Testing the Orbits Framework for Survivor Centric Policy Design
In July, we brought together experts and practitioners who work on policy design, implementation and advocacy from around the globe to explore, develop and refine our proposed Framework for Survivor Centric Policy Design. Here is what happened.
By Esha Meher and Chitrangada Sharma
The Orbits Project — a joint initiative of End Cyber Abuse and Chayn — is a journey started with the goal of creating a field guide for intersectional and survivor centered interventions across research, tech and policy aimed at tackling tech-facilitated gender-based violence (TGBV), or tech abuse. We began with mapping gaps in existing resources and best practices, organised workshops at Mozfest and RightsCon, interviewed experts from different countries to understand the nuances of tech abuse in local contexts and also reflected on and then documented our own practices.
Most recently, we conducted a series of consultation workshops where we presented our model to receive inputs and feedback from attendees. The first three workshops each focused on discussing interventions in the field of research, tech and policy and the fourth and final workshop was organised exclusively for receiving insights from survivors and letting them lead the way in the formulation of the final field guide.
Here, we will share some of the discussions held in the policy workshop and the learnings and insights we received from the attendees. You can read about insights from the tech and research workshop here.
Defining Policy and Exploring the Challenges
In order to discuss policy interventions for tackling TGBV, it is important to define the scope of what we mean by “policy”. We kickstarted the discussion by acknowledging that the term itself was broad and the field guide might not cover every aspect of it. Policy for the purposes of the workshop included:
- Government-set policies including legislation, regulation, criminal legal processes etc.
- Policies set by non-governmental and private organisations (i.e. tech companies, schools, employers) which include content moderation policies as well.
Following the workshop, we decided to narrow this down further for our guide, looking specifically at governments and tech companies only in order to ensure we were not generalising too much and our guide was appropriate for the audiences we are targeting.
Having chalked out the scope of “policy”, we opened the floor to discuss the key challenges to creating (and implementing) laws and policies to tackle tech abuse with an intersectional, survivor-centred lens. Our participants responded with many different challenges, including:
- Lack of infrastructure and training of punitive institutions
- Not ensuring agency of the survivor
- Cultural and societal treatment of women and girls under the patriarchy
- Lack of a political will to act
- Anti-immigrant and a sex negative perpectives being embedded into the law
- Different, confusing sets of policies across the different platforms
- Lack of support for survivors
- Lack of contextualised content moderation
- Lack of civil remedies to tackle abuse
Applying the Framework
We then deep dived to discuss our framework in greater detail and deliberated on the possibility of using specific principles in creating, implementing and advocating for policies to tackle tech abuse.
We explored case studies and examples of situations where participants had seen some of these principles applied well (of which there were few examples) and where they had faced challenges, how their application could improve policy making, implementation or advocacy for handling tech abuse cases.
We then went on to think about the possible challenges in implementing the principles, which may be seen as “idealistic” by some and ways of overcoming these challenges.
Some Learnings
We started with an engaging conversation on the principle of intersectionality. Here we not only defined and reflected on the academic principle but also discussed the real life examples where an intersectional lens was successfully applied within a law or policy context. From Brazil to Kenya, the examples were dissected and model laws were discussed while the others were highlighted as a lesson gone wrong.
We then carried forward our interaction on specific design principles in separate breakout rooms, where we discussed their nuances in greater detail. The discussions on the principle of equity began with recognising the need for free legal assistance and therapy for survivors and advocating for participatory models of creating laws that incorporated indegenous and marginalised voices. It also touched upon issues of limited access to the internet because of income disparity, gender and other social inequalities. These discussions overlapped with conversations on the principle of accessibility which too foregrounded questions of gender and language as some of the factors limiting access to the internet and justice. While participants lauded some social media platforms (like Facebook, Helo, Sharechat) for expanding language options to include regional languages, they were also conscious of the fact that a lot could be done to improve access in terms of reporting mechanisms. The need to simplify complex, jargon-heavy legal language and increasing sensitivity and responsiveness of law enforcement officials were also recognised by participants as concerns requiring immediate attention.
Other breakout rooms also saw rich discussions on principles of consent, confidentiality, accountability and decentralisation. Based on these detailed conversations on specific design principles and feedback received on the model as a whole, we’ve adapted and refined the first version of Orbits design principles into a final version for our field guide — and will be sharing them soon.
Thank You
This workshop saw an amazing degree of active engagement and participation, as we reflected on policies from across the world. Not only did we have vibrant break out rooms but also an extremely enriching conversation in the main room as people offered examples from their own jurisdictions. We walked away from the workshop with a jamboard full of inputs, minds full of ideas and the euphoria of having sourced diverse and interesting approaches from across the globe.
We are whole-heartedly thankful to all our participants who joined us and shared valuable insights and ideas. Though we could only capture some snippets in this blog, we would be using their insights and feedback in the final version of the field guide. Watch this space!
