where is the fight against femicide in Spain and Mexico?

November 25 is the International Day Against Violence Against Women. If in Spain, the number of feminicides is around 50, each year since 2012, in Mexico, more than 3,700 women died in 2022, in violent circumstances.

Spain has been at the forefront of the political, legislative, police and judicial fight against violence against women since the turn of the 2000s, after a femicide shocked the entire country. The comprehensive law against gender-based violence was unanimously approved by Parliament in 2004.

It includes specialized courts, prevention measures and protection for victims, who are helped economically and in terms of professional integration. Spain devotes 200 million euros each year to this policy. The law was subsequently supplemented by other measures, notably the imposition by judges of electronic bracelets on violent spouses.

The ousting of a minister

On the other hand, it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of the law since with regard to the total number of victims and therefore counting non-fatal injuries, we have observed an almost constant increase for 10 years. The number of victims increased from 27,000 in 2014 to 32,000 in 2023. The optimistic explanation would be that the number is increasing since there are more women filing complaints. It is possible, especially since feminicides remain stable. In the 2000s, there were around 70 per year. They have increased to an average of 50 each year since 2012. That is, half as many as in France, for a population that is only a third lower.

However, the Minister of Equality between Men and Women, Irene Montero was not reappointed in the new Sánchez government. Her ouster is precisely linked to a law that she had prepared against sexual assault. The latter was known as “Only a yes is a yes” and it had to place consent at the heart of the definition of rape. But by redefining the categories of crimes, the maximum sentences of hundreds of people were reduced, thus allowing them to benefit from reduced sentences. A technical and legal fiasco which got the better of the minister.

However, Irene Montero, the most prominent representative of Podemos, the radical left party, is not upset at her ouster. During the transfer of power to the new minister on November 21, she declared that “It is precisely because we did what we said we would do, namely, put institutions at the service of the advancement of feminist rights, that today Pedro Sánchez is throwing us out of government.” The fight against violence against women is therefore progressing in Spain, but in an atmosphere of political division.

Alarming figures in Mexico

The debate is recurring in Mexico on the real number of femicides. In fact, ten women are killed every day in Mexico, a figure that has remained stable for five years. However, less than a quarter of these crimes are officially treated as feminicides, therefore homicides committed for gender reasons. Mexico was, however, one of the first countries in the world to criminalize femicide, in 2012. But today, the vast majority of murders of women are diluted in the overall crime index, which is already very high in itself. in the country. There are also a large number of disappearances of women, a phenomenon which could obscure uncounted femicides.

Faced with this extreme violence, Mexican women are constantly mobilized. They denounce the indifference of the authorities with an anger that has contributed to the rise of a new feminist movement in Mexico. November 25, the international day against violence against women, has become a regular event. Women will protest against the trivialization of violence against them. They will demonstrate in Mexico City carrying 3,000 wooden panels cut out in the shape of silhouettes of women painted purple on which they have written the names of the victims, to make visible the thousands of women killed each year.

There is no justice in Mexico for victims of femicide and this is one of the main demands of the demonstrators. In Mexico, the impunity rate for all crimes reaches 98%. In the case of femicide, several studies show that the vast majority of these crimes go unpunished, as Ruth Diaz, a feminist activist, explains. “We never get justice in these cases. The authorities only get involved in the most high-profile cases. But out of 30 or 50 feminicides that occur every month, there is perhaps one that ends up in the media. “

Even in some cases that have been highly publicized across the country, investigators have favored suicide or accident, even though there was evidence indicating that the cases were femicides. This is a recurring strategy by the authorities to try to minimize the seriousness of the phenomenon.