Global Encryption Day: Encryption Protects More Than Data. It Protects Women Human Rights Defenders

Digital security is a matter of safety, privacy, and justice for women human rights defenders working to document abuses, support survivors, and organize communities.

For Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs), encryption is more than a technical tool. It is an essential part of protecting their privacy, safeguarding sensitive information, and enabling them to continue their work in defense of human rights.

For Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs), encryption is more than a technical tool. It is an essential part of protecting their privacy, safeguarding sensitive information, and enabling them to continue their work in defense of human rights.

Protecting the People Behind the Data

Women human rights defenders rely on digital technologies to document human rights violations, communicate with survivors, protect confidential sources, coordinate advocacy efforts, and mobilize communities. These digital spaces, however, can also expose them to surveillance, doxxing, online harassment, threats, and other forms of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV).

Such threats can compromise not only the safety of individual defenders but also the confidentiality of survivors, the security of sources, and the trust that sustains human rights movements.

When sensitive conversations and personal information are exposed, the consequences can extend beyond the digital space. They may affect a defender’s ability to work safely, a survivor’s willingness to seek support, or a community’s capacity to organize and demand accountability.

Encryption has help address these risks by making information unreadable to unauthorized parties. End-to-end encryption, in particular, is designed to ensure that only the intended participants can read messages, even when those messages pass through a service provider’s systems. While encryption cannot prevent every form of surveillance or digital attack, it provides an important layer of protection for sensitive communications.

Encryption as a Feminist Safety Practice

Encryption helps protect the confidentiality of conversations, personal information, and sensitive records. For WHRDs working with vulnerable communities, it can help safeguard survivors’ identities, protect sources, and reduce the risk of unauthorized access to critical information.

It also supports defenders in communicating, organizing, and collaborating more safely. By strengthening privacy and confidentiality, encryption helps create conditions in which people can exercise their rights to freedom of expression, association, and access to information.

From a feminist digital rights perspective, these protections matter because digital threats do not affect everyone equally. Women and gender-diverse human rights defenders may face gendered forms of abuse intended to intimidate, silence, or undermine their work. Digital security practices must therefore account for the specific risks they face, as well as the broader social and political contexts in which they operate.

Encryption is one part of a wider approach to feminist digital security - one that recognizes privacy, autonomy, and safety as fundamental rights rather than privileges.

Digital Safety Is a Collective Responsibility

Protecting WHRDs online should never be treated as an individual responsibility alone. Telling defenders to secure their accounts without providing the resources, training, and institutional support they need places an unfair burden on those already facing risks.

Organizations, movements, technology providers, and communities all have a role in building safer digital environments. This includes making accessible security tools available, developing clear digital security protocols, providing ongoing training, and establishing supportive procedures for responding to digital threats.

Organizations should also adopt practices that respect the autonomy and informed choices of WHRDs. Digital security measures must be practical, inclusive, and responsive to the different needs and circumstances of those using them.

Collective digital care means creating a culture in which security is integrated into everyday work, risks are addressed together, and people can ask for support without fear of blame or judgment.

Practical Steps Toward Safer Digital Communications

WHRDs and their organizations can strengthen their digital security through several practical measures:

1. Use end-to-end encrypted messaging. Choose trusted services that provide end-to-end encryption and understand their security and privacy settings.

2. Keep devices and applications updated. Install security updates to address known vulnerabilities.

3. Enable two-factor authentication. Add another layer of protection to important accounts, preferably using an authenticator app or security key where appropriate.

4. Protect sensitive information. Limit access to confidential files and share personal or sensitive data only when necessary.

5. Develop collective security practices. Establish team protocols for handling sensitive communications, storing information, and responding to security incidents.

6. Make digital safety an ongoing practice. Regularly review security needs and adapt measures as threats and working conditions change.

These measures can reduce certain risks, but no single tool can guarantee complete security. Effective protection requires a combination of appropriate technologies, informed practices, organizational support, and attention to the specific risks defenders face.

Protect the People. Protect the Movement.

On Global Encryption Day, FMA calls on organizations, movements, technology providers, and communities to recognize encryption as an important component of human rights protection and feminist digital security.

A safer digital world requires more than protecting files and messages. It requires protecting the people who use technology to expose abuses, support survivors, defend communities, and advance justice.

Encryption is a feminist safety practice. Digital security is collective care. Privacy is a human right.

Protect the people. Protect the movement. Encrypt for human rights.#