The development trajectory of Latin America and the Caribbean is going through a period of unprecedented vulnerability and uncertainty. The significant achievements of past decades, as well as the possibility of continuing to make progress, are under threat from the impact of growing geopolitical tensions, unresolved structural challenges, and an increase in crises of various kinds—environmental, political, health, technological, and social.
As the world faces escalating challenges, from climate change to biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, there is now a rapidly expanding understanding that these crises are deeply interconnected.
Political polarization, the climate emergency, organized crime, migration, and low economic growth currently dominate the public debate in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and rightly so. However, there is a significant structural challenge to human development and democracy itself that, along with inequalities, lies at the root of these crises: poverty.
Violence against women and girls is one of the most widespread and persistent abuses of fundamental rights at a global level that, to a certain extent, derives from what we consider "normal" in our societies. In addition to firmly condemning that every three women in the world suffer from physical or sexual violence, we must question what we are normalizing as a society for this to happen.