Friday, February 18, 2011

A pandemic of gender violence rips Latinoamrica

Latin America shows a serious pattern of violence against women. The extent of the phenomenon has become such a real crime pandemic, as noted Amparo Alcocer, a professor of International Law at the University Carlos III (Madrid), during the Ibero-American conference against femicide: The end of impunity, organized by Casamerica this center and that, during the Tuesday and Wednesday met in Madrid to a very large group of experts in this social scourge.

The alarming increase in murders of women and girls in the black triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras) is based on a culture of hatred against women and the failure of the judicial system, said the UN Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Rashida Manjoo. "Why do men use violence against women? Because they can." Was thus limited to Rashida Manjoo.

Femicide and femicide (country), not yet collected word dictionaries, as noted Miguel Llorente, the Spanish government delegate for the violence, is considered one of the most violent crime, a crime tip, because it threatens against women for the simple fact of being female. "And surprisingly, the answer is not as important as in other cases of violence such as terrorism," said Llorente.

"It comes down to a visibility problem." In El Salvador, violence against women has increased by 197% in the last decade, making the macabre percentage in the nation Central American country with the highest rate of femicide in the world. According to Salvadoran police, January to October 2010 there were 477 murders.

Guatemala ranks third at the death of Latin American women. Between 2001 and 2010 killed about 5,300 violent deaths. Although Guatemala is a pioneer country in legislation against such crimes, with the adoption in 2008 of the Law Against Femicide, the figure has increased by 400% in recent years.

The Honduras case is no different: between 2003 and 2010 killed 1,464 women, of which 44% were young women between 15 and 29. According to Rocio Villanueva, a senior lecturer in Philosophy of Law at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, femicide means different things depending on the national codes.

"Guatemala is, despite the figures, the country with broader legislation in Latin America, while Costa Rica has a very restrictive regulation," noted the Peruvian teacher. "The big outstanding issue is that each country's judicial system works." The situation is further complicated by indigenous women.

The experts meeting in Madrid stressed the "victimization" of these women, as well as serious assault and rape again become victims when they have to deal with judicial systems that ignore their language and customs. Inequality and discrimination, according to experts meeting in Madrid, the universality of human rights loses the qualifier when a large part of society, women, live from inequality and discrimination.

Cultural issues such as machismo settled in many cultures, religion, which, despite being a matter of conscience and belong to the private sphere, marks the behavior of many societies and deepens inequality, the wars, which often makes the body of women in war booty and used rape and other forms of sexual violence as a deliberate means of ethnic cleansing (recent cases of wars in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda), the acceptance of domestic violence and extreme inequalities : poverty, gender and access to justice.

"Femicide never going to be uniform. The key is to make it known," said Rashida Manjoo. The word was repeated during the conference impunity, although there is ample legislation and international jurisprudence on the matter, as the Convention on All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, for its acronym in English), or the Convention Belem do Pará for the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, or the judgments of the International Criminal Court, including rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution and forced pregnancy in the definition of war crimes and crimes against humanity .

The impunity that makes them invisible to the victims. A statement pioneer central theme of the conference was the judgment Cotton Field, marking a before and after in Latin America. On December 10, 2009, the Inter-American Human Rights Court, the highest court of justice in Latin America and whose decisions are final, said the Mexican government guilty of violating the right to life, integrity and personal freedom, among other crimes , for the case of three young women murdered in Ciudad Juárez in 2001.

The bodies of Claudia Gonzalez, 20, Esmeralda Herrera, 15, and Laura Berenice Ramos, 17, were found along with five other unidentified women, the November 5, 2001, in a vacant lot known as cotton field. " His remains showed that women had been raped with extreme cruelty. He condemned the State for failing to investigate properly.

Mexico was sentenced to investigate gender-offenders, and the authorities who allowed impunity demanded a public apology to the families of the victims and the public, the construction of a memorial, the financial compensation to the victims, changes laws and creating a database of missing.

The ruling was considered historic because it was the first time condemning a State responsible for femicide. However, the Mexican government has fulfilled its obligations only in the short term, but is committed to comply fully. The essence of Cotton Field Case is intended to serve as a repair transformation, highlighted the Mexican Ramínez Sergio Garcia, president of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Chilean Felipe González, president of the Human Rights Commission, admitted that the assumption of violence against women as a theme of work and research by this agency had a slow, took several decades that the commission determined Deal the issue. "In the nineties began to accept something that until then had been seen as a private matter." Gonzalez says the commission's work has served to raise awareness: "Until 15 years ago was not obvious that the issue of violence against women is within the scope of human rights." 309 new cases in Ciudad Juárez Emilio Ginés, Spanish lawyer, member of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, United Nations, complained that despite the sentence of the court, since 2010, there have been 309 new cases of disappearances and deaths of women in Ciudad Juárez.

Mexican journalist Rosa Isela Perez also emphasized in these figures: "Despite the ruling, the violence has intensified." In regard to the problems of execution of sentence Cotton Field, José Guevara, former director of the Unit for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights Department of the Interior of Mexico, provided important data to try to understand the Mexican response to this sentence.

Presented a "dark figure" of the Autonomous University of Mexico (UAM) which show that 75% of crimes committed in that country go unreported and that only 1.6 of every 100 crimes come to the attention of a judge. Guevara said that, despite the media coverage that has crime in Mexico, but this country is ranked sixteenth of violent crimes against El Salvador, which occupies the first, Venezuela, the third and fourth Colombia.

However, the Mexican state of Chihuaua, where Ciudad Juarez, where nine out of 10 cases go unpunished, is on a level with Colombia. "We thought the Cotton Field sentence would serve to stop violence against our women, but unfortunately not the case," said Guevara. Among the causes that contributed to the Mexican government had not yet executed the statement said Mexican federalism.

"The statement speaks only Cotton Field Chihuaua State and his Government who has to find those responsible for crimes and irregularities." The experts concluded that the holding of events like the Madrid helps to give visibility to these attacks against human rights and respect for judgments how are you are an essential step in ending impunity.

No comments:

Post a Comment