Gender & Sexual Solidarity: News & Updates

On behalf of IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) members, we wrote six letters this month to heads of state and other high-level officials in Colombia, El Salvador, and Honduras, urging their swift action in response to human rights abuses occurring in their countries.  We join with civil society groups in Latin America to: (1) protect people living under threat, (2) demand investigations into human rights crimes, (3) bring human rights criminals to justice.

IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) volunteers write six letters in response to urgent human rights cases each month. We send copies of these letters to US ambassadors, embassy human rights officers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regional representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and desk officers at the US State Department. To read the letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn , or ask us to mail you hard copies.

In 2022 there was a record level of violence against members of the LGBTQ+ community in Honduras, specifically in the capital city of Tegucigalpa. The majority of the murders were of gay men and were committed with firearms, and 80% of these murders have gone unpunished, with only 11% even investigated. These murders come along with a rise in other forms of violence against LGBTQ+ people, including threats, discrimination and physical attacks. The Honduran government, under the leadership of Xiomara Castro, has neither protected nor fulfilled campaign promises to the LGBTQ+ community, including the promise to institute sex education classes that discuss sexual diversity from a non-binary point of view. 

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Hailing from all corners of the United States and Canada, 22 delegates ranging from the ages of 10 to 80 traveled to Nicaragua from January 7-16, 2023 to investigate the conditions and the lives of Nicaraguan women on a delegation organized by the Jubilee House Community–Casa Benjamin Linder and Alliance for Global Justice. We had the opportunity to meet with a plethora of community organizers, workers, and public officials: from peasant feminist farmers to self-employed unionists; from urban community health workers to nurses and doctors; from battered women’s program directors to women leaders in the police, National Assembly, and Ministry of Women. We met with Nicaraguans from all walks of life and heard their stories of resilience and empowerment despite two hundred years of imperialist aggression and efforts to undermine their sovereignty. We were inspired by the power and protagonism of Nicaraguans and particularly Nicaraguan women and their participation in their communities and governments.

Donny Reyes, co-founder of the LGBTI Rainbow Association in Tegucigalpa, joined with other activists who are calling on the state to protect the rights and very lives of LGBTI people in Honduras, where at least 46 members of the community were killed in 2022. They also named the state as the main aggressor. “We are concerned about the increase in violence; we are in a state of great vulnerability and lack of protection,” said Reyes. The levels of impunity and defenselessness of the LGBTI community "continue to rise," said the activist, who expressed his concern about the "lack of protection" towards the members of the group.

Worldwide the population of female prisoners is rising at immense rates. Since 2000, the number of women in prisons has grown by 60%. The hotspots of this development are Asia and Latin America. Today around 95,000 women are imprisoned in Latin America and the Caribbean countries. The stories of these women are often the same. Born into poor families many only reach low levels of education, leading to un- or underemployment. Often they have suffered from sexual abuse and violence. With a majority of  them being mothers, the pressure to put food on the table is even more pressing, a situation driving them into the low level drug trade.

In 2010, the UN adopted "the Bangkok Rules," a system that promotes non-custodial alternatives like community service, school education, job trainings and house arrest. Since 2014 the National Code of Criminal Procedures has allowed this procedure in Mexico, which has led to a notable reduction of female prisoners between 2014-2019. But more often than not, this comes with a price. The number of pre-trail detention cases has increased, and many choosing this path have to wear an electronic monitoring device. 

Electronic monitoring by itself is a popular alternative to incarceration both in United States and Mexico. But this "alternative" comes with a number of problems. Restrictions like a mandatory permission to leave the house and the need to recharge the ankle mounted device twice a day makes it next to impossible to hold a job and leads to heavy dependence on relatives or other supporters. In the eyes of advocates, electronic monitoring is not an alternative to incarceration but a reproduction of many aspects of incarceration in a person's home. In the city of Los Angeles, electronic monitoring, as a condition of pre-trial release has increased by 5,250% between 2015 and 2021. With most of the affected still awaiting their trail, the system violates the "innocent until proven guilty" law. Furthermore, electronic monitoring comes with a financial aspect. In the United States the costs of confinement are transferred to the individual, leading to a price check of $2,800 - $5,000 per year. Even though in Mexico costs are officially covered by the government, private companies providing the devices charge a fee of $250-$300 monthly--an extreme high amount in a country with a minimum wage of $180 a month. But financial issues are just one side of the problem. Especially in Mexico the need of electricity and a mobile signal often means that the person has to move into a different area; this is a difficult task for jobless and stigmatized individuals. In the worst case this can mean that women are forced to move in or stay with violent and abusive partners. Adding to all the social and financial difficulties are health issues like dry skin and deformation of the ankle.    

October 15 is known as the Rural Women's day.