User:Funken Ferrera/sandbox

International agreements and legislation[ edit]
The Mexican government is party to a range of international efforts and agreements that aim to enhance the living standards of women and lower gender inequality within the country: First and foremost, they signed in favour of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 which guarantees the fundamental rights of men and women equally. The Mexican State was also part of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1979. In 1993 Mexico signed the first international document recognising ‘gender violence’ as a type of violence, by the United Nations ‘The Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women’. Followed by the Bélem do Pará Convention agreements signed in 1994 promoted by the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM), which criminalises violence against women with an emphasis on sexual violence.

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women 2012[ edit]
The 2012 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women showed its concern with the raising levels of insecurity and gender-based violence in the country:"“It is deeply concerned that the public security strategy to combat organised crime, combined with persistent impunity and corruption, have contributed to the intensification of already existing patterns of widespread discrimination and violence against women in the State party, rooted in patriarchal attitudes, and to the minimisation and invisibility of this phenomenon. The Committee is concerned that women and girls have been subjected to increasing levels and different types of gender-based violence, such as domestic violence, forced disappearances, torture and murders, especially femicide, by state actors, including law enforcement officials and the security forces, as well as by non-state actors, such as organised crime groups.”"The Committee encouraged the Mexican State to prosecute and punish perpetrators of violence towards women. To increase the efforts and resources to improve public security, by providing a systematic training on gender-based violence to law enforcing actors and all other public security forces. They emphasise that the existence of legislative inconsistencies at the state and municipal level should be tackled, including impunity and every other discriminatory penal and legal driven action or non-action.

Appropriate monitoring and sanctions should be carried out to all law enforcing actors and judiciary who acts against the interest of women protection. Being strictly necessary to collect consistent and veridical information on violence against women and make gender-based violence a state primary issue.

General Law on Women's Access to a Life of Violence (2007)[ edit]
The General Law on Women’s Access to a life Free of Violence (GLWALFV) introduced the 1st of February of 2007 with the aim of prevent and eradicate gender-based violence, by combining the efforts among the Federation, Federal entities and municipalities. It establishes the regulations to guarantee Mexican women a life without violence, according to the constitutional principles of equality and justice. As well as to enforce democracy to strengthen sovereignty of the state and its laws. This law recognises all the international treaties on Human Rights and gender-baser violence that the Mexican state ratified.

The GLWALFV in point IV, Article 5 in Chapter I defines 'Violence against women' as: Any act or omission, based on their gender, that causes them psychological, physical, patrimonial, economic, sexual damage, suffering or death, in the private and the public matter. It recognises 6 types of violence: psychological violence, physical violence, patrimonial violence, economic violence, sexual violence and any other analogous forms that harm the integrity or freedom of women. Furthermore Article 21 of Chapter V recognises 'Femicide violence' as: the extreme form of gender violence against women, produced by the violation of their human rights in the public and private spheres, produced by misogynistic behaviours that can lead to social and state impunity which can culminate in homicide and other forms of violent death of women.

Reports by Amnesty International have shown that this law has not been very effective due to poor implementation and a minimal change in police investigations following reports of different kinds of violence.

Gender Violence Alert Mechanism[ edit]
One policy that has been put in place to increase response by local officials is the Gender Violence Alert Mechanism (Alerta de Violencia de Género contra las Mujeres). In this program, citizens may opt to receive a gender alert when violence against women is increasing in their municipality. This alert is the set of governmental and security forces actions, to eradicate femicide violence in a specific area enhanced by individuals or the community. It looks to guarantee women's security, lowering violence levels and eliminating inequalities by:


 * 1) Establishing an institutional and multi-disciplinary group with a gender perspective that monitors the situation.
 * 2) Implement preventive, security and justice actions to confront and reduce femicide violence.
 * 3) Report on the area and the behaviour of the indicators of gender-based violence.
 * 4) Allocate the necessary budgetary resources to face the Gender Violence Alert Mechanism
 * 5) Transparency on the causes that triggered the alert and the security conditions of the area where these measure have to be implemented

In the state of Mexico, the state with the highest population, the federal government found the state of femicides severe enough to issue an alert on gender violence on July 31 in 2015. This is the first time the federal government had to  Since then, there have also been alerts released in Morelos, Michoacán, Chiapas, Nuevo León, Veracruz, Sinaloa, Colima, San Luis Potosí, Guerrero, Quintana Roo, and Nayarit. This regulation has also been shown not to be very effective, since authorities often see it as a punishment or a political attack, and choose to hide from facing any repercussions rather than address the problem and make changes in how they investigate violence against women.

Invisibility, Normalisation and Impunity[ edit]
While there has been legislation over the last few decades attempting to decrease violence against women, they have proven to have little effect due to a lack of enforcement. Many female homicides have gone unrecognized by authorities, so there is no action taken to investigate the women's deaths. In fact, femicide has been criminalised in the Criminal Codes of only 13 states of Mexico.