what it isa community consensus. This is a problem, according to Atilus, a leading digital marketing company. During an audit for a client using prime SEO software, Atilus found Wikipedia at or near the top over and over again, frequently with a prominent sidebar. On its blog, Atilus posed a not-always-hypothetical question to illustrate the problem: Would you rather trust a doctor whos undergone rigorous training or people who spend time in health-related chatrooms or an intern who blogs about heart health? Thats a big oversimplification, given that Wiki entries are supposed to be double-sourced and edited. But even when that works, its not even close to ground truth.

Granted, Wikipedia isnt the only source of content thats creeps into everything, ubiquitous and unavoidable. It could be your mom or The New York Times. What gives Wikipedia a central place in data heaven is that popular algorithms that lead us around by the nose go to the site to learn. AI reinforces whatever biases are put in front of them. Big data processes codify the past, writes Cathy ONeil in her book Weapons of Math Destruction.

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The Shaky Ground Truths of Wikipedia - WIRED

The Donald Trump era might have come and gone, but the age of disinformation is here to stay. What was already a humming misinformation machine before 2016 has, over the past five years, developed into a world-building juggernaut capable of reshaping economies, politics and social structures. Paired with the constant downsizing and shuttering of local, regional and even national media, this evolution has put a premium on trustworthy and easily accessible information.

This is the faltering information ecosystem into which Wikimedia Foundation CEO and executive director Katherine Maher stepped in June 2016. Wikimedia, which oversees Wikipedia along with Wiktionary, Wikiquote and other projects, is the collective name for a global movement that aims to harness the collaborative power of the internet by creating and sharing free knowledge in a variety of forms.

Maher, who will leave her post this spring, has spent the last five years shepherding Wikipedia and its non-profit organization through these turbulent contexts. During that time, Wikipedias readership has shot up 30 per cent, and the foundation has doubled its annual budget. The organization also introduced a universal code of conduct for participation in Wiki projects and increased its number of monthly active editors. During a time of media austerity, these are not small feats.

To top it off, despite hosting one of the worlds most popular websites, Wikimedia maintains a miniscule carbon footprint by keeping its focus on text rather than images. Wikipedias climate change articles remain some of the sites most deeply sourced and extensively cited works.

But how much vigilance is required now to sustain an enormous digital resource hub that anyone can edit? How has Wikipedia the global go-to reference that relies on volunteer editorial contributions dealt with an increasingly resourceful disinformation movement?

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Join Maher as she discusses these things and more with Canadas National Observer founder and editor-in-chief Linda Solomon Wood for a Conversations event on March 18 at 7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PT. Reserve your spot here, and send potential questions ahead of the event to [emailprotected].

Maher has had a front-row seat to the global fight against disinformation, but its hardly her first rodeo. Prior to her station with Wikimedia, she worked with various NGOs and non-profits to advocate for better information economies, free and open governance, and civic engagement. Alongside Wikimedia, her resume includes UNICEF, the World Bank and the National Democratic Institute.

With her Wikimedia tenure coming to an end in April, this Conversations event promises a relevant retrospective on the state of public media and disinformation since 2016.

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Wikimedia CEO Katherine Maher on how Wikipedia fights disinformation - National Observer

Why Global Citizens Should Care

Wikipedia is many peoples go-to source for quick information, but looking up something on the site doesnt always yield the most unbiased results.

Only 20% of the 1.7 million biographies on what is considered to be the largest online user-generated encyclopedia are about women.

There are also four times as many articles about men as there are about women out of Wikipedias 50 million articles.

In an effort to promote gender equality online, people around the world will add more content to Wikipedia about women who are influential figures, experts, and role models in different fields to celebrate International Womens Day on Monday. The edit-a-thon initiative is part of the fourth annual global #WikiGap supported by Wikimedia Sweden, the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The campaign is crowdsourcing the names of women who are missing from Wikipedia on social media.

What happens online is not separated from what happens offline, Eric Luth, involvement and advocacy project manager at Wikimedia Sweden, told Global Citizen via email. Inequalities in a digital sphere will build upon and feed inequalities in the physical world.

The gap in information about men and women on Wikipedia seems to be in direct correlation with the lack of representation among its authors 90% of the sites contributors are men. These discrepancies lead to less knowledge about women and a lack of womens perspectives to learn from.

Limited resources about women on Wikipedia can trickle down to the media and the information consumed by the public. Already, only 1 in 5 experts interviewed in the media are women, and when journalists conduct research they often reference Wikipedia, according to Wikimedia, but they do not have gender-equal sources to choose from.

The Wikimedia movement has acknowledged its responsibility, and a campaign such as WikiGap is important for breaking the vicious circle and giving visibility to, and agency for, women also in the offline world, Luth said.

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The first WikiGap event was launched by Wikimedia Sweden and the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 2018, and almost 60 countries worldwide have participated. Through this effort, more than 5,000 editors have added more than 50,000 new or improved articles about prominent women to Wikipedia.

As women around the world continue to be hit the hardest by the social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is essential that their stories arent forgotten, Luth noted. Many women who are frontline workers remain unknown.

When traditional media and knowledge actors fail to tell these stories, to gather this information, the Wikimedia movement with its hundreds of thousands of volunteers can play a pivotal role, Luth said.It means to give space to those who have been left out, or to highlight deeds that have not been told enough. Also,impressive women from history that can act as role models are important to bring forward.

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Only 20% of Wikipedia's Biographies Are About Women #WikiGap Wants to Change That - Global Citizen