This article discusses global strategies to combat femicide and enhance women's rights, emphasizing the need for strong legal frameworks and community engagement. Read more to discover how international initiatives are addressing gender violence.
Kareen Jabre, Director of Programmes for the Interparliamentary Union (IPU) explained that “women should be able to live free from violence and to take part in the management of public affairs. The IPU combats violence against women, in particular through parliaments in their power and role. Most cases of femicide are committed by partners, ex-partners or people familiar with the victims. This involves ongoing abuses, threats, intimidation, sexual violence and situations where women are often in disadvantages in term of power relations and resources with regard to their partner”.
No policy maker in the world can ignore it. The IPU supports parliaments to build legal framework to combatting, preventing and addressing violence against women, femicides and gender discrimination. 162 countries have passed law on domestic violence and 147 have laws on sexual harassment in the work place. “On femicides, most countries use their general criminal law provisions on homicides, other have adopted specific measures regarding femicides especially in Latin American countries. In the context of women trafficking, strong laws against murders that are following rapes, and crimes of honour must be adopted”, added Kareen Jabre.
For Alfonso Barragues,External Relations Adviser at United Nations Population Fund, “violence against women and femicides are grounded in an oppressive structure such as patriarchy system which treats women as secondary support to men or even as property of men. This is the main factors which explain why femicides are in some way still considered to be normal, something that results in impunity due to the culture of silence and acceptance of this form of violence. Femicides happens in every society, in every context, no cultural setting, no country, no society is totally free from it. It is not affecting developing nations only, it is a worldwide phenomenon”.
A recent UNFPA report highlights how despite progress there are still inequalities to be addressed. “The three main factors of exclusion are related to certain discriminations on the basis of age, disabilities, sexual orientation and gender identity. Not to mention the situation faced by women and girls in humanitarian situations where pre-existing inequality is exacerbated by conflicts and the fragility of protection systems”, underlined Alfonso Barragues.
UNFPA and UN Women are leading agencies in a global response to gender based violence and femicides which comprises prevention, protection, coordination of data, response services, sexual education in and out of school so that boys and girls understand power imbalances in terms of gender relations and the need of positive masculinity. Men engagement, cultural actors like religious and traditional leaders at the community level are a fundamental piece in perpetuating or challenging the prevailing social negative norms on gender based violence and femicides. Laws are important but they are not the only solution. They need to be completed with other measures. Data are important because femicides still remain invisible in official statistics. Home remains the most dangerous place for women and girls, but we also need data to know better what happens outside of home, according to the UN agencies.
Impunity, the big problem
Brigitte Leoni, film director of Norma, a documentary nominated for the Toronto Women Film Festival’s competition, describes the concrete case of Norma, a Mexican mother. “She was a teacher. In 2001, her daughter Alejandra was kidnapped while waiting for the bus to go home after work. Alejandra was killed. She is part of some 400 feminicides committed in Ciudad Juarez located in the Mexican State of Chihuahua. Some of the victims were working in maquiladoras or maquilas, factories assembling products for the United States, others were students, cleans or doing other jobs.”
Norma tried to have access to justice. She went to the police. She was told to come back in 48 hours. Alejandra’s mother tried to find who killed her daughter, herself mother of two children. “Norma exhausted all legal proceeding with the police, the municipalities, the Chihuahua State and the Mexico Federal State but nobody listened to her or helped her. At the end, she filed a case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights which waited 10 years to examine her request. In December 2023, the case was finally accepted by the Inter-American Human Rights Court. It is a very important step, because it is a unique chance to have a trial”, underlined Brigitte Leoni.
“I am telling the story of a woman who had a double pain. She suffered the loss of her daughter and had to fight for 23 years! She has been humiliated, blamed and attacked twice. She was almost killed by five bullets only because she wanted to know the truth. But she will never give up. For her and her daughter’s children, justice is the most important thing. Norma was denied access to justice in a country, Mexico, that recognized femicides. It has a legislation but the problem is that it is not enforced. There is a problem of impunity. Justice is not implemented, not only for women, but also for men in many cases of homicides”, stressed the film director.
Adriana Quinones, Head of Human Rights and Development, UN Women, recalled that “for the first time, the European Union has a major investment on ending violence against women through the spotlight initiative. This was a 500 million dollars investment that started in 2015 with the promise of creating the momentum at different levels in supporting what was relevant to the different regions. In Asia, the efforts by several UN agencies, governments and civil society has to do with trafficking in person; in Africa they are about domestic violence, in Latin America it is about addressing femicides. This comes from the women movements demanding a solution for the systematic murder of women”.
“We see in Brazil femicide of Afro descendent women, human rights defenders, women organized in social movements. We see the situation of women in Mexico, working in situation of vulnerability in maquilas, in non-formal jobs. The rage and the viciousness of these murders is terrible: women cut into pieces, women raped in the most horrific forms. It is a hate crime and also a crime which requires the response of the State. This is why the feminist movement in Latin America and particularly in Mexico came up with thrs request that we speak about femicide because it is not just the murder of women, it is the murder of women with the “collaboration” explicit or implicit of the State by not having adequate services, by not having prevention programmes, by not funding those policies that would allow for gender equality”, noted Adriana Quinones.
Needs for prevention and gender equality
Latin America had the first regional convention on ending violence against women and girls, a monitoring and evaluation framework common to all the countries. This allows to compare data, to inform on efforts made and to see the trends of what is working and what is not. Collecting efforts allow from having 8 countries with specialised legislations on femicides to 16 and more legislations provided, with implications on data collection, investigation, services provided and the role of schools in the prevention of gender violence.
Isabelle Santagostino, World Bank Private Sector Development Specialist, declared thatin the past two years, the World Bank has developed project to inform countries of women rights, in women empowerment in productivity and GDP. “A study has shown that when there is gender parity, in general, not only women benefit from this but it also creates a stronger and more resilient economy. It is not only about legislation on violence against women. It is also about creating an equal playing field in all areas. In the world, fifty percent countries do not mandate equal remuneration for equal values. And even less countries have mechanism to ensure that. There are still countries with unequal heritance rights between husbands and wives, sons and daughters. In the area of pensions there is inequality on laws and different kinds of discriminations are not prohibited in many countries, which can result in increasing the level of violence against women”.
The World Bank representative concluded by saying: “We can come together to make sure that governments, CEOs and the para-sector are aware of the economic impact in gender based violence against women. When we work with governments they pay attention to that aspect. We also emphasized that it is a human rights issue making the economic case for gender equality. Smart economic can bring further away”.
Luisa Ballin est une journaliste italo-suisse accréditée à l’ONU, correspondante du magazine Global Geneva/Italo-Swiss journalist Luisa Ballin is a contributing editor of Global Geneva magazine.
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