European Union and United Nations join forces to end femicide in Latin America under the Spotlight Initiative

The European Union and the United Nations announced a €50 million investment to end femicide in Latin America. Femicide claims the lives of 12 women in Latin America every day.

With €50 million investment, the EU-UN Spotlight Initiative will fund new and innovative programmes in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, to help women and girls live lives free from violence and to eradicate femicide in Latin America.

“Ending violence against women and girls is on top of our agenda. With the Spotlight initiative, we have a global coalition around this objective and are mobilising all efforts and actions in education, awareness raising, prevention and delivering justice,” said High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini. “We want to make sure that women and girls never have to live in fear again, in Latin America, in Europe and around the world.”

“Gender-based violence affects every single country and women and girls everywhere,” said UN Women Executive Director, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. “With the Spotlight Initiative, the EU and the UN are working to galvanize broad collaboration with focused intent, across UN agencies, civil society partners and governments, so as to end violence against women and girls once and for all.”

The new programmes will address legislative and policy gaps, strengthen institutions, promote gender-equitable attitudes, and provide quality services for survivors and reparations for victims of violence and their families. Critically, programmes will strengthen and build women’s movements both in the five countries and across Latin America.

The Spotlight Initiative will work closely with civil society, UN agencies and governments of the five programme countries to provide comprehensive, high-quality interventions that can save women and girls’ lives. A special focus will be put on reaching women and girls that are most at risk of violence and whom traditional programmes do not reach leaving no one behind.

Latin America is home to 14 of the 25 countries with the highest rates of femicide in the world. In 2016, 254 women and girls were killed in Argentina, 349 in El Salvador, 211 in Guatemala, 466 in Honduras and 2,813 in Mexico.

Original source: European Commission
Published on 27 September 2018