The abuse against women is a constant in every continent, in every country and in every culture, admits the leader of the United Nations, according to critique our columnist.

It happens during the whole year but generally only one speaks about the topic once a year. When there is close the celebration of the International Day of the Woman, every March 8, are published studies on the unfortunate state of million women in the world. This year the statistics do not seem better than those of the previous year. The women are still victims of the violence and in his cases the impunity still reigns.

The General Secretary of United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, who threw last year the campaign “Unámonos to Finish the Violence Against the Women”, says that the abuse against women keeps on being a constant in every continent, in every country and in every culture. “It is a devastating drama in the lives of the women, of his families and of the society in general”, it indicated in his most recent report. And while he asks most of the societies to prohibit the violence, the reality is that very often “it is concealed by the tacit remission”.

One of the five women in the world has been victims of violation or of attempt of violation, while in some nations, up to one of the three women they have been struck, been forced to have relations sexual or submitted to other ways of abuse during his lives. These are a part of the cruel statistics that appear in the report of the UNO of this year about the violence against the women. Women between the 15 and 44 years cover more risk of being violated or of being victims of domestic violence than of suffering from a cancer, of suffering car accidents, of facing a war or the malaria, according to information of the World Bank.

But even more dramatic is the number of women who lose his lives due to the domestic abuse. In Colombia, for example, they informs that in average a woman is murdered every six days by his partner or ex-partner. In Peru, 403 women were murdered between 2004 and July, 2007 and in 40 per cent of them for his husbands or fiancés. Fortunately for the Peruvian women a law has just published the lawyer's office turning into punishable crime what they call the "feminicidio". This will help to assemble more exact statistics and to begin to protect women in risk.

Another society male chauvinist with a distressing record as for violence against the women is Mexico. Very much one has said about the hundreds of women who have been kidnapped, violated and murdered in City Juárez during the last decade. Most of the still not solved cases assume to everything, from the drugs traffic up to imitators and serial killers. But the violence against the women is more generalized in the whole country. In what goes of the year, 264 women have been murdered in Mexico, half of them to hands of his husbands.
The experts say that the women that victims of domestic abuse have died were struck earlier by his partners. According to a new report, seven of every 10 women in Mexico of more than 15 years of age, have suffered some class of abuse.
Liliana Rojero, of the National Institute of the Woman, says that the women see the violence like something naturally in his lives. “30 per cent of the women who are struck think that they are struck by love. They believe that ‘if he strikes me it is because he must feel something for me’”, says Rojero.

Being I mother of two youngsters, there is something that worries me of exceedingly in the reports of this year about the violence against the women. The statistics show that one of the three adolescents has experienced violence during a sentimental relation. This type of violence crosses all the racial, economic and social lines. It is anticipated that one of the four girls turns into victim of violation or attempt of violation before coming at the age of 25 years, and three of every five cases happen before the young people come at the age of 18.

When my 14-year-old daughter and I were speaking about the well-known case of young singer Rihanna, who was struck by his 19-year-old fiancé, Chris Brown, she said: "Mom, he will not do it again, He is famous and he knows that one will see in problems”. Unfortunately the statistics demonstrate the opposite. For the good of our daughters and that of all the women violence victims in the world, let's hope that the reports of next year on the violence and the impunity for the bullies should be more promising than at present.

(c) 2008 by Maria Helen Salinas.