The Bolivian Government announced this Thursday that it will declare 2022 as the Year of the Cultural Revolution for Depatriarchalization as a response "structural" to the persistent cases of sexist, intrafamily violence and femicides in the country.
In an appearance before the media, on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the Minister of the Presidency, María Nela Prada, referred to the structural, normative and institutional lines of work that are being worked on.
"The actions that we are going to deploy are aimed at attacking the structural, where violence is generated and normalized as a pattern that is repeated throughout our lives and ends in femicides", he assured.
Prada mentioned the "generation of strategies for cultural and social transformation", through art and education that will incorporate the initial and university level of education, to generate a "collective degree of responsibility", as the first axis.
Secondly, she referred to the reform process of Law 348 of 2013, which guarantees women a life free of violence, has collected 1,000 proposals for modification for almost a year and has a bill that will be presented soon to the Parliament.
"We have clearly identified that the normative is not enough but it is necessary", the minister remarked.
The third aspect is related to the formation of committees in the public service, which could also be carried out in the private sphere, and improving the working conditions of the police stations that deal with cases of violence against women.
Prada detailed that the pandemic and the application of measures such as rigid quarantines caused "a big setback in progress" of women’s rights, such as the increase in cases of violence as well as economic and social inequalities.
In the opinion of the Bolivian minister, sexist violence and its various manifestations are a "structural problem" in which they intervene "capitalist, colonialist and patriarchal logic" plus a "ingrained machismo".
The official referred to some data that indicate that in Bolivia the main crime committed is related to family violence followed by sexual assaults, with the highest incidence in the departments of Santa Cruz and La Paz.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, up to the beginning of November there had been 97 femicides, the majority in the main departments of the country such as La Paz (36), Santa Cruz (16) and Cochabamba (15), while with a lower incidence in Potosí (10 ), Oruro (8), Chuquisaca (5), Beni and Tarija (3) and Pando (1).
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