A Digital complaint and reporting system for gender related violence in Peru

Abstract

In this article, we developed a low-cost digital innovation to improve the process of handling legal complaints for cases related to gender violence, especially those related to femicide. Gender-related violence or femicide has been a widely spread health problem throughout the world (refs). In Peru, this violence affects approximately 30-40%(?) of women at some time in their lives (refs). In 2020 (?) the National Police registered approximately 222 234 complaints related to family violence; 30% of these cases were registered through the Women's Emergency Center, a center for women requesting judicial, psychological, and social help. Studies have shown that many women are discouraged to report violence and harassment because the complaint system are often lengthy and ineffective. At the start of this study, we found that several steps of this system were still based on a paper-based system and often prone to error and delays. For this reason, we propose a a low-cost digital solution to improve the registration process of these complaints. The solution presented consists of four components: 1) A mobile application exclusively designed and targeted to women victim of violence, 2) A web application, aimed at those responsible for the managing the registration process of the complaint, 3) Back-end, and 4) Integration with devices of early warning. The proposed solution was piloted and validated with a small sample of 15 women between the ages of 19 and 43 who were victims or witnesses of gender-related violence, an officer from the National Police of Peru and a social worker from the Women's Emergency Center.20 simulations of complaint registers were carried out using the proposed solution. The preliminary results obtained during the validation phase showed that the average time used to register the complaints was and the users’ perceptions of the proposed system revealed that the system could provide transparency and ensure protection in the complaints process.