Fight Against Gender-Based Violence Finds a Technological Touch

By Edith Drouin-Rousseau Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 15 2013 (IPS) - The use of technology to fight gender-related violence is encapsulated in the “four Ps”: prevention, protection, prosecution and provision of multi-sector services, according to Lakshmi Puri, assistant secretary-general of the United Nations and acting head of U.N. Women.

Speaking at an event at the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations on Jul. 15, Puri stressed the need for the global community to take a “holistic view of the problem” of gender-based violence, and see technology as “a means to an end”, not an end in itself.

Alejandra Colom, programme coordinator of the Population Council, oversaw an eight-year project in the Central American nation of Guatemala to improve the safety of young girls in several rural communities across the country through the use of a global positioning system (GPS).

Girls were asked to rate their level of safety on a GPS device while wandering through the village. The scale went from green (meaning that a particular area felt very safe) to red (indicating a danger zone). The places where men congregate to drink, for instance, were reported as being some of the more unsafe spots for women and girls.

Using inputs from the girls’ responses, and with the help of Google Earth, the project coordinators created a gender-sensitive safety map of several Guatemalan villagers.

The coordinators of the project presented the maps to local authorities to encourage the implementation of policies to protect women and girls in unsafe areas.

But the experience proved that the project had to go further than the usage of technology. Many representatives of local authorities showed a deep inability and unwillingness to understand women’s safety concerns. They interpreted the project as an attempt to map out which areas girls should avoid, rather than seeking to make those areas less dangerous.

Speakers at the event on Jul. 15 also stressed that much of the violence against women occurs inside the home. According to a World Health Organisation (WHO) study conducted in ten countries, 13 to 61 percent of girls and women who suffer domestic violence do so at the hands of intimate partners and relatives, which makes the use of technology as a tool for combating gender-based violence slightly more complicated.

Another project conducted by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in Central Africa seeks to document evidence of sexual violence, and to facilitate communication between victims, police officers, physicians and judicial experts by using a non-specialised vocabulary that all actors can easily understand.

The main tools in this project include a medical chart on which women can document evidence of sexual violence and Medicapt, a mobile phone application that allows victims to take pictures of their wounds and share them with law enforcement officials and medical practitioners.

PHR Programme Director Karen Naimer explains that even though a majority of “people in the DRC do not have running water and electricity, most have access to a mobile phone.”

According to her, the downside of the project is the difficulty of transferring data, as mobile phone and Internet connections are very unstable in the DRC.