The Ghost in the Code: Why Global Law is Failing to Stop the Digital War on Women

Abstract

We are witnessing a systemic failure of legal accountability in cyberspace. Despite the growth of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) from basic harassment to complex AI-based warfare, including deepfake misuse and automated stalking, the digital law response is still lagging. It is a culture of impunity in which the perpetrators act with almost absolute anonymity, and justice statutes are symbols rather than actual shields. By applying feminist legal theory, this research interrogates how traditional legal definitions of "harm" and "privacy" fail to account for the gendered dimensions of digital surveillance and bodily autonomy. It further frames TFGBV as a fundamental violation of women’s human rights, arguing that the failure to regulate digital spaces constitutes a state-sanctioned withdrawal of the right to live free from violence. Using a stress-test methodology applied to three core International Legal frameworks, the article applies these tests to a sample set of high-impact TFGBV cases over 2024-2025. Following such cases from the first police report to their resolution, prioritising a survivor-centred approach, ensuring that the legal friction recorded is viewed through the lived experiences of those targeted, the research provides an empirical map of where in that process account holds, and applies comparative legal theorising to make sense of the friction between state sovereignty and transnational/borderless digital crime. This research sets the stage for a new era of accountability,
advocating that, without reforming the balance of proof and platform liability through three feminist interventions, laws will remain bystanders, as women are systematically erased from public digital life.