Of the 13 lawyers who provide legal support to victims of gender violence in the country, there are two who are in Neuquén. It is the only province with more than one professional and this is because the national State took responsibility in 2021 for the human rights violations suffered by Ivana Rosales, after an attempted femicide that went unpunished. That commitment assumed today is at serious risk.
The dissolution of the undersecretariat for the prevention of gender violence, defined by the government of President Javier Milei, is unprecedented. Since the democratic reconstruction of 1983, the State has always had, with lesser or greater hierarchy, a specific area that managed public policies linked to the issue.
In Argentina they have been committed for a decade by year an average of 245 femicidesa figure that is not only supported by feminist organizations that carry out a manual count based on publications in the mass media – such as Casa del Encuentro, Ahora que si nos ven or Mumalá – but also by the National Registry of Femicides of the Argentine Justice, which It depends on the Supreme Court, and is designed on the basis of judicialized cases.
In 2023, Neuquén had the highest rate of direct femicides per 100,000 women in the country.
The dismantling carried out by Nación directly impacts the province. The coordinator of the Approach Rights Program (PAD), María José Vázquez, explained to RÍO NEGRO that with the transfer of the Ministry of Human Capital to Justice they were informed that there will be an 80% reduction in staff.
At the local level, the team psychologist has already been fired and only The two lawyers who provide sponsorship remain standing, an administrative employee and the coordinator. Everyone’s contracts expire at the end of the month. There are two more employees in Zapala. “Everything ends on June 30”he claimed.
The PAD is the place where women who were going through a situation of gender violence came and there the evaluation was done to define whether or not they needed sponsorship. If the program, which was the entry route for female lawyers, no longer exists, how will the demand be channeled? What specific accompaniment will they have?
«We did an interdisciplinary approach to the situation, something that sometimes does not exist in teams. The lawyers of the body obviously sponsor and have a legal perspective on the case, but they do not have a psycho-social perspective, to be able to properly approach the situation,” she said.
Since June 2021, 820 women were accompanied in Neuquén and today there are 123 active cases, and around 18 that receive sponsorship.
Vázquez also expressed that there is uncertainty about how Line 144 and the Acompañar program will continue to operate, which gives women an economic contribution equivalent to a minimum, vital and mobile wage for six months. Regarding the latter, she specified that There was a delay of three months between entry, validation and collection. The current administration, he said, only approved in April what entered into January and February 2024, although there are requests that have been pending since August 2023.
The province has a legal sponsorship program for victims of violence, whose roster was never completed.
