Advanced Diploma in Measuring Gender-Based Violence Against Women and Femicide-Feminicide

Gender-based violence against women and girls, as well as its most extreme expression, femicide/feminicide, in Latin America and the Caribbean, demonstrates the persistence of one of the most complex structural knots of gender inequality to dismantle: discriminatory and violent cultural patterns that impede women's autonomy. As one of the most normalized violations of human rights, it constitutes a significant obstacle to development in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Furthermore, it violates and restricts women's enjoyment of their fundamental rights and freedoms, with serious consequences for their health, economic opportunities, rights, and well-being. According to surveys in the region, it affects between 30% and 77% of women. Its consequences not only profoundly affect the lives of the women victims, but also threaten the stability, security, and well-being of their families and communities, as well as the development of their countries. For more than three decades, this scourge has been one of the most relevant issues on the international and regional agenda for gender equality and human rights.

Los Estados de América Latina y el Caribe, cada vez más han ido incorporando en su legislación la necesidad de generar estadísticas sobre violencia por razones de género contra las mujeres y en gran número han establecido normativas para levantar información periódica y generar sistemas de registros de violencia contra las mujeres, con un marco conceptual integral que amplia los conceptos de violencia de género hacia mujeres y niñas, los diferentes ámbitos de ocurrencia y los victimarios, así como precisa los ejes de intervención y la acción de las distintas instituciones estatales a nivel intersectorial y subnacional. A ello se une el amplio que caracteriza las leyes de protección integrales y los planes de acción nacionales, estableciendo roles y responsabilidades en la prevención, atención, sanción y reparación de la violencia contra las mujeres para los operadores estadísticos sectoriales, así como para los institutos u oficinas nacionales de estadística. 

The institutional, cultural, and methodological challenges facing the measurement of violence against women and the monitoring of indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals related to violence against women are reflected in the diverse instruments and methodologies used to collect prevalence data. This complicates comparability between countries and within countries over time, thus hindering the generation of regional estimates. Similarly, a lack of regulations and funding persists for the institutionalization and periodic implementation of surveys to measure the magnitude of violence. However, significant progress has been made in data production, incorporating gender and intersectional analyses to improve diagnoses and account for the diversity of violence against women. Increasingly, national efforts are being made to include territorial dimensions, ethnic and racial background, gender identity, and age, in addition to income level, and to account for the heterogeneity of experiences with gender inequality in different contexts. 

Furthermore, States are making progress in generating Administrative Records Systems that account for violence against women in all its manifestations and, especially, in cases of extreme violence, such as femicide or feminicide or violent deaths of women for gender-related reasons.

Measuring the prevalence and incidence of gender-based violence against women has been included within the framework of international and regional human rights standards globally. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (1993), the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Belém do Pará Convention (1994), the Regional Gender Agenda, and the 2030 Agenda have established that efforts to end violence against women must be accompanied by rigorous and reliable statistics.

The duty of due diligence of States enshrined in CEDAW and the Belem do Pará Convention obliges them to adopt all appropriate measures to prevent, investigate, prosecute, punish and provide reparation for the acts or omissions of state and non-state agents that give rise to gender-based violence against women, which obliges states to investigate and record the response in prevention, care, reparation, protection of victims, access to justice and monitoring of judicial processes.   

To end gender-based violence against women, the design and implementation of public policies, their budgetary allocation and the monitoring of their management must be accompanied by reliable statistics on the different manifestations, characteristics, causes and consequences of gender-based violence experienced by women and girls in their diversity in all contexts and situations, in order to have information on the effectiveness of public policy and the evolution of the processes of eradicating this scourge.

The accumulated analysis of the processes of measuring and investigating gender-based violence against women has been built thanks to the consensus of international, state, academic and civil society actors, which has allowed progress in strengthening a socio-statistical analytical field of great importance for the social sciences and its implications in different areas of knowledge.

1. To understand the international and regional regulatory framework on gender-based violence against women and girls, in particular the mandates and recommendations on measuring its prevalence and incidence. 
   
   
2. Dar cuenta del marco analítico sobre la producción de información sobre violencia por razón de género contra las mujeres y los necesarios parámetros éticos para la recopilación y difusión de la información desde una perspectiva de igualdad de género e interseccionalidad.
   
   
3. Identify the main sources and procedures for measuring gender-based violence against women.
   
   
4. To know the results of the national surveys on violence against women and the modules in specific surveys on violence against women developed in health and demographic surveys.
   
   
5. Identify the methodological and quantitative challenges of the indicators for monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals, prioritized in violence against women in the 2030 Agenda.
   
   
6. Develop capacities to generate statistics from administrative records and their usefulness in accounting for state and civil responses to femicidal violence and manifestations of gender-based violence towards women and girls in contexts of extreme violence.
   
   
7. Analyze the availability and quality of data on trafficking in women and report on the challenges for improving disaggregated, coherent, up-to-date and public data, which optimize the recording and analysis of these problems.
   
   
8. To report on the progress in the quality of femicide/feminicide measurement in the countries of the region, as well as the tools for international comparability of femicide/feminicide data in the region.
   
   
9. Exchange knowledge and practices on proposals and mechanisms for monitoring and producing data on gender-based violence against women generated by civil society organizations.
   
   
10. To analyze the impact of economic, political, social and health crises on the production of information on extreme violence against women, especially femicides. 

• Methodological challenges of the procedures used and the sources for measuring gender-based violence against women and girls
  
  
• National surveys measuring the prevalence of violence against women.  
  
  
• Monitoring of the SDG indicators prioritized in the region to eradicate all forms of violence against all women and girls (Goal 5: indicator 5.2.1; 5.2.2 and C-5.2) and indicator of child marriage and early unions (indicator 5.3.1). 
  
  
• Monitoring the Belem do Pará Convention and its compliance process indicators.
  
  
• Administrative records on violence against women, standardization for the generation of statistics on violence against women in general, and on femicide in particular.
  
  
• Progress towards standardization and a single registry of femicide for Latin America and the Caribbean.
  
  
• The global statistical framework for measuring gender-based killings of women and girls.
  
  
• Findings and results on the quality of the measurement of femicide/feminicide and violent deaths of women for gender reasons.
  
  
• Analysis of measurement practices for violence against women and femicide/feminicide.
  
  
• Violence Against Women Registry Systems: The Mexico City Experience.
  
  
• New dimensions of analysis in violence against women: disappearances, trafficking and femicide. Challenges in information gathering.
  
  
• The challenges of intersectionality for measuring extreme violence against women.
  
  
• Measuring violence against women and girls in crisis contexts: Old measurement problems versus new and urgent responses.
  
  
• The challenges of measuring violence against women in organized crime contexts: The experience of data production and comparability in Central America.
  
  
• Femicide, data and activism: making data from civil society and feminist organizations.
  
  
• Lessons learned and challenges in measuring gender-based violence against women.
  
  

We are grateful for the contributions of UN Women, the UNDP Regional Office, the Follow-up Mechanism to the Belem do Pará Convention (MESECVI), UNODC and the World Bank.

• Alejandra Valdés (Social Planner. Researcher. Specialist in monitoring public policies on gender equality and in measuring violence against women. Consultant, Gender Affairs Division, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC)
  
  
• Alejandra Negrete (Lawyer, UNAM-Mexico. Master's Degree in Legal Argumentation, University of Alicante, Spain) 
  
  
• Marisa Weinstein, Researcher, Gender Affairs Division of ECLAC and Andrea Llerenas, Data and Statistics Advisor at the Regional Office for the Americas and the Caribbean of UN Women
  
  
• Manuel Contreras Urbina (Global Leader on Gender-Based Violence for Latin America and the Caribbean - World Bank) 
  
  
• Maite Albagly (Specialist in surveys on violence against women and girls, Eurosocial Consultant) 
  
  
• Andrea Llerenas (Data and Statistics Advisor at the Regional Office for the Americas and the Caribbean of UN Women)
   
• Luz Patricia Mejía (Technical Secretariat of the Follow-up Mechanism to the Belem do Pará Convention (MESECVI)) 
  
  
• Tere Guerra Favela (Coordinator of the Global Centre of Excellence in Gender Statistics of UN Women Mexico, UN Women) 
  
  
• Adriana Oropeza (Coordinator of the UNODC-INEGI Centre of Excellence for Statistical Information on Government, Public Security, Victimization and Justice, Mexico) 
  
  
• Diana Arango (World Bank)
  
  
• Teresa Inchaustegui (Sociologist-UNAM, PhD in Political Science with specialization in social policy FLACSO-Mexico) 
  
  
• Vivian Souza (Sociologist, Master in Social Sciences and Bachelor in International Relations. Consultant UNDP Brazil) 
  
  
• Marcela Smutt (Coordinadora del Proyecto Regional Infosegura del Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo para América Latina y el Caribe (PNUD)) 
  
  
• Helena Suárez (Social communicator and feminist researcher. Co-leads the participatory action research project Data Against Femicide)