Technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) has quietly become one of the most dangerous frontiers of violence against women in Pakistan. From deepfake pornography to image-based abuse and coordinated online smear campaigns, digital spaces are increasingly weaponised to silence women, destroy reputations, and, in some cases, cost lives. Yet Pakistan continues to confront these harms with fragmented laws and outdated regulatory thinking, while the structural driver of the crisis remains unaddressed: the absence of a comprehensive data protection law.

Existing legislation, particularly the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016, focuses largely on criminalisation after harm has occurred. It does little to regulate how personal data is collected, stored, shared, or misused in the first place. This gap is not abstract. It is visible in repeated data breaches involving banks, telecom companies, and state institutions such as NADRA, exposing citizens to identity theft, blackmail, impersonation, and offline violence. For women, whose personal data is often used as a tool of social control, the consequences are disproportionately severe to the extent that breach of such data can directly mean death in the name of honour.

Recent years have seen a surge in TFGBV cases documented by civil society and law enforcement........

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