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Permalink Reply by ROSE on October 11, 2014 at 5:26pm

Smartphones Are Used To Stalk, Control Domestic Abuse Victims
by Aarti Shahani, September 15, 2014

Cyberstalking victims often don't know they're being tracked through their own phone because spyware apps like mSpy use misleading labels (labeled "android.sys.process" here) and don't take up much data.

We've looked a lot at privacy from the Big Brother standpoint: how the National Security Agency or corporate giants like Google track us online, say for political reasons or to make money from ads.

But there's another kind of privacy concern that is a lot more intimate. You could call it Little Brother, though it's really more like husbands and wives, lovers and exes who secretly watch their partners — from a distance. They are cyberstalking — using digital tools that are a lot cheaper than hiring a private detective. ...

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/09/15/346149979/sma...

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Permalink Reply by ROSE on June 2, 2015 at 7:19am

The phone app challenging violence against women in a Mumbai slum

Domestic abuse is rife in Dharavi slum, but a new project uses a smartphone app and trained community workers to improve the reporting of violence

A female potter carries earthen pots through traditional pottery kilns in the Mumbai slum of Dharavi. Photograph: Shailesh Andrade/Reuters

KumKum Dasgupta, New Delhi

Tuesday 2 June 2015 Bhanuben lets out a throaty laugh when asked if the men of Dharavi are scared of her and her team. “Not yet ... but they are a tad wary of us these days,” says the 42-year-old community worker for SNEHA (Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action), a Mumbai-based NGO.

Mumbai’s Dharavi slum is home to anywhere between 300,000 and 1 million people. Bhanuben was born and brought up here and knows the place like the back of her hand, and the challenges of surviving in this “teeming slum of 1 million souls”.

“There is a high incidence of gender violence here, but I have been lucky,” says Bhanuben, a mother of two sons, adding: “My husband is a good man.”

Data from the National Crime Records Bureau shows that 43.6% of all crimes against women are by husbands and relatives

Violence against women is pervasive in India and much of it – domestic violence, dowry deaths, acid attacks, honour killings, rape, abduction and cruelty – is at the hands of family members. Data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) shows that an Indian woman is most unsafe in her marital home: 43.6% of all crimes against women are by husbands and relatives.

In multi-ethnic Dharavi, the problem is compounded by the fact that most women are poor and uneducated. The relentless pressure to survive, lack of space and unhygienic living conditions lead to malnutrition, deprivation and disease – and often abuse of vulnerable women and children.

SNEHA started working with women in Dharavi in 2001 and has since supported 300,000 women and mobilised 130 women’s groups to educate and support survivors of violence.

“While the number of cases of domestic violence has been increasing every year in the slum, we felt there was a gap in reporting of such incidents thanks to lack of a support structure and societal norms that force women to keep quiet,” says Nayreen Daruwalla, director of SNEHA’s prevention of violence against women and children programme.

To improve reporting of violence, SNEHA launched the Little Sister Project in 2014. Funded by the UN development programme, the project trained 160 local women to identify and report incidents of gender violence using Android smartphones that are loaded with an open data kit (ODK) form and an app called EyeWatch.

“Earlier we would write the case details in a register... it was cumbersome. But now with ODK, we do it electronically,” explains Bhanuben. The information is then stored in a central database maintained by SNEHA. The identity of survivors is kept private.

The EyeWatch app, which has been developed by a firm called Indianeye Security, is a mobile-based platform that allows the community workers, known locally as sanginis, to take audio and visual clips if they witness an incident. Once the app is activated and an alert has been raised, a call goes through to an SNEHA employee who can offer assistance.

“This technology helps us crowdsource cases of violence, track cases of repeat violence and understand more about the prevalence of violence in Dharavi,” says Daruwalla. “We believe reporting violence is the first step in preventing violence.”

Mumbai’s Dharavi is Asia’s largest slum and home to up to 1 million people. Photograph: Bethany Clarke/Getty Images

The app, SNEHA believes, encourages increased reporting of violence, lets community members know what assistance is available, and helps NGOs understand more about the prevalence of violence in Dharavi. The interaction is two-way: sometimes sanginis come to know about a case and approach the survivor; at other times, survivors seek out sanginis to report incidents.

“Our volunteers are trained to advise survivors on [the] availability of medical help and also on how to approach the police.” Once cases are brought to SNEHA’s centre, counsellors help survivors file police reports and offer legal support, says Daruwalla.

Earlier this year, SNEHA promoted its work at the inaugural Dharavi biennale. Using scrap denim pieces and discarded objects, sanginis created an art project called Mapping the Hurt, an innovative visualisation of gender violence in the slum.

But if tracking and reporting violence is one part of the challenge, the next big hurdle is getting the police to act.

“Whenever we go to the police to report on domestic violence, they are reluctant to file a case. They say such issues should be settled at home,” explains Bhanuben. Even if a case is lodged, low conviction rates strengthen the impression that there is little point in reporting the crime. Further, a lack of understanding of gender issues, violence and entrenched views about women’s status among lawyers and judges often encourages outcomes that favour reconciliations, overlooking a woman’s needs and demands.

Data collected from July to December last year by SNEHA showed that of the 345 cases analysed, only 19% were reported to the police.

The NGO’s outreach programme has trained 4,500 police officers and cadets in Mumbai and more than 2,100 public hospital staff to help them identify evidence of violence among patients.

Bhanuben says that along with being a support group, sanginis are friends with whom women can sit and chat. “Sometimes we go for an outing … to get some fresh air. To outsiders, this camaraderie may not mean much, but for us this is oxygen to survive in this challenging atmosphere.”

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jun/02/phone-app...

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Permalink Reply by ROSE on September 8, 2015 at 5:49pm

A new app that lets users' friends 'virtually walk them home at night' is exploding in popularity

• Mary-Ann Russon, International Business Times

• Sep. 3, 2015
  

IBTStudents at the University of Michigan have seen their personal-safety app, Companion, grow tremendously, with tens of thousands now using the app to stay safe at night.

Tens of thousands of people around the world are now using a free personal-safety mobile app that allows friends to virtually walk you home at night.

The Companion app, created by five students from the University of Michigan, enables users to request a friend or family member to keep them company virtually and track their journey home via GPS on an online map.

Although they can do so, the friend or family member does not need to have installed the Companion app, which is available for both Android and iOS.

The user can send out several requests to different phone contacts in case people are not available to be a companion or not with their phones at the time.

Those contacted then receive an SMS text message with a hyperlink in it that sends them to a web page with an interactive map showing the user walking to their destination. If the user strays off their path, falls, is pushed, starts running, or has their headphones yanked out of their phone, the app detects these changes in movement and asks the user if they're OK.

If the user is fine, they press a button on the app to confirm within 15 seconds. If they do not press the button, or a real emergency is occurring, the Companion app transforms the user's phone into a personal alarm system that projects loud noises to scare criminals from the scene, and gives you the option to instantly call the police.

Contacting university campus police

As the app was originally designed to aid students in walking home at night across university campuses. If the user calls 911, the app will also alert the person's relevant university campus safety department within the US, but this feature is only applicable to universities that have signed up to work with Companion.

At the same time, the app will send an alert to the contact who is keeping you company, and that person can choose to call the police and give them your location, as well as call you to find out if you are OK.

People in other countries can still use the app by entering their phone number, together with country code. In an emergency, the app will call the police and send SMS text messages to chosen companions.

"We've had a lot of people outside the US downloading the app. Since we launched, we've had dozens of emails from people in the US, as well as many other countries like the UK, Belgium, France, and Norway," Lexie Ernst, cofounder of the Companion app and a senior at the University of Michigan who is majoring in business with a minor in computer science, told IBTimes UK.

"Both men and women from all demographics have emailed us saying they'd love to use the app. Lots of parents want to use the app for their children, and some people want their elderly parents to use it, too, to make sure they don't get lost."

Working out where people feel most unsafe

The Companion app asks you to confirm you are OK if the phone is dropped or the user is pushed or falls. Users can also call the police or set off an alert system that makes a loud noise to dissuade animals or attackers.

On top of calling the police and alerting their chosen companion, users can also select an "I am nervous" button in the app, which tells the app where and when they feel unsafe. Companion's creators said that in just one week after launching the second version of their app, they collected 500 incidents where students across multiple university campuses felt unsafe.

The team plans to collate this data and provide the information to campus security so that they can be aware of areas where trouble might occur, and, in the future, users will be able to specify why exactly they feel unsafe. "Many people aren't even aware that their school has a campus safety department. In future, people can specify what makes them nervous and why, and we hope to open a dialogue between campus safety departments and students," said Ernst.

Many people have emailed the Companion team asking them to hook up their local campus security team to the service, and Companion is currently working with several big universities around the US.

As the app is meant to remain as a free product for users, the creators are monetising the app by working with universities. They hope to eventually connect every single university's campus police in the country to their app, as well as eventually connecting local police departments and emergency responders.

Read the original article on International Business Times. Copyright 2015.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/campanion-app-surging-in-popularity-...

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Permalink Reply by ROSE on September 9, 2015 at 7:21am

BIG NEWS: Today Hollaback! has released a new app to share and map your stories of street harassment around the world. What's more, with the new app, you can create your own, personalized maps of street harassment and share them on social media. Ever had someone tell you that street harassment isn't a big deal? Now, with a click of a button, you can show them what your daily commute really looks like! And, if you're waiting for the bus and want to quickly send some love, you can read other Hollaback! user's stories and let them know you've got their back. In a world where street harassment is too often dismissed or thought of as not a big deal, sharing our stories and supporting one another is a meaningful way to make our voices heard and create change. With this app, you can do both in under five seconds - freeing up your time to make the revolution go down! With that goal in mind, we're launching a story sharing campaign on the app and online with #iHollaback for the next two weeks. Stories shared during the campaign will be publicized in our storify and media outreach.  Join us from September 9th - 23rd, and let's show the world how powerful story sharing can be! The new app is available for free for iPhone and Android and was made possible with generous support from our partners at Voqal and Catapult. Check out the app today and let us know what you think!  With love and revolution, - The Hollaback! Team @iHollaback holla@ihollaback.org PS: Have questions about the app? Check out our FAQ, or send us an email at any time at holla@ihollaback.org. We'd love to hear from you. PPS: Want to support the new app and other Hollaback! programs? Donate today - your $5 donation makes this work possible (and means the world to us).

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Permalink Reply by ROSE on September 22, 2015 at 9:58pm

Cambodian women turn to tech in hope apps can turn tide of gender violence

Women’s groups in Cambodia are using the youth obsession with technology to try to change attitudes in a society where many think domestic violence is normal

Women at the launch of a safe cities campaign to end violence against women, launched in July 2014. Photograph: Safe Cities for Women Cambodia

Women's rights and gender equality in focus is supported by:

Marta Kasztelan in Phnom Penh

Monday 21 September 2015 

In Phnom Penh’s bustling cafes, hip-looking young people hunch over their mobile devices. According to Dany Sun, a women’s rights activist likewise armed with a smartphone, this relatively new trend is representative of modern Cambodia.

But the technological progress, Sun observes, has not been accompanied by advances on gender equality. Traditional attitudes and cultural norms, which portray women as subservient and inferior to men, continue to underlie the country’s harrowing statistics on violence against women.

“Since the day we are born, we are less valued than men. We are also still expected to follow cultural norms like those included in the outdated Chbap Srey [women’s code of conduct], which reinforces male dominance and stipulates that women have to be quiet and submissive,” says Sun, 23.

“At the same time, many people don’t realise that what they are doing is wrong because they are uneducated, and often both men and women think domestic violence is normal.”

Cambodia has a high rate of gang-rape, with many young men in urban areas treating it as a recreational activity

Sun is one of three women who have been supported by the Asia Foundation to tap into Cambodia’s growing hunger for mobile technology to tackle violence against women. Sun has designed Krousar Koumrou, an educational app meant to prevent domestic violence by challenging negative attitudes towards women. In Khmer, Krousar Koumrou means model family.

A 2013 UN paper on men and violence in Asia and the Pacific found 25% of women in Cambodia said they had experienced intimate partner violence – physical, sexual or psychological harm – at least once. The same study found that among men aged 18 to 49, every fifth man interviewed had raped a women once, either within or outside a relationship.

After Papua New Guinea, Cambodia has one of the highest rates of gang-rape in the region, with many young men in urban areas treating it as a recreational ac.... The study found that of roughly 1,800 male interviewees, 5.2% confessed to having participated in a gang rape, locally known as bauk.

“The significant factors in Cambodia that increase perpetration of intimate partner violence can be linked to alcohol abuse, media exposure that may normalise or condone violence against women, witnessing or exposure to violence as a child, and level of education,” says Erin Bourgois, manager of the Ending Violence against Women Programme at the Asia Foundation.

“But it is important to note that the cause of violence against women is gender inequality and a sense of entitlement by men,” she says.

Cambodian proverbs such as “men are gold, women are cloth” or “plates in the basket usually rattle” show just how deeply entrenched ideas of women’s inferiority are in society.

The basket, Sun explains, is a metaphor for family and, “since you live together, you are in physical proximity to each other, so sometimes you hit each other and things break”. The prevailing perception is that violence – be it physical, sexual or psychological – is inevitable and normal, she says.

An Asia Foundation report found that 94% of Cambodians own a mobile phone, while 39% of the urban population and 21% of the rural population have smartphones.

Rachana Bunn, who works for ActionAid Cambodia on their safe cities for women campaign, designed Safe Agent 008, a messaging system that sends women’s GPS coordinates to family and friends when they feel in danger and allows them to report violence anonymously.

The third app, 7 Plus, is the brainchild of Sreytouch Phat, a former beer promoter who wanted to help food and service sector workers claim their rights and stay free from sexual harassment and violence in their workplace.

Sun’s app uses animation to teach women about their rights. One animation, for example, explains that, contrary to the common belief shared by both men and women in Cambodia, intimate partner violence is not normal and should be talked about.

Perhaps most important, however, Krousar Koumrou connects women with services they might need, such as pro bono legal advice, psycho-social support, shelter or medical care. Sun says this feature addresses the scarcity of public services available to survivors of domestic violence, whose claims of abuse are often ignored by local authority representatives.

While it will take time to gauge the apps’ effectiveness – all three were launched at the beginning of September – women in Phnom Penh seem eager to start downloading.

Kuca Pisa, a 25-year-old sociology student at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, says Krousar Koumrou could change the way Cambodian young people view intimate partner violence.

This, she says, is particularly important in the capital, where it is becoming increasingly acceptable for young women to have boyfriends – a shift in a still traditionally conservative country where, until a few years ago, the idea of “boyfriends” was largely frowned upon. Women were expected to marry their love interest as soon as possible.

“I heard about instances of violence, sometimes even rape, perpetrated by male students, many of whom come here from the countryside and think it is OK to hit their girlfriends because this is what they saw at home,” she says.

But Pisa is less worried about intimate partner violence and far more concerned about her safety on the streets of Phnom Penh.

“Sometimes I don’t even feel safe during the day,” she says.

She is not alone in her anxiety. According to an ActionAid study based on interviews with 380 women, including university students, women working in garment factories, sex workers and beer promoters, 22% said they had experienced sexual harassment in public places in Phnom Penh, with 77% citing verbal harassment, and 25% reporting violent physical attacks.

Pisa moved to the city from Pursat province three years ago to pursue her studies, and she says her social network is not as strong as she would have liked, which is why she will download the Safe Agent 008 app.

“The option of quickly sending a message to my boyfriend and family with my whereabouts when I am in danger makes me feel much safer,” she says.

Bunn believes her app is a “sad necessity”.

“The change in social attitudes towards women will take a very long time,” she says adding that she too often gets hassled by men in the street. “Cambodia remains a man’s world, so as women we need this app.”

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/sep/21/cambodia-...

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Permalink Reply by ROSE on January 17, 2016 at 5:54pm

Hackathon to Combat Violence Against Women
by PTI, New Indian Express, 17th January 2016

RANCHI: Experts and technologists will come together to address the challenges of violence against women by finding innovative technological solutions to issues involving prevention, response and awareness at 'Hackathon', to be organised in Ranchi from January 24 to 26.

It is a programme designed to discuss and understand gender-based violence in the east and north-east India and provide an understanding of how to create interventions to solve gender issues with technology, according to a release from the US Consulate.

These initiatives by various organisations from across the globe range from mapping violence to gathering data and providing survivors with access to essential information and support, it said.

The event will be jointly organised by the US Consulate Kolkata, US-based non-profit organisation 'Geeks Without Bounds', Bangalore-based non-profit organisation 'The Bachchao Project' and 'Random Hacks of Kindness India'.

http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/Hackathon-to-Combat-Violence...

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Permalink Reply by ROSE on March 7, 2016 at 5:56pm

This Dating App Just Launched A Powerful Campaign To Combat Violence Against Women
by Sara Coughlin, Mar 7, 2016

In honor of International Women's Day tomorrow, dating app Happn has partnered with human rights organization Equality Now to raise awareness for female survivors of physical and sexual abuse. But this isn't your average awareness campaign — the app is making sure its users are exposed to the reality of abuse by putting survivors directly into their dating pool feeds.

In response to the chilling statistic that one in three women worldwide has been abused at one point, Happn and Equality Now are launching the One In Three campaign to remind Happn users in over 20 cities around the world just how disturbingly prevalent these crimes are. Since the premise of Happn is to connect users with people they've already crossed paths with, the campaign will populate timelines with images of models with bruises and the profile name "I'm One In Three," forcing its users to contemplate how they've likely known a woman who was a survivor of abuse.

According to a statement from Happn's cofounder and CEO Didier Rappaport, it was simply a matter of "making the connection between overlooked survivors of violence against woman [sic] and all the rest of us who otherwise pass them by every day." Something that affects so many women on a global scale, he argued, shouldn't be so easily ignored.

Yasmeen Hassan, the Global Executive Director of Equality Now, said in a statement that this campaign should go beyond spreading awareness and that users should treat it as a call to action. International Women's Day, she said, is a time when government officials should naturally reconsider any laws that "perpetuate violence, or which discriminate against women."

"We hope that showing how enormous this problem is will inspire everyone to call on their governments to end all forms of violence against women," she said.

For those in need of help or support, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.

http://www.refinery29.com/2016/03/105387/happn-equality-now-one-in-...

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Permalink Reply by ROSE on May 1, 2016 at 9:10am

Cyber Feminism: How Technology Is Being Used To Fight Violence Against Women
@YouthKiAwaaz
By Juliana Guarany, May 01, 2016

startup-photosTechnology has brought violence against women to a whole new level. Privately taken nude pictures are no longer limited to a single copy in possession of the individual but are now on smartphones and one angry ex-boyfriend is all it takes to ruin a girl’s reputation online. As we are all aware, no matter the reason someone decides to publicly humiliate a woman, she gets more scrutiny than empathy once her reputation is on the line. With the advent of the internet, things have only gotten worse.

In March 2015, we had the chance to see the “patient zero” of slut shaming speak up. Monica Lewinsky demanded to tell her own story on a TED talk in Vancouver. For 20 minutes, she narrated 17 years of public humiliation. She said her case was the first one to break online instead of on traditional media. She continues to deal with violence online up to this day.

Old problems, new tools. Soon enough, we all discovered the devastating power of technology and how it has become so easy to hate. For women in general, violence took on one more avatar in slut shaming. It looked like more of the same: women as a target for how they look, for taking nude pictures, for having sex or even just because they exist.

But that same technology is now being used to fight all of that and more. Feminist groups and organizations are developing a variety of forms to combat violence and restore women’s confidence.

In the very recent past feminist groups were restricted by technology. They hardly made headlines with their actions, aside from demonstrations, but they produced vast material in the form of magazines, pamphlets and academic work. Slowly, traditional feminist organizations migrated to online media and started to create a space for their voices to be heard through websites. The internet made it possible for all to have access to information and to slowly start to get a sense of the amount of work put into the cause.

With social media a new feminism is rising, one that challenges slut shaming. This generation of girls took charge on blogs, Twitter and vlogs on YouTube. Discussion groups on Facebook are especially effective to organize protests, create new content or even just to help a girl defend herself against any kind of misogynistic attack.

The power of social media is so strong that it is changing the way women’s magazines are written, children’s toys are designed by bringing to light the different forms of sexism hidden in the mundane.

One specific cause that the new wave of feminism on social media addresses is street harassment. Not long ago – about two years ago – it was considered just some annoying part of women’s lives; you go out, you get catcalled and that is what it is. But after a nasty comment, one girl went on her social media page and complained about it. Another girl followed. Another five girls followed. And about 45 girls “liked” it. Suddenly something that had been socially accepted, even celebrated for so long was finally shown to be another face of violence.

In order to show the world how much street harassment can ruin our days a few groups took on new technology to expose this problem. Using Google maps, they asked women to pin places where they were harassed and tell their stories. The campaigns were national, but similar in different parts of the globe. In Egypt, the HarassMap showed not just catcalling stories, but also situations of gang-abuse and women being assaulted during the Arab Spring demonstrations. A campaign in Brazil called Chega de Fiu Fiu (Enough of Whistling) conducted empirical research to prove that women actually do not like to be catcalled. They also created their own map. Hollaback, a global initiative based in the USA, has their own maps of testimonials as well as an app, so women can pin an incident of harassment at the same time it occurs. A similar app was also adopted by a project in South Africa called Blow the Whistle.

Another Brazilian initiative called PLP 2.0 took it a step further and connected their app to the police. Aimed at domestic violence, this app follows specific cases and works as a panic button if a woman is attacked. It is still restricted to one city but is slowly increasing the area it covers.

There are countless such projects around the world that use technology to amplify their work. Several times we might see different groups working on similar ideas, not knowing that someone, in a different part of the globe, has a solution they haven’t thought off yet. Feminist activists needs a global database.

In order to document feminist projects and connect similar ones, I created FemMap , a collaborative website that gathers information about projects focused on gender equality. It works both as a database and as a communication channel. As the platform gets more collaborators, it becomes a significant source of information about what type of projects are being done and the best practices for each idea. Through FemMap, groups can avoid redundancies in their work and help other organizations in whatever capacity they can- material, coding or simply better ideas to make it happen. We are using technology to break country and culture barriers.

It’s important to know how to benefit from technology and make it available to all. By working together, feminist groups are able to learn from mistakes made by others. Achieving gender equality is a long and bumpy road, so it’s always good to know we can get help.

This article was originally posted at Justice Adda

http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2016/05/technology-to-stop-violence-aga...

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Permalink Reply by ROSE on June 21, 2016 at 5:47pm

300-acre “tech park” for women to be built in Karnataka, India
WITW STAFF04.05.16

A government-funded “tech park” for women is slated to be built in Harohalli, a village in the Karnataka state of India.  The Times of India reports that the 300-acre park, which has a projected launch date of November 2016, will employ 2,800 people and act as a hub for women entrepreneurs. The government has already received over 50 applications from ventures in the IT, food processing, textiles, telecom, and electronics fields. Women architects and contractors will drive the construction of the park.

“Today there’s no platform for women entrepreneurs,” K. Ratna Prabha, additional chief secretary of the Commerce and Industries Department, told the Times of India. “[A]nd that’s why the state government thought it best to create an exclusive tech park for women.”

Read the full story at the Times of India.
http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2016/04/05/300-acre-tech...

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Permalink Reply by ROSE on July 15, 2016 at 5:49am

I include the following article in this forum to counterpoint the destructive role communication technology is also capable of in the hands of evil men:

Roughly 3,000 women and girls are sold on ISIS sex slave market using Telegram, WhatsApp
NY Daily News,TH E ASSOCIATED PRESS July 6, 2016

KHANKE, Iraq — The advertisement on the Telegram app is as chilling as it is incongruous: A girl for sale is "Virgin. Beautiful. 12 years old.... Her price has reached $12,500 and she will be sold soon."

The posting in Arabic appeared on an encrypted conversation along with ads for kittens, weapons and tactical gear. It was shared with The Associated Press by an activist with the minority Yazidi community, whose women and children are being held as sex slaves by the extremists.

While the Islamic State group is losing territory in its self-styled caliphate, it is tightening its grip on the estimated 3,000 women and girls held as sex slaves.

In a fusion of ancient barbaric practices and modern technology, IS sells the women like chattel on smart phone apps and shares databases that contain their photographs and the names of their "owners" to prevent their escape through IS checkpoints.

The fighters are assassinating smugglers who rescue the captives, just as funds to buy the women out of slavery are drying up.

 The thousands of Yazidi women and children were taken prisoner in August 2014, when IS fighters overran their villages in northern Iraq with the aim to eliminate the Kurdish-speaking minority because of its ancient faith. Since then, Arab and Kurdish smugglers managed to free an average of 134 people a month. But by May, an IS crackdown reduced those numbers to just 39 in the last six weeks, according to figures provided by the Kurdistan regional government.

Mirza Danai, founder of the German-Iraqi aid organization Luftbrucke Irak, said in the last two or three months, escape has become more difficult and dangerous....

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/roughly-3-000-women-girls-sol...

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Permalink Reply by ROSE on November 28, 2016 at 10:16am

Ashton Kutcher Rescued 6000 Sex Trafficking Victims. Almost All Of Them Had Something In Common…
by Chantel October 13, 2016 NEWS

Actor, activist and businessman Ashton Kutcher visited “The Today Show” this week to speak with hosts Kathie Lee and Hoda about the new season of his Netflix original series, “The Ranch.”

But what he was most interested in talking about was his organization’s work to end human sex trafficking and child pornography.

In the interview, Kutcher tells the hosts about Thorn, the organization he began with his ex-wife, actress Demi Moore, in 2008.

Through his work with Thorn, Kutcher has learned that almost all sex trafficking victims have one thing in common—they’re targeted online:

“We’re building digital tools to fight human trafficking. Basically, the purchase and commerce for human trafficking is happening online, just like everything else now, and so we’re building digital tools to fight back against it.”

Thorn’s self-described mission is “to drive tech innovation in the fight against trafficking.” On the organization’s website, it explains just how it goes about its work:

“We partner across the tech industry, government and NGOs and leverage technology to combat predatory behavior, rescue victims, and protect vulnerable children. The site also lists 20 members of what it calls The Thorn Technology Task Force, comprised of technology companies that lend their knowledge, time and resources to the work that we do. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Adobe are listed among the names who are helping Thorn’s cause.”

So far, Thorn has been a quiet success, with some impressive, real-world numbers to back up its mission statement, as Kutcher explains:

“We’ve built a tool to help law enforcement prioritize their caseload and recover victims and find traffickers. And we’ve found and identified and recovered over 6,000 trafficking victims this year. And we’ve found, identified, and recovered 2,000 traffickers.”

But Kutcher says he and his organization aren’t stopping there — they’re also working towards a truly ambitious humanitarian goal:

“Our next battle, my next commitment…I’m going to make a pledge that I’m going to eliminate child pornography from the internet.”

Thorn’s approach — using internet technology to find victims and their captors — is apt, because the major threat to victims isn’t white vans parked on corners with kidnappers awaiting passersby: it’s online.

Disturbing data which the organization compiled shows that everyday sites like Craigslist are frequently used as a means of doing business in the illegal sex industry.

Even more terrifying is that in 2015, 75% of child sex trafficking survivors Thorn surveyed were sold online at some point.

Asia, a survivor who spoke to Thorn during last year’s survey, told the organization:

“People are posted and sold online multiple times a day. As far as the ad that was posted up [for me], there was a girl who eerily looked like me…just [like] you can go find a car, there was a picture, and a description, and a price.”

Anti-human trafficking group Polaris reports that The International Labor Organization estimates 4.5 million people are currently working against their will for sex traffickers. And the underground sex economy in 2014 was worth $290 million in Atlanta, Georgia, alone, according to an Urban Institute study.

http://www.theearthchild.co.za/ashton-kutcher-rescued-6000-sex-traf...

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Permalink Reply by ROSE on January 17, 2017 at 6:07pm

New digital tool will help combat sex abuse online
by Mehreen Shahid, Orillia Packet & Times, January 17, 2017

A new digital tool released by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (CCCP) hopes to take aim at bringing down the amount of child-sex abuse material available on the internet.

Dubbed as Project Arachnid, the automated program searches through files online, detecting images and videos related to child sexual abuse, according to a press release by CCCP Tuesday. Once the content has been identified, using confirmed digital fingerprints of illegal content, a notice is sent to the website hosting company requesting the content's immediate removal, the release further explained.

"Children and young people who have experienced abuse...can get some sense of peace and protection that there's a program that's working quicker than humans to eradicate these images from the internet," said Jennifer Jackson, executive director of the Child Advocacy Centre of Simcoe/Muskoka (CACSM).

The press release presented evidence of the work already done by the tool in the six weeks since its release. During that time, Project Arachnid has processed over 230 million web pages, detected over 5.1 million different web pages hosting child sexual abuse material and has detected over 40,000 such unique images.

The need for the tool arises from a survey that documented voices of 128 victims of child sex abuse from around the world helping identify some of the unique challenges faced by survivors, whose abuse as a child was recorded and, in many instances, distributed online.

"It exacerbates the impact of the abuse because you can't leave it in the past," said Jackson. "It is a message to the victims we work with that we recognize the complexity of the problem and that we're diligently working to help them in the future."

"I think it's somewhat empowering for victims to know that there is help out there," she added. "Technologically, we're able to catch up with the problem and able to come up with a response for them."

The results produced by Project Arachnid also indicate the need to break the cycle of denial, said Lianna McDonald, executive director of the CCCP.

"These numbers serve as a reality check about the serious problem of child sexual abuse," she said. "We can no longer deny what is right in front of us. We believe that knowledge is the best antidote to societal denial that these types of things don't happen to children."

"Given what we heard from survivors, we believe that one of the most important outcomes of Project Arachnid will be the psychological relief offered to survivors who have had no control over the ongoing sharing of their abuse," said McDonald. "Project Arachnid is using technology to counter the years of misuse by offenders and to help end the cycle of abuse."

As has been seen in her line of work, said Jackson, young victims are very unlikely to disclose and report abuse.

"They've been threatened with harm and shame," she said. "So the responsibility is on the adults to observe behaviours to recognize situations that are putting a child at risk and to be better informed so we can reach out to children and assist in the rescue of the kid."

Education material available at cacsimcoemuskoka.ca can help identify and report child sex abuse.

The survey by CCCP continues to be available at protectchildren.ca/app/en, encouraging survivors to participate in the initiative.

Some of the preliminary results of the survivors' survey include:

    Of the survivors, 73% worry about being recognized by someone because of the recording of their child sexual abuse.
    Nearly 60% of the survivors indicated that the single/primary abuser was a parent.
    A 56% of the survivors indicated that the abuse began between the ages of 0-four, and of those, over 60% indicated the abuse continued into adulthood.
    At least, 52% cases involved organized sexual abuse (abuse that involves children being subjected to sexual abuse by multiple offenders).
    Some 67% of the survivors were threatened with physical harm, and of those, 43% were told they would die or be killed.
    As a result of abuse, 82% of the survivors anticipate needing ongoing/future therapy.

http://www.orilliapacket.com/2017/01/17/new-digital-tool-will-help-...

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