Frontline women activists in Mexico and Central America face threats, intimidation, and attacks for defending justice and human rights. This 2012 Assessment Report makes use of the data from the Mesoamerican Registry of Attacks against Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs), which was compiled from January to December 2012 in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. The aim of the report is to assess the scope and types of attacks suffered by WHRDs, as well as to describe the main features of these attacks and identify their gender components.
This report reveals the way gender-based discrimination and gender inequality perpetuate privilege and maintain social control, undermining the ability of citizens to make decisions that are rightfully theirs to remedy injustices and to ensure that states act in the public interest. This highlights the need for improved and specific protection mechanisms. Examples of gender indicators in the report include types of attacks (sexual violence and harassment, domestic violence, rejection by the community, or ridiculing); type of perpetrators (non-state actors such as family members, the community, organizations or social movements), and types of rights defended (sexual and reproductive rights as well as sexual orientation rights).
Recommendations include: incorporating a gender perspective in analyses of violence against all human rights defenders, further development of a regional perspective in order to identify trends and patterns that explain the violence faced by WHRDs, and recognizing and highlighting the role of WHRDs in building democracy, peace, and justice in the region and the impact and consequences of attacks against them.