As part of its campaign to mobilize parliaments and support their efforts to end violence against women, the IPU and the National Assembly of Ecuador held a regional seminar on Combating violence against women: from legislation to its effective enforcement in Cuenca, Ecuador, from 21 to 23 April 2010. The seminar brought together parliamentarians from Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama and Uruguay to discuss strategies to prevent and combat violence against women.
All Latin American countries have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Inter-American Convention of Belem do Para to prevent, sanction and eradicate violence against women. Those legal instruments have served as the basis for national legislation on violence against women in various countries.
Enforcement, however, remains a challenge and one of the main objectives of the seminar was to highlight different mechanisms that can be put in place to ensure adequate application of existing legislation. The meeting served to assess violence against women in the region and hear about new legislation adopted by several countries over the last four years. The discussion highlighted several common denominators for such legislation, including the fact that violence against women is defined as discrimination and a violation of the human rights of women and that violence is not only physical but also psychological, sexual, moral, economic and financial.
There was also discussion of the allocation and control of resources for the eradication of violence against women, mechanisms for the supervision and application of the legislation and processes for monitoring and overseeing State action. With respect to budget, parliamentarians stressed the need to analyze the national budget from a gender perspective and earmark it, and assess its impact using appropriate indicators.
The concerns about the inadequacy of coordination among, as well as training for, all of those involved with the eradication of violence (judges, prosecutors, law enforcement, defence attorneys, health and social services, civil society, etc.) was repeatedly raised during the debates. The meeting also discussed the importance of working with men and suggested that to work only with women would be to address the symptoms but not the causes of violence against women and would delay the process of change.
At the end of two and a half days of lively exchanges, participants adopted a list of recommendations for concrete parliamentary action to ensure the implementation of legislation on violence against women. These recommendations deal with issues such as acknowledging new forms of violence against women and giving special attention to the most vulnerable population segments (rural women, youth, indigenous peoples, migrants, the disabled and the elderly); repealing laws that discriminate against women and adopting measures to promote male participation in violence eradication efforts; analyzing budgets from a gender perspective and providing budgetary allocations, in particular, to secure the coordination and proper training of all those concerned with curbing this violence.
