The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) recently rewarded the winners of the Hackathon on protection against Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Harassment in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The winning team, MLezi, developed a mobile application capable of preventing abuse and sexual exploitation in humanitarian settings.
MLezi, whose name means “guardian” in Swahili, is made up of three functionalities: a database, a quiz and a chatbot. The database is a collection of official documents to help humanitarians increase their knowledge of sexual abuse issues, while the quiz allows users to learn while having fun through associated games. Finally, the chatbot allows users to have a computer conversation.
Irène Bangwela, a third-year computer science student at the Catholic University of Congo (UCC), is part of the Mlezi team. She explains that this application allows humanitarian workers to update and assess their knowledge of sexual abuse and exploitation. If used correctly, the app could seriously decrease rates of Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Harassment involving humanitarians.
The competition, launched on April 11 in Kinshasa, was aimed at young mobile application developers aged between 18 and 35. A total of 32 applications were selected for analysis. The jury selected three winning groups, Mlezi from Kinshasa, La Tempête from North Kivu and Authentique from Mbuji-Mayi (Kasaï-Oriental).
The Hackathon has thus made it possible to highlight innovative ideas aimed at combating abuse and sexual exploitation in humanitarian settings in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is a crucial issue, as the Australian UN Jane Connors revealed last February that there had been more than 300 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation involving peacekeepers around the world in 2021.
In any case, we salute the creativity and the efforts made by these developers to try to put an end to these practices which can, unfortunately, continue to afflict the vulnerable populations of this country.