Washington DC, July 25, 2024.– This International Day of Black Latin American and Caribbean Women, the Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights (Race and Equality) joins efforts to support the dissemination and promote the implementation of General Recommendation No. 5: Gender-based violence against Afro-descendent women, recognizing that it is a novel and comprehensive framework for action for the protection of Afro-descendent women, adolescents, and girls of the Americas in the face of this scourge.

As an organization that works to promote and defend the human rights of the Afro-descendent population based on ethnic-racial and gender approaches, we welcome the fact that the Inter-American Human Rights System has this general recommendation that provides broad and clear guidance for both States and civil society in the prevention and treatment of gender-based violence against Afro-descendent women.

Background

In the Plan of Action for the Decade for People of African Descent in the Americas 2016-2026, the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) instructed the Follow-up Mechanism to the Convention of Belém do Pará (MESECVI) to include the Afro-descendent perspective in the agenda for the prevention of violence against women as part of the objective of promoting access to justice for the Afro-descendent population of the hemisphere.

In turn, the MESECVI is an evaluation and monitoring system created to ensure the effective implementation of the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women, known as the Convention of Belém do Pará, which was adopted in 1994, being one of the most important legal instruments in the fight against gender-based violence in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The MESECVI prepared this general recommendation in strategic alliance with the Network of Afro-Latina, Afro-Caribbean, and Diaspora Women (RMAAD) and the United Nations Population Fund for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNFPA), according to the general coordinator of the RMAAD, Paola Yáñez, who considers this document to be a historic milestone, while also recognizing that its dissemination and implementation at the country level represents a challenging task.

Racism and Intersectionality: Two Key Points

General Recommendation No. 5: Gender-Based Violence against Afro-descendent Women was approved on April 28 and presented on June 12 at the IX Conference of States Parties to the MESECVI, held in Santiago, Chile.

This recommendation stands out because it recognizes racism as a factor that deepens and perpetuates the violence faced by Afro-descendent women, in addition to having an intersectional perspective that makes the problem visible and proposes responses considering the diversity of Afro-descendent women and the different types of violence they suffer.

“This recommendation recognizes that racism is a determinant for women to face violence. Throughout their lives, Afro-descendent women are more exposed than other groups of women to multiple forms of violence, including symbolic violence, derived from negative stereotypes associated with the racialization of their bodies, skin color, hair, sexuality, culture, and religion,” said Paola Yáñez, general coordinator of the Network of Afro-Latina  Afro-Caribbean, and Diaspora Women (RMAAD), during her participation in the Inter-American Forum against Discrimination, held by Race and Equality in the framework of the 54th General Assembly of the OAS.

In the section on intersectionality, the recommendation refers to LBT Afro-descendent women, those who live with some type of disability, migrants or in a situation of human mobility, those deprived of liberty, and those living under armed conflicts.

About the Recommendations

The recommendations set out in the document are mostly addressed to States, as it recognizes that they are responsible for adopting and implementing actions to transform the patriarchal system that legitimizes and tolerates violence against women. Another particularity is that it proposes the implementation of differentiated and specific measures to protect Afro-descendent women, including public policies that respond to their particular needs and that directly confront ethnic-racial stereotypes.

In terms of prevention and care for gender-based violence, the recommendations range from the development of awareness programs with an ethnic-racial and gender approach to recording statistical and administrative data on cases of violence against Afro-descendent women in a disaggregated manner.

The recommendations also reflect the importance of preventing and addressing the problem through the education systems, with measures such as preparing studies on discrimination and the impact of ethnic-racial and gender stereotypes experienced by girls, adolescents, and Afro-descendent women throughout the education system, establishing protocols for the management of cases of gender-based violence against girls and adolescents in educational centers,  the design and implementation of education programs with an ethnic-racial, gender, and human rights approach aimed at management, teaching, and administrative staff of the education system, and the promotion of curricular reforms of educational programs, content, and texts, ensuring the historical recovery and inclusion of the culture and contributions to today’s societies by the Afro-descendent population, especially women.

From Presentation to Dissemination and Implementation

For civil society, General Recommendation No. 5: Gender-based violence against Afro-descendent women represents a new advocacy tool to guarantee the respect and protection of the human rights of Afro-descendant girls, adolescents, and women in the region, which is why we celebrate its approval.

Race and Equality is committed to supporting the dissemination and promotion of the implementation of Recommendation No. 5 of the MESECVI, with a view to contributing to the prevention, attention, and punishment of gender-based violence against Afro-descendent women, adolescents, and girls in the Americas. We call on States to take action with civil society to make each of the measures proposed in this document possible.

Access, download, and share the full document, HERE.