On the International Day of the Girl, the Network of Women Against Violence (RMCV) denounced the persistent lack of social and state protection in the region, which places girls and adolescents in high-risk scenarios in the areas of life and faced with endless limitations to fully enjoy their rights.
In Nicaragua, since 2017 and so far in 2022, 52 cases of girls and adolescents who have been victims of femicide in these almost six years have been documented, according to the RMCV in a statement this Tuesday, October 11. The organization explained that the State’s lack of protection is visible in sexual violence, teenage pregnancies, maternal deaths, kidnappings and constant disappearances.
For his part, the economist and analyst Enrique Sáenz added that girls and adolescents in Nicaragua are also victims, for the most part, due to the “infamous manipulation of the dictatorship, the exile or imprisonment of mothers or fathers, the poverty of their families, forced migration, violence and siege by depraved». “Let’s take care of our girls!” he exhorted.
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Data offered by the organization indicate that Nicaragua is the second country in the world with more pregnant girls and adolescents. Eight out of 10 expert reports of sexual violence are carried out by girls and adolescents, according to official figures issued by the Institute of Legal Medicine in the period 2015-2021. “To make invisible and not act in the face of this tragedy is to be complicit in these crimes,” he denounces.
“We are alerted by the fact that they are increasingly involved among the aggressors of girls, in addition to adult men, young men and adolescents, which indicates that the education and training of masculinity has many debts with girls and women, who respect for the life and integrity of girls must be forged from the family, the school and the community, ”said the RMCV.
In addition, they assure that normalization and impunity persist as part of the state’s lack of protection because many of the crimes committed against the integrity of girls are not reported. They also criticize that the victims are judged and exposed to public ridicule in the propaganda media of the presidential family “without recognizing that the only culprits are the rapists and femicides.” “For the most part (the aggressors) do not come to trial or are released before completing their sentences, putting the lives of girls, adolescents and their families at high risk,” he concludes.
Various committees of the United Nations (UN) have expressed their “concern” about the impact of the ban on the rights to life and health of women and girls. In addition, they have asked Nicaragua to modify the legislation in accordance with international human rights law.
Article 165 of the Nicaraguan Penal Code, which had allowed therapeutic abortion for more than a hundred years, was repealed on the eve of the 2006 presidential elections, a year before the dictator Daniel Ortega returned to the Presidency of Nicaragua.
A citizen initiative presented by groups of women and feminists, presented to the National Assembly in 2015, proposed to decriminalize abortion when the health of the pregnant woman or girl is at risk, including cases of rape. This proposal was signed by more than 6 thousand people. In April 2017, the Assembly rejected the initiative without having submitted it for debate.
