Some violence makes no sound.
No knock. No witness. Just a screen, glowing in the dark. Seven women. Same night. Same weight.
Seven stories from Uganda, fictional in name, real in circumstance. Each one carries its own way through: rights, justice, action.
Seven women. Seven stories.
Read them in any order. Before each story begins, a note tells you what it holds, and every story has a way out and a way through.
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{{ epHarm }}About her story
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Answered only in your head. Nothing was recorded.
Or just keep scrolling. Answering in your head counts.
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{{ epName }}'s {{ epObject }} rests in the voice basket now. If her story would matter to someone you know, it travels well on WhatsApp.
The link carries no tracking. Nothing about you travels with it.
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The question is yours to carry. There is nowhere here to answer it.
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{{ rehearsalCloser }} The Pathway
{{ companionTradeoff }} All four companion cards are printable from the Pathway.
The Pathway
If digital violence reaches you, these are the steps the seven women shared. Take them at your pace, in your order, except the first one. That one always goes first.
Could someone close to you see your device: a partner, a family member, anyone?
Change nothing suddenly.
Get to a safe device or a trusted person before you act: a friend's phone, a work computer, a drop-in centre. Your safety sets the pace. Everything below can wait until you are somewhere safe.
Good. The steps below are yours to take in order.
Companions for the road
Four protective practices, carried as companions: the same cards walkers of the exhibition take home. Each names its trade-off plainly. English for now; French and Swahili are in process, and Luganda follows its printed deck.
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Card text is interim: before launch it must match the printed deck verbatim, per language. That check is a launch gate.
It is not your fault.
Support resources
You are allowed to ask. Every contact here is confirmed in writing with the organization before it goes live. A number that doesn't answer is a promise broken, and we don't ship those.
Clear my traces
One tap wipes what this site remembers on this device: reading progress and preferences. Your browser history is separate: to clear that too, use your browser's "Clear history" or read in a private/incognito tab.
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The privacy policy, in plain words
This site collects nothing about you. No analytics, no cookies, no trackers, no accounts. Nothing you read, tap, or answer is sent anywhere.
What the site remembers (reading progress and preferences) lives only in this browser's storage on this device, and the button above erases it in one tap. Links you share carry nothing about you, and the site sets no identifiers of any kind.
The hosting service delivers pages the way any host must; this site adds no logging, no analytics, and no identifiers of its own on top of it.
Your rights stay simple because the data stays simple: everything stored is on your device, and it is yours to erase at any time. Questions: programs@baseiota.org.
About these stories
Nankya, Bukirwa, Nakigudde, Nalongo, Nandutu, Awila and Sofia are fictional in name and real in circumstance.
Each carries one documented pattern of technology-facilitated gender-based violence: intimate images leaked as political sabotage, a coordinated pile-on, an AI deepfake, doxxing, intimate-partner spyware, sextortion, digital stalking. The patterns are not invented. Ugandan women have lived every one of them. And in one widely reported case, a woman whose stolen images were leaked was herself arrested, while the man who leaked them was not.
They stand for the many women for whom this violence remains unnamed, unreported and unprosecuted.
In every story, the blame belongs to the person who chose to do harm, never to the woman who was targeted.
The scale of the problem
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Sources: Pollicy (2020); DataReportal Digital 2024: Uganda; ACHPR Resolution (2022); African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms; documented public cases 2014–2019.
Where this came from
Scales of Change began as a comic strip campaign in March 2026, published by Base Iota Foundation with Femtech Law Initiative, HER Internet, and the Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET), in commemoration of International Women's Day 2026 under the theme “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls.”
Seven women. Four phases: Rights, Justice, Action, For All. One argument: seeing the violence clearly is the first act of justice.
Read the full campaign →Why it is here
A printed book was the plan. The funding was not there.
So the book became a walk. This digital edition was developed with CIPESA under the Paths, Traps and Safe Passage methodology, continuing its exhibition, where these stories first met readers as a comic wall inside a room about surveillance, because technology-facilitated abuse and state watching are the same architecture of power at different scales.
Base Iota and partners hold the testimony. CIPESA holds the method. If you met the comic wall at the exhibition, this is its continuation, and that room is this walk's doorway back.
Nothing here asks you to be a better user. You already read your own life more closely than any manual can. This is only the words for what you already know.
What is still being made
This edition is unfinished in ways we would rather name than hide.
The art. The imagery you see now (portraits, icons, the Scale, the textures behind this page) was generated with AI assistance and carries an invisible watermark identifying it as AI-generated. It is art direction, not the finished book.
The numbers. Every statistic on these pages is sourced.
Reading this safely
There is no account, no cookie, no tracker, and no third party watching you read. Quick Exit leaves instantly and keeps this page out of your back button, though it cannot clear your browser history, and we will not pretend otherwise. Clear my traces removes what this site remembers, and shows you how to clear the rest.
Before public launch
- NUWODU review of Bukirwa's episode as rendered: panels, alt-text, and the "So do I" line check.
- HER Internet sign-off on Nalongo's episode as rendered, and the resources shown at her episode's end.
- Every helpline verified in writing by its organization. Pending cards stay disabled until then.
- No invented statistics. The disability-and-TFGBV figure ships only when sourced (NUWODU / Pollicy / CIPESA).
- Quick Exit user-tested from WhatsApp's in-app browser with partner orgs.
- Survivor UX testing via partner organizations before public launch.
- Cultural custodian review of the scale's materials (lubugo cords, ebibbo baskets, mutuba beam), and Acholi review of Awila's beat.
- Batik artist commission: a Ugandan artist, briefed, credited, paid; custodian review covers the pattern set.
- Companion-card text matches the printed PTSP deck verbatim per language; Luganda ships only when its deck does.
- Story-weight test: if companion encounters dilute the episodes in user testing, cut the encounters, keep the cards.
- Political-phrase check: no Luganda lettering (exit-proverbs especially) before Kampala-based review.
TFGBV must not be faceless.
There is no single profile of a survivor.
The tactics vary. The goal is the same: to push women out of public life. No one should have to face digital violence alone.
Tipping the scale
They never all met. They tipped the same scale from seven different lives. An MP. A defender. A creator. An organiser. A supervisor. A storyteller. A lawyer.
Seeing the violence clearly is the first act of justice.
Seven faces, so that no one's harm stays faceless.
For every woman still unnamed: your weight counts too.
One strand of the voice basket's rim is left unwoven: the eighth. It is yours to pick up.
Scales of Change. Add yours.
When did you stop being alone?
The question is yours to carry. There is nowhere here to answer it. Nothing you think is collected. If you want to give words back, the exhibition's reflection wall is the place; this walk began there.