Content warning: This article contains mentions of misogyny and gender-based violence.

Maryam AlKhawaja is a human rights activist from Bahrain. She spends her time fighting for the well-being of others, but has since become a target of violence herself. Online, she faces coordinated hacking attempts and defamation campaigns designed to destroy her professional reputation and her will to continue her work by making false claims about her sex life. 

Offline, she is targeted, harassed, and filmed without her consent. But AlKhawaja refuses to be silenced. She remains a vocal critic of the regime that exiled her, teaches other activists how to defend against digital threats, and has shared her story with the world. 

AlKhawaja is one of dozens of women human rights defenders whose stories I have had the privilege of listening to as a research assistant at the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

Through this role, I have come to believe that researchers who deal with human subjects have a responsibility not only to elevate their voices, but also to give visibility to their resilience as well as their struggles. As researchers seek to expose wrongdoings and problems, we must also acknowledge the agency of people who have been victimized, highlight potential solutions, and provide hope for the future.

Rise of digital transnational repression

Journalists and activists who have fled their countries of origin for safety often find that the governments they tried to leave behind follow them through social media and their phones, hoping to silence them. We call this type of cross-border targeting digital transnational repression (DTR), and it has become increasingly prevalent in the borderless world of the internet.

In our recent report on gender-based DTR, we draw on interviews with women like AlKhawaja, finding that women face threats of sexual violence, defamation campaigns that target their sexuality, and threats to their children and families as part of gender-specific DTR. Human rights and freedoms are under threat globally, and these women are on the frontlines of that fight.

One interviewee expressed her frustration at the weaponization of gender by perpetrators, saying. “It’s much, much easier to silence [women], to pressure them with their family… And they know that.”

As researchers, we have a responsibility to try to tell difficult stories, filling in the gaps left by previous research by focusing on the impact of variables such as gender on DTR.

Narrative agency

At the Citizen Lab, I received training on working with research participants and conducting trauma-informed interviews. The academic skills I developed through this work have allowed me to see the complexity of gender-based DTR.

If our goal is to create change, to convince policymakers to address gender-based DTR, then the way in which we present our research is crucial to creating the outcomes that will most benefit the women we interview. 

I could write about the trauma inflicted on targets of spyware and online harassment campaigns, or the impact on victims’ ability to trust others and form relationships. I could write about death threats, rape threats, and states hiring mercenary hackers to silence opponents. Or about how quickly digital threats can escalate to physical ones. 

But that is a narrative that gives oppressors all the power. A narrative that rips the agency away from the resilient people who push back against tyranny around the world. 

When I joined the DTR team at the Citizen Lab in May 2023, I expected to be horrified and outraged hearing the experiences described by our interviewees, many of whom sought safety here in Canada and were still reached by foreign states. And I was horrified and outraged, but I was struck also by the fact that no matter the struggles they faced, the women we talked to would keep going.

One of our participants put it this way, “…they think [because] I am a woman, that… I should be easily destroyed. But I’m not.” 

I have come to believe that ‘resilient’ is the word that best describes the women who shared their stories with us. Many of them choose again and again to continue fighting for human rights and freedoms, even when the odds are stacked against them, and that is something truly remarkable. 

Unfortunately, in my research, I find that the theme of resilience is often missing from writing on the subject of extra-territorial states and state-sponsored targeting of journalists, activists, and human rights defenders. If we keep writing away the agency of the people we call “victims,” we are diminishing their power, which is exactly what the perpetrators of DTR want.

While I am angry that foreign states are causing people in Canada to feel unsafe, I am also wary of centring state actors in what should be a very human discussion. Initiatives to address DTR in Canada should involve victims, not as objects to be safeguarded by our government, but as people with expertise, experience, and valuable insights into this dangerous phenomenon.

I think the best way to encourage governments like Canada’s to address DTR in a way that will not alienate the people we want to help is to write about victims as actors in their own right, who deserve to be informed and consulted about policies which will affect them.

The university has a responsibility to train future researchers on how to use a trauma-informed approach to ensure researchers give visibility to these women’s resilience as well as their struggles. 

Every headline that informs us of the global rise of authoritarianism, of fascism, of the weakening of international law, disguises the people on the other side of that fight.

The motto of University College is “parum claris lucem dare,” to shed light on that which is obscure. That is our role as academics today: to shine a light, not just of truth, but of hope.