Progress and challenges in the provision of support and protection services for survivors of gender-based violence in Latin America

Following international commitments, Latin American States have committed to guaranteeing women’s right to a life free from gender-based violence. Over the past two decades, the region showed significant progress in fulfilling this mandate through the development of a comprehensive normative and policy framework to address gender-based violence against women (GBVAW) (MESECVI 2021). But how laws, institutional innovations and national plans translate into state capacities to implement essential services for survivors and families varies considerably across the region. Our paper focuses on this gap, identifying progress and challenges around the provision of support and protection first response services for survivors of GBVAW in Latin America. To this end we examine state capacities to implement specialized helplines, one-stop support centers, social protection programs, safe accommodation, reporting mechanisms and protection measures in nine countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. We assess the type of existing services, their reach and infrastructure, financial, human, and technical resources, data collection tools and take-up rates. We also examine coordination of these varied efforts to provide support and protection to GBVAW survivors. Our assessment on state capacities to provide essential services is based on normative standards drawn from State obligations included in binding international and regional treaties such as CEDAW and Belém do Pará; legal standards set up by general recommendations from the CEDAW Committee and the MESECVI; specific recommendations and progress indicators from monitoring bodies (CEDAW Committee, MESECVI) and policy guidelines from specialized international agencies (UNFPA 2015, UN Women 2016, WHO 2019, 2020). We collected data from a variety of publicly available policy documents: reports produced by governments (including reports to international organizations and multilateral agencies); ombudsman offices/oversight agencies; NGO’S (women’s rights, human rights organizations); international monitoring bodies and multilateral agencies (CEDAW Committee, MESECVI, ECLAC, UNFPA). We also examined institutional websites, news outlets and available literature on the issue and sent consultations to women’s policy agencies (WPAs) and/or agencies responsible for VAW/GBV related services in each country. Our paper maps the characteristics and capacities to implement essential GBV services across these nine countries, identifies similarities and differences among them and explores how they link with the normative and institutional framework around GBV, political and financial commitment with the issue from the national/federal government, regional autonomy to implement policies and strength of the feminist mobilization.