The former French president François Hollande has spoken of his concern for women suffering domestic abuse during the lockdown, reports The Guardian.
In an interview with The Guardian, Hollande called for schoolchildren to be taught that violence at home was unacceptable but that it affected every social group.
“There’s this idea that it’s just a problem in working-class settings or immigrant areas, but this is so wrong. It happens in all types of families,” he said. “For too long violence against women has been pushed aside because it was considered part of the personal, the private, and not something that concerned society.”
Hollande was speaking to support a new phone app developed in France, but available in the UK and a dozen other countries, to help female victims of violence whether at home, in the workplace or in public.
App-Elles – available for Android or iOS – allows women and girls to discreetly alert three trusted contacts when they are being attacked allowing them to call the police if necessary. As well as a GPS alert, a recording is made of the attack in real time on the victims and contacts’ phones.
On Thursday, the World Health Organization said emergency calls by women being subjected to threats or violence from their partner had risen by 60% compared with last year. The WHO pointed out that even before the Covid-19 crisis and lockdowns in several countries, a quarter of all women and one child in three were victims of physical or sexual abuse. In the first two weeks of lockdown in France the number of calls reporting conjugal violence rose 32% according to the equality secretary Marlène Schiappa. The strict lockdown ends in France on Monday.
Diariata N’Diaye, an artist and feminist campaigner, received a 200,000-euro grant to develop App-Elles, a play on the word Appel (call) and Elle (her) from Hollande’s Fondation la France s’engage (France is committed).
“When we started developing this five years ago, I was surprised there was nothing like it already. I thought, we can use technology to send men to the moon, but we don’t think to use it to help women victims of violence,” N’Diaye said.
“Maybe because this is not a business. It’s not about making money. It’s a tool for women who are victims of violence to discreetly alert someone. We’re often told that women can call the police if they are being attacked, but they can’t. Often they can’t speak freely and it’s not possible to make a call.