Mexico slashes funding for women's shelters

Human rights workers say plan to give money directly to victims of domestic violence risks unravelling decades of work

David Agren in Mexico City
Tue 5 Mar 2019 11.00 GMT

Human rights activists in Mexico have condemned a government plan to slash funding for women’s shelters – and instead give the money directly to victims of domestic violence.

Details of the government’s scheme are still being defined, though it said in a statement that “support for this purpose” would remain unchanged.

But advocates for victims of domestic violence warned that cutting funding to shelters risks unravelling two decades of work by civil society organisations, while exposing women and children to increased danger. They also questioned how the government will give money to women in imminent peril who need to flee dangerous situations with their children.

“They’re throwing 20 years of civil advances in multidisciplinary attention to victims of extreme violence in the garbage. The direct payments to women will help for three days, then the feminicides will fall on [the interior ministry],” tweeted Lydia Cacho, a journalist and activist, who has worked with women fleeing domestic violence and girls rescued from the sex trade in Cancún.

“(The president) doesn’t realise (or doesn’t care) that women are often put in danger when they receive cash in hand,” tweeted Regina Tames, the director of Gire, a reproductive rights organisation. “We know of many cases where their violent partners, neighbours and even their parents beat them to take the money from government programmes.”

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