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PARIS – No country has been spared the coronavirus epidemic, nor the scourge of domestic violence, which has increased during the lockdowns as the day that marks this type of violence approaches on Wednesday.
From an increase in rape in Nigeria and South Africa, higher numbers of missing women in Peru, higher rates of murdered women in Brazil and Mexico, and overwhelmed associations in Europe – the pandemic has exacerbated the scourge of sexual violence.
According to UN data released in late September, the closures have led to an increase in complaints or calls to report domestic abuse by 25% in Argentina, 30% in Cyprus and France and 33% in Singapore.
Women are also the most affected by online abuse.
In basically every country, measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus have resulted in women and children being confined to their homes.
“The house is the most dangerous place for women,” Moroccan associations said in April when they pressured authorities for “an emergency response.”
In India, Heena, not her real name, a 33-year-old cook living in Mumbai, said she felt “trapped in my house” with a husband who did not work, used drugs and was violent.
As she described what she had endured, she often broke down in tears.
After buying drugs, “he would spend the rest of the day connected to his phone playing PubG (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds) or beating and abusing me,” he told AFP by phone.
Insufficient measures
On August 15, her husband beat Heena worse than before, in front of her seven-year-old son, and kicked her out of the house at 3:00 am.
“I had nowhere to go,” he said. “I could barely move my body, he beat me to a pulp, my body was swollen.”
Instead of going to the police, he came to a friend’s house and then to his parents.
She is now fighting for custody of her son, “but the courts are not functioning at full capacity due to COVID.”
She hasn’t seen her son in four months, although he does manage to secretly call her every now and then.
It is not just the courts that are affected by the virus. The closure of businesses and schools, as well as cultural and sports activities, have deprived victims already weakened by economic insecurity of ways to escape violence.
Hanaa Edwar, from the Iraqi Women’s Network, told AFP that there had been “a dangerous deterioration in the socioeconomic situation of families after the closure, with more families in poverty, leading to backlash.”
In Brazil, 648 murders of women were recorded in the first half of the year, a small increase over the same period in 2019 according to the Brazilian Forum of Public Security.
While the government has launched a campaign to encourage women to file complaints, the forum says measures designed to help victims remain insufficient.
‘Mask-19’
Worldwide, the United Nations says that only one in eight countries has taken steps to lessen the impact of the pandemic on women and children.
In Spain, victims could discreetly ask for help in pharmacies using the code “mask-19”, and some French associations established contact points in supermarkets.
“The women who came to us were in situations that had become unbearable, dangerous,” said Sophie Cartron, deputy director of an association that worked in a shopping center near Paris.
“The closure established a wall of silence,” he said.
The mobilization on November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, remains uncertain due to restrictions linked to the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, marches for women’s rights have recently been held in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Liberia, Namibia and Romania.
“We will not be able to demonstrate to express our anger, nor march together,” said the Paris-based feminist group Family Planning.
“But we will make ourselves heard anyway, virtually and visually.”
Tamara Mathebula, of the South African Commission for Gender Equality, described a chronic “toxic masculinity” that was “everywhere you look.”
“There are gender pay gaps that are widening and continue to widen during the COVID-19 pandemic,” he told AFP.
As a result, “gender-based violence got worse,” she said, and the possible consequences were very serious.
In July, the UN estimated that six months of restrictions could result in 31 million additional cases of sexual violence worldwide and seven million unwanted pregnancies.
The situation is also undermining the fight against female genital mutilation and forced marriages, the UN warned. – AFP
