Alicante (EFE).- Fifteen institutions and academic centers from nine European countries, including Spain, are participating in a project that analyzes the existing resources in the fight against gender violence in their territories and the improvements that would be necessary, under an approach that includes the perspectives and assessments of the victims and the security forces, among other groups.
One of the main interventions of this European project is also the training of police officers through interactive learning so that they can acquire a little more knowledge about the problems and the needs of women who suffer abuse, in order to offer them a better attendance.
A chatbot to inform
Similarly, a chatbot will be developed to inform victims about ways to get help and assistance, in addition to providing them with a hotline number, such as police or other first responders, to reduce violence.
On the Spanish side, a multidisciplinary research team from the University of Alicante (UA), headed by the Professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health Carmen Vives Cases, and the Department of the Interior of the Generalitat de Catalunya (Mossos d’Esquadra).
Also part of ISEDA, which consists of several phases and is funded by the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation program, are entities from Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Finland and Bulgaria.
“This is a research and intervention project. In the research part, which is what we are now at, we are mapping the resources for attention at the police and social level, but not only making an inventory of those that each of the countries where we are going to work has, but also analyzing them.” , Vives Cases has indicated in an interview with EFE.
study questions
Among other issues, for example, “the extent to which they include women and other groups of victims (children) and attend to social inequalities” is analysed, he pointed out.
We are also going to carry out a qualitative study in the different countries that are part of the ISEDA project, in which women affected by gender violence, associations and public institutions, professionals and the police will participate” so that, from their perspectives, ” provide us with an assessment of the available resources and the improvements that would be necessary”, has advanced the professor.
All this information “will help us to define interventions that we already have planned in the project, which have to do, on the one hand, with improving accessibility to the police to file complaints in cases in which women have already find themselves in this situation and, on the other, with improving the training of security forces personnel in matters of gender violence and in other aspects that arise in this part of the diagnosis that are relevant”, he said.
Approach specific needs
“Because it is not only knowing about the problem (of gender violence), but also getting closer to the specific needs of women”, stressed Vives Cases, who stressed that “the project is also interested in the subject of social inequalities”, in the sense that these “do not also imply more difficulties in accessing resources” in terms of prevention against abuse.
On the other hand, an integrated data platform will gather, with the consent of the victims, judicial evidence that will be used to build a legal case and record trends on the nature, frequency and circumstances of events, according to AU sources.
On the other hand, there are some project teams – in this area, Spain does not participate – that will work on an intervention with abusers to redirect their behavior.
In the final phase of ISEDA, campaigns will be promoted to break with gender stereotypes and raise awareness about non-tolerance of violence with the contributions of the victims, through informative guides, posters and videos aimed at educational centers and society in general. .
“The situation of gender violence is obviously very different in the countries and, above all, the project does not focus only on this problem, on measuring the magnitude and risk factors, but on the availability of resources”, has exposed the professor. EFE