Mneesha Gellman Writes on El Salvador, Migration, & Violence

Mneesha Gellman, Associate Professor of Political Science, recently published a piece for the Globe Post that examines the male-dominated culture of El Salvador in the wake of a significant case that found a perpetrator guilty of femicide, or the killing of a female by a male because of their gender.

This message of consequence-free male domination, when coupled with the reality of a weak central government that does not have a monopoly on violence, means that the state cannot protect its citizens. The Salvadoran Congress can pass high-minded human rights laws to obtain international respectability – and it should, because creating such legal framework is part of the incremental work of system-building – yet the reality remains that El Salvador is currently unable to guarantee the human rights of many women and girls to their physical integrity.

Gellman also updated a piece first published in October regarding violence in El Salvador, which is one of the top migration countries to the U.S. According to Human Rights Watch, since 2013, at least 138 deported people from the U.S. back to that country have been killed.

Read the Globe Post piece and Conversation article.