Note on the Conference given by the Feminist Lawyer, Dr. María Guadalupe Ramos Ponce

Note on the Conference given by the Feminist Lawyer, Dr. María Guadalupe Ramos Ponce at the Casa de la América Latina located in Brussels on March 9, 2020 within the framework of the International Day for the Rights of Women and Girls.

One day after their participation in the March 8 march that takes place annually in Brussels and in support of the strike called by women for March 9 in Mexico. The feminist lawyer Guadalupe Ramos gave the conference Dialogues: Femicidal Violence and Human Rights of Women. New forms of violence against the diversity of women and access to justice. She presented the premiere of the #NosVanAVerJuntas campaign, a video that shows a message of solidarity and hope.

It is due to the uncontrolled increase in femicides that shot up in 2006 and increases each year at the national level that Dr. Guadalupe Ramos, a member of the National Citizen Observatory of Femicide, undertook the task of systematizing cases in the Jalisco state. It explains that only an equally patriarchal justice can end a patriarchal system of impunity in the face of sexist murders and violence suffered by women and girls. This exponential increase, he says, can be verified with comparative figures, in 1997 there were 34 murders of women, currently those 34 murders have only been carried out from January to March 2020. This situation of alarm and fear on the part of women has led them to mobilize and generate self-managed protection actions by the same citizens and family members. The violence and cruelty with which they are executed, disappeared and the support structure that revictimizes them or ignoring the urgency of preventing and exercising justice. It is the impunity and absence of a gender perspective that the authorities at all levels allow security to continue without being achieved or guaranteed as stipulated in the agreements ratified by Mexico to eradicate violence as mentioned in the Do Pará Convention and in accordance with the CEDAW recommendations.

In her book Study of Femicide in Jalisco, published in 2015 by the University of Guadalajara, the academic and full-time professor explains how young women with basic studies and between the ages of 21 and 30 are the main victims.

In her work as a defender and activist, she accompanies the victims’ relatives and survivors with different activities and organizes awareness-raising, prevention and reporting campaigns to warn of negligence on the part of the authorities and to point out the failures in the administration of justice. Member of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights, confirms how it is that through the patriarchal and domestic system that women live in constant violence both inside their homes and on the street and In none of these areas is a free and safe space to walk, inhabit and coexist.

In his presentation, he shared the following “official figures reveal a serious context of feminicide that is increasing, from 2015 to 2019 15,804 murders of women were committed, of which 3,751 were investigated as feminicide, that is, 23.7%; In 2019 alone, 3,825 women were murdered, 1006 cases are investigated as femicide. Regarding the problem of missing women and girls, according to information from the State Prosecutors’ Offices of 9 states [1] of the country, in 2019 7, 654 women and girls disappeared, of which 5,533 were found alive, 85 were located lifeless and 2,043 remain to be located.

That is why, with the launch of the #NOSVANAVERJUNTAS campaign, we endorse our accompaniment in this journey among us as defenders and with the mothers and relatives of victims of femicide in the face of a serious and adverse climate. In the demand for the cessation of femicide violence, an end to impunity and the search for justice:

NOSVANAVERJUNTAS because in Mexico they are killing us. Every day, ten women are murdered by men, because they believe they can do it without consequences: shut up, rape us, disappear us, take our lives out of jealousy, hatred, abuse of power, because we are women. ” Notes extracted from the presentation given on 03-09-2020.

Link to access the video of the conference:

https://youtu.be/AX6U9WO23lo