Latest news with #violenciadegénero
Washington Post
4 days ago
- Health
- Washington Post
Human rights committee blames Guatemala for forcing girl who was raped to carry out her pregnancy
GUATEMALA CITY — A panel of independent experts who make up the United Nations Human Rights Committee said Thursday they found that Guatemala violated the rights of a 14-year-old girl who was raped and forced to continue her pregnancy. A former director of a government-run daycare facility she had attended as a child raped her on multiple occasions beginning in 2009 when she was 13 and no longer attended the center, but she was denied access to abortion, forced to carry out the birth and care for the child, treatment the committee compared to torture.
Associated Press
4 days ago
- Health
- Associated Press
Human rights committee blames Guatemala for forcing girl who was raped to carry out her pregnancy
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — A panel of independent experts who make up the United Nations Human Rights Committee said Thursday they found that Guatemala violated the rights of a 14-year-old girl who was raped and forced to continue her pregnancy. A former director of a government-run daycare facility she had attended as a child raped her on multiple occasions beginning in 2009 when she was 13 and no longer attended the center, but she was denied access to abortion, forced to carry out the birth and care for the child, treatment the committee compared to torture. 'No girl should be forced to carry the child of her rapist. Doing so robs her of her dignity, her future, and her most basic rights,' Committee member Hélène Tigroudja said in a statement, adding that 'This is not just a violation of reproductive autonomy — it is a profound act of cruelty.' The committee monitors countries' adherence to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. When the girl's mother found out about the abuse she reported it to authorities. The man and his wife tried to bribe and threaten the girl's family into withdrawing the report. The case wound on in Guatemala's justice system for nine years, but the man was never punished. 'Guatemala did not properly investigate the rape, nor did it take effective action to prosecute the perpetrator,' the committee said. 'Guatemala is one of the Latin American countries with the highest rates of both forced motherhood and systematic impunity for sexual violence,' the committee's statement said. 'Although the Guatemalan Criminal Code allows abortion in specific situations to avoid a threat to the life of the mother, access to legal abortion is almost impossible in practice.' The committee called on Guatemala to establish a system to record and monitor such cases. In the case of the girl, it said the state should support her to complete higher education and attain her goals. Catalina Martínez, vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean for the Center of Reproductive Rights, one of the groups that brought the girl's case forward, said there is agreement in society that the protection of girls is a priority. 'But that promise is broken when we don't provide access to all health services, including abortion, and we obligate them to assume motherhood that they don't want and for which they are not prepared,' she said.
BBC News
27-05-2025
- BBC News
The Documentary Podcast Assignment: Spain - can an algorithm predict murder?
Early on a Sunday morning in February in the Spanish seaside town of Benalmadena, Catalina, a 48-year-old mother of four, was killed at home – the building was set on fire. Her ex-partner was arrested and remains in custody. In January, Lina – as she was known to her family and friends – had reported her ex-partner to the police for ill-treatment and threatening behaviour. And by doing so, she became one of around 100,000 cases of gender-based violence active in Spain's VioGen system. VioGen is an algorithm used by the police – it's a risk assessment tool. Based on a woman's answers to a series of questions, it calculates the likelihood she will be attacked again so police resources can be allocated to protect those most in danger. The level of risk could be negligible, low, medium, high or extreme. Lina was recorded as being at 'medium' risk of a further attack by the man who was her ex-partner. Three weeks later, she was dead. VioGen's critics are concerned about the number of women registered on the system who are then murdered by men who are former or current partners. Its champions claim that without VioGen there would be far more violence against women. With AI in the ascendency, and governments increasingly turning to algorithms to make decisions affecting society, for Crossing Continents, Linda Pressly and Esperanza Escribano investigate the story of VioGen and domestic violence in Spain.
Al Arabiya
17-05-2025
- Al Arabiya
In Mexico, first outrage, then victim blaming over murdered TikTok influencer
No sooner had 23-year-old beauty influencer Valeria Marquez been murdered on a TikTok livestream than the Mexican rumor mill started. Comments poured in on social media blaming her for her own death: She was involved in shady business, her ex-boyfriend was a narco, she had it coming, they said. By Friday, the media and politicians were already moving on. Marquez seems destined to become one in a long line of Mexican women whose murder briefly shocks the conscience only to recede into the background until the next gruesome crime happens. 'It sort of reflects a level of saturation, a level of societal acceptance of these sorts of killings,' said Gema Kloppe-Santamaria, a sociologist at University College Cork in Ireland who studies gender-based violence in Mexico. 'There's a lot of re-victimization that I think allows people to say, 'Let's move on. This is something that won't happen to us. It doesn't happen to good girls. It doesn't happen to decent Mexican women.'' Marquez, who had nearly 200,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok, was known for her videos about beauty and makeup. On Tuesday, she clutched a stuffed toy and livestreamed from the beauty salon where she worked in the state of Jalisco, when a male voice in the background asked 'Hey, Vale?' 'Yes,' Marquez replied, just before muting the sound on the livestream. Moments later, she was shot dead. A person appeared to pick up her phone, with their face briefly showing on the livestream before the video ended. Almost immediately, local media honed in on a man they identified as Marquez's ex-boyfriend, who they said was a regional leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of Mexico's most notorious drug cartels. Local media shared alleged text messages between the couple that appeared to show the ex-boyfriend threatening Marquez because she ignored him. Reuters was not able to independently verify the identity of the ex-boyfriend or contact him for comment. Marquez's family declined to speak with Reuters. The Jalisco state prosecutor said Marquez's murder is being investigated as a possible femicide - the killing of women or girls for reasons of gender - but declined to say whether Marquez's ex-boyfriend was a suspect. 'Anyone associated with this girl, whether friends, relatives, acquaintances, or boyfriends, is being investigated or interviewed,' Salvador Gonzalez de los Santos said in a press conference on Friday. Outrage passes Marquez is one of countless murdered girls and women whose deaths in recent years have triggered a groundswell of outrage and protests only for the status quo to prevail. Among them: Ingrid Escamilla, 25, who was stabbed, skinned and mutilated in 2020. Fatima Cecilia Aldrighett, 7, who in the same year was abducted from school and her body later found wrapped in a plastic bag. Debanhi Escobar, 18, who disappeared from the side of a highway in 2022 and whose body was found in a cistern 13 days later. Escamilla's boyfriend was convicted and sentenced in her killing. Two people were recently sentenced in Aldrighett's case. Escobar's case remains unsolved after an investigation riddled by mistakes and the firing of two prosecutors for 'omissions and errors,' according to a statement by the prosecutor's office. A government autopsy initially alleged that Escobar had fallen into the cistern, a version contradicted by two subsequent autopsies. 'Each case goes through its media cycle and then there's another one,' said Anayeli Perez, legal adviser to the National Citizens' Observatory on Femicide. 'It speaks of a society whose social fabric is falling apart.' In 2023, Mexico recorded 852 femicides, according to the most recent report by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. It has the fourth highest rate of femicides in the region on a per capita basis, with Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Brazil even higher. Many advocates say the number is likely underestimated. Jalisco is among Mexico's more dangerous states, with 910 homicides recorded since the beginning of President Claudia Sheinbaum's term in October 2024, according to data consultancy TResearch. Sheinbaum, who made history as Mexico's first female leader, said on Thursday that the powerful national security cabinet was working with the state prosecutor to investigate Marquez's murder. She implored people not to share the livestream of Marquez's murder on social media out of respect for Marquez and her family. But Sheinbaum's rhetoric - and gender - has added only a veneer of competence to what remains a fundamentally broken system for addressing violence against women, Perez said. 'The prosecutors are still negligent, the experts don't have training, the police don't have a gender perspective,' she said. Under police presence, Marquez was buried on Thursday, her casket topped by a bouquet of white roses.
