Here are two new initiatives to address street harassment!
Newsweek, “Female Entrepreneurs Launch Online Sexual Harassment Tracker in Beirut“
“Three female entrepreneurs have kickstarted a sexual harassment tracker in Beirut in the hope of combating crimes against women in the Lebanese capital.
A beta version of Harass Tracker—launched on Monday—will provide a three-month trial in the city after which, if successful, it will be expanded across the entire country.
The platform is essentially an online reporting tool where people who have witnessed or experienced sexual harassment can mark the location on a map of the city and provide information regarding the type of sexual harassment that they encountered, alongside a description of the event.
The three founders of the initiative—Sandra Hassan, who is based in France, Myra El Mir and Nay El Rahi, both in Lebanon—hope to “empower victims to report” these crimes and “raise awareness as to the frequency and severity of sexual harassment in the city,” Hassan, who developed the tracker, tells Newsweek by email.
“In the longer term, we hope to use the data collected to offer recommendations on how to tackle this issue practically as well as contribute to a shift in perception with regards to sexual harassment.”
Kera News, “Young women in Kosovo are writing code to fight harassment“
“Women and girls in Kosovo almost never report these incidents, which are exceedingly common. But a new mobile app called Ec Shlirë — Walk Freely in Albanian — hopes to change that.
Ec Shlirë, which launched on Thursday, is inspired by Hollaback, an American movement to report street harassment. The Kosovar app gives users the ability to discreetly report instances of sexual harassment of all types. The reports will be visualized on an interactive map and will be sent to the authorities.
While individual perpetrators won’t be identified, the data gathered by the app will allow Kosovars to actually see the full extent of sexual harassment and will also put pressure on the authorities to respond.
“In Kosovo a lot of women who experience harassment don’t go report it directly to the police, because the police may not take one incident of harassment on the street so seriously,” says programmer Albana Dulaj. “If we have more reports, I believe they’ll take it more seriously.”
Dulaj is among 30 young women who built the app as part of a group called Girls Coding Kosova.
The development of Ec Shlirë also is helping address another problem in Kosovo: the lack of women in the tech industry.”
