ISLAMABAD: A user-friendly cellular app ‘Hamqadam’ was launched right here on Tuesday with an goal to help greater than one-third of the nation’s girls who face bodily and emotional violence.
Developed by a civil society organisation Shirkat Gah — Girls’s Useful resource Centre in collaboration with the Nationwide Fee of Standing on Girls (NCSW) and with the technical assist from Lums, the app connects survivors with authorized and different companies. The challenge has been funded by the UN Belief Fund.
The audio system on the ceremony appreciated the launch of the app, terming the transfer “well timed and far wanted”. They, nonetheless, lamented the lax implementation of related legal guidelines, the absence of built-in information, and protracted adverse cultural norms that permit impunity for violence in opposition to girls.
Talking on the event, NCSW Chairperson Nilofar Bakhtiar mentioned there was a have to re-prioritise insurance policies regarding girls, which had been on the backburner for fairly a while. She mentioned Sindh, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa didn’t have the NCSW chapters whereas the fee itself was working and not using a common board for multiple 12 months.
“A girl who’s a sufferer of home violence can’t look in the direction of her household for assist and that is the place this [mobile] app helps,” she mentioned, including that the initiative would additionally assist in the capability constructing of regulation enforcers and the well being authorities.
Former MNA Mehnaz Akbar Aziz careworn the necessity to elevate consciousness to make this initiative profitable by introducing this app in universities, amongst girls legal professionals, and influencers which she termed the “pockets of change”.
Her discuss was adopted by an in depth presentation by Shirkat Gah coordinator Sana Raza and Dr Salman Shahid from Lums, who performed a key function within the growth of the app.
Ms Raza mentioned the platform was developed to create consciousness from the “grassroots to the very high” in a bid to have interaction the entire society.
Addressing the individuals, UN Girls’s Portfolio Supervisor Saman Ahsan mentioned over the time, funding for gender inequality initiatives had decreased and cited the instance of Covid-19 pandemic. In accordance with the Pakistan Demographic and Well being Survey, she mentioned, 56pc of the ladies didn’t even share it with their households, then how might they strategy the authorities?
MNA Huma Akhtar Chugtai noting that the cellular utility offered a complete referral mechanism in addition to credible information essential for policy-making, careworn the necessity to practice judges, civil servants, and the police to result in reforms which might facilitate the journey in the direction of ending the violence in opposition to girls.
PPP MNA Sehar Kamran emphasised the necessity for the enforcement of such insurance policies for which all stakeholders should be taken on board and present legal guidelines reviewed with a give attention to their execution. She underlined the necessity to make police stations protected for ladies by way of correct coaching to encourage survivors to lodge complaints and advocated reforms within the felony justice system for deterrence and for extra girls within the judicial system.
MNA Sabeen Ghauri mentioned girls had been usually silenced by their households regardless of incidents of violence however this app would give them the boldness to face up for themselves.
In her video message, Secretary Girls Growth Division Punjab Sumera Samad mentioned the app raised consciousness amongst gender-based violence survivors, significantly psycho-social counselling.
Amna Waheed Durrani from the KP Fee on the Standing of Girls mentioned the platform would assist break the taboo about gender-based violence, as often it’s “not thought-about unacceptable”.
Naseem Hasan Mastoi, the deputy director Girls’s Growth Division, Benazirabad, mentioned the app would cut back their workload because the built-in platform offered survivors with related data with only a click on.
Zarghoona Barrech of the Balochistan Fee on the Standing of Girls mentioned the stakeholders within the province would get information to make the appliance efficient.
Government Director Shirkat Gah Farida Shaheed mentioned the victims of the gender-based violence hardly ever knew to whom they need to name and the place to go or what companies existed to make sure their rights.
The Hamqadam app, she mentioned, offered the solutions, detailing nationwide and provincial assets and particulars of present companies in 16 districts.
Printed in Daybreak, Could twenty second, 2024