Councillor Nasrine Djemai

YOUNG girls are being harassed on the street in Camden, but most of them feel reporting incidents to the police is futile.

Some 10 per cent of Year 8 to Year 11 students at Regent High School said they had experienced harassment outside of school, but all of them said they would not report this to the police.

One pupil said: “What’s the point, it’s not like they’re going to do anything. Also, police officers tend to be men. I wouldn’t feel comfortable reporting any harassment to a man.” This research was conducted by Camden’s youngest women councillor, Nasrine Djemai, 26, who returned to her former school over the summer.

Cllr Djemai, the council’s cabinet adviser on safety for women and girls, said: “To hear that in 2024, from a student who went to the same school I went to, it really puts into perspective how much more needs to be done. One of the biggest things that came up was such a huge apathy contacting the police if they were cat-called or whistled at or some micro aggression that can become something much bigger. It went back to ‘if nothing is going to be done about it then what’s the point in raising it’.”

Cllr Djemai, who grew up on the Regent’s Park estate, said what she experienced as a young woman in Camden was “pretty much what every woman has experienced”. She was beeped at by passing cars while walking down the street and planned her route home to avoid poorly lit areas, or Hawley Wharf, which was considered dangerous before the redevelopment, she said.

Her suggestions include public education campaigns on the different forms of harassment, which include financial and coercion, introducing self defence classes for girls in schools, and having safe spaces that women can go to at train stations. Cllr Djemai said: “Being born and raised in Camden and seeing all the issues young women face, it’s been something I was really passionate about from the moment I got elected. How can I use my position to shine a light on something that’s so endemic in society?”