When a woman reports online abuse to a women’s organisation, the first hours matter. RFLD’s report Online violence against women in West and Central Africa 2026 includes a chapter that sets out a survivor-centred response, step by step. This article summarises it for organisations and for anyone supporting a survivor.
The guiding principle is simple. The survivor’s safety and wishes come first at every stage.
Step 1: Ensure immediate safety
The first priority is to assess physical danger. Online threats may precede offline violence. UN Women’s 2025 Tipping point survey found that 41% of women human rights defenders and journalists had suffered offline attacks linked to online abuse.
Support services should help survivors make a safety plan and, if needed, contact the authorities.
Step 2: Preserve evidence
Survivors often delete abusive content instinctively. This is understandable, and it can remove any chance of legal recourse. Organisations should help survivors capture screenshots that show the content, the account that posted it, the date and the link, and store them securely. Good evidence also helps when asking a platform or a data protection authority to act.
Step 3: Remove or contain the content
Several routes exist, and they can be used together:
- reporting the content directly to the platform;
- using hash-matching services, which block further sharing of intimate images without the image ever being uploaded;
- asking the national data protection authority to order the removal of personal data processed without consent;
- in Ghana, reporting to the Cyber Security Authority through short code 292 or WhatsApp.
Reporting can work. In the 2020 Pollicy study, 75% of women in Senegal who reported abuse to a platform saw the content removed.
Step 4: Seek justice, if the survivor wishes
Legal action is entirely the survivor’s choice. Where she wishes to proceed, organisations can help her file a complaint with specialised units, such as Benin’s national digital investigation centre (CNIN), and connect her with lawyers.
They can also help identify the right legal framework. In three English-speaking states, including Ghana, sharing intimate images without consent is a specific offence. Elsewhere, general offences on privacy or harassment, or data protection law, may apply.
Step 5: Provide psychosocial support
Online violence causes real psychological harm. In the Plan International survey of 2020, 42% of girls and young women who had been harassed reported mental or emotional stress. Yet the studies reviewed in a 2026 scoping review found that only 5% of victims sought counselling.
Survivors need access to counselling and peer support.
Step 6: Follow up and document
With the survivor’s informed consent, organisations can record anonymised information about the case. Over time, this builds the evidence needed for advocacy and shadow reports. It helps make an invisible harm visible.
Preparing in advance
The report recommends that women’s organisations prepare before a case arrives:
- keep referral lists with contacts for police units, data protection authorities, lawyers, counsellors and helplines;
- produce simple guides in local languages on preserving evidence and reporting abuse;
- agree protocols on consent and confidentiality, including how case data is stored;
- train a digital safety focal point, and support staff members who are themselves targeted.
For activists and defenders who need technical help, the Access Now Digital Security Helpline offers free support around the clock in ten languages, including French and English.
Why a survivor-centred approach matters
Survivors who feel judged, or pushed into a process they did not choose, may stop seeking help altogether. In the 2019 Internet Sans Frontières survey across 18 countries of West and Central Africa, only 15% of women affected by online violence had reported it. Responses that respect a survivor’s choices can encourage more women to come forward.
The African Commission’s Resolution 522 asks states to adopt victim-centred, gender-sensitive policies. Women’s organisations can lead by example.
Further reading
The full chapter is in the report, available from the summary page. For how documented cases can feed into advocacy, see RFLD’s manual on shadow reports.
About the report
This article draws on RFLD’s report Online violence against women in West and Central Africa 2026, published on 4 October 2026. Read the summary, download the English edition or the French edition.
