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Central America: Still a Long Way to Go in Fight Against Sexual Violence
by Danilo Valladares (Guatemala City)Friday, June 08, 2012
Inter Press Service
Access to justice for women who suffer sexual violence in Central America and southern Mexico remains limited despite the high incidence of rape and other crimes, of which underage girls are the main victims, experts say.
'This kind of violence is the most hushed up, hidden, and invisibilised, which means it enjoys the greatest impunity,' Marcela Suazo, the United Nations population fund (UNFPA) regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, told IPS.
The numbers bear this out.
According to El Salvador’s attorney-general’s office, only six percent of the 8,108 complaints of sex crimes filed between January 2008 and July 2010 led to convictions.
The situation is similar in Nicaragua, where 56 percent of the 1,133 complaints of sexual violence that reached the courts in 2008 were closed. Of this proportion, 70 percent were dismissed, 15 percent ended in acquittals, and only 15 percent led to convictions.
A multiplicity of factors give rise to these bleak figures in Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and the nine states of southeast Mexico — a region known as Mesoamerica, which is home to some 70 million people.
These include the reluctance of victims to report sexual violence due to shame or fear, the lack of an effective response by the authorities, and the unequal power relations between men and women, Suazo said.
The main victims are minors. 'Girls and adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 are the population group most affected by sexual violence,' the expert said, adding that they are often sexually harassed or abused by family members or by people close to the family.
Read full article here.
© Inter Press Service (2012) — All Rights Reserved
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