In the months of March over the last six years (2020-2025), we registered 5,672 attacks against 907 women defenders and 65 organizations that defend human rights in Mexico, Guatemala,1 Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua - accounting for 13% of all attacks documented during the period. Nearly half (41%) of the attacks registered in March during the period noted were perpetrated in the digital territory. Thus, we confirm how “women's month” - labeled as such because of the strength and visibility of women’s struggles around International Women’s Day (8M) - solidifies the trend of being the most dangerous month for women human rights defenders, both in the physical and digital spheres.
The most frequently documented forms of attack during the month of March are those that affect women defenders’ personal integrity, such as physical, verbal and psychological violence, and excessive use of force - accounting for 32% of all attacks. Also noteworthy are attacks limiting the freedom of assembly and the freedom of expression (13%). This type of attack can completely curtail the right to demonstrate, as is the case in Nicaragua, where, due to State repression and exile, our sister defenders mark eight years since the last time they were able to march together on #8M.
March 2026 arrives in a regional and international context shaped by the rise of far-right forces and misogynist anti-rights narratives, which are disseminated on a massive scale through digital spaces, the media, and official discourse from institutions and governments. Added to this is the beginning of a new cycle of imperialist expansion by the United States, backed by its military and economic power, aimed at deepening interventionist and extractivist policies, territorial devastation, the plundering of natural resources and the dispossession of the peoples and communities of Abya Yala to benefit oligarchies, corrupt elites and international capital.
Meanwhile, the normalization and impunity of atrocities such as the genocide perpetrated by the State of Israel in Gaza, as well as the scheme exposed in the Epstein case - an international network of patriarchal pacts among elites where power, money, and sexual violence are used to guarantee impunity and reproduce privilege based on the exploitation and violence against women and girls, many of whom are poor and come from countries in our region - sends the inhumane message that today, in the 21st century, for those who govern and their networks of interests, there are countless bodies that are disposable, exploitable, and vulnerable to violence, almost always marked by their gender - being a woman or gender dissident -, the color of their skin, their origin, or their social class.
This global scenario is not abstract or far away; it directly affects our territories. It translates into the escalation of multiple forms of violence, the expansion of repressive policies, the deepening of precarious living conditions, and the increase in migration and forced displacement, with differentiated impacts on women. In this context, those of us who defend human rights are exposed to greater risks precisely because we challenge these power structures.
Our leadership and our political and social participation challenge the root structures of gender-based discrimination and inequality. It is therefore no coincidence that we identified explicit gender-based violence as a component of more than half (63%) of the attacks documented during the months of March between 2020 and 2025: misogynist messages, smear campaigns focused on our sexuality or identity, sexualized threats, and discourses that seek to discipline us, “send us back to our homes” and punish us for disobeying the patriarchal mandate.
Given this context, now more than ever, it is vital that the voices of women and gender expansive people reverberate in the streets and the digital territories, making it clear that we are not willing to retreat from any of the rights we have won; that we will not be silenced by rising authoritarianism and the deepening of capitalist, racist and patriarchal violence; and that we remain firm, stubborn, rebellious and caring among ourselves on the road to defend what was gained and to continue advancing towards the construction of a better world for all people and beings in the Web of Life.
This is why IM-Defensoras, along with our national and territorial networks and articulations, remains vigilant during this month, reminding States that marching and raising our voices is our right. We will continue to document and denounce patriarchal attacks and violence against Mesoamerican women defenders, their organizations and communities.
- Data from Guatemala for the period 2020-2024. ↩︎︎