MediCapt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: The Design, Development, and Deployment of Mobile Technology to Document Forensic Evidence of Sexual Violence

Naimer, Karen; Brown, Widney; Mishori, Ranit

doi:10.5038/1911-9933.11.1.1455

Cited by 7 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…One promising avenue for intersectoral intervention and service delivery may lie within the technology field. For example, technology is being used to train providers that engage with sexual violence survivors [110,111]. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has developed MediCapt, a mobile phone app that has been developed to link medical, law-enforcement, and legal sectors to facilitate the comprehensive forensic documentation of evidence for survivors of sexual violence.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has developed MediCapt, a mobile phone app that has been developed to link medical, law-enforcement, and legal sectors to facilitate the comprehensive forensic documentation of evidence for survivors of sexual violence. It helps healthcare providers conduct medical exams through the provision of a medical intake form and mobile camera and to securely transmit this data to counterparts in the police and in the legal sectors [110,111]. It is currently being field-tested.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Male and LGBT survivors of sexual violence in conflict situations: a realist review of health interventions in low-and middle-income countries

Kiss

Quinlan-Davidson

Pasquero³

et al. 2020

Confl Health

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Conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) against women and girls has been the subject of increasing research and scholarship. Less is known about the health of men, boys and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and other gender non-binary persons who survive CRSV. This paper is the first systematic realist review on medical, mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) interventions that focusses on male and LGBT survivors of CRSV. The review explores the gender differences in context, mechanisms and outcomes that underpin interventions addressing the health and psychosocial wellbeing of male and LGBT survivors. The aim is to contribute to the design and delivery of gender-sensitive and, when needed, gender-specific approaches for interventions that respond to specific needs of different groups of all survivors. We conducted a systematic search of academic and grey literature to identify medical and MHPSS interventions that included men, boys and LGBT survivors. We identified interventions specifically targeting women and girls that we used as comparators. We then purposively sampled studies from the fields of gender and health, and sexual abuse against men and LGBT people for theory building and testing. We identified 26 evaluations of interventions for survivors of CRSV. Nine studies included male survivors, twelve studies focussed exclusively on female survivors and one study targeted children and adolescents. No intervention evaluation focussed on LGBT survivors of CRSV. The interventions that included male survivors did not describe specific components for this population. Results of intervention evaluations that included male survivors were not disaggregated by gender, and some studies did not report the gender composition. Although some mental health and psychosocial consequences of sexual violence against men and boys may be similar among male and female survivors, the way each process trauma, display symptoms, seek help, adhere to treatment and improve their mental health differ by gender. Initiatives targeting male and LGBT survivors of CRSV need to be designed to actively address specific gender differences in access, adherence and response to MHPSS interventions. Models of care that are gender-sensitive and integrated to local resources are promising avenues to promote the health of male and LGBT survivors of CRSV.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Male and LGBT survivors of sexual violence in conflict situations: a realist review of health interventions in low-and middle-income countries

Kiss

Quinlan-Davidson

Pasquero³

et al. 2020

Confl Health

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“…New technologies have been increasingly deployed in early-warning and conflict monitoring, and there is some evidence that innovators are seeking to leverage new technology to prevent and monitor CRSV. This is particularly true for the field of mobile health, where innovators are adapting innovations made through mobile health apps to report and monitor CRSV (Mishori et al, 2017;Naimer et al, 2017).…”

Section: Conflict-related Sexual Violence Early Warning and Monitoringmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As regards deployment of new technologies to address CRSV specifically, innovations primarily appear to be geared at addressing medical-forensic documentation of CRSV, and are in the "future proofing" stage (Mishori et al, 2017;Naimer et al, 2017)-notably, both the aforementioned cited studies are being trialled in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The development of apps seeking to enable users in low resource/conflict affected environments prioritise the creation of evidence of SGBV with an eye towards criminal prosecution, although one such app (MediCapt) does envision a data mapping capability will be built into the app but it highlights that significant additional study of the app is needed (Naimer et al, 2017: 33).…”

Section: Use Of Digital Technology Addressing Sexual Violence In Conf...mentioning

confidence: 99%

New Technologies for Combatting Sexual Violence in Conflict and Non-conflict Settings

Kaitlin¹

2022

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There are a significant number of new technologies aimed at combatting sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV)—primarily in the form of “emergency mobile apps”, but they are generally geographically and culturally limited, and under-studied. There are fewer applications of new technologies addressing conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), as regards prevention, monitoring, and early warning systems. Well established issues related to the under-reporting of SGBV also impact the accuracy of digital monitoring tools used in both conflict and non-conflict contexts. The use of digital tools to combat SGBV also raises novel challenges related to new technologies, such as bias and data protection concerns. This report reviews evidence of the deployment of new technologies to address sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) both in and outside of conflict settings, and the potential for applications from non-conflict settings to apply to CRSV. Although certain literature is beginning to address the specific limitations of new technologies (e.g. usability in urban environments, cultural and linguistic appropriateness, and other accessibility questions), the limited nature of the literature assessing these new technologies and—more importantly—the design of these new technologies, means that the needs of disabled individuals, LGBTQIA+, and even men and boys, are often not centred or addressed in the design and critique of these new technologies. The review found that the studies assessing new technologies designed for and deployed in non-conflict settings identify many of the same issues affecting societal understanding of SGBV generally (under-reporting, for example), as well as new issues specific to the digital turn, such as serious and evolving privacy and data protection concerns. As regards the application of new technologies to CRSV specifically, both the applications and literature assessing them are nascent. Nevertheless, scholars are seeking to define frameworks aimed at harm reduction for the proliferation of new technologies in the humanitarian field specific to CRSV.

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“…16 Raymond and Sandvik are cognizant of the "potentially transformative" impact in deploying MediCapt to "help hold perpetrators of human rights violations accountable for their crimes" starting in eastern Congo. 17 The scope of the problem Raymond and Sandvik identify explains the urgency of their task, which is to elucidate "ICT as a site of ethical precariousness and as capable of causing actual harm to the response, to responders, and most importantly, to civilians who are the targets of mass atrocities. "…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Querying the Ethics of Data Collection as a Community of Research and Practice The Movement toward the “Liberalism of Fear” to Protect the Vulnerable

Mazzucelli¹,

Visvizi²

2017

GSP

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MediCapt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: The Design, Development, and Deployment of Mobile Technology to Document Forensic Evidence of Sexual Violence

Cited by 7 publications

References 1 publication

Male and LGBT survivors of sexual violence in conflict situations: a realist review of health interventions in low-and middle-income countries

Male and LGBT survivors of sexual violence in conflict situations: a realist review of health interventions in low-and middle-income countries

New Technologies for Combatting Sexual Violence in Conflict and Non-conflict Settings

Querying the Ethics of Data Collection as a Community of Research and Practice The Movement toward the “Liberalism of Fear” to Protect the Vulnerable

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