US launches task force to combat violence against indigenous women

US President Donald Trump launched a task force on Tuesday to help protect Native American women and children, calling the rate of violence among indigenous people “heartbreaking.”

The task force aims to improve coordination and communication among federal, state and tribal authorities in response to cases of missing and murdered indigenous women and children, the White House said in a statement.

Native American women in some tribal communities are 10 times more likely than the average American to be murdered, it said, and the initiative called Operation Lady Justice is an “aggressive,

government-wide strategy” to address the crisis.

“The statistics are sobering and heartbreaking,” Trump said at a White House ceremony where he signed an executive order creating the task force. “Too many are still missing and their whereabouts are unknown.”

Research by the National Institute of Justice, a government research agency, has found more than four out of five Indigenous American and Alaska Native women, more than 1.5 million women, have experienced violence in their lifetime. More than 5,700 American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls were reported missing in 2016, according to the National Crime Information Center, a government data agency.

Indigenous American women are two-and-a-half times more likely to be sexually assaulted than women of all other races, while one in three reports having been raped, the US Department of Justice has said.

Several leading Native American rights organizations did not respond to requests for comment on the new task force. Law enforcement and prosecutions are often hampered by a maze of jurisdictions and justice systems based on such factors as whether a crime occurred on tribal land or whether the victim or the accused is a tribal member.

Last week the government announced an initiative to spend $1.5 million for law enforcement to help coordinate Native American missing persons cases.

Nearly 7 million Native Americans live in the US making up about 2 percent of the population, according to census figures.