NOVEMBER 25TH INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR THE ELIMINATION OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
POLITICAL STATEMENT
In commemoration of the international day for the elimination of violence against women, as feminist organizations concerned about the serious escalation of violence that wracks our country and for the high number of FEMINICIDE cases – violent gender based deaths of women – which between January and October 2010 number 285 cases, we make known to the citizens of Honduras:
-We express our most profound concern for the serious escalation of violence that takes the lives of thousands of people, principally young men, young and adult women and children with statistics that surpass explicit war scenarios and places the country at the top of the list of the most violent countries in the world, averaging more than 20 victims per day.
-Honduras registers extremely high rates of violence against women compared to other countries in Central and Latin America to the degree that the United Nations talks about a “triangle of violence against women, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Statistics for FEMINICIDE between 2003-2010 reach 1464 victims. 44% of the victims are young women between the ages of 15 and 29 years of age.
-Over one half of the FEMINICIDES (55%) are concentrated in the most important cities of the country, Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, located in the departments of the country with the highest levels of economic development, Cortés y Francisco Morazán.
-The production of violence in all of its expressions in Honduras involves a disproportionate number of male actors in the role of aggressors in intimate, family and community relations and as protagonists of public organized violence; hired killers, gangs or transnational drug trafficking rings, and networks that traffic people among others. The bodies of women have been converted into fields on which men settle accounts, exercise revenge and demonstrate their power over the lives of women.
-In the overwhelming majority of cases, women and children are victims of violence in which there were not protagonists; brutal aggressions, fatal violence reaches them as they carry out daily activities, in their own homes, in their workplaces, neighborhoods or on the streets of major cities which have become the privileged sites for feminicides: 1 of every 3 feminicides occurred in the home of the victim, and 2 out of 5 occurred in the street.
-80% of the victims were assaulted with armed weapons, and the feminicides occurred as a result of multiple crimes in at least 14 cases, with 2 to 4 women and girls murdered in their own homes.
-Women are murdered for being women because men feel empowered to act using force, including extreme, lethal force, and are protected by impunity and social and state permissiveness so that crimes accumulate without application of justice. Neither the direct or indirect victims receive the compensation due to them. When cases are registered, 95% have no reference information for the aggressor. Of 944 cases of violent deaths registered between 2008 and 2010, according to statistics of the Unit for Crimes against the lives of Women, of the Special Prosecutor for Women, only 61 sentences have been obtained (6.4%).
-Feminicides are state crimes. The Honduran state is principally responsible for the situation of violence against women. Today we find ourselves before a collapsed state, with weakened, inefficient and irresponsible institutions that have demonstrated that there is no true commitment beyond discourse, to take action to prevent, attend and punish violence against women. Impunity and injustice are imposed in the crimes against women.
As women and feminists in resistance, we call on women and men that believe in peace and justice, on all social and popular organizations, and organized women of this country to join in the construction of a Honduras in which we are all welcome – everyone- with rights, peace, equality, equity, respect and justice.
Tegucigalpa, November 22, 2010
CAMPAIGN FOR THE LIFE OF WOMEN
MY BODY IS NOT A BATTLEFIELD, STOP FEMINICIDES
WOMEN ARE MURDRED AND THEY DO NOT CARE
NO MORE IRRESPONSIBLE FUNCIONARIES!