Cuba recognized for the first time the existence of femicides in the country during the third meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean Forum on Sustainable Development, according to the news agency. Inter Press Service (IPS).
Through a report presented to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), last April, the Cuban authorities spoke at an international event about an issue traditionally silenced by the official media and state institutions.
The Havana government has denied for decades that women are victims of gender violence in Cuba. In fact, the report has not been published in the official press with references to feminicide, an increasingly frequent phenomenon in daily life on the island.
According to the study, the incidence of femicides in 2016 was 0.99 per 100,000 Cuban adolescents and women aged 15 and over. The number of deaths of women caused by their partner or ex-partner in Cuba has decreased between 2013 and 2016 by 33 percent.
Cuba also includes in its report the results of the National Gender Equality Survey applied in 2016, one of the most recent dates in which statistical data is offered on the Island.
In the 12 months before the 2016 survey, 26.7 percent of women suffered violence within the couple and another 39.6 percent at some point in their lives.
In an unprecedented event, on October 20, 2017, the Cuban national press published information about the violent death of a woman.
On that occasion, an 18-year-old girl, Leidy Maura Pacheco, had been kidnapped on September 26 on the way back to her home, raped, murdered and buried in a wooded area, near the Junco Viejo settlement, on the outskirts of the provincial capital.
In the last decade, following the report of the Cuban authorities, Around 10 women die in the country per month as a result of violent events, almost always at the hands of partners or ex-partners of the victims.
In 2014 the number of femicides shot up to 157 and the lowest number reported was in 2017, when there were 130.
The National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) in Cuba does not publish statistics that allow us to know the incidence of femicides. However, the Health Statistical Yearbook includes deaths of women due to sexual assault in the first 35 causes of death of the Cuban population.
Last May 4 A 27-year-old girl was stabbed to death by his ex-partner, outside a day care center in Havana, when he was leaving his two young children at the educational facility.
Given the absence of coverage of cases of femicides in the country by the Cuban government and press, in recent years social networks have served as a means of reporting for many relatives of the victims.
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