Several Croatian, Spanish and Portuguese NGOs have launched a three-year project to define recommendations for preventing violence against women online, which they will offer to the governments to include in national penal codes, EFE news agency said on Wednesday.

With this project we hope to draw up documents on cyber violence against girls and women, and to influence state administrations to include them in penal codes, said Teresa Nevado Bueno, president of the European Women’s Lobby in Spain.

Numerous crimes and media violence are being committed online, she said, such as the sharing of sexual content, the use of fake profiles and hate speech.

Those crimes are not sufficiently included in the penal codes of the EU’s 27 member states, she added during an international online conference organised in Zagreb.

The conference on raising awareness of cyber crime and ways to achieve a safer online environment for women and girls was hosted by Croatia’s gender equality ombudsman Visnja Ljubicic.

Those online crimes are rising exponentially in Europe, she said, so campaigns are necessary to raise awareness in society, notably among adolescents.

The joint project of Croatian, Spanish and Portuguese NGOs, expected to be co-financed from EU funds, was presented at the event.

Violence against girls and women begins in the virtual sphere, then turns into physical pain with psychological, social, sexual and economic repercussions, said Alexandra Silva of the Portuguese Platform for Women’s Rights.

The violence does not stop when a woman turns off the internet, she said. Violence against women is deeply rooted in our societies and has a dangerous support in modern technologies, she added.

About 95% of women who have been exposed to violence online experience negative repercussions which mainly manifest as depression, said Ana Neves of the Portuguese Commission for Citizenship and Gender Equality.

A recent study shows that 67% of persons in Portugal aged 18-25 have been exposed to sexual violence based on photos shared online, she added.