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  Application that comes to the aid of people living with domestic violence

Wave

Application Domestic Violence

Even before COVID-19 existed, domestic violence was already one of the greatest human rights violations. In the previous 12 months, 243 million women and girls (aged 15-49) across the world have been subjected to sexual or physical violence by an intimate partner. Even before COVID-19 there was a lack of data that will show real scale of violence against women as well as lack of consciousness of the phenomenon and its danger by actual or potential victims. On the other hand, victims lack information on the existing legal tools allowing women to protect themselves. As COVID -19 crisis grew and more and more countries went into a lockdowns or push #Stayathome messages on its citizens the international organizations started to worn on possibility of the increase of domestic violence.

Some of the leaders pointed out that violence against women is closely connected with COVID-19 lockdowns. All this situation makes us to slow down and to think through and to try to find solution for this increase of domestic violence and violence in women. Why? Because, informal data from the help lines and shelters showed increase of 30% in domestic violence in France. The increase is noticed, still all lack of data remains in some European countries that draw their conclusions on situation of violence against women on formal daily police reports that only count numbers of police interventions. Though less than 10 % of women subjected to the domestic violence seek help go to the police when there is no pandemic. COVID -19 lockdown make for these women even harder to report due to limitation to access to the phone and to helplines and disrupted services who provide help and assistance to the victims of domestic violence. Also, all these problems that existed pre COVID-19 pandemic continues to exist but they intensified. Therefore, we came with the solution – WAVE App. The app will have different functionalities. I’ll present two and my teammates the other features. First there will be simple assessment questionnaire for women who are victims of psychological abuse. Because psychological abuse in hard to recognize this might help a victim to be sure what is going on. Second feature that I might even call the major one is the list of resources. It will feature only help lines and shelters and police numbers of the city where victim lives. The user of the app will put her place of residence and that way she will get information on resources available in her vicinity.
Now I am handing over to Ilaria.

The uniqueness of the app is that not only it responds to an immediate need in a situation of squared emergency : Covid-19 lockdowns and the threat of physical violence, but it has a huge expansion potential. It can be used when the storm is raging

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but it can be also used when a light but pouring rain slowly leads to a flood

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Additional functionality consist in providing legal information, included the competent authorities; in presenting the phenomenon in its most insidious aspects, uncovering , for instance the hidden bias that are often collateral effects of gender neutral legislations – as in the case of many of the revised legislations on custody of children, that in aiming to be gender neutral turn out to be cruelly biased. Eventually, the more the app will be shared and used, the more it will be possible to collect data allowing to assess both the wideness and forms of the phenomenon and most importantly on the effectiveness of the present institutional response

Slide target

These functionality do not need to be activated simultaneously. The app is addressed in the first place to women in actual danger and needing to be helped or rescued before it’s too late.

Secondly, the legal content of the app - competent authorities; available tools, legislation in a simplified but effective manner – could be developed in order to target those women that are not in actual danger but are aware of a being abused and need to establish an efficient exit strategy from the potential danger.

In the third place, the target would be women who do not even realise that they are being abused. They are depressed, they have been led to think to be “crazy”, “stupid”. They are isolated and society is leaving them more and more ununderstood. The app could help these women in the short and in the long run by accompanying them in acknowledging what is going on, via the questionnaire and the available videos.

Slide 3 phase plan

This 3 steps approach allows for an experimental phase, where the target could be limited to 2 or 3 European countries and languages, focused on extreme situations, followed by a phase where the content may be added to the app and, eventually, by a phase where the app generates available information through the gathering of the data put in by users as well as their feedbacks. Anonymity is of course crucial.

Slide team This expansion potential would allow a floating budget: developing the app would require a small albeit multidisciplinary team, consisting in an IT and a field expert in placing women victims of violence and a legal expert. This team would be sufficient to target women in actual danger in a given or two given EU countries (available in 2/3 languages).

In a second phase, a larger team with the increased participation of lawyers and psychiatrists would be needed, possibly with the aim to target women in potential danger in an increased number of EU countries, thereby increasing the languages, including those of refugees and other women in fragile situations.

Eventually, the app could serve as a powerful teaching and researching tool targeting women that are not even aware of being abused. The team could benefit of the existing instruments to detect Violence against women, such as the “Duluth model” and integrate psychologists to develop an app to attract women by promising “mindfulness” or the healing of depression. This camouflage is crucial in extreme psychologic violence cases, in order to prevent censorship by the abusive men and bearing in mind that often, domestic violence include the control by men of all “sensitive” social media accounts a woman may have on her phone.

Most importantly, the app will collect feedback by women having reacted to the violence. This allow sto assess the efficiency of the institutional response a) Not only giving insights on how to correct the latter b) but, in the immediate, will serve as “first hand” advice to other women wishing to find the most efficient way to react.

We believe that this app will help uncover the existing biases and forms of abuse on women and possibly, grant women the empowerment they deserve in the interest of society as the Covid-19 crisis shows: aren’t the seven countries to have better controlled the pandemic led by women?

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"Violence against women has become as much a pandemic as HIV/AIDS, or malaria. But it is still generally downplayed by the public at large and by policy-makers who fail to create and fund programmes to eradicate it," Noeleen Heyzer,