CEDAW, Digital Violence and State Due Diligence: Assessing India’s Response within a Global Framework

Abstract Online gender-based violence (OGBV) is escalating worldwide. This article argues that the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), read together with its General Recommendations, provides an operationalizable due diligence framework for evaluating state responsibility for OGBV across prevention, protection, prosecution, punishment and reparation. It develops this argument through India, where a rapidly expanding digital-regulatory landscape offers an important site for assessing how due diligence obligations are translated into domestic law, enforcement, intermediary regulation and civil-society interventions. The article assesses the state’s alignment with CEDAW and identifies structural challenges hindering compliance, including regulatory fragmentation, weak enforcement, limited cross-sectoral coordination, inadequate remedies, competing rights concerns and entrenched misogyny. It provides a structured method for assessing state accountability and shows that digital due diligence must be operationalised through coordinated, survivor-centred, rights-sensitive digital governance. It advances debates on digital governance, gender justice and state responsibility under international law.