Looking Towards the Future

Politically, six years' experience has reaffirmed the need for a Network to coordinate strategies to prevent violence against women. Multiple responses and mechanisms must be developed and this work must be extended and/or consolidated in other fields, such as formal education, the media and human-rights organizations. Persistent violence against women and girls in Latin America and the Caribbean increasingly forces us to emphasize the underlying causes: relationships of hierarchy and power; cultures which undervalue all that is female; unequal opportunities for women. We must build an institutional and social culture that opposes violence against women and girls. Governments and organizations capable of influencing the cultural changes that women and our societies require for full social and human development have a particular responsibility in this process. For this reason, we must focus specific kinds of work on these entities.

There is no doubt that we have made great advances in the past decade. Today we have a well-organized Network prepared to propose, negotiate and act. Nevertheless, given the enormous magnitude of this problem in every country in our region, this work is and will be just beginning - for a very long time.