site.btaPanic Button App in Development to Help Women at Risk of Violence

A phone app for a panic button to help women at risk of violence will be developed by the University of Telecommunications and Post in Sofia and the Bulgarian-Turkish Women Business Club (BTWBC). The app's development was presented by BTWBC Chair Turkyan Turker at a conference on "Life Without Violence" here on Friday.

The app will be developed in Bulgaria and will be donated to the Ministry of Interior. More than 10 million women are currently registered in the similar KADES mobile app used in Turkiye, requiring only registration and the woman's location. Only the Ministry of Interior has access to this data, Turker specified. The app is a panic button type, which, when pressed, connects the victim to the police. According to Turker, after asking the woman to confirm that she is sure she is being subjected to violence, the police respond within 5-15 minutes. In order for the Bulgarian app to be implemented in an identical way and to work effectively, the institutions need to lend us a hand, the BTWBC Chair added.

University of Telecommunications and Post Rector Miglena Temelkova said that there is no state policy to protect the lives of victims of violence in Bulgaria, since it has come to the point where organizations are initiating forums like Friday's. According to her, this means a complete abdication on the part of the State to preserve human life in situations of violence. "This is also the reason why we responded to Turkan's proposal to contribute to the protection of human life. I realize that even if we create a wonderful application, if we do not receive cooperation from the Ministry of Interior, we will create an ineffective product," she noted. "For us, as developers of this application, it is extremely important to have clarity on how it will work with state institutions. The longer we delay this panic button, the more the sad statistics will swell," added Prof. Temelkova.

Chief Inspector Zornitsa Shumanova, head of the Domestic Violence Sector at the National Police Directorate, said that in the first ten months of this year, 3,517 women, 1,295 children, and 544 men were registered as victims of domestic violence. According to her, compared to the same period in 2024, there has been an increase in the number of men who have suffered from domestic violence. The number of protection orders issued this year has decreased by 4.3% compared to January-October 2024. The highest number of protection orders as a share of the population were issued in the regions of Lovech, Silistra, Razgrad, Smolyan, Shumen, Veliko Tarnovo, Pleven, Yambol, and Pernik. A bridge is needed between people, organizations, and institutions, Shumanova added. 

The forum was co-organized by the International Police Association (IPA). It was founded 75 years ago in the UK and has over 300,000 police officers from over 100 countries as members, according to the IPA Bulgaria website. The organization was created on a friendly basis and its members include active, retired, and former police officers.