Women Watch Group: Only 7 Percent of Women Assaulted in Mexico Had Legal Help Elizabeth Velasco C. - La Jornada
go to original April 18, 2013

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.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

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