FEMICIDE rose in Mexico in the first six months of last year, according to official statistics, with at least 1,844 women murdered in the Central American country, an increase of 10 from the previous year.

The National Institute of Statistics and Geography recorded a total of 17,123 murders between January and June 2020, meaning that Mexico has the world’s sixth-highest homicide rate. El Salvador and Jamaica topped the list.

Roughly two-thirds of women have experienced some form of violence, the institute said. Nonetheless, the government has slashed budgets for shelters and the National Institute of Women.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines femicide as “the intentional murder of women because they are women,” with the organisation Cero Impunity warning that cases in Mexico have rocketed by 137 per cent in the past five years.

The group says that there is a culture of impunity when it comes to femicide, with Baja California Sur state, for example, not recording a single prosecution in 2019.

Lawyer Patricia Olamendi warned: “We are living in a climate of real impunity and a total lack of response from the state.”

Mexico only started recording femicide in 2012 and that year was 16th in the world for the number of killings.

The United Nations has warned of a “shadow pandemic” as there has been a worldwide rise in recorded cases of femicide during the coronavirus crisis.

April 2020, just a month after a stay-at-home order came into effect in Mexico, was the deadliest month in the past five years, with a record 267 murders of women.

The emergency services also received an unprecedented number of calls relating to violence against women in the first month of the lockdown – some 26,171 in March and 21,722 in April.

But women’s organisations reacted with alarm at the response from President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who dismissed the figures and sought to blame the neoliberal economic model that he inherited from his predecessor.

“I’m going to give you another fact, which doesn’t mean that violence against women doesn’t exist, because I don’t want you to misinterpret me,” he told a May 2020 press conference on the figures. “Ninety per cent of those calls that serve as your base are false, it’s proven.”

Campaign groups responded that the calls were not “false” but were not acted on.

Statistics released on Monday showed a 30 per cent rise in calls last year to 260,000, compared with 198,000 in 2019.

National Network of Shelters head Wendy Figueroa said that demand for her organisation’s services had risen sharply.

“Without a doubt, there was an increase,” she said. “They aren’t just numbers, they’re women’s stories.”