Introduction
According to the Honduras 2015 Crime and Safety report, Honduras has one of the highest murder rates in the world. Incidents of extortion, harassment and abduction are not uncommon in cities of Honduras where the women and children are most vulnerable to such incidents of violence. Most of the major cities of Honduras has higher homicide rates than the national average1 . Public spaces and public transportation i.e. the buses and taxis are considered as unsafe for women in Honduras. This fear of violence in public spaces affects the everyday lives of women as it restricts their movement and freedom to exert their right as citizens of the city – freedom to move, study, work, and spend leisure time.
Creating a safe environment involves much more than just responding to violence. It is important to create the conditions by which women are able to move about safely and without fear of violence or assault. Fear often plays a key role in women's experience and access to the city. Therefore, in order to create greater levels of safety and comfort, both actual violence and the fear of violence need to be addressed. Research has shown that many factors play a role in determining women’s access to the city, including urban design and planning, community involvement, improved policing, and usage of space. The question was how to gather that information to build safer cities.
Safetipin, is a map-based mobile application and online platform, which works to make communities and cities safer by providing safety-related information collected by users and night time photographs. It uses the methodology of the safety audit as a tool to assess public spaces and perception of safety in those public spaces. The safety audits measures several parameters including infrastructure and the social usage of the space. The safety audit measures factors like lighting, signage, presence of people, presence of security, natural surveillance, maintenance of the place, the state of the sidewalk. Additionally, safety audits identify possible actions for change and build public awareness, ownership and commitment to implementing these actions at both the local and policy levels.
The Safetipin technology platform has two apps – My Safetipin, a crowd sourced tech platform that is used by volunteers and citizens to give data about their city and Safetipin Nite, a tool to collect night time pictures of the city. For this project, data has been collected through My Safetipin app only.
For this project, Choloma Municipality was selected as the pilot as it’s one of the most unsafe cities of Honduras. Choloma Municipality is part of Cortes, one of the 18 Departments of Honduras. As seen in the Map 1, Choloma Municipality has 41 administrative divisions or localities. The key stakeholders for this project are the Municipality of Choloma, UN Women, UNDP, UNICEF, and local organizations.
My Safetipin app has been used to assess public spaces in Choloma for safety, both on infrastructure as well as social usage. The data has delineated why certain spaces are vulnerable by assessing infrastructural parameters as well as social usage by measuring women’s feelings of safety at different places around the city. The collected data has been analysed in this report, and can used for actual on-ground responses and actions that will work towardsimproving safety for citizens on the streets and public spaces.
The two key objectives for this project are:
1. Capacity Building training of local organizations in Choloma
A two-day capacity building program with key stakeholders on how to use the app, how to analyze data for public policy and to develop an understanding of public spaces and violence against women. A training will also be held with volunteers on how to use the My Safetipin app.
2. Data Integration at the Local level
The data collected to be analyzed by the Safetipin team and made available through GIS layers maps, reports, tables and other formats. The raw data will also be made available to All the data collected at the local level will be integrated into the app platform and will be available both for analysis as well as visible on the app for usage by all citizens to understand safety concerns and make safer decisions while using public spaces.