In the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, several marches took place yesterday in the whole of Mexico where protesters demanded justice for the women killed, as well as the creation of sound public policies and programs aimed at preventing gender violence in Mexico.
In Cancún, Quintana Roo, several marches took place where state governor, Carlos Joaquín, demanded the Attorney General’s Office to modify the management to the gender alert provided as none of the ninety-seven femicides in the entity, from 2010 to 2016, has been processed as such.
In Pachuca, Hidalgo, at least a hundred women from various civil organizations participated in the “March of the Whores” where they demanded to put a halt to the street harassment which also constitutes a form of violence against women.
Bertha Miranda, state leader of the Sexual and Reproductive Network (Ddeser) noted that they decided to make street harassment visible to prevent from considering this form of sexual advance as “normal”.
In Guadalajara, Jalisco, more than a hundred people, marched at night through the Red Park to the Liberation Square. According to statistics from the Attorney General’s Office, between 2009 and 2015 the number of femicides in the state has been tripled and stands at one-hundred and fifty murders against women in 2015 and 80 cases so far this year.
Nine months after the gender alert in eight municipalities was issued, the state government of Jalisco published yesterday in its Official Gazette the decree aimed at ensuring legal certainty for this prevention mechanism.
In Guerrero, women adhered to feminist organization marched and protested to the slogan of “not a single more one of us” in state capital city of Chilpancingo and in the municipality of Atoyac. The Violet collective regretted that of the one-hundred and ninety-six murdered women, sixty-eight were put in mass graves without having been identified.
In Morelos, members of the State of Morelos Committee against Feminicides (Cocofem) demanded authorities to provide more safety and sound prevention programs against gender violence. Since 2000, over eight hundred violent crimes against women have been reported and an average of fifty crimes per year have been committed against women in their state since 2014 with fifty-three crimes reported so far this year.
Several marches took place in Villahermosa, Tabasco; Mérida, Yucatán, Juchitlán, Oaxaca; Culiacán, Sinaloa; Tuxtla Guitierrez, Chiapas and City of Juárez in Chihuahua, among others.
For its part, Mexico City government announced the creation of an inter-agency database that will gather all the cases of violence against women with the aim to address the issue in a coordinated manner, as well as the beginning of “16 days of activism for the elimination of Violence against Women”, where special cultural activities, forums, debates, seminars and service fairs will take place as well as the delivery of Family Violence Insurance cards aimed at making violence against women visible and provide preventive strategies for this social issue.
“Locatel’s Women Hotline”, created to provide assistance to women suffering from violence, has assisted over 140,172 users since its creation in 2014, mostly to women between the ages of 35 to 50-years old.
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