Cyberwomen: Holistic Digital Security Training Curriculum for Women Human Rights Defenders

Cyberwomen is a digital security curriculum with a holistic and gender perspective, geared towards both professional trainers and those who want to learn how to train others on their digital protection and include gender considerations as they do so.

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) built the curriculum with the intention of reflecting the technique and practice developed by women human rights defenders (WHRDs) who are undertaking digital security training efforts in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region. It was created with a focus on sharing real-life instances of digital attacks as experienced by WHRDs, activists, and journalists in high-risk environments.

Featuring audio-visual and graphic materials as instructional aids, the curriculum is made up of training modules, interactive games, and recommendations for evaluating the training. Modules can be used either as standalone sessions or as components of a full training workshop, which IWPR recommends spacing out over a period of at least 6 months. By using examples from YouTube videos and messages on various social media platforms, the curriculum aims to create a safe space for discussion and reflection on technology-based violence that specifically targets women. The hope is to empower women participating in Cyberwomen training to more consistently practice new skills and subsequently provide digital security advice to others.

This curriculum is an effort to provide information for participants to identify and explore several strategies for their digital self-defense; these include, but are not limited to, separating the personal from the public, creating online identities, "doxxing the troll", encrypting their communications, and documenting digital incidents.

To integrate a more gender-sensitive, feminist approach, this curriculum was produced with various values and principles, which infuse its core characteristics:

• Cyberwomen content is designed to support an ambiance of woman-to-woman confidence and trust in a training setting that is perceived as a safe space, where participants can feel at ease sharing their fears, doubts, and emotions, and can actively participate and engage with others.
• Recognising that not every woman at a given workshop will define herself as a feminist, the curriculum's approach involves raising awareness about online violence against WHRDs, first by highlighting differences between attacks on male and female activists and then by providing examples of online gender-based violence (e.g., on social media platforms) as a means towards helping women identify the violence they may already be facing in these spaces. As part of this methodology, the curriculum presents case studies that are meant to be relatable to diverse women's everyday lives.
• A great deal of time is dedicated to introducing participants to digital security concepts such as encryption, anonymity, privacy, and open-source software before training on related tools. The central ideas, information, and practices shared are grounded in promoting digital autonomy so that women are equipped with the information they need to make their own decisions about which tools are best for them.
• As part of its focus on holistic security, the curriculum incorporates specific content on feminist self-care and recognising gender-based violence, whether symbolic or online. The objective of these sessions is to reinforce participants' sense of agency and control over their safety and identities - therefore, IWPR suggests they be integrated throughout trainings as spaces for individual and collective action and reflection, rather than covered as a standalone module.