August 30, 2024
Our vision for a world free of image-based sexual abuse and a safer internet
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As image-based sexual violence continues to harm more people each year, there is an urgent need for coordinated, cross-sector solutions on a global scale. The Reclaim Coalition to End Online Image-based Sexual Violence brings together a global network of leaders to accelerate the global response to online image-based sexual violence through shared initiatives across advocacy, policy, technology, and survivor services.
Just as this form of violence encompasses a complex web of issues, so too must the solutions be wide-ranging and interconnected, including stronger laws, global cooperation, government action, media education, technology innovation, prevention strategies, and more.
The Reclaim Coalition serves as a platform for coordination, collaboration, and convening amongst lived experience experts, direct service providers, advocates, civil society organizations, academics, tech for good, law enforcement agencies, and other stakeholders working to combat the nonconsensual creation and distribution of intimate imagery.
Through our global partnerships and survivor-centered approach, The Reclaim Coalition works to:
Image-based sexual violence is the act or threat of sharing intimate or explicit images without consent. It is a violation of privacy and consent that disproportionately affects women and LGBTQ+ individuals.
When nonconsensual imagery is shared over text message, in online forums, or posted on social media platforms, it can quickly reach a global audience via uploads to pornographic websites that do not, or cannot, reliably verify consent and/or ages of people depicted. Those who are impacted, whether they are adults or children, frequently experience high levels of psychological distress and trauma, including extreme, prolonged anxiety and suicidal ideation.
Image-based sexual violence and other mechanisms of online harm have increased at an alarming rate in recent years, especially as reliance on digital tools such as social media and other online platforms has become a new norm.
Together we can raise awareness, support survivors, and work towards ending this violation of privacy, consent, and human rights.
In our work, we have chosen to refer to individuals with firsthand knowledge of image-based sexual violence as “lived experience experts.” Put quite simply, we use this term because we recognize that everyone is more, and has more to offer, than the trauma they have experienced.
While in law enforcement and regulatory contexts the term “victim” may apply for legal reasons, and in other settings the term “survivor” is often used to shift focus onto the resiliency and agency of those who have experienced traumatic events, in the context of our work to drive global action, our advisors offer not only their lived experience of the issue, but their expertise – in pursuing accountability, remediation, healing, and justice. Lived experience experts are leaders in their own right, and we are proud to center our work around their insights and ideas.
The Reclaim Coalition is proud to work alongside a global network of partners who have been working to end image-based sexual violence by various means, including through advocacy, policy, direct services, and technological solutions.
We collaborate with civil society organizations, lived experience experts, advocates, tech experts, direct service providers, policymakers, and government regulators to align high impact global partnerships and mobilize joint action to transform the systems and norms that enable online sexual violence.
