Access to the internet and smartphones is increasing in the Pacific (GSMA, 2023). There are now an estimated 6 million mobile subscribers across the Pacific Islands and 3.5 million mobile internet users, with all indicators showing further uptake, penetration, and access (GSMA, 2023, pp. 6–7). This will deliver benefits in the fields of healthcare, education, emergency response, disaster recovery, general connectivity, and economic development. However, this report is concerned with the impacts on domestic and family violence (DFV), particularly how the increased access to smartphones and the internet may encourage and facilitate technology-facilitated abuse (TFA).
The global experience demonstrates that women and children face acute challenges of abuse, harassment, stalking, and violence that are enabled or facilitated through technology and the internet. In Australia, for example, 99.3% of those who work in the DFV advocacy sector have clients who experience TFA (Woodlock et al, 2020, p. 2). Around the world, technology-facilitated gender-based violence is ‘alarmingly widespread’, with a study of 18 countries suggesting that 59.9% of women had experienced some form of TFA (United Nations Population Fund, 2025, p. 5). Children also face alarming levels of sexual abuse, bullying, harassment, economic exploitation, and exposure to harmful content via the internet and smartphones (UNICEF, 2024, p. 4).
It is very common for instances of DFV around the world to now have a technological component. Perpetrators use a wide variety of technology to track, harass, stalk, intimidate, manipulate, and ‘gaslight’ their targets (Eterovic-Soric et al., 2017). The forms of TFA are numerous and can include the use of GPS trackers, hidden cameras, social media, spyware, non-consensual image-based abuse, and a range of other niche technology facilitated attacks such as harnessing Bluetooth capabilities (Eterovic-Soric et al., 2017, p. 282). The growth of consumer ‘IoT’ (the internet of things) is a particular area of concern for DFV (Tanczer et al., 2018; Lopez-Neira et al., 2019). Other developments such as the rise of ‘deep-fakes’ and use of AI are extremely worrisome (Dodge & Johnstone, 2019). The full range of potential technological threats are becoming harder to track and TFA is causing considerable problems for victim survivors of DFV, including significant psychological harm (Mandau, 2020; Stevens et al., 2020), in addition to facilitating physical abuse and murder (Citron, 2015; Todd et al., 2021).
The purpose of this report is to improve our understanding of the prevalence of TFA in the context of DFV that is experienced by women and children in Fiji, Tonga and Vanuatu. It seeks to illuminate how TFA has developed in the context of rising internet and smartphone access; measure the prevalence and rates of TFA; take a snapshot of what types of TFA are currently dominant in Fiji, Tonga and Vanuatu; and understand the support services that are currently in place in Fiji, Tonga and Vanuatu and how these can be improved. International experience often suggests that those supporting women and children are struggling to respond to TFA (Lopez Neira et al., 2019; Freed et al., 2017; Tanczer et al., forthcoming). TFA can often outstrip the technical knowledge of those who support women and children, with many workers not having the skills or abilities to identify and suitably respond to various forms of TFA. There is also some evidence that victim-survivors of TFA are still ‘not taken seriously’ by organisations like the police (Harris & Woodlock, 2019, p. 531). This research aimed to establish if this is consistent with the experience in Fiji, Tonga and Vanuatu.
Read the full report HERE.