thebahamasweekly.com - Alejandra Mora Mora, President of the CIM, on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against women

During the last 20 years of the Belém do Pará Convention, the Americas has positioned itself in the region with the highest set of legal norms regarding the right of women to live free from violence, with strong integrated laws at national levels which in some cases have developed beyond the provisions of the Convention. The adoption more laws on the various manifestations of violence against women; femicide, rape and sexual harassment, trafficking in women and girls, political, economic and symbolic violence, among others - is a clear indicator of political will and commitment to strengthen the response to this violence from a human rights perspective.

Over the past 10 years The Follow-up Mechanism to the Belém do Pará Convention (MESECVI) - and its Committee of Experts has been discussing how and why violence against women occurs, how to prevent it and how it is being sanctioned and legislated to protect women and girls in the region. For the first time, the MESECVI is working based on a set of ‘progress indicators’ for measuring the implementation of the Belem do Pará Convention, a process adopted by the Committee in 2013. This set of indicators seeks to measure the States’ efforts to guarantee women live a life free from violence through concrete tools to assess the status of women’s rights in each State Party.

Broadly, the set of indicators has allowed us to identify significant progress and persistent challenges in all countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Here is some promising information:

The above reveals that while there has been significant progress, particularly in the areas of legislation and public policy, major challenges remain to ensure the right of women to live free of violence, particularly in the areas of access to justice, public budgets allocated to prevention, treatment and sanctioning of violence, and information about its scale and extent. In short, the gap between standards and policies and the reality that women face in their daily lives remains significant.

The commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Belém do Pará Convention coincides with the celebration of other historic moments of key importance to gender equality and women's rights in the region - including 20 years of Program of Action at the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994) and the Declaration and Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995) and 15 years of the Millennium Development Goals.

In the last 15 years eliminating violence against women has been cited many times as the missing Millennium Development Goal- because violence constitutes a barrier against the achievement of any of the other development goals. In the field of international and hemispheric cooperation, it is time to set out concrete commitments and goals to advance the prevention of violence. The Organization of American States would gladly support this process.

In the context of the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Belém do Pará Convention, the and discussion on a new global post-2015 development agenda we must ask what impact have all these discussions and processes made on women’s rights and on our daily lives? It remains a oppressing task for all States to focus efforts on the roots of violence against women, in the power structures that perpetuate gender inequalities and which then reproduce discrimination and violence. Progress means taking charge as a State and as a society-of the serious and widespread consequences that violence -in all its manifestations- has on the lives of women, affecting not only their right to life, personal integrity and freedom, but moreover in their ability to develop with autonomy, actively participate in decision-making, make informed choices about their bodies, their time and their endeavors. In other words, progress means taking the initiative to guarantee women their status as equal citizens in terms of their rights and in their sense of dignity. The time is now.