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UN promotes safe cities, spaces for women in Mexican exhibition

Xinhua, February 19, 2016 Adjust font size:

The United Nations promoted the concept of safe cities and spaces for women in a three-day Mexican exhibition, which concluded in the central state of Puebla on Thursday.

The Smart City Exhibition Puebla 2016: Urban Innovation towards Fair Cities, part of the UN's global flagship program of Safe Cities and Spaces for Women and Girls, opened Tuesday to enhance the public awareness and good practices to protect women living in cities from violence and sexual harassments.

According to Luiza Carvalho, regional director of UN Women for the Americas and the Caribbean, 50 percent to 90 percent of women in cities in UN cases reported some sorts of sexual violence in transport vehicles and other public places.

Carvalho added that the severity of sexual harassment for women in public places has not been recognized enough, since governments have rolled out "few laws, policies or interventions to prevent it. Harassers are also highly likely to go unpunished in daily life."

The general ignorance of sexual harassment has eroded women's chances to go to school, get employed, enjoy essential public services and fully participate in public affairs, warned Carvalho.

"We can no longer continue living with this reality," said the UN representative. "UN Women's message in this respect is overwhelming -- Violence is not a women's problem but society's as a whole. It is unacceptable and can be avoided. Our aim is to make every city free from violence against women and girls."

"Cities with better gender equality have a higher level of development and they are more sustainable," Carvalho noted.

The global initiative, launched in 2010 to prevent and eliminate sexual harassments and various types of violence that women and girls face in public space of cities all over the world, as required by Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, embraced the joining of Mexico City in 2015 and Torreon and Puebla in 2016.

Besides holding the exhibition, Puebla will also take measures to prevent violence against women in marketplaces, said Carvalho.

The exhibition organizers said 150 speakers are expected to attend the event, including Erik Vittrup, representative in Mexico for the UN Habitat Program, and Eduardo Bohorquez, executive director of Transparencia Mexicana. Endi