Argentina Position Paper on Violence against Women
Mitchell B. Flaherty/Christian Gonzalez
Model United Nations
    Violence against women is a major human rights problem that affects women in countries both developed and developing. It is especially problematic in developing countries where cultural and traditional customs condone different types of violence against women including: female genital mutilation, traditional forms of abuse (beatings, etc.), honor killings (killing a girl or woman due to an indiscretion real or imagined), early marriage (almost invariably without consent of the bride), dowry murder (killing a woman due to inability or unwillingness to pay the dowry) and prenatal sex selection. Also, in developing countries dealing with civil wars and national conflicts the use of rape as a weapon of war increases the spread of HIV/AIDS in these countries.
    On Violence against Women in Argentina: Studies have made the estimate that 4.5 million women a year suffer from one or more various types of gender abuse. This takes the form of, not only physical abuse, but emotional and verbal abuse as well.
    The country of Argentina has created legislation to combat all forms violence against women. The law calls for funding that matches the high ambitions of the law, though the delegation is confident that this will not be an issue.
    The country of Argentina is of the opinion that no form of gender based violence is acceptable, whether cultural or otherwise. New laws have been created, and violence against women will not be tolerated.
Currently, violence against women is not caused by an absence of laws against it, but because in some areas it is broadly accepted and because police officers do not always enforce these laws.
    The country of Argentina is of the opinion that the best way to combat violence against women is to enact specific regulations to make it more difficult for this problem to continue. These regulations will work by stiffening the penalties faced by police officers not enforcing laws. In addition to this, these regulations should make it easier to detect police officers who are guilty of this by creating a method of looking at records to determine if the police officer could have known about the violation. These laws must be matched with funding for the agencies that will be dealing with the problem. In addition, training must be provided for health and law enforcement professionals that will teach them to recognize these problems, as well as the proper procedure for enforcing these laws.

Citations:
Valente, Marcela. "ARGENTINA: Bold New Law on Violence Against Women - IPS Ipsnews.net." IPS Inter Press Service. Web. 24 Mar. 2011. .