Explicit Harms of Non-Explicit Images

In many of the countries where major technology platforms are based, image-based abuse is defined as being of a sexual nature.¹ The laws, the content moderation systems, and the reporting tools that exist to protect women were subsequently built around a specific kind of harm: the non-consensual sharing of nude or sexually explicit images. But our research finds that for millions of women around the world, almost any photograph can be weaponised, and harm is determined more by what the image can be made to mean, than what it actually shows.

A photo of a woman sitting next to a male classmate. A video of her dancing at a party. Even an ordinary selfie in the wrong person’s hands. For women in Pakistan, and many other parts of the world, images like these can trigger punishments including forced marriage, loss of work or education, community ostracisation, violence, and in extreme cases, death. The harm in these cases comes from who holds the image, who sees it, and what meaning is imposed on it, not its content.

This research exists because there is a gap in what platforms, policies and legal systems define as harmful, and what many women around the world – including in Pakistan – experience as harmful. And that gap needs closing.

This is an excerpt from Chayn’s research Explicit Harms of Non-Explicit Images: Defining Image-Based Abuse in Pakistan and the Diaspora designed for policy-makers.

Read the full report on Chayn’s website.²

Participants described a wide range of images they considered private, intimate, or potentially dangerous if shared without consent: hair visible without a hijab or head covering; Western clothing, revealing clothing or anything that shows the contour of the body; a photo dancing or laughing at a social event; being photographed alongside a man who is not a husband or a close family member; a photo taken at night, in a bedroom, or at a location with a certain reputation; a voice note; a screenshot of a fabricated conversation; or an AI-generated image created from a photograph of someone’s face.

The term Image-Based Abuse is sometimes used interchangeably with phrases like intimate image abuse or the non-consensual sharing of intimate images. At Chayn, we deliberately avoid the word intimate in this context. The meaning of intimacy shifts across cultures, communities, and even individuals, and understanding what it means in Pakistan is a central aim of this study.

In our definition, image-based abuse refers to the taking, sharing, or threat of sharing an image or video of someone without their consent. The legal language varies across countries, but most definitions include nude, semi-nude, or sexually explicit images or videos – whether they are real or artificially created or manipulated, such as in the case of deepfakes.

Technology-facilitated image-based abuse is regulated differently across jurisdictions. In many countries there is no single ‘IBA law’ and prosecutors rely on a combination of offences (e.g., intimate image offences, harassment, privacy/data protection, child sexual abuse material, defamation), depending on the facts.

Despite the growing recognition of this harm, global legal protections remain inconsistent. At present, 110 countries have no laws against intimate image abuse. Sixty-seven countries have what are considered “sufficient” laws – meaning they align with Article 16 of the UN Cybercrime Convention – while eighteen have laws that fall short of this standard, including the United States, Japan, and Nepal.⁶ So far, Australia appears to be the only country that explicitly recognises images of a person without clothing of religious or cultural significance as intimate images.⁷

Harm, the third side of the triangle, is also poorly understood by existing frameworks, particularly because it so frequently extends beyond the individual survivor. As we found in this report, when an image circulates without consent, it moves through families, neighbourhoods and communities. The harm is not only psychological but social, economic and, in some cases, life-threatening. Nargis and Sanam, two activists from Balochistan whose experiences are described in the full version of the report,¹⁰ did not have sexually explicit images shared. What circulated were their words, their political identities, and their visible presence in public life, but the harm was no less severe.

Cultural context is threaded through all three sides of this triangle. What counts as harmful intent, what constitutes meaningful consent, and what registers as harm are all shaped by the social worlds in which images travel. A framework built only on Western legal definitions of intimate content will fail the women whose experiences were shared in this report. Understanding how intent, consent, and harm interact, and how culture shapes all three, is foundational to fully understanding image-based abuse and achieving justice for survivors.

A 2024 Karachi district court case illustrates what justice can look like when all three sides of the triangle are taken seriously. A district and sessions court in Karachi sentenced a man to nine years in prison for posting pictures of his wife online that were described by press coverage as “indecent” or “inappropriate.”¹¹ He was also fined Rs 90,000 ($320 USD / £253 GBP). According to the prosecution, he had shared these photos with her brother via social media and used them to blackmail her. The court observed that “the accused tarnished the dignity of the complainant and her family, violated the complainant’s modesty, displayed obscene videos without her consent, and displayed them publicly”, reflecting the collective nature of harm that women in this research described repeatedly.

For many survivors, their deepest wish is to be believed. Women repeatedly described the emotional exhaustion of trying to convince others that what had happened was real, serious and dangerous. “I just want them to believe me,” Warda, a survivor from Faisalabad explained. “I started questioning my own sanity.” The disbelief they encounter from families, institutions and even friends often forces them into defence mode at a point when they are most vulnerable.

Survivors imagined institutions where frontline officers are gender-sensitised and not dismissive, where female officers are present, respected, and empowered, where survivors are believed and not interrogated, where reporting systems are simple, predictable, and confidential, where investigations stop perpetrators from sharing images further and where cases do not take months or years to resolve.

Those who work closely with survivors were equally clear about what needs to change. Ayesha at the Digital Rights Foundation described law enforcement’s online complaint management platform as “basically ineffective” – a system where survivors of online harassment and TFGBV file reports and simply are not assisted in the manner that they need to be. For women who cannot travel to their relevant cyber crime office, or their mobility depends on a male family member, and for whom involving a male family member carries severe consequences, that online portal represents one of the only potentially safer routes into the system. When it fails to respond, they are left without any effective state recourse at all. She was clear that the legal authorities must strengthen their online complaint system so that it registers complaints, processes them, and generates real follow-up rather than a dead end.

She also pointed to persistent problems with how officers respond when images are not explicitly sexual. In those cases, she said, officers tend to “brush off” complainants, telling them there is nothing to be done. “Intimate is not always sexual,” she said, underscoring the need for state institutions to recognise the broader spectrum of online harm when assessing and responding to complaints. Alongside the systemic issue, she also noted the prevalence of victim blaming within law enforcement, which further deters survivors from seeking justice.

Reem, a trans woman activist with experience working both in policing and government, offered a detailed vision of what meaningful institutional reform would look like in response to these challenges. Training, she argued, is the central issue, but it must go far deeper than box-ticking. She called for mandatory gender-sensitisation workshops, with a clear rule that only officers who complete the training should be assigned to handle these cases. That training should be trauma-informed, teaching officers what trauma is, how it presents, and what its consequences can be. Critically, she argued that government officials alone should not design these modules – civil society experts must be involved, and the training should incorporate the lived experiences of women and transgender people, told in their own words.

She also identified a structural gap that cuts across institutions. For image- and video-based abuse cases, standard operating procedures (SOPs) simply do not exist. She called urgently for SOPs to be developed, formally introduced and actively monitored for compliance. And she returned to a point she described as crucial – that transgender people and women must be actively recruited into cybercrime units:

Another strong theme was the desire for widespread education: not just general cyber-safety advice, but specific, real-life scenarios that reflect what actually happens and give women concrete examples they can relate to and learn from. Survivors wish organisations would use explicit language or terms such as “nudes leaked online” so that survivors searching online for support in panic can find accurate, relatable information. They suggested that when support pages use language that is not known to many women, such as “non-consensual sharing of intimate images”, those searching for support will not know what terms to search for and may miss vital information.

Generic phrasing does not help, participants explained. It hides the situations people need to see reflected. “Words hold a lot of shame” Nida, a survivor from Lahore, said, “but being explicit helps someone recognise… this is what happened to me.”

Women also want accessible workshops that reach girls in schools and colleges, especially because many first experienced image-based harm as teenagers without even knowing the term. Raising awareness, they argued, helps to normalise help-seeking and dismantle silence. Survivors also emphasised the importance of knowledge, including where to go, what to do, what rights they have, and how to act quickly. Lack of information, money, and access continue to prevent many from reporting at all. More knowledge, they argued, would reduce harm and empower girls, hopefully before crises occur.

Saida, a survivor from Karachi, broadened the conversation further. She argued that any meaningful prevention effort must name the wider social context in which image-based abuse occurs. Without acknowledging patriarchal norms and the community dynamics that shape women’s lives and reputations, she suggested, education risks becoming superficial. Women are not navigating these harms in isolation; they are doing so within families and neighbourhoods where honour, silence, and blame often determine what is possible.

She strongly advocated for greater public awareness of cybercrime laws and clear reporting mechanisms, alongside preventive education that genuinely empowers women online. But she was equally clear that knowledge for survivors alone is not enough. Support systems, particularly support from mothers and trusted peer networks, were described as central to resilience and also sites for education and awareness-raising. Without that backing, she reflected, many women “cannot even begin” to confront what has happened to them, let alone seek justice or redress.

In this framing, education is also about shifting the social conditions that make image-based abuse so powerful, and so silencing, in the first place. That shift, participants argued, cannot rest on women and girls alone. Several women were clear that prevention requires engaging boys directly. If patriarchal norms, entitlement, and peer dynamics underpin much of the harm, then those who circulate, trade, or threaten to leak images must also be part of the conversation.

When we presented our policy recommendations to relevant stakeholders, we were often met with a question: what about the false reports? It is a question we are familiar with in the gender-based violence sector, especially when we talk about trusting survivors. As such, it is an important one for us to respond to.

The first scenario we want to take a closer look at is one in which a woman who has been photographed reports a picture even though it is not causing her any harm. It could be that she is doing so simply because she does not like the picture or the way she looks in it. At Chayn, we would argue that this is a good enough reason to take down the picture. The argument behind supporting legislation framed around consent and the right to one’s own picture is that women should not need to prove harm. In fact, it should not matter if there is any harm at all – if a woman wants her picture taken down, it is her right and that right should be respected.

The second case is when a report is made by a third party. In this case, a possible way to avoid malicious reporting is to request that when a user reports on behalf of another person, they identify that person. If the person is a user of the platform on which the content is reported, the next step is to contact them to confirm whether they want the picture taken down.

We also believe that AI and pattern recognition can support the identification of malicious reports. When trolls engage in malicious reporting, they will most likely do this at a large scale, reporting many pictures from many unrelated individuals. It is therefore worth analysing the reporting history of an account. Are they making a report for the first time or have they only done it a few times? Or is the activity happening on a mass scale? Is there other suspicious activity coming from the account? We believe those data points can be used to weed out malicious reporting while still allowing women and their loved ones to report images they legitimately want taken down.