The organization La Casa del Encuentro released a report in July finding that during the first six months of 2010 there were 126 domestic violence deaths in Argentina. The organization, which based its statistics on newspaper articles due to a lack of official statistics, noted that this constituted a forty percent increase from the number of reported domestic violence deaths during the same time period in 2009.
Of the 126 victims, only 18 had filed complaints against attackers. Most of the perpetrators were reported to be present or former boyfriends or husbands and the majority of deaths occurred in the Argentina’s most populous province, Buenos Aires.
La Casa del Encuentro’s general coordinator Fabiana Tunez urged the government to establish “awareness campaigns” and develop strategies to “prevent and eradicate” sexual violence. Tunez further appealed to the government to promulgate regulations in order to finalize the implementation of a March 2009 law calling for the prevention, punishment and eradication of violence against women. Finally, Tunez advocated for the adoption of policies that would deny perpetrators of domestic violence killings custody of their children and impose exemplary sanctions on domestic violence offenders.