English News

November 25: Political Positioning of Feminists in Resistance in Honduras

for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

Center for Women’s Rights (CDM)
Center for Women’s Studies Honduras (CEM-H)

As feminist organizations concerned about the grave escalation of violence that is overwhelming the country of Honduras, and the vast number of FEMICIDES, (violent murders of women motivated by gender discrimination)  that now number 285 cases from January to October 2010, and in commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, declare publicly to Hondurans and the international community the following:

• We express our deepest concern for the grave escalation of violence that is cutting short the lives of thousands of persons, especially young men, young women, and children of both genders in numbers that exceed real war scenarios around the world, and place the country at the top of the list of the most violent countries in the world, with as many as 20 victims a day.
  • Honduras has the highest rate of violence against women in Central America and throughout the Latin American region. The United Nations has coined the term the “triangle of violence” to refer to the three Central American countries with the highest rates of violence against women: Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. The number of FEMICIDES occurring in Honduras from 2003 to 2010 amounts to 1464 victims. About 44% of the cases have involved young women between the ages of 15 and 29.
    
• More than half of the FEMICIDES that have occured at the national level (55%) take place in the most important cities of the country, Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, in the two most developed departments of the country, Cortés and Francisco Morazán, which are also where the maquiladora industry prospers.


• Women are killed because they are women; because men feel they have the power and the permission to exert violence over women, even the most extreme and lethal form of violence supported as they are by the impunity the state grants them and by the social tolerance of violence against women that protects them from punishment. Unsolved crimes accumulate as well as crimes that receive no application of justice by the law, and the victims of direct and indirect violence receive no attention nor compensation for the damage suffered. In all reported cases, 95% of them contain no information about the possible aggressor. Of 944 cases of violent deaths of women between 2008 and 2010 recorded by the Unit of Crimes against the Lives of Women in the Office of the District Attorney for Women, only 61 court rulings were registered, which amounts to 6.4% of the cases.


• Femicides are considered felonies, thus, the Honduran state is the main culprit for the situation of violence of women and the impunity of the crimes against them. We find ourselves today before a collapsed state with weakened, inefficient, and irresponsible institutions. The institutions of the state have demonstrated that they not only pay lip service, but that they have no real commitment to the law. They have no real intention to work to stop, prevent, and punish the violence against women.


• Violence in all its manifestations in Honduras involves disproportionately men in their roles as aggressors in intimate, family, and community relations as well as perpetrators of organized public violence or organized crime. This includes hired assassinations, gang murders, or the crimes of transnational networks of drug trafficking, human trafficking and others. Women’s bodies have become the battleground where men settle their scores, take revenge on each other, and demonstrate their power over women’s lives.


• In an overwhelming number of cases, the women and girls who were victims of violence did not bring this violence onto themselves; the brutal aggressions against them and their deaths occurred while they were engaged in their daily activities, in their own homes, workplaces, neighborhoods, or walking down the streets in the main cities that have become the privileged sites of the femicides: 1 in 3 femicides took place in the house of the victim and 2 out 5 in the streets.


• About 80% of the victims were murdered at gunfire, and femicides were the result of multiple crimes at least in 14 cases, with 2 to 4 women and girls killed each time, most of them in their own homes.

As women and as feminists in resistance we call all women and men who believe in peace and justice, and all social and popular organizations and organized women of Honduras and the world to help us build a new Honduras in which rights, peace, equity, respect, and justice is guaranteed for all.

Tegucigalpa, November 22 2010

CAMPAIGN FOR THE LIFE OF WOMEN:

MY BODY IS NOT A BATTLEGROUND!

STOP FEMICIDES!

THEY MURDER WOMEN AND THEY DON’T CARE

NO MORE IRRESPONSIBLE STATE FUNCTIONARIES AND POLITICIANS!