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Imagine waking up to a stranger --
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sometimes multiple strangers --
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questioning your right to existence
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for something that you wrote online,
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waking up to an angry message,
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scared and worried for your safety.
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Welcome to the world of cyberharassment.
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The kind of harassment that women face in Pakistan is very serious
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and leads to sometimes deadly outcomes.
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This kind of harassment keeps women from accessing the internet --
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essentially, knowledge.
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It's a form of oppression.
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Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world,
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with 140 million people having access to mobile technologies,
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and 15 percent internet penetration.
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And this number doesn't seem to go down with the rise of new technologies.
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Pakistan is also the birthplace of the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner,
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Malala Yousafzai.
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But that's just one aspect of Pakistan.
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Another aspect is where the twisted concept of honor
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is linked to women and their bodies;
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where men are allowed to disrespect women
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and even kill them sometimes
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in the name of so-called "family honor";
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where women are left to die right outside their houses
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for speaking to a man on a mobile phone,
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in the name of "family honor."
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Let me say this very clearly:
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it's not honor;
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it's a cold-blooded murder.
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I come from a very small village in Punjab, Pakistan,
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where women are not allowed to pursue their higher education.
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The elders of my extended family didn't allow their women
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to pursue their higher education or their professional careers.
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However, unlike the other male guardians of my family,
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my father was one who really supported my ambitions.
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To get my law degree,
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of course, it was really difficult,
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and [there were] frowns of disapproval.
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But in the end, I knew it's either me or them,
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and I chose myself.
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(Applause)
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My family's traditions and expectations for a woman
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wouldn't allow me to own a mobile phone until I was married.
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And even when I was married,
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this tool became a tool for my own surveillance.
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When I resisted this idea of being surveilled by my ex-husband,
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he really didn't approve of this
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and threw me out of his house,
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along with my six-month-old son, Abdullah.
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And that was the time when I first asked myself, "Why?
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Why are women not allowed to enjoy the same equal rights
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enshrined in our Constitution?
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While the law states that a woman has the same equal access
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to the information,
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why is it always men -- brothers, fathers and husbands --
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who are granting these rights to us,
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effectively making the law irrelevant?"
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So I decided to take a step,
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instead of keep questioning these patriarchal structures
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and societal norms.
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And I founded the Digital Rights Foundation in 2012
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to address all the issues and women's experiences in online spaces
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and cyberharassment.
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From lobbying for free and safe internet
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to convincing young women
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that access to the safe internet is their fundamental, basic, human right,
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I'm trying to play my part in igniting the spark
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to address the questions that have bothered me all these years.
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With a hope in my heart,
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and to offer a solution to this menace,
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I started Pakistan's and the region's first cyberharassment help line
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in December 2016 --
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(Applause)
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to extend my support to the women who do not know who to turn to
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when they face serious threats online.
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I think of the women who do not have the necessary support
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to deal with the mental trauma when they feel unsafe in online spaces,
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and they go about their daily activities,
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thinking that there is a rape threat in their in-box.
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Safe access to the internet is an access to knowledge,
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and knowledge is freedom.
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When I fight for women's digital rights,
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I'm fighting for equality.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)