Amnesty Report: Ten Women And Girls Killed Every Day In Mexico
According to a new report, at least ten women and girls are killed every day in Mexico, and the victims’ families are frequently left to conduct their own homicide investigations.
Amnesty International’s damning study, details both the scope of the violence and the alarming lack of interest on the side of Mexican authorities in preventing or solving the murders.
“Mexico is continuing to fail to fulfil its duty to investigate and, therefore, its duty to guarantee the rights to life and personal integrity of the victims as well as to prevent violence against women,” says the report, Justice on Trial.
“Feminicidal violence and the failings in investigation and prevention in northern Mexico are not anecdotal, but rather form part of a broader reality in the country,” the report adds.
Femicide has been rampant in Mexico for decades, most notably in the 1990s, when an epidemic of killings claimed the lives of over 400 women in the border city of Ciudad Juárez. Massive street rallies against the brutality have been organised in recent years by a burgeoning feminist movement, but authorities have proven hesitant to take action to halt the killings.
In Mexico, 3,723 women were killed in 2020. 940 of the murders were found to be femicides.
According to the report, families that conducted their own investigations were ignored by investigators. Authorities contaminated crime scenes or botched evidence in many cases. They didn’t always follow up on leads, such as geolocation data from victims’ cellphones.
In the case of Julia Sosa, her two daughters discovered her body buried on the suspect’s property – but had to wait hours for authorities to arrive and analyse the crime scene. “The police officer was falling asleep,” one of her kids remembered of the subsequent interrogation process.
Activists claim that incidences of femicides go uninvestigated in states where drug cartel violence is rampant because impunity is the norm.
