The weeks of lockdown imposed in the wake of Wuhan virus pandemic is extracting a severe toll on women and girls across Latin America, where the number of calls to helplines has sky-rocketed, made by victims of domestic violence who cannot flee the aggressors with which they are locked-in for an extended period of time.
The lockdowns might have slowed down the spread of COVID-19 but the dark and less-intended consequences of it in the form of a spike in the number of distress calls is chilling, to say the least.
A United Nations Population Fund report released on Tuesday warned that domestic violence cases around the world could grow by at least 31 million if quarantine measures continue to the end of the year without specific protections for vulnerable populations.
From Buenos Aires to Mexico City, Santiago, São Paulo to La Paz—the entire South American region has seen the domestic violence cases exacerbate with the lockdowns in place.
Argentina’s emergency 137 line for abuse victims has seen a 67 per cent rise in calls for help in April versus a year earlier, after a nationwide lockdown was imposed on March 20, according to a Reuters report.
One in three women around the world experience physical or sexual violence, mostly from an intimate partner, according to the World Health Organization. The ‘Intimate terrorism’ as some experts like to call it has only flourished in these torrid times.
In Colombia, daily domestic violence calls to a national women’s hotline were up nearly 130 percent during the first 18 days of the country’s quarantine. The lockdown has been extended till May 11 in the country, and it means the cases will only increase.
In Chile, the women’s minister said calls to domestic abuse helplines had increased 70 percent in the first week of lockdowns. However, the formal reports of domestic violence actually declined by 40% in the first half of April which the authorities attributed to restrictions in movements because of the lockdown.
While Chile has seen a drop in formal reports of abuse, countries like Mexico and Brazil have seen a soaring rise.
In Brazil’s Sao Paulo state there was a 45% jump last month in cases of violence against women. Whereas in Mexico, according to official data–complaints to police of domestic violence rose around a quarter as compared to the prior year.
Not only domestic violence cases are on an upswing, but the Femicide cases in Peru have also increased manifolds during the Coronavirus Lockdown. The Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations (MIMP) reported that at least seven femicides have been confirmed in the last month in the country, and activists reported at least 80 cases of sexual violence.
The armistice that couples used to have camouflaged in the form of their daily routines seems to have broken because of the lockdowns. And it’s not limited to the Latin world only. A similar story is transpiring across the world.
In Hubei province, the epicentre of the initial Wuhan virus outbreak, domestic violence reports to police more than tripled in one county alone during the lockdown in February, from 47 last year to 162 this year, activists told local media.
While at the same time, there has been an increase of 25 percent in divorces due to the lockdown. Cases of filing divorce have increased numerously in Xian city in central China and Dongguan in Shenzhen province.
According to a report in the New York Times, mounting data suggests that domestic abuse is acting like an opportunistic infection, thriving in the conditions created by the pandemic and it is the dark underbelly of lockdown that governments around the world seem to have been neglecting.
Imposing lockdowns without taking into cognizance the effect it would have on the lives of such demography appears to have been the undoing, as the rising distress calls worldwide suggest. The Wuhan virus cure cannot be worse than the problem itself, therefore a suitable system needs to be formulated by each individual country so that the ‘domestic violence’ pandemic does not spiral out of control.
