Women Ask Funes to Create Policies that Guarantee Their Rights

The Salvadoran organization, Women Creators of Peace and Life, have asked the recently elected president of the Republic of El Salvador, Mauricio Funes, to create policies that guarantee women's rights during his tenure. The representatives of the organization state that women's rights were not taken into consideration during the past twenty years of ARENA's rule.

Some of the issues that many Salvadoran feminist organizations hope that the new government will address are reproductive rights, sex education, women's labor, domestic violence, and the femicides.

The feminist organization, CEMUJER, has called for an end to the impunity for those responsible for the murder of women. In the last two months, sixty women have been murdered in El Salvador. Ima Rocio Guirola, a representative of CEMUJER, stated that there have been no concrete measures taken to stop the rate of femicides in El Salvador and believes that the Salvadoran government could help by passing the Comprehensive Law against Violence against Women. Since 2007, women's organizations in El Salvador have urged the Salvadoran government to list femicide as a crime and to create a special police unit to investigate crimes against women. Perhaps with the election of Mauricio Funes to the presidency, the Salvadoran government will concern itself more with the needs and rights of women.

- Sara Skinner, US Grassroots Coordinator