Ni Una Menos

In Argentina feminicide, the killing of women, it’s a new category of crime recorded in the Criminal Code in 2012 and it’s punished by life imprisonment. Despite the tightening of legislation, murders of women are increasing in the country. Currently, according to statistics, a woman is killed every twenty-eight hours. In the spring of 2015, there had been a succession of atrocious crimes in all the country: women burned alive, hacked to pieces with machetes, even a pregnant woman killed by her boyfriend and buried in the garden of grandparents. In those days it was created by the feminist collective Ni una menos a protest movement against violence towards women. It was first manifested in eighty cities of Argentina on June 3, 2015. Since 2015 this movement, with unprecedented success, this movement is mobilizing the masses against gender violence reaching an incredible result during the historical women’s international strike where, on march 8, 2018, half a million women marched in Buenos Aires and millions in more than 50 countries all over the world. Every time, like never before, more women joined the march starting to claim their rights. The movement has spread to other Latin American countries, recently also in Europe and USA. The problem is unfortunately common in all the country and particularly serious in the many Villas Miserias of the cities, slums located sometimes also very close to the city centers where people live in poor condition, criminality is very high and the youngster are in danger. In these places traditional domestic rules and patriarchal composition of society support the violence. Often young girls leave family home in which they suffer domestic violence for a love a air with people belonging to gangs who introduce them to the world of drug or they become victims of the human traffic, kidnapped and forced to prostitution. Only In Buenos Aires there are1500 brothels, 40000 in the country. Frequently girls between 13 and 16 get pregnant. Often police doesn’t take the reports, corruption is very common and women suffer domestic and psychological violence for several years. The movement is fighting against gender violence on many different aspects. It marched alongside families of murdered women, victims of physical and psychological violence, women discriminated in the workplace, due to precarious economic or social conditions, to be migrants or to belong to ethnic minorities. In recent days historical steps have been taken in the issue of legalization of abortion. The green scarf worn by thousands of women in the country has become the symbol of the struggle for the right to decide for themselves on their own body during the massive demonstrations but also in daily life. 'Ni una Menos' is part of a larger on going project on gender violence. My goal is to continue documenting this topic in LatinAmerica. The common line that sadly connect many countries is violence in all its aspects (domestic, psychological, physical, economic, institutional, cultural). I strongly believe that it’s very important to give visibility and voice to victims who doesn’t have it, inspiring more of them to come forward to tell their stories and bring pressure on the governments.