Pathways to Digital Justice

The white paper identifies a significant 'accountability gap' in how legal systems handle technology-enabled harms, such as deepfake pornography and algorithmic bias. It argues that current protections are too focused on privacy rather than broader human rights, self-determination, and personhood. The report proposes two primary pathways for governments: increasing the judicial capacity to adjudicate digital claims and creating comprehensive, trauma-informed victim resource guides to help survivors navigate the justice process.

• There is a systemic 'accountability gap' where victims of digital harm lack clear pathways to justice, allowing bad actors to operate with impunity.
• Technology-enabled harms, particularly deepfakes, disproportionately target women; 96% of the 85,000 deepfakes circulating online in 2019 were pornographic, and over 99% of those targeted women.
• Digital harms should be viewed as violations of self-determination and personhood rather than exclusively as privacy breaches, as they impact fundamental human rights including freedom of assembly and thought.
• Current legal frameworks are often outdated or fragmented, relying on analogue laws (such as defamation or copyright) that are not fit for the digital era, especially when dealing with anonymous or international defendants.
• Automated decision-making systems often lack fair process, transparency, and accountability, leading to biased outcomes; for example, the COMPAS algorithm was found to wrongly label Black defendants as high-risk at twice the rate of white defendants.
• The report recommends that governments modernize judicial capacity to adjudicate more claims and develop a victim resource guide containing 10 core components, including a roadmap of legal options and access to a 'digital victims investigator'.

APA

World Economic Forum (2021). Pathways to Digital Justice. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Pathways_to_Digital_Justice_2021.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Pathways to Digital Justice. 2021. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Pathways_to_Digital_Justice_2021.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Pathways to Digital Justice |date=September 2021 |url=https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Pathways_to_Digital_Justice_2021.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2021pathways, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Pathways to Digital Justice}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2021}, month = sep, url = {https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Pathways_to_Digital_Justice_2021.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }