‘Educate your boys’: France rallies Nigeria to confront hidden scars of digital violence against girls

On a warm December evening inside the French Embassy in Abuja, the closing of the global 16 Days of Activism felt less like an ending and more like a call to conscience.

Representing Ambassador Marc Fonbaustier, Deputy Ambassador Jean Francois Haspenue spoke with the urgency of someone who has watched harm migrate from streets to screens, and resisted its normalisation.

“The web has become a real arena of gender-based violence. It’s not freedom of speech; it’s an abuse meant to harm,” he said, naming threats, hate speech, and the non-consensual sharing of images as attacks that spill from virtual spaces into women’s real lives.

This year’s theme, “Unite to end digital violence against all women and girls,” comes from the European Commission, but Haspenue made it clear the choice also reflects what frontline partners see daily: online harassment that multiplies in packs, devastates mental health, jeopardizes careers, and isolates women from public life.

France’s push is less about abstract advocacy and more about disrupting a pattern that has spread fast and silently through social media and messaging threads.

“We see you”: a message to abusers behind the screen

His words were direct, stripped of diplomatic vagueness, stating that, “it’s not because you believe you are anonymous that we don’t see you. We are aware of your activities.”

He described a multi-faceted threat: psychological, professional, even physical, and insisted society must refuse to normalize the harm.

The stance is both a warning and an invitation: accountability is coming, and the public has a role in demanding it.

The embassy and partners (civil society organizations, the UN, and fellow missions such as the EU and Canada) ran at least 20 activities across 14 states, involving 11 Nigerian partners.

Debates, trainings, school and community outreach, and cultural programming culminated in joint film screenings at the Institut Français.

Haspenue insisted the movement cannot be “women fighting for themselves,” but a community standing together.

He invoked a French refrain, "educate your boys," as a simple, radical commitment: model responsible masculinity, teach respect, and understand that being a man carries obligations not to harm “the other side of humanity.”

Asked about Nigeria’s difficult road to justice for survivors, Haspenue acknowledged the reality and returned to the practical: advocacy, support systems, and concrete partner work that sustains survivors through the long arc of accountability.

“Not only for the last 16 days. It’s really 365 engagements all over the year,” he emphasized.

France’s broader relationship with Nigeria stretches across science, art, entrepreneurship, politics, development, and humanitarian work.

Haspenue called it “feminist diplomacy,” not a siloed program, but a thread stitched through everything: make partners aware of what gender equality means for women’s daily lives, and make that awareness a condition of serious collaboration.

As Haspenue put it, feminism in diplomacy means weaving gender equality into everything the mission does, from education and science to development and humanitarian work.

It’s a simple, stubborn proposition, but it makes the world safer for women everywhere, whether online or off.