Measures against feminicide in Argentina

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"Not one less": four years of claim in Argentina 1:12

(CNN Spanish) - The murder of Brenda Micaela Gordillo once again set off the alarms in Argentina. Friends, relatives and acquaintances of the victim, who was suffocated and burned, asked for justice for the heinous crime, which enmeshes the country and again raised the posters of women shouting "Not one less, alive we love each other".

Brenda Micaela and Naim Vera Menem, her alleged perpetrator, were known, a police source confirmed. And on Saturday night, after an argument, the young man said that the 24-year-old girl fell down the stairs and died. Noticing that she was dead, the young man looked for a way to discard the body, wrapped it in a blanket and burned it on a grill, he told police, according to the same police source. Then, he dismembered the remains and got rid of them in different parts of the city.

At noon on Sunday, the father and family lawyer accompanied him to the investigation division of the province's police, where he declared and was detained at the infantry base.

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Article 80 of the Criminal Code of Argentina, establishes "life imprisonment or life imprisonment" who kills, among others, "a woman when the act is perpetrated by a man and mediates gender violence."

Although Argentina has some of the toughest laws in the region to punish femicides in Latin America, but crimes against women still count for tens. If Gordillo's crime is confirmed as femicide, the 63 most registered cases in Argentina would be added between January 1 and February 29, 2020, according to the Observatory “Now That Yes See Us” published on March 3. According to these figures, a woman is murdered in the country every 23 hours, just because she is a woman.

According to the report, in 66% of the cases the perpetrator was the victim's partner or partner and 5% was family member. Of the 28% of cases there are no data and 1% is unknown.

Of the 63 cases, 15 had previously filed a complaint and three had legal action.

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That organization registered between January 1 and December 30, 2019, 327 femicides; but the Observatory of Feminicides of the Ombudsman of the Nation registered more conservative, but no less devastating, figures with 280 feminicide victims confirmed throughout 2019, “which includes 5 feminicidal suicides, 25 linked femicides and 10 trans / transvestites”.

"It is becoming increasingly clear that the violent deaths of girls and women on the grounds of gender are naturalized," says the report of the Ombudsman of Argentina published in 2019, which added cases of suicidal femicides, in which suicides of women who "could be undercover femicides."

In addition to legal remedies, Argentina also has offices of violence, police stations and other state institutions to protect the security of women.

“… This Observatory considers that it is of the utmost importance that suicide, in cases where the previous existence of abuse and violence against women has been proven, be treated
as Femicide Suicide, ”says the report.

There is also the program Las Víctimas Contra Las Violencias, which depends on the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights of Argentina. This program has lines of gender violence, among which is the National Line Against Child Sexual Abuse, which provides advice throughout the country, and line 137, which receives calls on cases of family violence, gender and sexual violence in Buenos Aires.

The country has promoted some measures to combat femicides, such as “the Action Guide for police and security forces for femicide investigation at the scene,” which was approved in 2017.

Also, in early 2019, the Brisa Law was passed, which stipulates an economic reparation for the children of victims of femicides. With this, the best who have lost their mothers or fathers due to gender violence have a monthly help from the State. The remuneration that minors can claim is the equivalent of a minimum retirement of around $ 270, until they are of legal age. This applies when one of the parents is prosecuted or convicted for killing, being an accomplice or participant in the murder of the other parent.

But in the country, cases of gender-based violence against women continue to be counted “despite access to offices of violence, police stations and other state institutions” to protect the security of women, something that, according to the collective Now They do see us at the end of January of this year, it is not enough "to prevent this terrible outcome."

Femicides Feminicides