Mexico City, Mexico — With nearly 500 votes in favor of, Mexico’s Olimipia Law will be revised to include sextortion. Over the weekend, the Plenary of the Chamber of Deputies approved expanding the concept of digital violence in Mexico law.
The modification of the current law will add sextortion to the General Law on Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence.
The Plenary of the Chamber of Deputies approved with 480 votes, the opinion that considers digital violence as the fraudulent action of threatening, blackmailing, coercing or extorting a woman to display sexual content without prior consent by means of communication technologies.
The addition to Article 20 of the General Law on Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence was turned over to the Senate of the Republic for its constitutional effects.
It refers that it is necessary to update and strengthen the Law in order to contemplate “sextortion” as a form of violence against women, since this conduct transgresses and violates the human rights of women within the Mexican State; therefore, it is imperative to make it visible and attend to it through the generation of public policies and government actions.
In substantiating the opinion, the president of the Gender Equality Commission, deputy Julieta Vences Valencia, expressed that it seeks to expand the concept of digital violence.
This, by including that it should also be considered as digital violence, “any malicious action of threatening, blackmailing, coercing, extorting a woman by exposing, distributing, disseminating, exhibiting, transmitting, marketing, offering, exchanging or sharing images, audios, videos real or simulated intimate sexual content, better known as pack, without their consent, approval or authorization, in any area of their private or public life of their own image”.