Mobile app tackles gender-based violence

News for Friday 24 August is taken from Women’s Views on News

Natalie Calkin
WVoN co-editor

A Kenyan woman, Anne Shongwe, has pioneered a mobile phone application to help address violence against women.

The app, called ‘Moraba‘, is a free game aimed at children and teenagers.

The idea is to teach them about issues related to gender-based violence including what constitutes unwanted advances and how to report and give testimony for violent and inappropriate acts.

‘Moraba’ is based on a popular South African board game called Morabaraba and incorporates quiz show style questions to enable children to become informed in a fun and practical way.

Shongwe, an international development specialist and social enterpreneur, created the app following 25 years experience of working at the United Nations Development Programme.

Keen to apply her knowledge to find solutions to social problems, Shongwe started asking young Africans about their perceptions of the opposite sex.

It was then that she realised education was key to preventing negative gender stereotypes that can manifest as violence in later years.

After conducting interviews with the young people, Shongwe told Al Jazeera in a recent interview that:

“We didn’t realise that actually at the core [of much gender violence] is really just misunderstanding and misinformation”.

This realisation informs every design aspect of the app, which has already won the App Circus 2011 competition and funding and support from UN Women.

Shongwe is now looking for sponsorship to expand the game to predominant handsets in the market as well as developing distribution.

This is just the start of an ambitious goal to reach 100 million young Africans at risk of gender-based violence and to change choices and conversations around the treatment of women and girls.

With 200 million young Africans accessing mobile phones and using them for one to eight hours a day, Shongwe has a captive audience on which ‘Moraba’ could have a significant impact.

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EU and UN Women partnership to improve global gender equality

European Union (Photo credit: ana branca)

News for 18 April 2012 has been taken from Women’s Views on News.

The European Union (EU) and UN Women have set up a new partnership scheme to foster greater cooperation between them.

Ratified on Monday at the EU Sustainable Energy for All Summit in Brussels, the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) commits the two organisations to support gender equality and women’s empowerment around the world.

It will also ensure closer collaboration, allowing them to share information, expertise and analysis in order to effectively advance women’s rights.

Given the ways in which which women are negatively impacted by the lack of modern energy services, the MoU can only be a good thing.

Energy plays a fundamental and varied role in women’s daily lives, from helping feed their families to ensuring personal safety to meeting their wider needs, allowing them to study in the evenings, providing street lighting for safety and enabling communication.

The MoU was signed by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton, Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs and the Executive Director of UN Women Michelle Bachelet, who described it as a “strategic partnership”.

Piebalgs said: “As I travel around the world, I can see that women are the agents of change. There will be no human and economic development without a sound respect of women’s rights and conditions.

“This is a fundamental part of the development policy that I wish to champion. I’m convinced that this partnership will take our collaboration with UN Women to a new level, ensuring more efficiency and better support to women all over the world.”

Although the two organizations are already working together on other gender equality initiatives, this new agreement is a timely reinforcement of their commitment  to promote the empowerment of women, in light of the advancing deadline by which to achieve the Millenium Development Goals in 2015.

Speaking about the new commitment, Ashton said: “Discrimination against women and girls remains the most pervasive and persistent form of inequality. Together with UN Women we will work to improve the role of women in political and economic decision-making.

“We will also fight impunity for perpetrators of sexual violence, ensure better protection of women and improve their access to justice. These are issues that need our full attention and this new partnership enhances our ability to work even harder to reach these goals.”

Both the EU and UN Women have also pledged to improve access to work for women, as well as social opportunities.

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