After the gruesome and cruel death of a 25-year-old woman and shortly after a 7-year-old girl in Mexico City, there have been increasing protests against the government headed by Andrés López Obrador in its inability to protect women.  The government of Mexico recorded 1,006 incidents of femicide in 2019 and less than 5% are solved by the justice system. 

Femicide is defined as the intentional killing of women or girls because they are females.  It is a term mostly used in Latin America

Besides Mexico, the Atlantic Council reports an increased rate of femicide in Latin America. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports that in 2018,  14 out of the 25 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have high femicide rates. These include the Northern Triangle counties (Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala), Jamaica, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru to name a few.

Furthermore, women killed by intimate partners or family members are the highest in Asia then followed by Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Oceania according to the 2019 Global Study on Homicide by The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Closely related,  the NYTimes published this week a photo essay on Herat Women’s Prison in Afghanistan focused on women who are serving sentences for killing their abusive husbands.