Last month, Peru’s Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations (Ministerio de la Mujer y Poblaciones Vulnerables — MIMP) established the National Women’s Council. This temporary working group is the latest step in attempts to reduce workplace discrimination against women.
MIMP hopes the Council will facilitate proposals to strengthen equal opportunities for women at the national level and build on previous efforts. Moreover, this year marks the first renewal opportunity for the 27 initial companies who were awarded the initial Certification Mark of a “Safe Company, Free of Violence and Discrimination against Women.”
The Certification Process
The project invites companies and businesses to join forces and rid Peruvian society of this threat, incorporating a points system that grades participants with a gold, silver, or bronze rating. The “Marca de Certificación Empresa Segura” (safe company certification mark) means companies can show their advocacy for bringing positive change; the process is outlined in Ministerial Resolution No. 336-2022-MIMP on the Peru state website.
Advocating for Change
Every two years, businesses are encouraged to reevaluate operations according to their current score. On its digital sign-up platform, MIMP outlines four major criteria for businesses’ performance assessment, with 17 sub-criteria in total. The main categories in the rubric are:
Mainstreaming the gender-based score within the company’s practices.Guaranteeing women’s economic and working rights.Reconciliation of family life and work activities for female employees.Prevention of and attention to gender-based violence.
Boosting Companies’ Awareness and Alliances
The platform offers each signee the chance to “position itself as a leading organization (and) ally of the MIMP in promoting the right to a life free of violence.” Moreover, the certification boosts companies’ social profile, strengthening the link with their target market at a national level. Companies can co-sign the agreement, registering their advocacy for the cause by May 31 this year.
Intimate Partner Violence
Peru has a concerning level of intimate partner violence (IPV), affecting 38% of women aged between 15 and 49 years historically — 27% is the global average. At the time of the publishing, Peru still sat in the top three South American nations alongside Colombia and Bolivia, according to the 2018 World Health Organization data. Curiously, violence in Peru spikes during natural disaster events, such as floods, earthquakes, and landslides.
There have been dozens of violent episodes in the South American country over the past decade, including a series of horrific fire attacks against young women in 2018. Women’s rights groups have become more vocal in light of the atrocity witnessed in Miraflores, the district in Lima where Eyvi Liset Agreda Marchena lost her life.
A Campaign of Intimidation
“If you are not mine, you are nobody’s.” These were the last words Marchena heard before being doused in gasoline and set alight by her assailant, Carlos Huelpa. The 22-year-old was on a public bus where the attack took place, and it wasn’t the first time Marchena had encountered her killer. The young lady rejected his latest advances three weeks earlier, though her murder concluded a two-year campaign of public intimidation from Huelpa.
The victim was left with 60% second and third-degree burn coverage, spending 38 days in hospital, where she died after attempted surgical interventions. Her stalker received 35 years in prison for attempted aggravated femicide. Remarkably, the incident came only weeks after International Women’s Day, when Peruvian ladies marched in the capital for fair treatment, equal rights, and justice.
One of Many Atrocities
Marchena’s death is just one chapter in an ongoing story. Other similar attacks occurred in the same period. The month before, 18-year-old Katherine Gomez met the same fate when ex-boyfriend Sergio Tarache Parra sprayed and set her alight near Dos de Mayos Square. Shockingly, March 2018 also saw Sheyla Águilar suffer a gruesome death at the hands of ex-lover Romario Aco Rodríguez. Several other murders followed.
Prevalent Disappearances
Latin American Post reported in 2020 how 2,415 female Peruvians (737 adults and 1,720 minors) had disappeared during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The country’s reduced mobility accelerated missing person cases, with 900 women vanishing from existence in six months — that figure didn’t include 28 femicides and 32 femicide attempts, among other worrying trends during the same period. However, by many accounts, the situation is worsening, with over 3,400 women reported missing in the first four months of 2023 alone.
Low Autonomy and Increased Violence
Statista published the number of confirmed femicide victims in Peru between 2010 and 2023, which totaled more than 1,600 women. The most recent figures were the highest, with over 250 victims last year alone. Meanwhile, an International Journal of Public Health study of the Peruvian population found a correlation between “low autonomy” and increased IPV in 18,621 female participants.
Human and Fundamental Rights
Peru’s lawyer and deputy for Women’s Rights at Peru’s Ombudsman’s Office, Diana Portal Farfán, spoke in an interview on NGO Capitál Humáno y Social (CHS) Alternativo’s YouTube channel last year. “It is very important to remember the obligation of the state to guarantee the human and fundamental rights of every person in our country, regardless of their immigration status,” said Farfán, adding that migrant women fall into a “high vulnerability and risk” group.
Furthermore, the WHO also declared its efforts to curtail violence against women as a health and gender equality priority with the RESPECT Women website, which started in 2019. The platform was launched at the “Women Deliver” conference in Kigali, Rwanda, bringing together “over 6,000 delegates focused on advancing gender equality and the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls.”
The WHO and The Why
With gender-based violence a challenge to many global regions, the WHO outlines the health sector’s importance in preventing and responding to gender-based violence, issuing a series of steps it is taking:
Publishing estimates on global, national, and regional violence against women and girls, including maintaining an interactive visualization database. Strengthening health responses to gender-based violence during humanitarian crises.Developing clinical protocols for tackling violence and focusing on “survivor-centered health care.”Offering care services for adults and minors affected by genital mutilation and child marriage, in addition to training healthcare workers in “prevention counseling.”
The RESPECT Women Campaign
RESPECT is an acronym for the initiative’s seven key features, incorporating themes considered crucial to the cause, such as relationship skills, poverty reduction, and transformation of attitudes. The organization’s paper on the RESPECT campaign details the website’s outputs, outcomes, and desired impacts, which ensure women are contributing to development in safe, fair, and healthy environments.
