The report identifies the progress made in institutional approaches to tackling violence against women in the region and will contribute to the knowledge base on implementation of national policies and plans and will be an important resource for many countries in the process of formulating, implementing and evaluating their own public policies and plans. It additionally presents promising experiences developed by some states in the areas of prevention; care; punishment; and reparation of violence against women and provides recommendations to address the critical bottlenecks persisting in responses to violence against women in the region.

The report is based on responses from 33 countries to a questionnaire oriented toward the national mechanisms for women’s advancement and bilateral interviews with some of their representatives, carried out during 2014 and 2015, in addition to revision of secondary sources of information. The countries that contributed to the research are: Antigua and Barbuda; Argentina; Bahamas; Barbados; Belize; Plurinational state of Bolivia; Brazil; Chile; Colombia; Costa Rica; Cuba; Dominica; Ecuador; El Salvador; Grenada; Guatemala; Guyana; Haiti; Honduras; Jamaica; Mexico; Nicaragua; Panama; Paraguay; Peru; Dominican Republic; Saint Kitts and Nevis; Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; Saint Lucia; Suriname; Trinidad and Tobago; Uruguay; and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.