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News > Guatemala

Guatemala: Gender Activists Demand a Halt To Femicides

  • Human rights demanding security for women, Guatemala, March. 7, 2021.

    Human rights demanding security for women, Guatemala, March. 7, 2021. | Photo: EFE

Published 8 March 2021
Opinion

This Central American nation has one of the highest rates of violent deaths of women in the world (9.7 per 100,000).

On the occasion of International Women's Day, Guatemalans took to the street on Sunday to demand an end to gender-based violence and justice for women who have been victims of femicides in the country.

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The activists marched throughout the Supreme Court and the Constitution square streets in the capital to promote the "We Want Us Alive" campaign.

Carrying banners, photographs, and flowers, they recalled femicide cases such as that of the 25-year-old Prosecutor's Office criminal investigator Luz Maria del Rocio who was murdered by her husband on Jan. 20. 

Demonstrators also called on Guatemala's President Alejandro Giammattei to punish those responsible for the abuses against the female population while demanding the approval of laws against sexual harassment and rapists.

The meme reads, "A video at the Girls square in Guatemala City."

Voicing "Girls are not touched, not raped, not burned, not killed", the activists also condemned the event registered on March 8, 2017, when 41 girls were burned to death amid allegations of abuse at a state-run minors' shelter. 

So far this year, over 10,500 cases of violence against women have been registered in this country. The Public Prosecutor's Office reported that three out of every ten complaints correspond to murders of women and girls.

The UN Women warned that Guatemala is one of the countries with the highest rate of violent deaths of women (9.7 per 100,000). Last year alone, 278 women were murdered with firearms and 37 with a knife.

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