The President of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, has signed this Tuesday a decree for the creation of the Ministry of Women and Human Rights, which will replace the Secretariat of Human Rights in all its competences.
This new government portfolio, presented in a ceremony at the Casa de la Cultura in Quito, will start operations immediately and will be headed by the current Secretary of Human Rights, Paola Flores, as reported by ‘El Telégrafo’.
The head of the new Women’s Ministry thanked «the political will» of the Ecuadorian President in Human Rights matters, as well as the women’s social organizations for achieving the creation of the portfolio.
«It is a great achievement for the girls and women of the country», said Flores, stressing that «everything that happens today is historic and transcendent».
Meanwhile, the creation of the Single Registry of Violence Against Women has also been announced, which seeks to establish measures and public policies against gender violence in the Latin American country, in addition to addressing the most urgent cases for immediate assistance to those affected, as well as the punishment and penalization of the aggressors.
The program, which is supported by the European Union and the Spotlight initiative, consists of the convergence of nine institutions of the Ecuadorian state for the establishment of a single registry with history, demographic information and statistical data on incidents of violence affecting citizens, particularly children and women who are victims of this problem, the newspaper reported.
Guillermo Lasso has described the creation of the ministry and the registry as a «historical debt» with the country’s girls and women. In addition, he has advanced that the new portfolio will work together with the Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion and the Ministry of Labor to strengthen women’s access to the labor market and reduce the wage gap.
«Rest assured that my government’s determination to combat and eradicate violence against women will not stop for a single day,» Lasso has affirmed.
