Feminicides in Central America and Mexico: MOTION FOR A EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT RESOLUTION

This is the highly interesting DRAFT REPORT on the murders of women (feminicides) in Central America and Mexico and the role of the European Union in fighting this phenomenon, produced by the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (PROVISIONAL, 2007/2025(INI) 10.5.2007, Rapporteur: Raül Romeva i Rueda). It presents a complex analysis of the phenomenon, gives useful definitions and proposes some solutions.

You may find the original PDF document in English and many more European languages by clicking on this link... (line "feminicide")

MOTION FOR A EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT RESOLUTION

on the murders of women (feminicides) in Central America and Mexico and the role of the European Union in fighting this phenomenon (2007/2025(INI))

The European Parliament,

– having regard to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948,

– having regard to the International Human Rights Pacts of 1966,

– having regard to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) of 1979 and its optional protocol of 1999,

– having regard to the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women (Convention of Belém do Pará) of 1994,

– having regard to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of 1984 and its optional protocol of 2002,

– having regard to the recommendations of the report on the disappearance and murder of large numbers of women and girls in Mexico of 12 May 2005, by the rapporteur for the Council of Europe’s Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men,

– having regard to the recommendations of the report on women’s human rights, gender mainstreaming and violence against women, regarding the mission to Mexico of the UN special rapporteur Mrs Yakin Ertürk in January 2006,

– having regard to the recommendations of the report on women’s human rights, gender mainstreaming and violence against women, regarding the mission to Guatemala of the UN special rapporteur Mrs Yakin Ertürk in February 2005,

– having regard to the recommendations of the report on the situation of women’s human rights in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico and the right not to be the object of violence and discrimination, drawn up by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in March 2003,

– having regard to the hearing on feminicide held at the European Parliament in April 2006 and organised jointly by the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality and the Subcommittee on Human Rights,

– having regard to the Economic Partnership, Political Coordination and Cooperation Agreement between the European Community and its Member States, of the one part, and the United Mexican States, of the other part, [1] the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement between the European Community and its Member States, of the one part, and the Republics of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, of the other part, [2] signed in 2003 (pending ratification), and the Framework Cooperation Agreement between the European Economic Community and the Republics of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama [3],

– having regard to the documents concerning the EU’s regional strategy for the periods 2001-2006 and 2007-2013 for the countries of Central America and Mexico,

– having regard to the third objective of the Millennium Goals, namely to promote gender equality and empower women,

– having regard to Rule 45 of its Rules of Procedure,

– having regard to the report of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (A6-0000/2007),

Whereas...

A. whereas the term ’feminicide’ is grounded in the legal definition of violence against women established by the Convention of Belém do Pará in its Article 1: ’violence against women shall be understood as any act or conduct, based on gender, which causes death or physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, whether in the public or the private sphere’; whereas its punishment and eradication of is an obligation and must be a priority for any state based on the rule of law,

B. whereas violence against women has a global, not only a local, dimension and concerns all countries, Europe included; whereas this report should be considered as part of a global strategy, aimed at focusing joint actions and efforts by the EU and the countries concerned for the eradication and prevention of violent deaths of women everywhere,

C. whereas the majority of the killings of women in Ciudad Juárez and Guatemala have been characterised by exceptional brutality and many of the victims have suffered sexual violence, cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment and even torture; whereas a high percentage of these murders have happened in the areas of operation of the maquiladora companies, which lack the necessary means of security for the protection of women,

D. whereas these feminicides cannot be explained purely in terms of a ’general climate of violence’, but, rather, account must be taken of discrimination and of a local social and economic context that is unfavourable to women - especially indigenous women -, as well as high poverty rates, women’s economic dependence, criminal gangs in the Mexican case, and, in the Central American case, the failure to disarm the illegal security forces and clandestine security apparatuses [4],

E. having regard to the situation of impunity, in other words the non-existence in law or in fact of criminal, administrative, disciplinary or civil liability of the perpetrators of these acts, the fact that they are avoiding being investigated or sentenced, the lack of budgetary resources and the frequent obstacles placed in the way of access to justice for the female victims and their relatives,

F. whereas a state that respects the rule of law must pursue policies ensuring that women in general, and especially those from the least-favoured strata, have appropriate protection against discrimination, violence and, ultimately, feminicide; whereas the first stage is to make the providers of public services themselves aware of the seriousness of the problem,

G. whereas the struggle against feminicide and impunity must extend to all links of the chain of justice, encompassing preventive efforts, revision of discriminatory laws, facilitation of the reporting of incidents, judicial investigation and prosecution capacity all the way up to the prison system, the fight against organised crime, and institutional reshaping and consolidation, all on a basis of sufficient financial and human resources,

H. repudiating altogether the use of torture by certain state bodies for purposes of obtaining self-incriminating confessions from the presumed authors of feminicides,

I. whereas feminicide has claimed the lives of two citizens of the Netherlands, Hester Van Nierop (in 1998) and Brenda Susana Margaret Searle (in 2001) [5],

J. whereas given the systematic history of violence in Mexico and Central America and the patriarchal structure of their societies it is women who are the repeated victims of manifestations of violence,

K. welcoming the legislative measures which have been adopted in Mexico, notably the General Law on women’s entitlement to a violence-free life of February 2007, as well as the work of the Special Prosecution Service for crimes related to violence against women, set up in 2006,

L. concerned that the countries of Central American are delaying legislating on the matter,

M. having regard to the Interparliamentary Alliance for Dialogue and Cooperation, created to bring together women parliamentarians from Spain, Mexico and Guatemala with a view to promoting legislative initiative for the eradication of violence against women,

N. whereas the development and consolidation of the rule of law, together with respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, constitute a global objective of the CFSP and need to be an integral part of the Union’s external action,

O. having regard to the legally binding nature of the human rights and democracy clauses in both the EU-Mexico Agreement and the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement,

P. whereas when entering into agreements with third countries that contain a human rights clause the EU takes on responsibility, from the moment of signing, for ensuring compliance by both sides with international human rights standards, [6]

Calls

1. Calls for full compliance with the recommendations of the various reports and the international human rights instruments, especially those referred to above concerning women’s human rights;

2. Calls on the governments to support, with financial and technical resources, the prevention and protection policies relating to violence against women, to develop the capacity of the judicial bodies, security corps and public prosecutor’s offices in order to prosecute and punish the perpetrators, and to combat drug trafficking and organised crime; calls for the promotion of closer coordination in these areas;

3. Urges the Guatemalan Congress to ratify the UN-Guatemala agreement on establishing an international committee of inquiry against impunity in Guatemala (CICIG); [7]

4. Urges the countries of Central America and Mexico to take all necessary steps for the effective combating of violence against women, and calls for the measures taken to ensure full respect for the human rights of the population;

5. Calls on the countries of Central America and Mexico to eliminate all references to women that are of a discriminatory nature from their national laws, and calls on their authorities to promote legislative initiatives defining violence within the family and sexual harassment as specific crimes; [8]

6. Urges the Central American and Mexican governments to recognise and engage in dialogue with civil society organisations, the relatives of the victims and with men and women human rights campaigners, on a basis of awareness of their crucial role in society;

7. Urges the countries of Central America and Mexico to ensure respect for women’s labour rights under national law, [9] and calls for the transnational companies to be pressed to apply corporate social responsibility (CSR), on a basis of respect for their workers’ integrity and labour rights;

8. Calls on the Commission, in the context of the agreements in force and those under negotiation, to promote mechanisms for implementing the human rights and democracy clause, whose formulation in legal terms should be based on the international obligations and undertakings entered into under the international pacts and conventions, with particular reference to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and its optional protocol;

9. Calls on the EU representation and the embassies of the Member States in Mexico to draw up, together with the OECD’s National Contact Point in Mexico, a specific programme for female employees of multinational companies aimed at ensuring safety, decent working conditions and equal pay for women;

10. Calls on the EU to pay particular attention in the context of cooperation to the restructuring and strengthening of the legal system in Mexico and Central America, starting with prevention policies (awareness campaigns), the legal system (the police; the legal profession and the judges), protection of victims, witnesses and relatives, and the prison system;

11. Calls on the EU to create the position of ’coordinator’ within its representations in Mexico and Central America, with the role of coordinating the efforts of the Union, the Member States’ embassies and, in the case of Mexico, the OECD’s National Contact Point, in order to put an end to impunity for feminicide, raise the awareness of staff on gender issues and violence against women in particular, act as a contact body for Central America and Mexican citizens, ensure that the feminicide issue is raised at all levels of the political dialogue, and submit an annual report to Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality;

12. Urges the EU, in the context of the political dialogue with Mexico and Central America, to make systematic reference to the issue of violence against women and feminicide in particular, as well as to the need for access to justice for victims’ relatives and support groups, also in the dialogue with civil society;

13. Regrets the vagueness of the references to gender in the country strategic document for Mexico for 2007-2013, and calls for these documents and those following them to be updated every three years; calls for cooperation on gender issues to be enlarged to include feminicide; also calls for the inclusion of an action plan to fight feminicide and impunity and ensure access to justice for the victims’ relatives;

14. Calls for immediate action, in the context of the negotiations for the Association Agreement with the countries of Central America, for the sustainability impact assessment (SIA) to be extended to include a gender impact assessment (GIA), and for the results to be taken into account in the conclusion of the negotiations;

15. Calls on the Commission to provide information on the progress made on this issue in the context of the negotiations for the Central America-EC Association Agreement, before the negotiations close and at all events before the EU/Latin America and the Caribbean summit to be held in Lima in May 2008;

16. Calls on the EU representations and the Member States’ embassies to organise a Round Table on feminicide and impunity, to include input from the different networks and initiatives of a parliamentary nature, as well as research centres, human rights groups, gender associations and the victims’ relatives;

17. Calls on the European members of the EU-Mexico Joint Parliamentary Committee, as well as on Parliament’s Delegation for relations with the countries of Central America, to ensure that the issue of feminicide and impunity is systematically included in the programmes for their visits to the region;

18. Proposes that a joint hearing be organised by the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, the Subcommittee on Human Rights and the delegations concerned, before the Lima summit, with a view to evaluating the measures in place, including the cases of the two Netherlands nationals who were victims of feminicides in Mexico;

19. Urges the Council and the coming EU presidencies, in view of all the above, to adopt guidelines on women’s rights, since these would make a vital contribution to consolidating the coherence and consistency of the Union’s human rights policy;

20. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the EU Member States, the Council of Europe, and the Governments of Mexico and the countries of Central America.

EXPLANATORY STATEMENT

In April 2006 a hearing was held at the European Parliament on the subject of feminicide in Mexico and Central America, under the title ’Ni una muerta más’ (’Not a single woman more must die’). This hearing was organised by the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality and the Subcommittee on Human Rights. Those present at the hearing included MEPs of both genders, representatives of the governments of Mexico and Guatemala, the UN rapporteur Mrs Yakin Ertük, the Council of Europe rapporteur Mrs Gaby Vermot-Mangold, and experts from civil society organisations.

The present text is the outcome of that hearing and the follow-up work to it. In addition, a database has been created with a view to sharing urgent information and pooling efforts. This report is part of a global strategy on the part of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality for the worldwide eradication of violence against women. While feminicide is not confined to Mexico and Central America, the aim of the present report is to set out the joint actions and efforts under way for the eradication and prevention of murderous violence against women.

The term ’feminicide’ is used in the legal sense arising from the definition of ’violence against women’ contained in Article 1 of the Convention of Belém do Pará: ’Violence against women shall be understood as any act or conduct, based on gender, which causes death or physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, whether in the public or the private sphere’.

’Feminicide’ as such received its first definition in Mexico, as: ’the sum total of crimes against humanity consisting of criminal acts, kidnappings and disappearances affecting girls and women in a context of institutional collapse. This is a sign of breakdown of the rule of law which favours impunity. Feminicide is a state crime.’ [10]

Feminicide appears in a social context conditioned by a patriarchal mentality, where most domestic and reproductive labour is performed by women, whose independence in society is consequently impaired, as well as by insecurity, inequality, poverty and the maquiladora model of economic modernisation.

Central America and Mexico have witnessed a sharp increase in violent killings in recent years. Thanks to the greater publicity given to the issue and stronger organisation on the part of the victims’ relatives and friends in the denunciation of cases, the phenomenon is becoming increasingly visible, although the campaign against it has yet to make sufficient progress.

The official Mexican statistics state that between 1999 and 2006 6000 girls and women were killed. In 2004 alone, there were 1205 murders of girls. [11] In Guatemala, 1188 women were murdered between 2001 and August 2004. In El Salvador, there were 2374 killings, a figure which rose to 2933 in 2004. In Honduras, 442 women and girls were the victims of violent killings between 2002 and 2005. In Nicaragua, 203 women were murdered between 2003 and 2005. [12]

Despite the legislation passed at national level on the issue, not enough effort has been made to tackle the roots of feminicide. There are thus but few preventive measures in place. The investigations that are carried out tend to lack teeth, and the majority of the perpetrators are not being brought to justice.

The cases of the two European women murdered in Mexico have particular symbolic value. Hester Van Nierop was killed in Ciudad Juárez in 1998 [13]; Brenda Susana Margaret Searle met a violent death in Chichén Itzá (Yucatan) in 2001. The grave shortcomings of the legal system are clear from the failure to elucidate the murder of Van Nierop and the delays affecting the trial of Searle’s killers. [14]

The general context in which feminicide is perpetrated is as follows: [15]

— Social inequality: Mexico and Central America [16] are characterised by high levels of economic inequality in society and by women being economically dependent on men.

— Patriarchal attitudes: the social structure in Mexico and Central America is based on a patriarchal mentality, with violence against women being considered perfectly ’normal’. Patriarchal attitudes not only naturalise violence against women but lead to a severe segmentation of the labour market and hinder the recognition of the political contributions made by women.

— Economic modernisation since the 1990s - growing presence of maquiladoras, many of them funded with European capital. Many, and often a majority, of the workers employed by the maquiladoras (assembly plants) are women, frequently very young. Complaints are recurrent regarding the appalling conditions in which the employees have to work, without fixed contracts and in degrading conditions, with few and irregular transport facilities and inadequate public infrastructures. This disrespect for women workers’ labour rights, and therefore for their human rights, tends to reinforce a cultural image of woman as an inferior being, to be discarded at will. [17]

— Failure to guarantee the rule of law: It appears that Mexico’s states are not succeeding in ensuring the effectiveness of the legal system, access to justice, or security and full enjoyment of their human rights for their inhabitants.

— Impunity: The phenomenon of impunity arises from a corrupt and inefficient legal system and presupposes complicity with and protection (direct or indirect) of the guilty parties. It encourages the repetition of crimes and creates a climate of collective insecurity. Crimes committed specifically against women are more likely to go unpunished than other offences. This point was made by the UN Secretary-General in the context of the campaign to eradicate violence against women and the celebrations of 8 March 2007.

— Violence in society: There is a growing presence of criminal gangs in Mexico, while in Central America there is the problem of illegal security forces and clandestine security apparatuses, dating from the time of the armed conflicts in the region [18].

— Inefficient institutions: The countries of Central America are still suffering from the consequences of the armed conflicts in the region, and their legal and penal systems are too weak to prevent human rights violations.

— Stigmatisation of victims by the authorities: Frequent complaints have been made that the police and the legal authorities seek to devalue individuals because of how they dress, their workplace activities or their personal relations, the intention being to cast doubt on their credibility, reduce the cases to isolated events and distract attention from what really matters, in other words security, the right to life, and the dignity of the murdered women and girls. In Central America the blame for feminicides is often laid at the door of the ’maras’ or linked to prostitution, in order to minimise the problem.

— Violent nature of the killings: These murders bear the marks of hatred and misogyny. The women are kidnapped, sexually abused, tortured, murdered and mutilated, and their bodies are left in the desert, by the roadside, or in markets or vacant lots.

— Underfunding of the institutions created to tackle feminicide: The main obstacle facing the state institutions that have been created is lack of financial and human resources. [19]

— Shortcomings of national legislation / ratification of international instruments:

Mexico and the Central American countries have laws and national plans for the prevention and eradication of violence against women, including the fight against feminicide, but in most cases they are not being implemented effectively for various reasons, among them the lack of human and financial resources. [20] Nicaragua, for instance, has not ratified the CEDAW optional protocol, [21] which establishes a procedure for complaining against human rights violations and enables the Committee to initiate investigations into severe cases of violation of women’s rights.

Your rapporteur’s view is that, in view of the nature of the EU’s relations with Mexico and Central America and the commitment of all parties to full respect for human rights, the Union is under an obligation to act and to offer its total support to ensure that acts of feminicide do not go unpunished, making use of all the instruments available to it, from prevention campaigns to support for institutional reconstruction and development. The existing agreements between the parties provide a sufficient basis for action. The (re)establishment of the rule of law, with a legal system restructured so that it operates without corruption and is accessible to all citizens of both genders, must be a priority for the Union in the context of cooperation and political dialogue.

In addition, this should be a guiding objective for the third pillar of relations, namely the commercial chapter, especially where EU enterprises and capital are involved. What is in question here is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), with its attendant implications regarding gender issues: equal pay at a decent level, protection of women workers against gender discrimination in the workplace, and security for those travelling to or from the workplace.

In practical terms, we propose that the EU should:

— ensure that its representations in the countries concerned recruit staff qualified in gender matters;

— assume concrete responsibilities including the creation of the post of coordinator for gender issues and feminicide, and commission reports on the progress achieved and the problems encountered, to be sent to the Commission, the Council and Parliament;

— ensure the mandatory inclusion of an item on feminicide and impunity on the agendas of the various levels of the political dialogue, such as the Joint Council and Joint Committee;

— set up a permanent Round Table on Feminicide, in the Mexican case in cooperation with the OECD, and in particular with its National Contact Point, to have responsibility for ensuring compliance with the guidelines for multinational companies;

— ensure that the Country Strategy Papers for 2007-2013 cover the fight against feminicide and impunity, no later than the next three-yearly revision;

— ensure that the subject is highlighted in the negotiations for an Association Agreement with the countries of Central America;

— also ensure its inclusion in the ’inbuilt agenda’ of the Association Agreement with Mexico, and, in particular, in the related investment agreement.

The role of the European Parliament on the issue of feminicide and impunity in Mexico and Central America must be, above all, to monitor the actions carried out in the region by the Commission and the Member States in order to eradicate the phenomenon. It is important in this context that a conference on feminicide should be organised before the next Euro-Latin American summit scheduled for May 2008 in Lima, with the presence of all the institutions and authorities mentioned above, in order to examine the state of progress and adjust future strategy in the light of the results achieved.