Domestic violence against Latin American women, frecuency and trends in the Covid - 19 pandemic¿s context

During the Covid-19 pandemic, one of the main phenomena evidenced in parallel with preventive isolation was the increase in domestic violence (1). Countries with solid national records reported an increase of at least a third of the official figures compared to the same period in the previous year (2,3). The hypotheses about the origin of the increase in violence during this period point to primary structural conditions that have been accentuated and magnified by the pandemic (domestic violence, poverty, and inequity, disproportion of power according to sex, sociocultural discrimination) associated with the appearance of new factors typical of the current situation (environmental stressors, fear of contagion, stigma, loss of close beings, permanent coexistence with the aggressor, unemployment and economic reasons) (4). Reports in different locations show the dramatic increase in intimate partner violence and violence against women since the beginning of the confinement(4). This trend is even more complicated considering that the World Health Organization estimated before the start of the pandemic that approximately 35% of women in the world will experience physical or sexual violence by their partner in the course of their lives (5¿8). This phenomenon is even more alarming in Latin America, where deaths and disabilities due to violent acts have historically occupied the top positions in health indicators (9). Therefore, we designed a systematic review to quantify the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown in violence against women in our region.