Women violent deaths up near 28% in Panama

The  20 “Femicides” in Panama  2019, was the same number as in 2018, but violent deaths of women rose 57.8% to 30 cases, according to statistics released by the Public Ministry on Friday, January 10.

“Violent death refers to all homicides of female persons that were not considered as femicides” or the murder of a woman because of her gender, “according to the prosecutor’s assessment of the case,”

Most of the victims of femicide were between 25 and 29 years old (5) and between 18 and 24 (4), although the official figures for 2019 include 2 cases of women 80 years of age and older.

The weapon most used to take the lives of women only because of their gender (10), was a knife while four were killed with a firearm and three by strangling, among others.

In the case of violent deaths, the majority of the victims (8) were women between 18 and 24 years  of age . A firearm was used in 20 of the 30 cases recordedlast year.

Currently, the prison sentence for femicide in Panama is 25 to 30 years, while for other types of gender violence it is between 5 and 8 years.