The women's social movement asks Petro to declare a national emergency for sexist violence

An activist during the protest this Tuesday for the anniversary of the decriminalization of abortion, in Bogotá. Fernando Vergara (AP)

Just one day before the start of the year 2023, the first femicide was already registered in Colombia.

A 26-year-old woman was murdered by her romantic partner, in the municipality of Yondó, Antioquia.

The next day, the second was recorded.

A 22-year-old woman was murdered in the same department, this time in the city of Medellín.

After that start, in less than two months of 2023, 25 femicides have already been registered.

In 2022 there were more than 500 compared to 106 in 2021.

Faced with a wave of violence that is on the rise, feminist movements and women's NGOs have been making numerous efforts to get President Gustavo Petro to declare a state of emergency over sexist violence.

They ask you to do so in order to deploy more forceful strategies to stop the growth of murders and mitigate the different types of violence.

Under this premise, over the weekend a hundred women held a sit-in and various symbolic performative acts in the Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá.

Among the organizers of the day was the women's collective Search for them until we find them, which provides psychological support in cases of disappearance of women, children and femicide throughout the country.

The co-founder of the collective, Gabriela Romero, tells EL PAÍS: "The initiative was born to capture, through pedagogy and art, the pain we experience when we see all the cases of sexist violence that occur daily, and that are added to the negligence, revictimization and instrumentalization of the authorities”.

The activist is emphatic in expressing the need for comprehensive care by the State.

"It is a call to the authorities for the lack of activation of action routes that could save lives and a real follow-up on the cases."

Yesenia Moreno, another feminist activist who participated in the planning of the event, agrees with her: “There must be an entity that has a risk nature to accompany and prioritize the emergency, which has a free and autonomous fund for free allocation.

The political party Estamos Listas has also been working on this demand.

Already in 2020 they filed a guardianship action to declare a humanitarian crisis due to sexist violence and sought to have it declared locally by the Council of Medellín, where they have a councilor, Dora Saldarriaga, who explains: "The category of humanitarian crisis contemplates three conditions: a massive violation of Human Rights, that there is no institutional articulation to intervene in this crisis and that urgent actions are needed for that intervention.

Based on these criteria, we conclude that the panorama of violence against women warrants this statement."

In the work of counteracting and comprehensively addressing gender-based violence, the councilor highlights the importance of creating the vice-ministry for women in the Ministry of Equality.

“We believe that it is important to have an institutional framework with symbolic power that allows for mainstreaming with other ministries and that the political will translates into a budget.

In this way, many actions could be delegated with gender perspectives, specialized bodies, articulation with political and material power with the other portfolios”.

Data from organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) support the demands of the activists.

Colombia is the second country in that organization with the highest level of violence against women, as President Petro recalled on his Twitter account.

Despite sharing this information, so far the president has not ruled on the request of the NGOs or on the alarming humanitarian scenario for women.

Even so, for Romero and the 28 other volunteers who accompany cases of gender-based violence, it is urgent to recognize that Colombian women are the main victims of the bloodiest expressions of patriarchy.

“Recognizing that this problem exists is a way of recognizing reality.

It is the only way in which society, the media and institutions pay real attention to families and to those who are at risk of violence”, he concludes.

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