"Not one less" 2019
On Monday, June 3, the "Not One Less" march was held for the fifth consecutive year.
Born on June 3, 2015 in Buenos Aires, year after year more cities in Argentina and other countries in Latin America and the world joined the mobilizations, with women marching through the streets with their demands, their chants and the portraits of victims of sexist violence.
The Latin American Network of Young Journalists published a recent investigation indicating that in Latin America, 60% of universities do not have a protocol against gender violence.
The report demonstrates the lack of tools that higher education institutions possess to deal with sexual and sexist violence within the institution, since only 40% of them have a protocol that indicates the steps to follow or the strategies to carry out in such situations.
Using the hashtag #PasóEnLaU, the campaign was spread on social media about the journalistic investigation carried out by 35 professionals from the Network, analyzing the situation of 100 universities in 16 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean: Argentina (8), Bolivia (6), Brazil (6), Chile (6), Colombia (6), Costa Rica (6), Cuba (6), Ecuador (6), El Salvador (6), Guatemala (6), Honduras (6), Mexico (8), Nicaragua (6), Paraguay (6), Peru (6), Venezuela (6).
In each country, half of the universities were chosen based on their student enrollment. The other half were selected according to the QS ranking, which assesses the quality of university teaching, using data from 2017 to 2019.
The overall objective of #PasóEnLaU was to identify how many of the selected universities had protocols for addressing sexual violence and, if they did, to find out if they were public, if they were implemented correctly, and if they have created safer spaces for university students.
The final results showed that only 40% of the universities surveyed have protocols to prevent, address, and punish sexual violence, although these are not always publicly available or easily accessible. 36% of the universities do not have a specific policy to address this issue, and 24% did not answer the questions, presumably because they also lack such protocols, or there is no indication of their existence.
In summary, 60 out of 100 universities investigated lack an internal, institutionalized, public and open policy with their communities to address cases of harassment, abuse and other forms of sexual violence.
