User:Alesliemir/Femicide in Mexico

Lead
Mexico officially began documenting the amount of femicide occurrences in 2012.[1] The country's femicide rate exceeded more than 1,000 femicides in the year 2021.[2] The reports gathered over the last few years display that on average, 10 girls or women are killed daily in Mexico.[2] The high murder rate in the country has continued to make international news, while directing attention to Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's decision-making abilities to maintain criminal activity to a minimum.[1] The amount of femicides have gradually increased since the early 1990's, that in more recent years, now make up 10 percent of all homicides in reported in 2019.[1]

Risk factors and roadblocks
Violence against women is ultimately the result of gender discrimination. Feminist movements have been active in bringing attention to femicide however this has had an adverse impact as a result of the backlash theory in action. Mexican women gained more autonomy in a patriarchal society resulting in a violent response from their oppressors, which in this case is men. Furthermore, while femicide and gender based violence is an issue that impacts all women there are certain risk factors that have led to some women facing a disproportionate amount of violence. Low-income women in particular are more likely to be victim to femicide than their middle-class and upper-class peers. Indigenous women are also vulnerable but in a different way. Geography is the main obstacle in the femicide and other violence Indigenous women face as offices that report these instances are not location near Indigenous communities. This makes it more challenging to quantify the level of violence they face as it goes under-reported. Other roadblocks to quantifying the violence Mexican women experience is a general misunderstanding of what femicide is. Many people view femicide as the same as any other kind of murder rather that a targeted attack on the basis of gender. Femicide being lumped in with other kinds of violence erases the gender aspect and the motivations.

Feminist movements
Until recent decades, feminism was treated as a dirty word. As the violence rose in Mexico this sentiment faded. As more women became victims to violence the general disdain towards feminism and its ideals became less common among women and many began fighting for justice of murdered women. Mexican women began to take to the streets to march in large demonstrations. These marches called for the acknowledgement of the gender based violence women face. Mexican feminists created the term "feminicidio" (femicide) to describe the way some women are murdered because they are women. They urged their community members to recognize this kind of violence deviates from other kinds of murder and see it as a different issue. The main participants in this movement are the loved ones of those who have been victims of femicide. Their loved ones use various forms of media to spread the stories of those who lost their lives in the violence. Their efforts birthed many organizations that act to keep women in Mexico safe from violence as well as informed about it. Social media and the #MeToo movement transformed the movement through changing the culture of shame and fear that came with coming forward about sexual violence. Women naming their abusers publicly became normalized as a result.

National protocols
Following the disappearance of Mónica Citlalli Díaz in a suburb of Mexico City in November, 2022, the Supreme Court President Arturo Zaldívar placed a national protocol to investigate all femicides along with all other homicides targeted towards women under any circumstance.[1] Efforts have been previously made by certain states in Mexico to create prosecutor's offices specifically for gender based crimes given the increasing numbers of homicides. Since 2015, the federal government declared multiple gender violence alerts in order to urge local, state and federal authorities to take the necessary emergency action in particular regions so that they could provide the public with vital security measures and justice for victims and affected communities.[1]