Latin America: a dangerous place for women

Edwin Guerrero Nova November 30, 2018

263 3 minutes read

According to the UN, nine women are losing their lives daily in Latin America

Product of sexist violence, according to UN data, nine women are losing their lives daily in Latin America. The worst thing is that the events occur without being in a war scenario. What is the panorama? Let's see:

Leer en español: América Latina: una región peligrosa para las mujeres

Mexico: the country where more women are killing

According to UN figures, some 3,430 women, equivalent to 9 women a day, were murdered in Mexico during 2017. However, only 760 were investigated as feminicide, as shown by figures collected by the Secretariat of the Government of Mexico. The total number of women murdered in this country is more than the figure released by the UN in 2016 when there were 2,746, that is, 7 women murdered a day.

On the other hand, information collected by the latest survey of the National Institute of Statistics of Mexico highlights that those women who were married, with boyfriend and single, suffered acts of violence while living with their partners and were economic, emotional, physical and sexual. A worrisome figure that the aforementioned body reveals is that "about eight million women have been asphyxiated, cut, burned, have bled due to nervous problems and have acknowledged suffering from depression."

Also read: Will AMLO be the change Mexico needs?

To address the problem of violence against women, the government of the outgoing president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, implemented the strategy of declaring gender alert those peoples who represent a great danger to women. One example is Ecatepec (State of Mexico) that has already been alerted since 2015, however, the figures of violence against women increased by 14% in this municipality of Mexico and, more than a month ago, the authorities made effective the capture of a serial killer of women, says the National Institute of Statistics.

Mexico exceeds in figures to Colombia. According to the UN, in 2017, 1,002 murders were committed against women, equivalent to 3 a day. For its part, Brazil, as revealed by the Observatory of Gender Equality, had 1,133 and El Salvador 345 cases.

Impunity in violence against women in Colombia

When a man tends to blame a woman for the sexual violence he suffered, thus excusing his aggressors, there is already impunity, say experts to El País de España. In August of 2017, during the debate on violence against women proposed by the then-senator, Claudia López, it was reported that the feminicide went from 100 in 2015 to 204 in 2017. But at that time, as indicated by El Colombiano, the news it was not that but the absenteeism of parliamentarians, which clearly left the situation of women in complete vulnerability, reaching 96%, as the Senator said at the time.

On the process of denouncing women who are violated, cites El Colombiano, Lopez told what is the picture, saying: "In the offices and institutions to which women go in the intermediate and rural municipalities there is no justice and in the cities Yes there is, but inefficient.

Some women decide to face their situation alone in the absence of justice and somehow manage to at least get away from what they experienced and find some inner peace. One case is that of Milena, who, through the Instagram account of the NGO Mutante, a space for social conversation about sexual violence against girls in Colombia, reveals what she lived and how through a story she managed to empower herself to face your experience.