With the support of Digital Defenders Partnership (DDP), the Somali Women Journalists Rights Association (SOWJRA) held a digital security training for 60 women journalists in Mogadishu today where they learnt how to safeguard their data, information, devices, and communications against online attacks.
The training is held in response to the growing online gender-based violence against women journalists in Somalia. The women journalists in Somalia have been experiencing online abuse, harassment, threats and attacks that forced many of them to retreat from the public sphere, leaving the male-dominated field of journalism with even fewer female voices. The insidious problem of online violence is increasingly spilling offline, and the risk even extends to their families, sources and audiences. All these challenges continue to exist and dire for women journalists, because of they do not have gender-specific mechanisms through which to address these attacks. Majority of the women journalists are not trained on digital security and lack sufficient knowledge on how to source for digital security tools and how to use them due to language barriers.
The training which is the first of its kind was launched by the Director General of the Ministry of Information of the Federal Government of Somalia Mr. Abdullahi Hayir. The Director has hailed the training, saying that it’s paramount for the protection of the Somali women journalists who face a myriad challenge including digital crimes.
The Executive Director of SOWJRA Leila Aded has said that the training is important for the women journalists in Somalia who has been continuously facing digital security problems.
“This digital security training is important for our women journalists in the country. This is a response to the growing and the recurring digital crimes meted against women journalists in Somalia. We want to teach the women journalists how they can protect their privacy and information” she said
SOWJRA trains these women journalists in Somalia with context-specific, gender-specific digital security tools to improve their digital security literacy and capacity to respond to the digital threats that they face every day. These women journalists successfully attended a training held in Mogadishu, and they are equipped with the knowledge to challenge the digital safety threats, restrictions, attacks, harassment, and intimidation to which they were exposed before.
