Mariam Torosyan, creator of Safe YOU, an app that helps women experiencing gender-based violence

Mariam Torosyan is a 2023 Cartier Women’s Initiative Fellow and 2025 Impact Awardee.

In 2018, Torosyan was pregnant with her daughter. At a family gathering, close to her due date, she was approached by an elderly woman. “Don’t worry,” the woman soothed, “the second child will be a boy.”

Like any expectant mother, Mariam had allowed herself blissful daydreams about the rainbow of life experiences awaiting the tiny child she was about to bring into the world. The woman’s comment stung. Was her daughter not as deserving of those experiences as a boy would be?

Yet it came as no surprise. A researcher for the World Bank, with a background in human rights, Mariam was at that time conducting research into gender-based violence. She understood how patriarchal attitudes can affect the lives of women and girls, from restricting their opportunities, to placing them at risk of physical harm, even death.

“Violence against women and girls has been around for as long as we have existed as a human race,” says Mariam. “As many as 50,000 women are killed annually by an intimate partner or family member, and one in three women worldwide experience some form of sexual or physical violence. Attitudes that frame girls as mattering less than boys perpetuate that cycle.”

A safe space for women and girls

New motherhood, and a passion for the rights of her new baby daughter, were all the impetus Mariam needed to make it her life’s mission to protect women and girls from those who might harm them, in turn lifting their opportunities for dignified and fulfilled lives. And so, she set out to understand the situation in her own country, Armenia.

After criss-crossing the country to visit women’s shelters and hear victims’ stories first hand, Mariam concluded that women in danger of gender-based violence needed a virtual safe space to come together in support and solidarity.

And so, Safe YOU was born. Safe YOU is a mobile application that provides women experiencing gender-based violence with emergency support, helpful resources and an online support ecosystem. Women and girls use the app to get emergency help in violent situations, as well as free medical, legal and social and community support through peer-to-peer discussion. Audio recordings of incidents made through the app can also be used to help secure prosecutions in follow-up legal action.

Lives saved and futures transformed

Today, the app has more than 44.000 users across three countries, with the emergency help button being used 31,300 times by beneficiaries of the application.

Of course, behind those figures are stories of lives saved and futures transformed. One of those futures belongs to Anoush (not her real name). Mariam explains how for two decades Anoush endured physical and psychological abuse at the hands of her husband until, at breaking point, she confided in a friend. That friend told her about Safe YOU and Anoush signed up. Later that week, while being subjected to a particularly brutal attack, Anoush activated the app’s SOS button. The police arrived and saved her from likely death.

Safe, and removed from her abusive environment, Anoush has since thrived and is an example of what Mariam describes as women “finding their way back to themselves.” Because in losing their safety, she explains, women also lose their hopes and aspirations.

“I have spoken to women who use our app and often they will tell me that as a child they wanted to become, say, a musician or a doctor. But then at some point their dreams became imprisoned. It’s such a privilege to see them return to those dreams.”

For the most part, of course, Mariam and her team have no idea of the very real human stories behind the subscription numbers and incident logs. Very occasionally though, she reveals, a Safe YOU employee will be approached at an event and told: “Just a few days ago your app saved my life.”

Yet the complex and far-reaching nature of gender-based violence means there is still a way to go, says Mariam, offering as an example “the direct correlation between domestic violence and kids killing each other in the streets.”

However, with an offering that also includes community engagement, workshops and awareness campaigns and an ultimate goal of reaching one million women and girls worldwide in the next five years, Mariam is unwavering in her commitment to a world in which gender-based violence is a thing of the past.

“On this, there is no impossibility,” she assures. “Just very committed work and an unstoppable spirit.”