An Interactive session on Women’s Safety by Kathryn Travers from Women in Cities International (WICI) was held at IHC on 14^th May 2013.

The session arranged by Jagori, was headed by Kalpana Viswanath, Senior Advisor, Safe Delhi Initiative at Jagori and Kathryn Travers, Director of Programme at WICI, Canada.

The basic purpose of this meeting was to hold a dialogue about Safety Audit Tools and various other issues concerning women’s safety as well as creating safer and inclusive cities.

The session consisted of an open discussion with the audience on various safety issues concerning women and girls and the need to create safe cities, Kathryn Travers also gave a presentation on the same issues. The presentation was an interactive session aimed at opening dialogue about women safety issues in public spaces, the need to have discussion and debate at various levels to talk about safety in public spaces. One major aspect when we talk about safe cities is to look at women and girl’s safety & status in cities and community. It is necessary to focus on gender equality and participation of women and girl in urban development, including women in dialogue is necessary for safety.

 Work of WICI and its partner organization, safety audit tools used to look at a space that feels unsafe and determine why it feels that way, need for safe cities and a gender approached to safe cities, BIAAG, CSW, were some of the key discussions in this session.

Various important dialogues and discussion came forward in this event, and it proved to be highly useful as every audience member participated and took something away from this discussion. We hope to continue having such relevant study circles and meeting in future as well, to take forward the dialogue on creating safe cities and engage with as many people as possible.