Embracing ICTs to Eliminate Violence Against Women and Children in Kazakhstan

This article describes the efforts of the Podrugi Crisis Centre, the first organisation to work against domestic violence in Almaty, Kazakhstan, as it seeks to be more effective in its work by becoming a pioneer in Internet Communication Technologies (ICTs).

The article describes the biggest barriers to women networking against violence in Central Asia as the prohibitive price of ICTs and the fact that few ICT training materials are available in Russian. Further, staff are described as never having heard of many different types of software such as free and open source software (FOSS).

According to the article, 540 women died due to spousal abuse last year. Members of the Centre comment that domestic violence is not understood as a concept by school children, despite the violence they experience in their homes. The article describes age and gender as affecting people's ability to seek help in situations of domestic violence. Young boys and girls who’ve been affected by family violence prefer to contact their mothers or friends, mostly because they do not know that professional help is an option. “Podrugi has noted that boys call their hotline much less frequently than girls, in part, they suspect, because boys feel embarrassed speaking to female hotline staffers,” according to Kaca Fialova of the APC Women's Networking Support Programme. One of the goals of the Podrugi Crisis Center is that the anonymity of reporting cases of violence through the internet will increase boys' ability to seek help.”

The Podrugi Crisis Centre is introducing ICTs with a focus on youth participation. As a winner of the Global Knowledge Partnership’s 2004 Seed Grant, the Centre has launched a website, and scheduled online forums, conferences, and distance-learning to eliminate violence against women. An innovative tool is also being used by the Centre: the Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM) for ICT initiatives and ICT evaluation, a gender analysis tool developed by APC Women's Networking Support Programme (WNSP). Used for both evaluation and planning purposes it is helping bring out issues such as privacy and security around the issues of gender and ICT issues.

The article concludes with this statement: "It's no surprise that the initiative and spunk of an organisation that brought domestic violence to public light in Kazakhstan eight years ago is now embracing ICTs in order to eliminate it."