In Mexico, human rights activists have called for urgent action to address violence against women. As the rule of law has collapsed in many areas of Mexico amid corruption and cartel violence during the ongoing U.S.-backed drug war, thousands of women have been killed or disappeared. The violence is particularly intense in the north, along the U.S.-Mexico border. In the northern state of Chihuahua, there were 23 murders for every 100,000 women in 2012. María de la Luz Estrada, director of the National Citizen Observatory on Femicide, said the government has failed to address the crisis.

María de la Luz Estrada: “We are talking about a national emergency of femicides, because women are being brutally murdered more often, and now there’s the pattern of them going missing. This happens because the government has not generated the mechanisms, the protocols, the search required to immediately find them and to prevent more crimes from being committed.”