Women report harassment

Women report harassment

Every day hundreds of women in Azerbaijan are victim to different types of harassment because of corruption, often being asked by men in positions of power to provide them with sexual bribes. But for the most part, their abusers remain unpunished. Moreover, women usually do not have a means of reporting incidents or are reluctant to do so due to the unique sensitivity of harassment issues in Azerbaijani society.

TI Azerbaijan is expanding its Advocacy and Legal Centre program with the aim of strengthening the responses of both government and civil society to corruption in the country. This is part of the Azerbaijan Partnership for Transparency project which focuses on the social inclusion of vulnerable groups. While women fall into this category, at present there is no way of responding to reports of harassment within cases of corruption in an efficient and legitimate way.

Women may  feel ashamed to report  cases to the police as they are often met with negligence and indifference towards their concerns, with officers tending to blame women themselves for giving men “the grounds” for harassment. In addition, international research and practice has shown that women are particularly vulnerable to instances of corruption where instead of money exchanging hands, they are asked for sex in exchange for social services that should be provided for free.

Protecting women who become victims of sexual harassment in Azerbaijan is therefore very difficult, along with the tasks of increasing  awareness of the issue in local government and demanding that authorities respond to incidents accordingly.

As it stands, there are no online portals  that allow women to anonymously report incidents of violence. However, there are examples of such platforms (e.g. Balkan and Egypt models) which have had a positive impact on both contributing to the evidence-based practice and government responsiveness to the problem. As this is a pilot initiative in Azerbaijan, initially the platform will be launched for women to report harassment cases in Baku (the capital city). Therefore, the target group for the pilot initiative will be women living in Baku.

Through such online platform, women in Baku will be able to anonymously report incidents of harassment via SMS, email, as well as if possible (in terms of anonymity and confidentiality concerns) through Facebook and Twitter to a site that would map and categorize the facts of harassment and would also let women share their stories.