7 Women Killed Per Day: Mexican Activists Protest Femicides, Disappearances

Hundreds of women from the leftist National Regeneration Movement or Morena party, gathered at the government's headquarters in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, to protest against femicides and disappearances of women in the state.

"We promised to keep fighting to improve conditions for women in this country, in this state, and we are sure that one day we will have justice and we will bring an end to this culture (of violence) that is so rooted in the state of Chihuahua," activist Teresa Guadalupe Reyes Sahagun said Sunday.

As part of the demonstration, protesters laid a bouquet of flowers at the memorial plaque for Marisela Escobedo Ortiz, a social activist who was killed in 2010 while protesting the murder of her daughter.

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The phenomenon of the female homicides in Chihuahua has received international attention, with hundreds of women and girls killed in the border city of Ciudad Juarez since 1993. So far this year at least 10 women have been killed in the state, and critics say government inaction in preventing violence against women and bringing perpetrators to justice contributes to the rising number deaths.

Moreover, female homicides have become widespread across the country in recent years. According to figures provided by nongovernmental organizations, during the past six years almost 2,000 women and girls were violently killed in Mexico, which nore ranks among the 25 countries with the highest rate of femicides in the world.

According to the National Citizen Femicide Observatory, seven women are killed every day in Mexico, and their bodies are often found badly mutilated along with sings of violence and rape.

In terms of disappearances, the State of Mexico had the highest number reported in the country with 1,258 girls and women reported disappeared in 2011 and 2012. Current Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, who was governor of the state at the time, has been criticized recently for not mentioning the human rights crisis during his third State of the Union address.