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In an act of complete indifference to the reality of women, the Government of President Daniel Noboa has assigned the management of criminal policy to the Ministry of Women and Human Rights. In a country where a woman is murdered every 27 hours, with an unprecedented security crisis and in which women have become another target of organized crime: 56% of the femicides reported in 2023 occurred in criminal contexts. The news has taken women and feminist groups by surprise, who have expressed their rejection of this decision that relegates all women and girls in the country.
At first, the Government’s idea was not to “eliminate” but to “transform” the Ministry of Women and Human Rights into the Ministry of Criminal Policy and Human Rights. This was announced on May 20, 2024 by Esteban Torres, the vice minister of Government. The justification was to “cover a greater spectrum and give more powers” to this portfolio. “It will not stop protecting women’s rights, but will have more comprehensive attention,” he argued.
Questions from feminists did not take long to arrive. They considered that this “transformation” involved much more than a name change. The Ministry of Women in Ecuador renounced the reason for which it was created: to eradicate gender violence. With it, years of struggle to obtain a cabinet focused on preventing and eradicating violence against women were overturned.
Virginia Gómez de la Torre, director of Challenge Foundation —an organization that works to promote the sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls—points out that, with the decision, Ecuadorian women—51% of the population—are relegated to the background, especially in a country that Every year between 300 and 350 women are murdered for reasons of gender. With no signs of improving the numbers and lives of women.
“When we found out, we were shocked. Women do not want to be in charge of criminal policy and we do not want the ministry to be taken away from us. If so, it is a ministry that has not lasted at all,” questions Gómez de la Torre. The Women and Human Rights portfolio in Ecuador has been just over two years since its creation in November 2022, when it replaced the then Human Rights Secretariat, whose responsibilities included creating public policies for women in the country. The new Ministry was created by an Executive Decree, after years of struggle by the Ecuadorian feminist movement and after the murder of María Belén Bernal inside the Police Higher School by her partner, a police officer on active duty.
For the representative of UN Women in Ecuador, Ana Belén Badilla, the creation of the Ministry of Women as a decision of the Executive and not of the National Assembly implied that this portfolio had a relatively weak legal status, “but symbolically and politically very important, because it was the first time that a Women’s Ministry with that rank was created.” But since its founding, this portfolio has received minimal resources to solve major problems. “What currently exists is that Human Rights Secretariat but with a different name, because it maintains the same structure,” reflects Badilla.
A couple of hours later, after the announcement that it would transform this portfolio, the Ministry of Women and Human Rights retracted the vice minister’s announcement. “The name of the entity is maintained and will be added regarding the direction of criminal policy, which is why it works on the prevention and eradication of gender-based violence,” he announced in a release. According to the institution, this decision responds to the Organic Law Reformatory to Various Legal Bodies for the Strengthening of Institutional Capacities and Comprehensive Security, which grants it criminal policy and human rights powers.
Rocío Rosero Garcés, president of the Zero Violence Corporation, calls it a mistake to add an issue as complex as criminal policy to a weak cabinet, without a ministerial structure and without a budget. By 2024, the resources of the Ministry of Women have decreased by 23% compared to the previous year, according to data from the Ministry of Economy and Finance. This reduction is reflected in the absence of responses to sexist violence: fewer first-home shelters, fewer violent centers and less attention to rescue those who experience physical, psychological and sexual violence.
Entrusting the Ministry of Women and Human Rights with criminal policy means delegating the main problem that Ecuador has to an entity that is unaware of the matter and that has not finished solving the problems that women in the country experience every day. This is particularly serious when criminal policy involves issues related to crime prevention, organized crime and prison policy, Badilla emphasizes. “Criminal policy has a series of components that in other countries is managed by the ministries of justice,” adds the UN Women official. In the case of Ecuador, this portfolio does not exist, as it was eliminated in 2018.
“If criminal policy is assigned to the Ministry of Women, the greatest risk we have is to weaken that institution,” explains Badilla, because “the majority of the resources, time, capacities and programs of this portfolio will be absorbed by criminal policy.” , which is an important challenge.” Rosero Garcés adds that attributing these powers demonstrates the little importance that the authorities give to both issues of having a mechanism specialized in women’s equality and another that addresses criminal policy. “It’s like putting a huge burden on a broken bag.”
UN Women Latin America and the Caribbean received the news with “concern” and asked the Ecuadorian authorities to maintain the Ministry of Women “as an independent entity, with a specific mandate and sufficient resources to meet the objective of improving the living conditions and exercise of rights of Ecuadorian women and girls.”
Rosero Garcés and Gómez de la Torre agree that there is no transparency either from the Government or from the Ministry of Women itself. Rosero maintains that they do not know if the current State portfolio will become a vice ministry or will once again be an undersecretary. The authorities have not clarified to the women what will happen, what the new structure of the Ministry will be, and who will be in charge of it. “What the President is saying to Ecuadorian women, girls and adolescents is: ‘Your life does not interest me. I am not in charge of your life. Take charge yourself because what I am going to do is give money to face insecurity.”
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