Guatemala
Guatemala: Women-only buses against sexual harassment
GUATEMALA CITY, Jun 24, 2011 (IPS) - "We are all safer here; it's great because this way there are no men groping you," Jaqueline Escobar, a sales executive, told IPS on a bus that is exclusively for women, a service against sexual harassment that is being tried out in the Guatemalan capital.
Guatemala City's mass transit system, Transurbano, launched a pilot programme on Jun. 14 with dozens of buses identified with signs reading "For Women Only" and pink ribbons, which run between the city centre and neighbourhoods to the north and south.
From Guatemala: What God was thinking when he created women
A creation myth reminds survivors of violence of their capabilities and value.
When Ines Santizo was a young girl her mother woke her up on the middle of the night and told her to get out of the house: Her stepfather was coming home in a drunk and violent state. Before Ines could escape, her stepfather kicked her in the face and broke her nose. “My mother thought I was going to die, there was so much blood,” Ines said. “I swore right then that I would never allow a man to treat me like that again.”
Guatemala: Government must act to stop the killing of women
Amnesty International today urged the Guatemalan authorities to act to stop the high numbers of women being killed across the country and ensure perpetrators are brought to justice, ahead of on 8 March.
According to official figures, 685 women were killed in 2010 alone in Guatemala amid a culture of impunity, a legacy of the 1960-96 internal armed conflict which led to hundreds of thousands human rights violations which remain unaccounted for.