Social media corporations and authorities are failing girls by specializing in nudity fairly than consent when coping with image-based abuse, in response to a brand new report by gender justice organisation Chayn.
Its criticisms are backed by Pakistani actress Ayesha Omar, whose experiences, together with these of different girls, are described within the findings.
One of many girls on the centre of the report, whose title has been modified to Mahnoor to guard her privateness, explains that the pictures that modified her life weren’t nude. They weren’t sexually specific. They confirmed a girl exposing her naked shoulders and carrying Western clothes.
The 32-year-old from Pakistan informed BBC International Ladies that she returned to her childhood dwelling when her marriage broke down. She hoped for consolation and assist from her household, however as an alternative, she and her younger daughter have been met with iciness.
It has been over a yr and her father and brothers nonetheless haven’t spoken to her. Colleagues at work who she has identified for years is not going to look her within the eye.
Mahnoor had anticipated a troublesome divorce. It had by no means been a simple marriage. She says her husband, to whom she was married in an organized match, was each verbally and bodily abusive all through their relationship. But it surely was the publicity of her non-public world that value her probably the most.
Like many younger girls, Mahnoor had saved numerous footage of herself on her cellphone. She had taken photographs of her on a regular basis life – a pleasant dinner, a selfie when the lighting was significantly flattering. Many have been years previous. One was of her smiling after a brand new haircut. One other confirmed her on an abroad alternate programme with pals. Others have been odd selfies, mendacity in mattress, carrying a vest, together with her eyes closed to indicate off her eyeliner.
None had ever been shared publicly. She hardly ever posted photographs on social media, aware of the conservative tradition of her neighborhood in Pakistan.
In line with Mahnoor, who’s a college lecturer, her former husband gained entry to her WhatsApp account and personal photographs earlier than distributing them to male kinfolk, colleagues and acquaintances.
Mahnoor says he additionally cropped photographs of her with a gaggle of pals, to make it seem that she was standing with a single man, insinuating that they have been having an affair.
The pictures, she says, have been used to painting her as “a girl of dangerous character”, an accusation that, in lots of communities, can carry life-altering and typically deadly penalties.
Report creator, Hera Hussain, warns an “picture doesn’t need to be nude for it to be dangerous” [Emco Conference 2026]
Along with her family and friends, in addition to colleagues, barely participating together with her, Mahnoor says she has misplaced her social standing and the as soon as highly effective place she held in her neighborhood.
“I misplaced my voice,” she informed the BBC. “I now not felt seen.
“My household as soon as revered me, my brothers revered me. Having your voice revered by your dad and mom is such a fantastic factor,” she says. They used to ask for her recommendation, however that’s now not the case.
Mahnoor’s ex-husband has now remarried.
What’s image-based abuse?
The report highlighting Mahnoor’s story is by Chayn, a worldwide non-profit organisation that examines gender-based violence. Chayn argues that image-based abuse is routinely misunderstood by each authorities and know-how corporations as a result of they proceed to outline hurt primarily by nudity.
Titled Specific Harms of Non-Specific Photographs, the report argues that for a lot of girls, a completely clothed picture can have penalties each bit as devastating as an intimate {photograph} inside their wider, and sometimes conservative, communities.
“The picture doesn’t need to be nude for it to be dangerous,” says Hera Hussain, report creator and founding father of Chayn. “Generally it may be as dangerous, even when not a single physique half is naked.
“We need to reframe the dialog round image-based abuse away from nudity and in direction of consent.”
For years, public conversations about image-based abuse have centered on so-called revenge pornography, deepfake nudes and sexually specific content material. However Chayn’s analysis means that this framework misses how disgrace, status and social management function in lots of communities.
{A photograph} that seems solely odd to 1 particular person might carry extreme penalties for one more. A video clip displaying a girl dancing at a marriage. {A photograph} of a girl on the seaside. A selfie shared with out permission.
Cultural sensitivities
The report argues that hurt is commonly decided not by what the picture accommodates, however by why it’s shared, who receives it and what penalties observe.
Chayn performed 64 interviews between July 2025 and February 2026 and members spanned each main area of Pakistan in addition to diaspora communities within the UK, Canada, Germany, Malaysia, the UAE and Kuwait.
The analysis catalogues the sorts of photographs girls feared seeing shared: hair seen with no headband, Western or fitted clothes, {a photograph} taken beside a person who just isn’t a relative, a screenshot of a fabricated dialog, or a picture generated by AI from a single photograph of somebody’s face. None include nudity. All will be made to inform a dangerous story.
For Ayesha Omar, the argument just isn’t theoretical. The actress, who has labored in Pakistan’s movie and tv trade for greater than 20 years, says her personal photographs have been stolen and circulated lengthy earlier than social media made such publicity commonplace. Images taken on a vacation over a decade in the past in Thailand with a feminine pal, on a seaside, the place she wore a one-piece swimsuit and shorts, have been taken from a laptop computer with out her information and posted on-line.
“It was very damaging for my profession,” Ayesha says. “I misplaced advert campaigns. I misplaced some work stuff.” She takes a pause earlier than including: “As a result of in my tradition, you need to conform to a specific picture, even in the event you’re representing a model otherwise you’re enjoying a personality on TV. So it did harm me psychologically and emotionally rather a lot.”
She says the expertise left her “hypervigilant”, always scanning her surroundings for individuals who could also be filming her.
Ayesha Omar says that many tech corporations do not perceive what issues to totally different communities [BBC]
For Hera Hussain, society is asking the unsuitable questions relating to image-based abuse. Chayn’s framework rests on three exams: the hurt executed to the particular person, the intent behind the sharing, and the absence of consent.
In Mahnoor’s case, she says, all three are current. The identical will be stated for actress Ayesha Omar. The hurt has penalties: misplaced relationships and misplaced revenue.
“The precept is respect, dignity, consent,” Hussain says. “These are the issues that matter.”
That precept, the report argues, is exactly what tech corporations and regulatory programs fail to use. When Mahnoor took her case to Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Company, now working because the Nationwide Cyber Crime Investigation Company, she was informed the pictures fell outdoors its remit as a result of they weren’t nude or sexually specific.
Her written grievance, seen by the BBC, was declined on these grounds. When she approached her cell community supplier, she says she was informed nothing may very well be executed until she might produce the SIM registered to the offending account – a SIM her ex-husband had taken from her.
BBC International Ladies approached Pakistan’s Nationwide Cyber Crime Investigation Company for remark and has not acquired a response.
Mahnoor says she additionally reported the pictures to a buyer complaints e mail tackle for WhatsApp. She says that she was informed they didn’t breach the platform’s guidelines. As she now not has the e-mail alternate, it has not been potential to confirm what was stated.
WhatsApp declined to touch upon Mahnoor’s case however a spokesperson pointed the BBC to the platform’s pointers which “define what’s and is not allowed”.
The rules don’t give a selected coverage on image-based abuse however say WhatsApp offers with “abusive individuals” to ban “dangerous conduct in direction of others”. Additionally they state they’re “not obligated to manage the actions or data (together with content material) of our customers or different third-parties”. WhatsApp makes use of end-to-end encryption so can not proactively evaluate photographs that individuals ship.
Within the context of sexually specific and nude photographs, its mother or father firm Meta says: “We’re dedicated to creating Fb, Instagram, Messenger and Threads secure locations. We take away content material that would contribute to a danger of hurt to the bodily safety of individuals.”
‘Systemic failure’
The workforce at Chayn need tech corporations to alter the best way they evaluate photographs which are reported [Hera Hussain]
However Hera Hussain is apprehensive that cultural sensitivities usually are not recognised by tech corporations, the place reported photographs are sometimes first assessed by an AI moderation system educated largely to detect nudity. Figuring out photographs that may very well be problematic is far more nuanced than recognizing naked pores and skin and Hussain says a person might have to be very persistent to ensure a human moderator evaluations an image.
There’s concern that there’s not sufficient human oversight as corporations lean on cheaper automated instruments and consolidate regional experience into groups protecting huge, various areas. For instance, in a disclosure to the US Senate Judiciary Committee, the CEO of Snapchat revealed cuts to its belief and security workforce – its security and moderation headcount fell from a 2021 peak of simply over 3,000 to about 2,226 in 2023 – a 27% discount.
Campaigners need the logic reversed. At current, Hussain says, platforms examine after which take down. She believes they need to take down first, for twenty-four hours, pending evaluate, and examine after. “What are you going to lose?” she asks. In our interview, Hussain factors to a case that got here to gentle in 2017 the place three sisters in Pakistan have been killed after a video of them singing and clapping at a marriage was shared – three of their male kinfolk got life sentences.
The reporting burden, in the meantime, falls nearly solely on the sufferer, who should find the pictures, view them repeatedly, and submit each, with no easy mechanism to take away copies in bulk.
“You undergo all that retraumatisation,” Hussain says, “and then you definitely won’t even get a response.”
That distinction issues most, the report concludes, as a result of the hurt isn’t contained to the lady within the body. It particulars how a leaked picture lands on her entire household, fathers unable to face work, sisters whose marriages collapse, households watched “in a shameful method”. Honour is collective, and the specter of collective disgrace is itself a device of management.
For Mahnoor, the fee is measured within the individuals who now not communicate to her. Her daughter, who’s three-and-a-half years previous, has begun to note that the kinfolk upstairs don’t greet her mom. The pictures that took her voice have been, by any platform’s definition, innocent.
Some nations do deal with the sharing of photographs as a query of privateness. France has lengthy recognised a “proper to 1’s personal picture”: beneath Article 9 of its Civil Code, each particular person, public determine or non-public citizen, has an unique proper over how their picture is used, topic to exceptions for information and issues of real public curiosity. A minister on vacation, nevertheless, retains a proper to privateness.
The UAE goes additional nonetheless, criminalising the photographing of individuals with out consent even in public locations, with no broad public-interest exemption.
“Picture-based abuse is larger and wider than nudes” and there’s “systemic failure” concludes Hera Hussain.
She says the police, courts and tech platforms “can all accomplish that a lot better in supporting survivors”, including that “in the event you’re experiencing image-abuse know that it’s not your fault, you aren’t alone and there are organisations like Chayn which are right here to assist you”.
[BBC]
That is a part of the International Ladies collection from the BBC World Service, sharing untold and essential tales from across the globe