‘ Latin America most violent area for women’

Panama City, Nov. 23: Latin America and the Caribbean is the most violent region in the world for women, the United Nations said on Thursday, highlighting Central America and Mexico as particularly dangerous.

In a report presented in Panama, UN Women and the UN Development Programme ( UNDP) found assaults on women persisted in the region despite severe laws aimed at curbing the phenomenon.

“The against women in America is critical.

It’s the most violent region in the world against women outside of conflict contexts,” Eugenia Piza- Lopez, head of UNDP’s gender mission in Latin America, said.

The rate of sexual violence against women outside of relationships is the highest in the world in the region, and the secondhighest for those who are in, or were in, a couple, the report stated.

Three of the 10 countries with the highest rates of rape of women and girls were in the Caribbean, it said.

Femicide — the killing of women — occurred on a

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“devastating scale” in Central America, it said, explaining that two out three women murdered died because of their gender.

“In some countries it has become a severe crisis. In the Northern Triangle ( Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala) and Mexico the problem of femicide and violence against women has reached epidemic levels, in many cases with links to organised crime,” PizaLopez said.