"The app is not meant to stand alone. It goes hand-in-hand with coaching in asylum centers in both equality and human rights in Danish society, so the people coming to Denmark get a glimpse of what we expect them to know," Children, Education and Gender Equality Minister Ellen Trane Nørby told Danish Radio.
According to Nørby, the app is designed to educate the refugees about equality and democratic freedoms.
"Now there's an easy way to get access to Danish legislation if, for instance, you have been subjected to violence, if you want a divorce, or if you experience any other kind of harassment," Nørby said. She admits to deploring the fact that many immigrant women have not yet mastered the Danish language and thus do not know their legal rights.
The app promotes the concept of gender equality and respect for men's and women's rights, duties and opportunities in their work and social lives. On a more private plane, the app explains, among other, the peculiarities of premarital sex between consenting adults, the right of women to get abortions and the use of contraceptives, specifically addressing the issue of non-consensual sex, which constitutes rape. With respect to family life, end users are warned against forced marriage, whereas equal rights for spouses are promoted.
In addition to the new app, posters and leaflets on the same topics have been printed for distribution throughout the Scandinavian country's accommodation centers, language schools, municipal public services, police stations and libraries.
Denmark has relied on immigration consistently as a strategy to combat falling birth rates, even though its political establishment is reluctant to admit it publicly. Between 1960 and 2010, Denmark's population rose by about one million, with immigration accounting for up to 65 percent of the increase. Recently, Statistics Denmark warned that the non-Western part of the country's population is bound to increase from 7.9 percent of the total to 9.6 percent in 2020. Last year alone, over 20,000 asylum-seekers were taken in, primarily from the Middle East and northern Africa.
