“We are here today because the search for our daughters in unstoppable, femicide and disappearances force us to continue fighting without respite to demand justice, to raise awareness and to show solidarity, to join forces and denounce together.”
—These were the words of the Committee of Mothers and Relatives of Disappeared Daughters in Ciudad Juárez, dozens of women who came together to give a press conference on March 11th 2013.
This year it will be two decades since this phenomenon began, they said, “20 years of impunity, of pain for the mothers and families of Ciudad Juárez”. (Click here for the full report).
In 1993 young women from Juárez started disappearing and turning up in fields and rubbish dumps, mutilated, sexually abused and murdered. Many of the victims were factory workers who disappeared while travelling to or from work. Others were teenage students, migrants and other vulnerable young women. According to data from El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 47 per cent of victims (1993-2004) were aged between 10-19 years and 27.8 per cent between 20-29 years).
Such murders of women in Mexico have continued to escalate in recent years, in the complete absence of effective investigations and justice. Women’s organisations use the term femicide or feminicide to describe the brutal killings of women by men, often preceded by intense sexual violence and torture.
Femicide occurs not only in Ciudad Juárez, but country-wide: at least 34,000 women were murdered in Mexico between 1985 and 2009, according to figures produced by the UN and local rights groups. In 2010 alone, Amnesty reported that 2,418 women were killed nationwide, 320 of them in Ciudad Juárez. Between June 2011 and June 2012 almost 4,000 women and girls were reported as disappeared.
Ciudad Juárez is a border town in Chihuahua with an estimated population of 1.4 million. It is a free-trade zone for exports to the USA, established following the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and hosts about three hundred assembly plants (called maquilas). Young women from all over Mexico and Central America come to Ciudad Juárez to find work in these factories. They are especially vulnerable to exploitation by their employers and to acts of violence because they lack the social networks that exist in their home communities.
In the past five years a number of laws have been approved and institutions established to protect women from discrimination and violence. One of the most important is the General Law of Access for Women to a Life Free from Violence (GLAWLFV) which recognizes femicide as a crime and lays responsibility both on the perpetrator and on the State for failing in its duty to safeguard women’s lives. However, a lack of political will and dedicated resources means that many of these measures are useless in practice. Not only has the State continued to neglect its duty to protect women and tackle the causes of extreme VAW, but femicide rates have increased in the past few years with little being done to prevent these crimes or bring the perpetrators to justice.
In a seminal ruling published on 10th December 2009, the IACHR ruled that the State of Mexico was responsible for the unsolved murders and disappearances of women in Ciudad Juárez. The Court found Mexico to be in violation of human rights laws by failing to adequately investigate and prosecute these murders. Although the Cotton Field Case examined only three out of more than three hundred Juárez femicides documented since 1993, not to mention the equal number of women who have ‘disappeared’ over the same period, the Court’s application of the Convention of Belém do Pará (on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence Against Women) defined human rights for the first time in relation to women’s rights.
‘The Cotton Field ruling was a very important moment from a legal point of view because the Mexican Government acknowledged the ruling of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. However, femicides have increased in many regions of the country to such an extent that within the whole State of Mexico, these crimes have tripled within the last two years.’ says Mexican sociologist Amanda Hernández Pérez.
The IACHR ordered reparations and this appeared to be a turning point for both victims of femicide and, indeed, all women in Mexico. However, the Mexican government has been slow to carry out the court order and subsequent investigations by international organisations have found that clearly defined deadlines are not being met and no measurable progress updates being provided. According to the Mexican civil society group Feminicidio del Campo Algodonero, the State has only succeeded in meeting one of the Court’s requirements while implementation of the rest is lagging sorely behind. Despite this, the IACHR does not appear to have imposed any sanctions.
In an exclusive interview, Amanda Hernandez Perez, told CAWN:
“The state should guarantee the protection of women in general, and that of women from the maquilas in particular, as citizens with rights before the law. Also, corporations have a contractual responsibility towards their workers, above all in their labour rights: payment for accidents, deaths, indemnity etc. However, neither state nor companies are sufficiently fulfilling their responsibilities. We have various problems: absence of rule of law, absence of labour rights, and on the other side, absence of political will to implement measures, programmes and policies pertaining to VAW. Today, one of the major challenges throughout Latin American is VAW. However, the problem spreads further than that, it has to do with gender roles, the authoritarian exercise of power, impunity, the deterioration of the country and the region in every aspect – poverty, unemployment, generalised violence and lack of legislation.’
FEMICIDE IN MEXICO: THE COTTON FIELD CASE AND ITS SEQUELS
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