Community of Practice (CoP) members exchange insights and plan strategic activities.
Synergy in Action: Strengthening Jordan’s Response to Digital Violence Against Women
When a group of institutions stopped working in silos and started coordinating as a community, they helped women reach safer, more consistent support—faster.
From harassment to sextortion, DVAW is not a problem that any institution can tackle alone. Survivors encounter multiple systems: police, regulators, courts, social services, universities, platforms, media. And the weakest handoff can become the point where support breaks down.
In Jordan, ten senior practitioners came together to reduce those weak points, working within their existing mandates. They formed a year-long Community of Practice (CoP) to strengthen the national response to DVAW—putting SecDev’s ecosystem approach into practice through cross-sector action.
From the start, the CoP was built for action. Members didn’t just share insights—they carried them back into their organizations and put them to work in everyday decisions. What follows is a look at that translation in practice. It shows them mapping the real path of DVAW cases, then shaping procedures that keep coordination strong after the project ends.
Built for action
IRCKHF team members with legal experts during a CoP-led policy discussion.
The CoP sat within a multi-layered SecDev Foundation initiative to strengthen legal, psychosocial, educational, and technical responses to DVAW in Jordan and Iraq. The initiative was funded by the International Development Research Centre. And in Jordan, the Information and Research Centre–King Hussein Foundation (IRCKHF) led implementation. That included convening and hosting the CoP, and they proved exceptionally well-suited to the task.
IRCKHF knew firsthand that DVAW can’t be addressed through one system alone. Cases move across law and enforcement, platforms and technology, public policy, and the social norms that shape reporting and accountability. That’s why the CoP brought together such a wide diversity of working members to reach across traditional boundaries.
CoP members included legal and judicial experts, digital and media specialists, civil society actors, and academics. Government bodies represented were the Jordanian National Commission for Women, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, the Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship, and the Public Security Directorate’s Cybercrime Unit. A representative from the Danish Institute for Human Rights added an international perspective.
This mix allowed the group to test ideas against operational realities: what regulators can message publicly, what enforcement can investigate, what courts need to see, and what universities can teach. It also kept the work grounded in what civil society can safely support and what public narratives help or harm survivors.
Rawan Rbehat, IRCKHF Senior Researcher, put it this way:
Over the course of the year, members showed up consistently and helped create a credible space for decision-making, coordination, and quality assurance—not just consultation. Their feedback shaped the work at every stage and, just as importantly, their commitment continued to inspire us.
Suzan Saif of the Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship added:
The CoP provided a rare space to reframe digital violence as a cross-cutting issue linked to human rights, public safety, and digital governance. It enabled participants to move beyond siloed mandates and connect technical, regulatory, and policy discussions with real-world protection needs, contributing to a more coherent national response.
And according to Dr. Sakher Al-Khasawneh (legal, media ethics and cybercrime expert):
The CoP provided a rare and structured space that brought together institutions working on different but interconnected aspects of digital violence against women. Through this process, I gained a clearer and more practical understanding of institutional mandates and how regulatory bodies, enforcement entities, and civil society actors complement one another.
In short, the CoP was more than a forum for discussion. It became a practical coordination space where institutions could align, reality-check proposals, and move toward work that could actually be adopted.
What the group delivered
CoP members and guests dig into a legal policy discussion.
Once the CoP was running, it became easier to connect work that often runs on separate tracks. Research shaped training and policy discussions, and lessons from practice fed back into the evidence.
Across the wider initiative, research and action moved together. Legal landscape reviews and judicial analyses informed stakeholder mapping and case studies. Findings could then shape both practice and policy. Universities embedded DVAW content across law, media, women’s studies, and IT programmes. Judges and lawyers took part in targeted training, supported by a practical Lawyer’s Guide. Structured policy dialogues helped align advocacy and awareness—so government, civil society, academia, and regulators move in the same direction.
The CoP also sharpened the project’s focus. Members steered work away from duplicating legal reviews and toward analysing judicial rulings. They strengthened policy and training materials through structured feedback, grounding outputs in the realities of overlapping mandates.
One of the CoP’s major achievements was mapping how DVAW cases move from the moment a survivor reports harm to the point of resolution. Members clarified responsibilities across the Family Protection Department, the Public Security Directorate’s Cybercrime Unit, and civil society support services. That exposed gaps and overlaps in the state’s response to survivors.
Once we saw that clearly, coordination became practical, not theoretical,” said CoP member Yara Al-Rafie from the Jordan Open Source Association. “We now know who to call and when—and that makes a real difference for survivors.”
From there, the group moved from diagnosis to design. Members agreed to formalize improved coordination through Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for DVAW across government and health institutions—anchoring effective practices beyond the project cycle.
Informal coordination was no longer enough,” said IRCKHF Director Ayman Halasa. “The SOPs were our collective decision—to protect what we had built and ensure it continues beyond the life of the project.”
With that foundation in place, the group also endorsed selective expansion into adjacent systems—child protection and cybersecurity. They engaged the National Council for Family Affairs, the Family and Juvenile Protection Department, and the National Cybersecurity Center. To keep momentum, members agreed on regular hybrid meetings and check-ins between sessions.
Institutional follow-through
From left: Dr. Ayman Halasa (IRCKHF) with Ameena Arabiyat (Cybercrimes Unit) and Dr. Mohammad Tarawneh (TRC).
System-level decisions last if institutions can carry them into day-to-day practice. In the CoP, follow-through began when members translated shared learning into actions their organizations could realistically take—within existing roles, tools, and channels.
For the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), that translation meant treating DVAW as more than a social harm. It also framed it as an issue of regulation, public communications, and coordination across the digital ecosystem. In the words of Dr. Mohammad Al-Tarawneh, Director of the TRC’s Commissioners’ Affairs Unit:
My participation added a practical dimension to my work in legal and regulatory affairs and deepened my understanding of the real impacts of digital violence against women and girls… It highlighted the gap between legal texts and effective implementation, and reinforced the need for coordination between regulators, telecommunications providers, digital platforms, and law-enforcement bodies. It also strengthened the case for preventive approaches based on awareness, digital empowerment, and safe technology use.
That extended into concrete public outreach. Dr. Al-Tarawneh carried priorities back into the institution. The TRC then advanced public awareness efforts by broadcasting official messages through its own channels. These campaigns highlighted risks, promoted safe technology use, and reinforced the Commission’s role in safeguarding society from emerging digital threats.
The CoP also carried follow-through into the next layer of the ecosystem: universities and future practitioners. Through partnerships with several institutions, members translated complex DVAW issues into practical learning—supporting student-led awareness podcasts and a moot court based on a real DVAW case. Designed and implemented by students, these activities helped equip future lawyers, technologists, and media professionals with rights-based and technically informed approaches.
Why this model worked—and lasted
Dr. Sakher Al-Khasawneh, Rania Sarayreh, Lina Momani, and Lt. Eng. Ameena Arabiyat during an end-of-year review meeting.
Long beyond the formal life of the CoP, members kept collaborating. They continued to review guides, align workplans, and shape agendas to keep outputs practical and consistent with national priorities. And that continuity didn’t happen by accident. It was built on trust and credibility over time. It made space for hard conversations—about where responsibilities begin and end, where systems fail survivors, and what cooperation looks like when mandates overlap.
Addressing DVAW requires enforcement, regulatory alignment, legal precision, academic uptake, and civil society reach to move in step. The CoP created conditions for this alignment. It built a shared vocabulary, predictable collaboration, and clearer role assignment—especially between enforcement, regulators, and civil society. That helped coordination move from goodwill to informed collaboration.
For civil society and media actors, this shift from consultation to collective learning was especially significant. Rania Sarayreh, founder of the Jordanian Network to Combat Digital Violence Against Female Journalists, reflected:
My participation was one of the few professional experiences that had a genuinely lasting impact on my work. What stood out was not only the diversity of expertise, but the quality of the space it created for learning, reflection, and exchange.
She noted that discussions were practical and open, shaping how she approaches digital violence in her own initiatives. Over time, the collaboration grew into a trusted professional network. It has continued beyond the programme itself, rooted in relationships, shared knowledge, and collective commitment.
Sustained facilitation and early member input helped work streams converge into a coherent response that institutions can use. Coordinating across government, civil society, academia, and the private sector isn’t easy. It means navigating different priorities and constraints. And so IRCKHF invested in the unglamorous work of relationship-building and keeping discussions anchored to shared purpose. The result was less duplication, greater complementarity, and a more holistic response to digital violence.
Well after the project concluded, the CoP has stayed connected. Members met in person and kept in touch via WhatsApp. They protected momentum and kept government and parliamentary counterparts informed. They also kept pitching in where needed—through judging, content review, and activity design. In other words, this wasn’t a committee that met and dissolved. It changed how institutions work together on DVAW.
A network of influential actors learned from one another and strengthened coordination within their mandates. And they continue to champion the work inside their institutions and beyond. That is synergy in action, and a practical endorsement of the ecosystem approach.
