Petition for a Comprehensive Law against Gender-Based Violence in Cuba

Abstract

Dear Sirs and Madams:We the undersigned Cuban citizens write to you as representatives of the people as provided for by Article 61 of the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba currently in force: Individual persons have the right to bring complaints and petitions to the authorities, who in turn are obligated to receive these and respond in a timely, pertinent, and just fashion, within the timeframe and according to the procedure established by the law.We also invoke Article 2 of People’s Power National Assembly (PPNA), which defines itself as the “supreme organ of state power” and thus “represents and expresses the sovereign will of the entire nation and is the only body with constituent and legislative power in the Republic.”In addition, we address the Permanent Commission on Childhood Affairs, Youth Affairs, and Women’s Equal Rights which, according to Article 29 of the aforementioned Article, has as part of its mandate the elaboration of legal projects, rules, and agreements.The present petition has the following precedents:In 2019, three political-institutional actions recognized a fundamental issue within Cuban society: gender-based violence.First, Article 43 of the new Constitution of the Republic of Cuba acknowledged the state’s obligation to protect women from gender violence and to create the requisite institutional and legal mechanisms. This obligation was not previously included in the Magna Carta and is one of the most notable positive measures of the new constitutional document.Next, the National Gender Equity Poll (NGEP) that was undertaken throughout the entire country was published in 2016. Among other issues, that survey verified that gender-based violence within intimate partner relations is a problem at the national level and that victims often do not seek justice or institutional redress.Thirdly, in 2019 Cuba presented its first national report on the implementation of Agenda 2030 which included the state’s first official data on femicide in the country. A comparison of Cuba’s data with those of other countries during the same time period demonstrates that, while the rates of femicide in Cuba were low compared to El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and Brazil, they were on par with or exceeded the rates of femicide in Peru, Chile, and Panama.Yet recognizing that gender violence is a problem in 2019 is not new. It has been an issue of ongoing public concern for three decades.Since 1990 the Federation of Cuban Women’s Family and the Women’s Resource Center have addressed the issue. To that end, various institutions, people, and projects have endeavored to make the problem visible, to expand the scope of attention to it, and to develop strategies to reduce it for the benefit of the entire society. In 2012, the final report of the national conference of the Cuban Communist Party prioritized “making visible and ending gender-based and family-based violence, as well as community-based violence.”Cuba was the first country to sign and the second to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). In this way, the Cuban state declared its commitment in the fight for equal gender rights, for the expansion of women’s rights, and for ending inequality in all its forms.The need for a specific law on gender violence has been part of the agenda since 1999 when the United Nations special rapporteur on gender-based violence, Radhika Coomaraswamy, urged the approval of special legislation to address gender-based violence in Cuba. From that moment to the present one, activists, lawyers, researchers, and academics have pursued a law against gender-based violence.Despite this work, gender-based violence continues to grow noticeably: National rates of violence against women within intimate partner relationships are high and comparable to global rates. According to the National Gender Survey, Cuban women recognize abuse and violence as a problem they experience. Although 51.9 percent of the population polled believed that the incidence of violence against women is low, 26.6 percent of the women surveyed had been victims of domestic violence in the 12 months prior to the poll, and 39.6 percent reported having suffered violence at some other point in their lives.In this same National Gender Survey it was revealed that women rarely seek out help from state organizations. Only 3.7 percent of the surveyed women who experienced violence sought help. Earlier data suggests that female victims of violence lack appropriate support networks and information that would facilitate their search for help. Furthermore, existing institutions might not be considered safe, trustworthy, or reliable. The National Gender Survey demonstrated the persistence of stereotypes that foster violence against women. These stereotypes are an expression of the dominant patriarchal culture which, together with the absence of education about gender and a lack of clear legal norms, pervasively affects how law enforcement and the criminal justice system respond to victim complaints and fail to protect the victimized.According to official data, in 2016 the femicide rate was 99 for every 100,000 women and adolescents over 15. That year the number of deaths at the hands of an intimate partner or ex-partner decreased by 33 percent compared to 2013 rates. Based on these rates, we estimate that 50 women were killed by their partner or ex-partner (about 1 per week) in 2016 and that 63 were killed in 2013. Because the data considered only intimate partners or ex-partners, in the absence of a broader definition of gender-based violence cases such as those of Leydi Mauro Pacheco Mur (2018), the woman assassinated in Cienfuegos after having been raped, or Tomasa Causse Fabat (Cienfuegos, 2018) and Delia Echeverría Blanc (Santiago de Cuba, 2017)—who were both assassinated by the ex-partners of their daughters (who also had been raped)—are not counted. We could add many others to the list of names that are increasingly becoming public knowledge. That is, we suspect that the numbers are actually much higher.The Cuban Penal Code does not specifically recognize gender-based violence or femicide as a crime. Although being in conjugal relations with or being related within four degrees of consanguinity to the victim is considered an aggravating factor in cases of “crimes against life and bodily integrity, or against normal development of sexual relations, family, childhood, and youth” there is no specification about gender-based violence that considers that crime in its particularity, reach, or multiple forms of expression. The commonly normative focus of state institutions is “domestic or intrafamily violence.” Nevertheless, that is only one realm of gender-based violence. The latter is expressed and reproduced in all social spheres (public, workplace, political, educational, cultural, virtual, etc.) and at different registers (psychological, economic, physical, sexual).Testimonies and evidence reported in qualitative research and the media show that important barriers exist in the police and legal processing of complaints in cases of gender-based violence, such as a lack of institutional support, and the nonexistence of safe houses or refuges for women who file complaints in police stations; stereotypes that hinder the search for help in cases of violence; and a lack of social norms cognizant of the many forms gender-based violence takes.Nowadays we have enough global, regional, and Cuban research that demonstrates that gender-based violence is not the same as other types of violence and that it calls for different laws, policies, and strategies.Over the last several decades in Latin America and throughout the world, femicide has been recognized and addressed in penal codes, comprehensive and targeted laws against gender violence have been developed, and essential data have been collected on the nature and structure of violence in each country.Different international agencies sponsor these legislative initiatives. Among them are the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979) and the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (1993). Similarly, in the Fourth Global Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995, violence against women was recognized as an obstacle to the goals of equality, peace, and progress, and as a limit to the enjoyment of women’s human rights and fundamental liberties. In 2015, Cuba committed itself to the implementation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda which includes among its goals the elimination of all forms of violence against women.In our region, the issue plays a primary role in community and feminist demands, as well as in the institutional agendas concerned with gender inequality.Nonetheless, we have known since the 1970s that violence is socially reproduced in particular ways: it is embedded in cultural codes, and made manifest in the persistence of inequality between men and women (such as women’s lower labor force participation, fewer economic resources, greater time spent in care and domestic work, diminished recognition of their labors, etc.).The systems that buttress the reproduction of gender violence cannot be undone using the same actions or strategies that are effective in addressing other forms of violence. One bit of data is revelatory in that regard: in countries with low indicators of social violence and high social indicators of education and health, rates of gender violence do not decrease. Instead, they remain high and consistently manifest in prejudice against women and their opportunities for personal growth, workforce participation, and political participation. Therefore, to understand gender-based violence and fight against it, recognizing its specificity as well as its relationship to different settings and social circumstances is critical.Given the above, we the below signatories, diverse Cuban women and citizens concerned about persistent gender violence in the country, propose the following measures: Include an articulated and comprehensive law against gender violence in the forthcoming thirteenth legislative chronogram of the Constitution of the Republic currently in place.Constitute an advisory council whose composition is publicly known and includes specialists in the issue, who will participate in the drafting of legislation. We request that the group include representation from different regions and sectors of the country.Receive and consider proposals from the citizenry, while developing the Comprehensive Law against Gender Violence.This comprehensive law would allow for the realization of the previously mentioned Article 43 of the constitutional mandate, which points to the state’s duty to protect women from “gender-based violence in any of its manifestations and spaces” and to create “institutional and legal mechanisms for that.”In addition, the Cuban state would actualize Article 41 of the Magna Carta itself, which upholds the principles of progressiveness, equality, and nondiscrimination. In particular, the Comprehensive Law against Gender Violence would assure the fulfillment of Article 44: The state creates the conditions that guarantee its citizens equality. It educates individuals from an early age with respect to this principle. The state makes this right manifest with the implementation of public policies and laws to facilitate social inclusion and to safeguard the rights of those individuals who need it.The law would also contribute to the fulfillment of Article 86 of the Constitution, which ensures that girls, boys, and adolescents “are protected from all types of violence.”The law should not simply punish crimes—its purpose should not be solely punitive; rather, it should create the foundation for an integrated system that addresses and prevents violence, and that educates the citizenry about a life without gender-based violence, guarantees access to justice, preserves women’s lives, takes into consideration the need to set up safe houses and spaces of refuge for victims, and builds awareness programs for women, perpetrators, institutions, and the larger society.The law should be intersectional. We are not requesting a piecemeal approach, fragmented and unfocused, but instead a legal instrument that, in its totality, permits and requires other laws that recognize and pay attention to gender-based violence, and that accordingly supports, regulates, and fosters the design of appropriate public policies. The Family Code, Work Code, Civil Code, and Penal Code are some of the legal instruments that should be synergistic with the Comprehensive Law against Gender-Based Violence. Likewise, the law may facilitate and require the creation of protocols for handling cases of gender-based violence and foster its prevention in institutions of law enforcement, work and study centers, political party spaces, cultural spaces, and media outlets.The development and institutionalization of this law will ensure an indispensable instrument for the design of public policies that intervene in the production and reproduction of violence, identify its causes nationally, recognize the diversity of victims (including girls, adolescents, trans people, and those who identify as nonbinary), permit support of victims and survivors, and progressively reduce its incidence.Cuba counts on its people, institutions, and history to make this happen. In March of this year, an audit by the Republic’s controller general verified that the government has the resources necessary to implement the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Objective 5, which includes among its goals the ending of all forms of violence and discrimination against women.A just and comprehensive law against gender violence is what we need now.