The Ibero-American Initiative to Prevent and Eradicate Violence against Women was approved in the XXVII Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government held in Andorra, in 2021. This Ibero-American Cooperation initiative was born from the will of the member countries to contribute to the elimination of all forms of violence against women in Ibero-America.

At the time of its approval, this initiative had the support of 10 countries: Andorra, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Spain, Mexico, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay. The purpose of this Ibero-American initiative is to comply with the commitments assumed at the international and regional level by the member states to ensure the right to a life free of violence for all women in the region.

The latest global estimates indicate that around one in three women in the world have suffered physical and/or sexual violence at the hands of their partner or third parties at some point in their lives. In order to eradicate violence against women in Latin America, this initiative has a strategic plan made up of three specific objectives that have to do with public policies, comprehensive protection and reparation, and prevention.

Within the framework of strengthening public policies, this initiative will focus on strengthening the capacity of the entities responsible for the formulation, monitoring, and evaluation of public policies and comprehensive laws for the elimination of violence against women. Likewise, it will seek to generate knowledge about the real magnitude of this problem in order to design new and better public policies and comprehensive laws.

Regarding the improvement of care, protection and reparation for women victims and survivors of violence, the initiative will seek to improve the response capacity of specialized services. This with the aim of ensuring an integrated, multidisciplinary, systematic and sustained response over time.

Finally, this initiative will try to strengthen the scope of programs or plans for the prevention of violence against women. In this way, it is expected that the initiative will become the first permanent Ibero-American cooperation platform on the prevention and elimination of violence against women, being able to consolidate itself as a benchmark, both in Ibero-America and in other regions.

Fountain: Ibero-American General Secretariat