Sharp rise in number of women murdered in Honduras, dozens killed every month

Source: TrustLaw

Sharp rise in number of women murdered in Honduras, dozens killed every month
Tue, 31 Jul 2012 17:55 GMT
Source: trustlaw // Anastasia Moloney

By Anastasia Moloney

BOGOTA (TrustLaw) - The number of women murdered in Honduras has more than quadrupled since 2002, the national human rights commission says, with more than 90 percent of the killings going unpunished in the country which has the world's highest murder rate.

Forty percent of the 3,018 women murdered over the past decade were killed in the last two years, the commision said in a report. In 2010, 36 women were killed on average each month in Honduras. In the first half of this year, that figure rose to 46 – about three women every two days.

Experts blame several factors for the sharp rise in female murders, which has coincided with spiralling organised crime in the poor Central American nation and a rise in violent turf wars between Mexican cartels battling over cocaine smuggling routes to the United States.

"Femicide is part of the general wave of violence in Honduras but there are certain populations that are particularly vulnerable and affected by the violence, including women, journalists, lawyers, and murders related to sexual orientation," Ramon Custodio, head of Honduras' human rights commission (CONADEH), told TrustLaw in a telephone interview from the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa.


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