Mining the web for insights on violence against women in the MENA Region and Arab States

Violence Against Women (VAW) is one of the most commonly occurring human rights violations in the world; the Arab region is no exception.

At least 37% of Arab women have experienced some form of violence in their lifetime, yet up-to-date data about attitudes and social norms around VAW is lacking due to cost, time, and bias constraints. In the Arab region, understanding social norms around gender-based violence is important for creating effective interventions to eliminate VAW.

This report seeks to fill this data gap by using data from social media platforms, specifically YouTube and Twitter, to assess the Arabic speaking populations’ attitude on violence and discrimination against women.