by Allanah Leahy – EM TV Online
Human rights activists have spoken out over their government’s inaction in tackling Mexico’s pressing gender violence issues.
In the Mexican city of Chihuahua alone, the registered murder rate stands at 23 per 100,000 women.
Despite the alarming rates, human rights advocates are urging more action from the government in preventing gender crime. Incentives taken by the Mexican lawmakers have not yet been effectively implemented.
“It reflects that there is a painful act on behalf of the justice institutions in the state of Mexico to hide events of violence, to deny there is a problem of femicide violence against women,” said Justice Organisation Director Rodolfo Dominiguez.
As drug violence escalated in Mexico over the past eight years, an increase of gangs in neighbourhoods has contributed to a culture of extreme violence. Mexico’s National Citizen Observatory on Femicide reported the disappearance of 4,000 women in 2011-2012.
“We are talking about a national emergency of femicides because women are being brutally murdered more often and now there’s the pattern of them going missing. We have mentioned forced disappearances, others are disappearances, but this happens because the government has not generated the mechanisms, the protocols, the search required to immediately find them and prevent more such crimes from being committed.” Director for the National Citizen Observatory on Maria de La Luz Estrada.
Combined efforts from the government, police, the UN, the Australian government and the church, as well as many local and international initiatives, have contributed to addressing violence against women in Papua New Guinea.
Despite this, a lack of accountability, legal support and protection, and corruption, easily plague an otherwise solid effort to abolish the issue of violence against women in PNG.
Source: Reuters
