Women and online violence, two Treviso women found the agency that protects victims in The Hague

It’s called CRO Cyber ​​Rights Organization, it is based in The Hague in the Netherlands and provides legal and technical assistance to victims which they suffer gender-based violence onlinecyberbulling, hate speech, doxing, sextortion, digital identity infringement and online trafficking. “In the world, women are 27 times more exposed to online violence than men. It takes more than a hundred days to delete a link, a photo or a video that damages a person’s privacy. Worldwide, more than 20% of victims of online sex trafficking are children. Cybercrime costs the world 8 trillion dollars a year: personal data breach, sextortion, doxing, revenge porn. We said enough to all this and we set out on the road”. The protagonists of the initiative are two from Treviso: the director Annachiara Sarto e l’head of research e advocacy, Silvia Semenzin, who packed their bags for Holland to give life to the most impressive international organization specializing in “cyber rights”: the human rights of the web.

The CEO of Reputationup Andrea Baggio and Juan Ricardo Palacio founded the international organization based in the Netherlands together with Annachiara Sarto. Director Annachiara Sarto and activist researcher Silvia Semenzin are two well-known faces of Italian and European activism: both forged after years of important academic achievements and awareness campaigns on key issues such as gender-based violence, inclusiveness and the fight against deals with. “What is the future of human rights on the web? Can we do more to make the European and international community aware of the protection of the online life of citizens?”, ask Sarto and Semenzin, “CRO Cyber ​​Rights Organization will take care of oppose and eliminate all those alterations that violate human dignity from a digital point of view, and all that long series of digital crimes degrade and cruelly break into the online life of citizens from all over the world”.

On the one hand Annachiara Sarto, originally from Castelfranco Veneto, graduated in International and European Law at The Hague University, specialized in Criminal Law and Human Rights, director of Protection4kids since 2019, former Consultant at the Child Protection Team of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations of the United Nations. Next to her Silvia Semenzin, activist and Postdoc fellow at the Complutense University of Madrid. You have a PhD in Digital Sociology from the University of Milan. In 2019 you promoted the #intimitàviolata campaign to ask for a law against the non-consensual dissemination of intimate images in Italy, which led to the introduction of the art. 612ter of the Italian penal code and the criminalization of sexual abuse through images. “Thanks to our technical offices, coordinated by a specialized committee made up of university professors from The Hauge University”, explains Sarto, “we will be able to provide legal and technical assistance to victims of cybercrime. We are proud to start a close fight against the many forms of violence”.

Another Treviso native, Elia Cavarzan, is also part of the project as communications manager.

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