juárez femicides
adapted from article by Inter Press Service
Ciudad Juárez in Mexico has been dubbed “the femicide (gender-motivated murders of women) capital” of the world by human rights organisations because of the high murder rate of women there. But murders of women are also frequent elsewhere in Mexico, as well as in Guatemala and El Salvador, and so far there is little public discussion about them.
These crimes have achieved notoriety in Ciudad Juárez, on Mexico’s border with the United States, where they have been the object of an outcry by human rights groups, investigations by United Nations rapporteurs, films, documentaries and books.
“Juárez has become a by-word as a result of all the denunciations and demonstrations that the femicides there have provoked, but in other Mexican cities, and particularly in Guatemala, the situation now is extremely serious,” Teresa Rodríguez, head of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) for Mexico, Central America, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, told IPS.
“We are very concerned about these murders, which for the most part go unpunished,” Rodríguez said ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which since 1999 is commemorated on Nov. 25.
“There is a culture that continues to turn a blind eye to this situation, and we cannot tolerate it. It must be combated and prevented by means of public policies, but also, as has happened in Ciudad Juárez, it must be exposed and denounced, and we have to make it clear that these killings are not normal, just as violence against women and girls in general is not normal,” she said.