Translated by Shaun Twomey
Of the fifty-eight thousand Mexican women who suffered violence and consequently looked for legal support from a total of 21 different states, only 7 percent of them (around 4 thousand) actually got it, according to the report Orders of Protection in Mexico: Female Victims of Violence and their Inability to Gain Justice, published by the National Citizen’s Watch for Female Murders (OCNF)
María de la Luz Estrada, executive director of the OCNF, warned that a pattern of impunity and neglect still continues on the part of authorities responsible for protection of female violence victims, which therefore impedes the prevention of future female homicides.
In a press conference alongside Rodolfo Dominguez, who represents the Mexican Commission on the Defense & Promotion of Human Rights, and with Martha Figueroa of the San Cristóbal Women’s Group (COLEM), Estrada emphasized that:
“Gender violence cannot be stopped because the very laws that protect women are impotent. The authorities also acknowledge that they don’t even offer the mechanism (of protection provided by these laws) since women supposedly ‘don’t ask for help,’ despite the fact that it is the state’s responsibility to offer this resource.”The protection, Estrada explained, is but one small measure that could help prevent greater harm to women, and it is even prescribed in Article 27 of the General Law of Access by Women to Violence-Free Life.
The OCNF report, which covers the timeframe between January 2011 and June 2012, is based upon information for 27 Mexican states. Six states did not provide an official response, and include Coahuila, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Nayarit, San Luis Potosí, and Tabasco.
One of the more relevant findings of the report reveals that authorities from Durango, Jalisco, Morelos, Nuevo León, Puebla, Querétaro, and Tlaxcala admitted to not issuing protection orders of any kind, despite the presence of violence. In Puebla, for example, the attorney general’s office registered 6,237 cases of gender violence, but did not issue any protection order because “the victims did not elect use of this prerogative.”
In similar fashion, while Campeche, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Colima, Distrito Federal, Guanajuato, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, and Veracruz have at least granted protection orders, the number of orders issued in each state pales in comparison to the levels of violence witnessed in each.
Chihuahua experienced 7,342 violent acts between August and October 2012, but the local authority granted only seven orders representing merely 0.1% of the total. Mexico City registered 15,276 similar events, but issued 565 protection measures, for a similarly-low action rate of only 3.6%.
The states of Chiapas, Mexico State, Guanajuato, Morelos, Nuevo León, Sinaloa, Sonora and Tlaxcala lack even the slightest semblance of authoritative procedure for issuing protection orders, on which authorities blame the lack of action.
Despite the fact that the state of Mexico tops the list of female murders, it neither registers nor records in any systematic way the data on these violent crimes against women, much less the data regarding protection orders granted on behalf of them.
The majority of issued orders are classified as “urgent” and usually involve placing public safety security in the victim’s home and prohibit the responsible assailant from approaching the victim’s home, place of work, or place of study.
However, said Estrada, these measures “are insufficient by themselves to guarantee the physical safety of women,” because by the time these steps are taken, the female victim is already in a high-risk situation.
“Protection isn’t immediately given to these women because an investigation has to be conducted first, and the woman has to provide all the proof. There are even cases where the victim herself has to notify her own attacker of the measures being taken.”Members of the various associations offered dozens of recommendations to the three different levels of Mexican government and the legislative & judicial branches. Among these are:
- orders of protection should be interconnected, flexible, and adaptable,
- they should eliminate the need for victims to initiate them,
- their implementation should be expedited nationwide,
- the General Law of Access by Women to Violence-Free Life & its corresponding application should be reformed,
- a “gender alarm” on the epidemic of violence against women should be sounded.