The United Nations has found evidence of the swelling number of domestic violence in some countries in Latin America amid the global health pandemic COVID-19.


Domestic Violence in Latin America 

Most of the countries today in Latin America are implementing lockdowns and stay-at-home policy. These measures somehow help countries to at least control the spread of the infectious and deadly COVID-19. However, this also increases domestic violence towards women in the region.

Almost 20 million women are ranging from different ages who are sexually and physically abused. This phenomenon is widespread in the Latin American region that affects children as well. 

If not all, but most of the countries in Latin America had experienced a rising problem with domestic violence even before COVID-19 hit these countries. This is a pandemic that the region faces every day. 

In cities like Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Santiago, Sao Paolo, and La Paz, mostly women are only allowed to go out of the house to buy essentials or to go to the hospitals. They are confined and isolated in their homes in an unprecedented way.


Countries With High Cases of Domestic Violence in Latin America 

Mexico and Brazil are the top two countries with the highest complaints of domestic violence against women in Latin America. At the same time, Chile and Bolivia have managed to drop their domestic violence cases.

According to the United Nations, the two countries managed to drop their domestic violence, not due to the decline of violence but because they were able to seek help or report abuse through their local authorities and regular channels.

For Eva Giberti, founder of the Victims Against Violence program in Argentina, who helps runs a hotline for women to report abuse, said: "The jump in violence has not surprised us, it is the unleashing of a violence that was already there in people."

The 137 hotlines in Argentina for abuse victims has helped the country to respond to different domestic violence. Since they started the hotline, they have seen an increase of 67 percent who asked for help in the country for April while Argentina is in the state of lockdown compared to last year.

UN Added that femicide cases in Argentina, while the country is in lockdown or quarantine, has doubled, and the group receives more reports every day about domestic violence. Meanwhile, in other countries like Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia, domestic violence has also seen to increase.

Moreover, the Argentine government that one woman is killed every 23 hours in the country. Lucia Vasallo, the filmmaker of the "Line 137", said that domestic violence in Argentina was a pandemic before COVID-19 hit the country.

Over the previous decades, there have been many protests staged by women in Latin America and the Caribbean. UN also asserted last year that one out of three women experienced physical and sexual abuse in the region.  

Maria Noel Baeza, regional director for UN Women, said: "In a situation of confinement, what is happening is that women are locked up with their abusers in situations where they have very limited outlets." She also added that around 3,800 violence against women were recorded last year.

Chile has the same problem also. The country has received many calls in their hotlines during the first week of the country's quarantine. Seventy percent of the calls they received were related to domestic violence. 

To address this rising problem in Chile, they bolstered counseling channels and opened shelters for women who are at high risk for violence. 

However, reports of violence against women received by the UN from Chile declined to percent because the international organization and prosecutors believed that the movements of women in the country were restricted.


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