2017 ICT4D Conference

The Dalit community is one of the most deprived communities in South-East Asia especially in countries like India and Bangladesh. With about 6.5 million Dalit population living in Bangladesh this community has continuously been under human rights abuse and continuously faces discrimination such as denial of service from local businesses, lack of access to various social safety net program. To improve the situation in support from various NGOs, Government and Donor agencies a network named Bangladesh Dalit and Excluded Rights Movement (BDERM) has been formed to protect their rights. BDERM has created Dalit human rights defender, a group of young Dalit community members who works on building awareness about their rights and works as a watchdog in case of any rights abuse. In case of any discrimination they report it to the BDERM who holds a mock-trial in the community to publicly shame the business. But often when these volunteers find any discrimination the can’t keep the record properly to present it in the court, hampering the process of trial. In addition, the ordinary citizen has very little data and understanding of this ongoing discrimination of the Dalit community.

Hence in collaboration with Christian Aid and Nagorik Uddayag, two NGOs working in Dalit rights and are member of BDERM, mPower has created an ICT based case management and citizen reporting platform through which the Dalit Rights Defender can report any rights abuse, violence and discrimination through a mobile app, by taking pictures and recording audio. Each report then turns into a case, where a Nagorik Uddayag NGO officials reviews the report, approves it and assign it to designated officials. Time by time, they can update information about the case and these cases now contains testimony and pictures, it now becomes a vital part of the mock-trial. In addition, there is a dynamic dashboard that provides an aggregated snapshot of the overall report on violence against Dalit community which can be shared across social media to raise wide-scale awareness.