On July 3, Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández, together with Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta, Minister for Women, Gender and Diversity, presented a national action plan against gender-based violence, which aims to ensure a more just, equal and non-violent society.

The centre-left politician Alberto Fernández replaced the right-wing Mauricio Macri in the presidential elections on 27 October 2019 and is generally regarded as a straight ally who stands up for queer concerns – and seems willing to implement them.

The focus of the Plan Nacional de Acción contra las violencias por motivos de género 2020-2022 is on monitoring extreme violence (femicides, transvesticides and transfemicides) and the cultural as well as structural dimensions of violence against women and LGBTIQ*s. The goal is to build a more just, equal and non-violent society for women and LGBTIQ*s through inter-agency, intersectional and participatory measures in Argentina. 18 billion pesos are available for this purpose.

“This is an ambitious plan. But we must be ambitious if we want to stop seeing women suffering and dying from violence.” @alferdez at the launch of the National Action Plan against Gender Violence 2020-2022.

Machismo as a cause

Fernández said he considered it “shameful that someone suffers violence because they are a woman” and affirmed that this situation “can no longer be supported and must be punished” because “tolerating it makes us a terrible society”. And on:

“We have a duty to change as a society. We men are responsible for the downfall of equality, and there is no reason not to understand that this must end urgently.”

Femicidio (Femicide) means the gender-specific killing of (trans*) women and is widespread in Latin America. Of 25 countries with the highest femicide rates in 2016, 14 were in Latin America. One of these countries, whose society is very much macho, is Argentina. Femicides, including transvesticides and transfemicides, are a serious problem for the country.

Every 30 hours, a woman falls victim to a femicide

According to a survey conducted by La Casa del Encuentro, there were more than 300 victims of femicides, transvesticides and transfemicides in Argentina between 30 May 2019 and 1 May 2020. In order to give this number a human dimension and to make visible all these murdered (trans*) women and girls, the national Argentinean newspaper Clarín published the obituaries with all the names of the victims on 3 June. The campaign was a cooperation with the Spotlight Initiative, a global alliance of the European Union and the United Nations that aims to eliminate violence against women and girls worldwide.

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