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2 “Superplatforms”, or “platforms of platforms”, are giant internet companies that operate across multiple sectors, such as Apple, Facebook, and Google. See, for example, David Porteous and Olga Morawczynski, “The Superplatforms are Coming … and They Will Transform Financial Inclusion”, NextBillion, 21 December 2018, available at: https://nextbillion.net/the-superplatforms-are-coming-and-they-will-transform-financial-inclusion/ (all internet references were accessed in January 2021). We use this term for the emergence of platforms such as the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) PRIMES (see: www.unhcr.org/primes.html) and the World Food Programme's SCOPE (see: https://tinyurl.com/y4axb5br).

3 See also the thematic issue of the Review on “Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict”, Vol. 96, No. 894, 2015, available at: https://international-review.icrc.org/reviews/irrc-no-894-sexual-violence-armed-conflict.

4 We understand technologization as the incremental development and application of technology-based approaches.

5 António Guterres, Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: Report of the United Nations Secretary-General, UN Doc. S/2019/280, 29 March 2019, available at: https://peacekeeping.un.org/sites/default/files/annual_report_of_the_sg_on_crsv_2018.pdf.

6 To that end, the article builds on and develops insights from Kristin Bergtora Sandvik, Technologizing the Fight against Sexual Violence: A Critical Scoping, PRIO Working Paper, Oslo, 2019, available at: https://gps.prio.org/Publications/Publication/?x=1274; Sandvik, Kristin Bergtora, “Digital Dead Body Management (DDBM): Time to Think it Through”, Journal of Human Rights Practice, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2020CrossRefGoogle Scholar, available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huaa002.

7 While the notion of moral economy is used to describe those norms and habits embedded in market rationalities, more broadly it is also concerned with what it is that lends legitimacy to the constitution of markets and the economy. See Karstedt, Susanne and Farrall, Stephen, “The Moral Economy of Everyday Crime: Markets, Consumers and Citizens”, British Journal of Criminology, Vol. 46, No. 6, 2006CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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11 Haggerty, Kevin D. and Ericson, Richard V., “The Surveillant Assemblage”, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 51, No. 4, 2000CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

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16 See Ian Sample, “Internet ‘Is not Working for Women and Girls’, Says Berners-Lee”, The Guardian, 12 March 2020, available at: www.theguardian.com/global/2020/mar/12/internet-not-working-women-girls-tim-berners-lee.

17 Sandvik, Kristin Bergtora, Jacobsen, Katja Lindskov and McDonald, Sean Martin, “Do No Harm: A Taxonomy of the Challenges of Humanitarian Experimentation”, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 99, No. 904, 2017CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Madianou, Mirca, “Technocolonialism: Digital Innovation and Data Practices in the Humanitarian Response to Refugee Crises”, Social Media + Society, Vol. 5, No. 3, 2019CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Dataveillance is the systematic monitoring of people or groups by means of personal data systems in order to regulate or govern their behaviour. Esposti, Sara Degli, “When Big Data Meets Dataveillance: The Hidden Side of Analytics”, Surveillance & Society, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2014Google Scholar, available at: https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v12i2.5113.

19 K. B. Sandvik, “Wearables for Something Good”, above note 9.

20 See K. B. Sandvik, “Making Wearables in Aid”, above note 9; Sandvik, Kristin Bergtora, Jumbert, Maria Gabrielsen, Karlsrud, John and Kaufmann, Mareile, “Humanitarian Technology: A Critical Research Agenda”, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 96, No. 893, 2014CrossRefGoogle Scholar; K. B. Sandvik, K. L. Jacobsen and S. M. McDonald, above note 17. See also special issue of the International Journal of Transitional Justice on “Technology and Transitional Justice”, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2019.

21 For an exploration of the gendered aspects of risk – that is, how risk shapes the lives of different genders because of their gender – see Hannah-Moffat, Kelly and O'Malley, Pat (eds), Gendered risks, Routledge-Cavendish, London and New York, 2007CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 We also note the risk that digital technology reproduces biases and discrimination in society and in data sets. For example, if the working assumption is that CRSV only affects women and girls, then men, boys, and sexual and gender minority individuals will remain invisible. For an analysis of two examples of algorithmic exclusion of men and boys – in the UNHCR's vulnerability assessments and in drone strikes – see Sandvik, Kristin Bergtora, “Technology, Dead Male Bodies, and Feminist Recognition: Gendering ICT Harm Theory”, Australian Feminist Law Journal, Vol. 44, No. 1, 2018CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 See Eliza Mackintosh and Swati Gupta, “Troll Armies, ‘Deepfake’ Porn Videos and Violent Threats: How Twitter Became So Toxic for India's Women Politicians”, CNN, available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/22/india/india-women-politicians-trolling-amnesty-asequals-intl/index.html.

24 Katerina Fialova and Flavia Fascendini, Voices from Digital Spaces: Technology-Related Violence against Women, Association for Progressive Communications, 2011; Barua, Archana and Barua, Ananya, “Gendering the Digital Body: Women and Computers”, AI & Society, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2012CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shaw, Rhonda, “‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’, Technology, and Questions of Ethics: Cyberfeminism and the Lived Body”, Australian Feminist Studies, Vol. 18, No. 40, 2003CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 But see Dubravka Šimonović, Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Its Causes and Consequences on Online Violence against Women and Girls from a Human Rights Perspective, UN Doc. A/HRC/38/47, 18 June 2018, available at: https://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/HRC/38/47.

26 See, for example, “Sexual Assault and Technology Misuse”, VAWnet, available at: https://vawnet.org/events/sexual-assault-and-technology-misuse.

27 Evgeny Morozov, “The Perils of Perfection”, New York Times, 2 March 2013, available at: www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/opinion/sunday/the-perils-of-perfection.html; see also Evgeny Morozov, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism, PublicAffairs, New York, 2013.

28 See the Callisto website, available at: www.projectcallisto.org.

29 See the LegalFling website, available at: https://legalfling.io/.

30 See Doreen Raheena Sulleyman, “Sexual Assault in Ghana: How Technology Can Help Build Visibility”, GenderIT.org, 6 February 2019, available at: www.genderit.org/feminist-talk/sexual-assault-ghana-how-technology-can-help-build-visibility.

31 Sandvik, Kristin B. and Lohne, Kjersti, “The Rise of the Humanitarian Drone: Giving Content to an Emerging Concept”, Millennium, Vol. 43, No. 1, 2014Google Scholar.

32 Meier, Patrick, “New Information Technologies and Their Impact on the Humanitarian Sector”, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 93, No. 884, 2011CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a discussion of this literature, see Sandvik, Kristin Bergtora, “Now Is the Time to Deliver: Looking for Humanitarian Innovation's Theory of Change”, Journal of International Humanitarian Action, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2017, p. 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Kirby, Paul and Shepherd, Laura J., “The Futures Past of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda”, International Affairs, Vol. 92, No. 2, 2016Google Scholar. See also Baaz, Maria Eriksson and Stern, Maria, Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War? Perceptions, Prescriptions, Problems in the Congo and Beyond, Zed Books, London and New York, 2013CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 See also Anette Bringedal Houge and Kjersti Lohne, “End Impunity! Reducing Conflict-Related Sexual Violence to a Problem of Law”, Law & Society Review, Vol. 51, No. 4, 2017.

35 E. J. Wood, above note 1. See also António Guterres, Report of the Secretary-General on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, 16 April 2018, available at: www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/wp-content/uploads/reports/sg-reports/SG-REPORT-2017-CRSV-SPREAD.pdf.

36 Dara Kay Cohen and Ragnhild Nordås, “Do States Delegate Shameful Violence to Militias? Patterns of Sexual Violence in Recent Armed Conflicts”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 59, No. 5, 2015.

37 Chelsea Young, “HarassMap: Using Crowdsourced Data to Map Sexual Harassment in Egypt”, Technology Innovation Management Review, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2014.

38 Joshua Lyons “Documenting Violations of International Humanitarian Law from Space: A Critical Review of Geospatial Analysis of Satellite Imagery during Armed Conflicts in Gaza (2009), Georgia (2008), and Sri Lanka (2009)”, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 97, No. 866, 2012.

39 Kristin Bergtora Sandvik and Nathaniel Raymond, “Beyond the Protective Effect: Towards a Theory of Harm for Information Communication Technologies in Mass Atrocity Response”, Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2017.

40 Molly K. Land and Jay D. Aronson (eds), New Technologies for Human Rights Law and Practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2018.

41 Kristin Bergtora Sandvik, “The Physicality of Legal Consciousness: Suffering and the Production of Credibility in Refugee Resettlement”, in Richard D. Brown and Richard Ashby Wilson (eds), Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008.

42 Council of Europe, Information Disorder: Toward an Interdisciplinary Framework for Research and Policy Making, 2017, available at: www.coe.int/en/web/freedom-expression/information-disorder.

43 Sam Gregory, “Cameras Everywhere Revisited: How Digital Technologies and Social Media Aid and Inhibit Human Rights Documentation and Advocacy”, Journal of Human Rights Practice, Vol. 11, No. 2, 2019.

44 See Joseph Rocca, “Understanding Generative Adversarial Networks”, Towards Data Science, 7 January 2019, available at: https://towardsdatascience.com/understanding-generative-adversarial-networks-gans-cd6e4651a29.

45 See James Vincent, “New AI Deepfake App Creates Nude Images of Women in Seconds”, The Verge, 27 June 2019, available at: www.theverge.com/2019/6/27/18760896/deepfake-nude-ai-app-women-deepnude-non-consensual-pornography.

46 On the trade-offs between freedom of speech and security, as well as the risks inherent in limiting freedom of speech, see David Kaye, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, UN Doc. A/74/486, 9 October 2019, available at: www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Opinion/A_74_486.pdf.

47 See Anastasia Powell and Tully O'Neill, “Cyber Justice: How Technology is Supporting Victim-Survivors of Rape”, The Conversation, 5 April 2016, available at: https://theconversation.com/cyber-justice-how-technology-is-supporting-victim-survivors-of-rape-56022.

48 Sheila Peuchaud, “Social Media Activism and Egyptians’ Use of Social Media to Combat Sexual Violence: An HiAP Case Study”, Health Promotion International, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2014.

49 Andrea L. Wirtz et al., “Development of a Screening Tool to Identify Female Survivors of Gender-Based Violence in a Humanitarian Setting: Qualitative Evidence from Research among Refugees in Ethiopia”, Conflict and Health, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2013, available at: ww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3695841/.

50 Josef Ruzek and Carolin M. Yeager, “Internet and Mobile Technologies: Addressing the Mental Health of Trauma Survivors in Less Resourced Communities”, Global Mental Health, Vol. 4, 2017; A. L. Wirtz et al., above note 49.

51 Morse, Jaimie, “Documenting Mass Rape: Medical Evidence Collection Techniques as Humanitarian Technology”, Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, Vol. 8, No. 3, 2014, p. 72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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53 This lack of access to digital technologies is also known as the “digital divide”. For discussion on this term, see Lina Gurung, “The Digital Divide: An Inquiry from Feminist Perspectives”, Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology, Vol. 12, 2018; Jennifer Radloff, “Digital Security as Feminist Practice”, Feminist Africa, No. 18, 2013.

54 Mark Latonero and Zachary Gold, Data, Human Rights and Human Security, Data & Society Research Institute, 2015.

55 Access codes are a series of letters and numbers that allow access. The idea, of course, is that legal regulations apply once consent to access has been given. The authors are grateful to the participants at the Expert Roundtable on “Using Tech Innovation to Combat Conflict-Related Sexual Violence”, held in Geneva on 18–19 February 2019 and hosted by Legal Action Worldwide and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, for this point.

56 Maras, Marie-Helen and Miranda, Michelle D., “Overlooking Forensic Evidence? A Review of the 2014 International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict”, Global Security: Health, Science and Policy, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2017Google Scholar.

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58 M.-H. Maras and M. D. Miranda, above note 56.

59 Ibid.

60 See UNHCR, Global Virtual Summit on Digital Identity for Refugees, Concluding Workshop: Summary Conclusions and Recommendations, August 2019, available at: www.unhcr.org/idecosystem/wp-content/uploads/sites/69/2019/12/Conclusions_and_Recommendations.pdf.

61 As noted previously, this section develops insights articulated in K. B. Sandvik, above note 6; see also Kendall, Sara and Nouwen, Sarah, International Criminal Justice and Humanitarianism, University of Cambridge Faculty of Law Research Paper 69, 2018CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 See “Ideal Type”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, available at: www.britannica.com/topic/ideal-type.

63 Fabrice Weissman, “Humanitarian Aid and the International Criminal Court: Grounds for Divorce”, Centre de Réflexion sur l'Action et les Savoirs Humanitaires, Fondation Médecins Sans Frontières, 2009, available at: www.msf-crash.org/en/publications/rights-and-justice/humanitarian-aid-and-international-criminal-court-grounds-divorce.

64 Rosa, Anne-Marie La, “Humanitarian Organizations and International Criminal Tribunals, or Trying to Square the Circle”, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 88, No. 861, 2006Google Scholar.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid.

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70 Although humanitarian actors have been present in some locations for several decades and are increasingly present in protracted conflicts, a state of emergency animates their intervention; see Fassin, Didier and Pandolfi, Mariella, Contemporary States of Emergency: The Politics of Military and Humanitarian Interventions, Zone Books, New York, 2010Google Scholar.

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