Violence against women is a pervasive and widespread issue that affects women all over the world. This particular type of violence refers to any act of physical, sexual, psychological, or emotional harm inflicted on a woman without her consent, for which it can take many forms, including not only domestic violence, but also sexual assault, rape, stalking, and human trafficking. In today’s world, violence against women is a major public health problem and is also a violation of human rights, as it not only impacts a woman’s physical and emotional well-being, but also a a woman’s ability to participate fully in society. On top of the immediate and devastating physical and mental consequences that this type of violence causes, it can also have long-term effects on the health, education, and economic opportunities of women and their families. According to estimates published by the World Health Organization (WHO), it is estimated that 736 million women in the world (which equates for 1 in every 3 women) have been subjected at least once in their life to physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner (or sexual violence from a non-partner), and that’s a number that has remained largely unchanged over the past decade. Statistics collected by the WHO also suggest that around 80% of complaints are dismissed, with only 1% of them actually resulting in a criminal conviction. While efforts to address violence against women are being made at a worldwide scale – including the implementation of laws and policies that aim to protect women, as well as providing support services for victims, and also raising awareness about the issue – there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done in order to address this global issue and ultimately ensure that all women have the right to live free from violence. This is why ATBHASH created the NanShe App, a revolutionary free mobile App that allows victims of domestic violence to pre-establish digitally-certified evidence of abuse and ultimately share it with authorities without the risk of their abusers finding out thanks to the use of blockchain technology.
ATBHASH’s newly announced NanShe App essentially brings a platform that aims to create a safe space for women survivors as well as any other people who have been subjected and suffered from any form of violelnce.
WHO IS ATBHASH?
ATBHASH is a 4-year old French tech company based in Paris that’s focused on developing blockchain technology-based solutions that ultimately enable the verification and inalterability of one’s personal evidence in digital form for different scenarios.
Since the company originally worked solely for the building industry, ATBHASH’s first technology-based solution was CEERTIF, a mobile application that in just a few clicks allows users to obtain the assurance that their photos, videos, and scans made on a construction site or any other sort of intellectual property owned either by companies or individuals remain completely inalienable and unalterable by any third party thanks to the use of blockchain technology, including both the files themselves as well as the timestamp for those files (i.e. the original date that each file was create), thus bringing CEERTIF users a digitally-certified evidence / proof that’s ultimately indisputable, whether that’s when presenting it to legal authorities or even in a court of law.
Eric Albou, who’s the founder, CEO, and Chief Digital Office of ATBHASH, is a former veteran lawyer with 20 years of experience who was involved in the defense of women who were subjected to any form of violence, working in defending victims and ultimately proving their case by personally gathering credible evidence that could be used in court.
Around 2 years after creating the CEERTIF App, Eric came up with the idea of creating a mobile app which aims to aid women who have been victims of violence in providing evidence that’s digitally-certified to prove their situation and assert their rights in court.
That app, called the NanShe App, uses the same blockchain technology that’s used in the CEERTIF App to certify and legitimatize any sort of digital evidence created by the App users.
The NanShe App’s name is directly based on NANSHE, a Sumerian goddess from the Mesopotamian mythology that represents justice, social welfare, and the protection of abused individuals who envisions a world of work in which those people are always treated with equally, respectfully and fairly.
In a recent interview, Eric noted that “Conjugal and familial violence, both physical and psychological, is a true social problem that has a considerable impact on all family members, not just the victims, but also for the close relatives who are witnesses, and especially for the younger children.”
Eric added to his statement by mentioning that “People don’t report abuse for a variety of reasons: because they’re terrified of their abusers, because they are not welcomed well by police, because they are not believed.” ATBHASH studied all of these factors when creating the NanShe App, which is built for victims to collect evidence discretely without catching the attention of their abuser.
WHAT IS THE NANSHE APP?
Essentially, the NanShe App is an innovative mobile App powered by the Tezos blockchain technology that allows victims of domestic violence to pre-establish digitally-certified evidence of abuse and then share it with authorities without the risk of their abusers finding out thanks to the use of that same blockchain technology.
In other words, the NanShe App ultimately empowers victims of violence with the ability to provide legal entities and/or authorities with legit and indisputable evidence that’s certified digitally through blockchain technology in order to support and back-up their personal claims about being subjected to any form of violence from any potential abuser.
HOW DOES THE NANSHE APP WORK?
Via the NanShe App, victims of violence can securely pre-establish digital proof that they were or are still being the victim of abuse in the form of digitally-certified files, which can be transcriptions of texts and/or emails, evidence of photographs and videos, scans of digital documents, screenshots of a user’s mobile device screen, exports of WhatsApp chats, and also audio recordings.
Any digital file created in the NanShe App is securely timestamped, geolocated, and then encrypted through the use of Tezos blockchain technology, which is a low-efficiency blockchain, as this blockchain technology works based on a proof-of-stake protocol (unlike blockchains that rely on proof-of-work schemes), so in just approximately 5 minutes the whole blockchain-based process of time-stamping, geolocating, and encrypting a user’s digital files is concluded.
Whenever a digital file is created in the NanShe App, a watermark is also automatically added to that file if possible (including files such as pictures, screenshots, etc.).
The whole blockchain process that takes place whenever a user creates their digitally-certified files in the NanShe App is done through a Merkle hash tree function output process, which essentially converts any kind of data, regardless of its hash length, to a fixed-size output. This ultimately allows for only 6 hash functions a day (1 every 4 hours) to be made on the back-end of the App’s system (instead of having to perform the typical 5 hash functions each time a file is created) whenever those digitally-certified files are created, ultimately saving the system resources.
Last but not least, know that the ATBHASH doesn’t use any of its users’ data for anything, meaning it does not collect, nor use, nor sell, nor rent that data, as all of their users’ data is fully encrypted through the entire process from start to finish, making all of their users’ personal data completely private and anonymized.
The way that works is by having each user’s data that’s collected by the NanShe App being encrypted by the Tezos blockchain technology, and then sent to the company’s dedicated secure data center server by (OC3), meaning that no other third-party company is involved in providing a server that would be utilized as the NanShe’s App data storage server (which is usually the case with big tech companies such as Amazon, or Google, etc.).
Each NanShe App user can also pre-determine up to 3 “Angels” per user account, which are basically trustworthy contacts they’d want to have automatically contacted and notified in case the user themselves is in imminent danger. Those Angels can be anyone that user trusts, whether that’s family members, close friends, a lawyer, associations, or even trusted third parties. If those emergency contacts accept a user’s request to be their Angels, they’ll be registered directly on the NanShe App.
Then, whenever a user feels like they’re in danger, they can simply click the Red Alert Bell Icon (located the bottom-right of the screen) to contact their Angel(s), who will receive that an alert either in the form of an SMS, a WhatsApp message, and/or an email, for which that Angel can then click on that notification, allowing them to “geo-localize” that NanShe App user for a total of 30 minutes, essentially giving those emergency contacts enough time to contact the police or any other local authorities.
On that note, it’s also worth mentioning that the company (ATBHASH) has also coded the NanShe App to be connected to all currently existing police phone numbers worldwide, meaning that no matter what country your from, the NanShe App is programmed to automatically know which police phone number to use thanks to its Geo-location capabilities.
Best of all, note that the NanShe App not only works in 3/4/5 G connected mode, but also while a user is completely offline, which is a huge advantage for a user’s personal physical and psychological security in real-time.
WHAT ARE ATBHASH’S FUTURE PLANS FOR THE NANSHE APP?
ATBHASH is planning on officially launching its NanShe App on March 8th, which is when International Women’s Day is celebrated.
While the NanShe App will remain free for single user accounts, the company has business plans to monitize the NanShe App by marketing its mobile app to companies as well as universities by offering them additional In-App functionalities on top of all the basic features already offered (including increasing the file-limit for each and every digitally-certified file-creation option), ultimately allowing large entities to discourage any potential abusers from exerting any form of violence within their facilitates.
If you’re interested in learning more about the NanShe App, simply visit the official website.
Lastly, if you’re interested in knowing more about the company (ATBHASH), then head over to the ATBHASH’s official website.
