Mexico: the theme of gender-based violence at the top of the country’s political agenda: the story of Jeysol stabbed 37 times

ROME – Jeysol Amaya was stabbed 37 times by her former partner and spent two months in intensive care. She is still dealing with the emotional trauma of this assault she suffered in 2015, along with the hospital and legal costs incurred in her long fight for justice.

The fear of those who survive violence. “He is still free and I live in fear every day,” said Amaya, a former club dancer who lives in the southern Mexico city of Campeche, to theUnited Nations agency dealing with human rights (OHCHR). “How do I know he won’t try to hurt me again when I go out on the street?” Amaya is one of many Mexican survivors of an attempted feminicide, a hate crime defined as the intentional killing of women and girls because of their gender, i.e. just because they are women.

Feminicide in Mexico. In the Latin American country, about ten women and girls are killed every day by their partners or other family members, according to data released by the government. Mexico is one of the countries with the highest rate of femicide in the world. The wave of violence against women has sparked demonstrations and protests in the country and has placed the issue of crimes against women at the top of the political agenda.

The solitude of those who suffer violence. Those who survive gender-based violence are often left without protection and without justice, Mexican journalist Gloria Piña tells the UN agency. “We hear many stories about the murders of women in Mexico, but we don’t hear about the women who survive these extreme acts of violence,” said Piña, who won the 2023 Breach/Valdez Award for Journalism and Human Rights with the documentary “The Survivors: Forgotten by Justice”. Built through interviews with women survivors, lawyers and gender rights defenders, the documentary also highlighted the importance of calls for the government to make long-awaited reforms to – hopefully – end gender-based violence in the Latin American country. And she also underlines the need for women to break their silence when they suffer violence and forge alliances with each other, with other survivors and with all those who have experienced violence, so that all together they can help rebuild their lives.

The Breach/Valdez Award. It was created by the United Nations office for human rights and other UN agencies operating in Mexico together with various non-governmental organizations with the aim of recognizing the work of journalists working on human rights issues in Mexico. “I thought it was important to tell their story. When you don’t name something, it’s like it doesn’t exist. But when you start calling it by its name, then yes we can make a change,” concluded Piña.