5 Ways Humanitarian Bots Can Save the World

Fifteen year old Sarafina, a female student in the capital city of Liberia, had a distressing problem at school: Her math teacher refused to give her a report card unless she had sex with him. Every day at school, he would request sexual favors and touch her inappropriately. Embarrassed, Sarafina kept the issue hidden from everyone, even her parents, until her father overheard a sexually harassing phone call the teacher made to their home. Sarafina’s father successfully confronted the man and got the report card, but his daughter was reprimanded for reporting her teacher’s sexual advances and forced to move to another school.

1. Bots Can Uncover the Truth

In Liberia, teachers enjoy high social status but children, especially young girls, are culturally trained not to speak out, leading to a culture of silence and tolerance. While Sarafina’s story sounds extreme to Westerners, her experience is painfully common yet largely ignored in her country. Enter UNICEF’s U-Report, a social reporting bot that enables young people in developing countries to report issues in their community via SMS and other messaging platforms. U-Report polled 13,000 users in Liberia to ask if teachers at their schools were exchanging grades for sex. An astonishing 86% of reporters said yes.

Within a week of the U-Report discovery of the “Sex 4 Grades” epidemic, help hotlines around the country were inundated with reports of child abuse. Simply exposing a pervasive taboo inspired victims to speak up and reach out for help. Since then, UNICEF and Liberia’s Minister of Education have collaborated on a plan to stop the issue. “U-Report is not just about getting questions answered, but getting answers back out,” explains Chris Fabian, Co-Lead of UNICEF’s Innovation Unit. “We get responses in real-time to use the data for policy change.” With over 2.6 million U-Reporters worldwide and deep expertise building technology for developing economies, the U-Report team is uniquely positioned to tackle challenging social issues like violence against children, HIV/AIDs policy, climate change, and war and conflict...