Proposition 52K1677

Proposition de résolution relative aux féminicides en Amérique centrale et au Mexique.

General information ¶

Authors

CD&V Peter Luykx, Nathalie Muylle
Ecolo Juliette Boulet
Groen Wouter De Vriendt
LE Georges Dallemagne
LDD Martine De Maght
MR Xavier Baeselen
Open Vld Hilde Vautmans
PS | SP André Flahaut
Vooruit Maya Detiège

Submission date

Dec. 12, 2008

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

Mexico Central America death penalty violence resolution of parliament position of women human rights

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP Open Vld N-VA LDD MR FN VB

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

Feb. 5, 2009 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

The rapporteur is Mr Deseyn. Since Mr Deseyn is not present, I assume that he refers to his written report.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, dear colleagues, in our country the report of rape is taken seriously by the police and emergency services. We must also dare to admit that this was different before.

Also in case of domestic violence and rape within the marriage, a whole machine enters into operation to protect the victims and punish the perpetrators. In Belgium, unfortunately, we can not always prevent violence against women, but we can take action and take action. In many parts of the world, there is still a long way to go in this regard. With this resolution, we want to draw attention to one specific region, namely Central America and Mexico, where violence against women has become more visible in recent years. Public authorities have become more sensitive to this issue. Recently, such crimes can be ⁇ .

Unfortunately, this also means a huge increase. Every year, literally thousands of women are murdered. I don’t know if you understand it correctly. Thousands of women are murdered. I am told that many cases are the result of the possibility of reporting a rape. The perpetrator would now rather kill his victim than leave the wounded behind. This is not about violence against women. Women are still in a disadvantaged position. There is a little discrimination based on gender.

It makes little sense to investigate whether the machismo that makes murders possible. I think we should first look at what we can do about it. With this resolution, we would like to ask the Belgian government to take its responsibility, in particular in the bilateral contacts we have with those countries, call for measures against those who commit crimes and provide assistance in the investigation. To take good measures, of course, one needs an investigation. It is necessary to identify what is going wrong and to provide support and protection to human rights defenders.

I see some of you watching. You may be wondering why we should talk about women’s murders in Mexico on Thursday, February 5th. What does this have to do with Belgian politics and this Parliament? We must not close our eyes to crimes abroad. Last week I was with Minister De Crem, along with a number of colleagues – also Mrs. della Faille and Mr. Crucke – visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau. When we stood there, with our hats up, in the icy cold, and saw the rails leading to the camp, the trains, the gas chambers and the remains, we wondered how it could last five years without the world having reacted.

When one stands there, one becomes small. I realized that as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, as a member of this Parliament and as a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, I have a task.

We have a mission to criminalize crimes against humanity and crimes against women in the world. We must not point the finger to those countries, but we must extend our hand and help those countries to detect and punish those crimes.

I hope, as in my previous resolution, I can count on your support here too. We must not close our eyes, we must not point with the finger, but we must reach the hand. We will never have to say that we did not know.

Mr. President, Mrs. Vautmans, you do not have to worry. You will also receive our full support for your resolution here.

By the way, I would like to point out a problem regarding the definition of female murders in the explanation and the statistics used.

Official figures from Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador show the number of women and girls killed. According to footnote 2, these figures also include victims of road accidents and fires. I wonder why such a thing is needed. Are the real figures not dramatic enough?

That is something I, by the way, repeatedly find in figures distributed by women’s councils and by the women’s movement. The figures are not considered dramatic enough by themselves and the definitions are broadened so that every accident can be classified as discrimination or, in this case, even as murder.

I think that the problem itself is already serious enough and that one should not work with such an unscientific method. This only minimizes the problem, and the whole problem of discrimination against women risks not to be taken seriously.

In any case, our party takes the problems seriously. In this regard, we would like to add something to this resolution. The first sentence of the explanatory note states that the resolution is the framework of the global strategy to eradicate violence against women worldwide. There is then no logical reason to limit the available part of this resolution to Mexico and Central America, unless one simply wants to assume the actuality – in the meantime already some time ago – in order to approve the resolution.

After all, these are not the only countries with which our country has bilateral agreements and where women are arbitrarily abducted, abused, raped and murdered. This is also the case in other developing countries where the government and the legal system are unwilling or unable to enforce the most basic human rights in the general civil life.

As we just heard, this is happening in Cameroon, in eastern Congo, where war was used as an excuse to throw all the brakes and treat women in the most disgusting way, in South Africa, where the number of rape in relation to population has been the highest in the world for decades. In this way we can continue for a moment.

For this reason, we have submitted amendments in which, in accordance with the intention of eliminating violence worldwide in a global strategy, we call on the Government to monitor compliance with international human rights conventions in its bilateral contacts with all countries where the rule of law fails in respect of violence committed against women, not only by declarations in international forums, but also in its own domestic practice.

What makes me notice when one looks at it is that many of the countries we are talking about here are signatories of all the necessary international treaties starting from the United Nations to discourage and limit violence against women, but apparently nothing else is requested by the international community beyond their signature.

Our amendments aim to strengthen those of the majority. We unanimously support this resolution.