Mexico & Nafta - December 2016 (ISSN 1741-444X)

Residents in at least 40 cities across Mexico took to the streets to stage events, marches, and workshops as part of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women held on 25 November.

Though violence against women manifests itself in many forms, including psychological and emotional abuse, extreme violence against women remains an endemic problem in many Mexican states. The incidence of ‘femicide’ – the killing of females for no other apparent reason than their sex – has almost doubled within the last ten years according to a 2015 report from Mexico’s national statistics institute (Inegi). Moreover, in the last two years, an average of six women were murdered per day on account of their sex, Inegi found. Femicides are also the biggest cause of death in Mexico for women between 15-29.

However, these statistics barely scratch the surface of the extent of the violent crimes committed against women in Mexico. Femicide is notoriously underreported and the aforementioned figures do not include some 7,435 women who went ‘missing’ last year, according to a 2015 report by international human-rights NGO Amnesty International. Indeed, lack of precise and up-to-date statistical data collected by the state about the issue makes it difficult to pin down an exact figure.

President Enrique Peña Nieto called for an end to the violence against women in a national address making the International Day Elimination of Violence against Women. He asked women to “not be victims of violence” and to come forward and report abuse. Equally, he ordered men who “cross the line” to hand themselves over to the authorities. “Whoever refuses to report these crimes and are witnesses become complicit in the violence we are trying to eradicate”, he stressed. Peña Nieto’s comments relate to the social stigma against victims of gender violence which may prevent them from reporting abuse in the earlier stages.

While the need for victims to speak out is important, many human-rights campaigners have called for the state to redouble its efforts to prevent gender violence. In theory, Mexican women can seek legal protection from discrimination based on their sex under the 2007 general law on women’s access to a life free from violence – a piece of legislation drawn up following the recommendations of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which purports to sanction all forms of violence against women including domestic, economic, psychological, social, and institutional abuse. In practice, however, a lack of enforcement has rendered this legislation ineffective. Though it is difficult to source up-to-date statistics on the topic, a report by the Observatorio Nacional Ciudadano del Femicidio, a local NGO, found that of 613 men accused of femicide, only 1.6% received a sentence in 2012-2013, pointing to widespread impunity for gender-based crimes.

In Mexico City, public measures to protect women from violent crimes have also fallen flat. In April, Mexico City launched a 100-day initiative to crack down on violent crimes committed against women. Promoted by the federal interior minister, Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, the initiative was designed to reduce incidences of violence in public places including on public transport. However, a joint report published on 24 November by women’s rights groups found the initiative to be woefully inadequate. For example, the government gave out whistles so women could alert the authorities about potential abuse but only supplied 115,000 whistles in a city which houses over 9m inhabitants. More worryingly, the report found that both the police and the authorities had not been trained about how to react if a woman reported abuse. Feminists and human-rights groups have called upon the government to come up with more strategic way to address the problem of gender violence and spurned the previous initiative for being “poorly planned, poorly executed” and ineffective.

• Puebla proposes female-only transport

A state deputy for the Partido Verde Ecologista de México (PVEM) in Mexico’s south-eastern state of Puebla, Geraldine González Cervantes, has drawn up a new initiative designed to cut down on sexual violence in public spaces. The bill, called ‘Transporte Rosa’ (‘pink transport’), will offer exclusive public transport services for women and children under 13 years old. A similar initiative called ‘Pink Taxis’ was implemented in 2009 but was scrapped after a year amid rumours that some of the men driving the taxis had allegedly been exploiting the women they were chauffeuring.