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Bolivia Declares Emergency Plan to End Gender Killings

Reuters

   BOGOTA - Bolivia, which has one of South America's highest rates of
   women being killed because of their gender, has declared femicide a
   national priority and will step up efforts to tackle growing violence,
   a top government rights official said on Tuesday.

   Since January authorities have recorded 73 femicides - the killing of a
   woman by a man due to her gender - in the highest toll since 2013. The
   murders amount to one woman killed every two days.

   "In terms of the femicide rate, Bolivia is in the top rankings," said
   Tania Sanchez, head of the Plurinational Service for Women and Ending
   Patriarchy at Bolivia's justice ministry, despite legal protections
   being in place.

   A 2013 law defined femicide as a specific crime and provided tougher
   sentences for convicted offenders.

   "We are not indifferent," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "The
   national priority is the lives of women, of all ages, and for that
   reason the president has raised this issue of femicide as the most
   extreme form (of violence)," Sanchez said.

   Emergency Plan

   The latest femicide victim was 26-year-old mother Mery Vila, killed
   last week by her partner who beat her on the head with a hammer.

   This week, the government announced a 10-point "emergency plan."

   Worldwide, a third of all women experience physical or sexual violence
   at some point in their lives, according to the U.N. In Bolivia,
   violence against women is driven by entrenched machismo culture, which
   tends to blame victims and even condones it.

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