May 4, 2017
The Northern Triangle of Central America, which includes El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, is one of the most violent regions in the world. Along with staggering homicide rates, all three countries have extremely high rates of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), including rape and sexual assault, domestic violence, human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and sexual abuse of children. The three countries also have some of the highest rates of femicide, or the gender-motivated killing of women and girls, in the world, and rates have risen dramatically over the past several years. In El Salvador, a woman was murdered every 16 hours in 2015. In Honduras, gender-based violence is the second leading cause of death for women of reproductive age. On average, two women are murdered each day in Guatemala, and the number of women murdered each year has more than tripled since 2000.
