Irene Montero's Crisis Committee: "useful", but "without making anything clear"

The murder of eight women by their partners or ex-partners during the month of July in Spain caused a new meeting of the Crisis Committee of the Ministry of Equality to be convened yesterday, the fourth since its creation was approved a year ago, on July 22, 2022, at the Sectoral Conference of the department of Irene Montero that took place in Tenerife.

The Government delegate against Gender Violence, Victoria Rosell, was in charge of appearing after the meeting in a telematic institutional statement in which questions from the press were not accepted. Among other issues, the government representative stressed the role that both State institutions and citizens have in the face of sexist violence. And, without mentioning Vox, he stressed the importance of insisting to youth that sexist violence cannot be relativized “much less denialism.”

Rosell also emphasized the need to show zero tolerance for any type of gender violence, not just the most extreme, and stressed that being intolerant of this scourge “women will know that we will be there when they need us.”. The delegate also recalled that “telephone 016 answers 24 hours every day of the year in 53 different languages” since only one of the eight murdered in the month of July had filed a complaint.

Those eight women murdered in July have raised the total number of deaths from gender violence since 2003, the year in which records began to be kept, to 1,216.. If counted by months, July is the deadliest in the historical series, accumulating 127 including 2023.

Although the Crisis Committee is considered “useful in some aspects” by the regional representatives present at the meeting, these same representatives affirm that “no concrete action comes from there”. One of the people present at the meeting, where the Government Delegation and the Ministries of Equality, Interior and Justice participate, pointed out yesterday that “today only the data for July have been reviewed, the previous ones are not even monitored”. Specifically, what was established on this occasion is “the need to raise awareness from the media, especially among the youngest, and the need to advance in the compensation of minors who are orphaned.”

However, of the four meetings that have taken place so far “nothing has been made clear”, adds another of the present. In fact, in the first two crisis committees not even all the autonomous communities were present and only the representatives of those governments that had registered victims of sexist violence in their territory in the last month. At the request of the rest to join these meetings, the criteria was modified and they were included.

“It would be good if we analyzed all the cases in more depth to develop more tools that allow us to eradicate this type of violence,” said an internal source from the meeting yesterday, in which Asturias and the Basque Country were not present.. «It does not make much sense that we only comment on the data, more specific measures should be established. Just as the committee could be convened more regularly, not only when there are five murders in a month because each victim is important to draw conclusions”, indicates a second, who considers that by not commenting on the cases of the months in which there are fewer murders “information is lost.”

However, these same sources also affected the “useful” things that come out of the meetings and “the reinforcement of collaboration between administrations” in the face of sexist violence. In the case of the one held yesterday, one of those measures is to “train translators with gender perspectives” after the murder of a Chinese woman last month and which, according to Equality, could have been avoided if the victim had counted with a language professional who would have helped her.