Be­fore it be­comes ob­scured by po­lit­i­cal crosstalk, there needs to be a deep­er ex­am­i­na­tion of dig­i­tal gen­der-based vi­o­lence (GBV), a prob­lem that re­quires a ro­bust re­sponse.

The is­sue was raised by prime min­is­ter-des­ig­nate Stu­art Young at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Na­tion­al Women’s League’s In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day event in Ch­agua­nas on Sat­ur­day.

Young’s pledge to in­tro­duce leg­is­la­tion to tar­get ir­re­spon­si­ble use of so­cial me­dia by in­di­vid­u­als who tar­get women, made for a good talk­ing point when is­sues af­fect­ing women and girls were in the spot­light.

How­ev­er, the “if elect­ed” con­di­tion­al­i­ty that ac­com­pa­nied the pledge adds a de­gree of un­cer­tain­ty in re­sponse to a prob­lem en­abled by con­stant­ly evolv­ing tech­nol­o­gy and the anonymi­ty so­cial me­dia pro­vides to preda­tors.

In the vast dig­i­tal space, much of it lack­ing safe­guards and checks, abusers find all kinds of ways to in­fil­trate the com­put­ers and phones of vic­tims, sub­ject­ing them to cy­ber­stalk­ing, cy­ber­bul­ly­ing, sex­tor­tion, trolling and oth­er crim­i­nal acts.

An­oth­er ever-present per­il is deep­fake abuse, where ma­nip­u­lat­ed im­ages or videos can re­sult in last­ing and dev­as­tat­ing rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age.

These and oth­er forms of dig­i­tal GBV, crimes com­mit­ted us­ing smart­phones, com­put­ers, cha­t­rooms, so­cial net­work­ing sites, on­line gam­ing sites, GPS track­ers, and video stream­ing plat­forms, are best tack­led with tougher leg­is­la­tion and oth­er reme­dies that pro­vide greater pro­tec­tions and in­sti­tu­tion­al sup­port to vic­tims.

It was un­for­tu­nate that the mat­ter was raised in a man­ner that added an un­nec­es­sary po­lit­i­cal di­men­sion. The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ re­sponse sug­gests there is lit­tle chance of it be­ing se­ri­ous­ly tack­led as a na­tion­al is­sue and is more like­ly to be lim­it­ed to pre-elec­tion PNM-UNC ex­changes.

That is un­for­tu­nate be­cause, with in­creas­ing fre­quen­cy, abusers have been us­ing on­line chan­nels to bul­ly, ha­rass, stalk and in­tim­i­date vic­tims — com­mit­ting crimes that do not in­volve in-per­son con­tact but still in­flict a heavy men­tal and emo­tion­al toll.

Since many vic­tims of dig­i­tal GBV don’t re­port in­ci­dents to the po­lice, in all like­li­hood this crime is much more preva­lent than of­fi­cial T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) sta­tis­tics in­di­cate.

By rais­ing the is­sue, Mr Young, who is just days away from oc­cu­py­ing the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, made it a pos­si­ble agen­da item should he be elect­ed lat­er this year. That means much-need­ed le­gal and ad­min­is­tra­tive mech­a­nisms are sub­ject to an elec­tion time­line and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing crowd­ed out by more po­lit­i­cal­ly ex­pe­di­ent elec­tion cam­paign top­ics.

The need for stronger leg­is­la­tion, sup­port­ed by rel­e­vant in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work, is well known, but like so many press­ing needs in this coun­try, has not pro­gressed be­yond talk.

At present, there is no Cy­ber­crime Act in T&T, so pros­e­cu­tion of dig­i­tal GBV re­lies on var­i­ous laws, in­clud­ing the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act, Chap­ter 11:02, Sec­tion 106, which ad­dress­es the mis­use of tele­phones; the Of­fence Against a Per­son Act, Chap­ter 11:08, which deals with ha­rass­ment; and the Com­put­er Mis­use Act, Chap­ter 11:17, among oth­ers.

This leaves plen­ty of le­gal loop­holes to be ex­ploit­ed, with per­pe­tra­tors get­ting am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ties to weaponise tech­nol­o­gy to harm women and girls.

What is even more fright­en­ing is the po­ten­tial for on­line abuse to es­ca­late be­yond com­put­er and phone screens, threat­en­ing the safe­ty of vic­tims on and of­fline.

This is not a mat­ter that should be sub­ject­ed to the un­cer­tain­ties of an elec­tion cy­cle and is too se­ri­ous to be just a con­ve­nient po­lit­i­cal talk­ing point.