Cover-Illustration: Große sitzende Figur mit geschlossenem Auge umfasst eine Landschaft mit Wasser, Bäumen und Text in Englisch und Spanisch.
Policy Paper

Reclaiming Tech: Tools for Territorial Defenders Facing Digital Repression

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Across the globe, land and environmental defenders are facing growing digital repression – especially women and queer activists in the Global South. Every year, hundreds of defenders are murdered for protecting their homes and their communities.

This publication explores how grassroots movements are resisting surveillance, online violence and gendered disinformation by reclaiming technology through feminist, decolonial and solidarity-based approaches.

Product details
Date of Publication
December 2025
Publisher
Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Global Unit for Feminism and Gender Democracy
Number of Pages
56
Licence
Language of publication
English, Spanish
Table of contents

“Water is not for sale; it is cared for and defended”
Who is being targeted, and why do we need an intersectional perspective?

  • South Asia
  • Latin America 

How can we reclaim tech? Resources and tools counteracting tech abuse against women and queer defenders

  1. Digital rights
  2. Online safety
  3. Support and healing for survivors
  4. Digital content creation and trauma-informed design
  5. Evidence gathering and the mapping of gendered violence and territorial information
  6. Open data and community-based tech
  7. Capacity building and training initiatives
  8. News, analysis and community-driven resources

How can we move towards digital and territorial justice?

  • Towards accountability as territorial justice: Who is behind
  • tech-facilitated harm against defenders?
  • So technology is just a neutral medium? How Big Techs is magnifying harm
  • What would tech accountability look like? Decolonial feminist tech approaches “to delay the end of the world”
  • Organising in the collapse: Recommendations

In memory of defenders
References

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