Hugs and kisses are now described by law in Mexico as examples of “suggestive physical contact or sexual contact” undesirable in federal public management.
The new code of ethics, published in the official gazette this Tuesday (8), deepens and strengthens the previous one, sanctioned in 2019, to try to curb sexual harassment in public administration, and will come into effect from this Wednesday (9) ).
According to the new law, in addition to kissing and hugging, touching, singing, comments about the appearance of people with a sexual connotation — made in person or through other means of communication — and the dissemination of rumors or any information about the sex life of people must be avoided. someone, among 17 other prohibited behaviors.
While the previous code did not even mention the word harassment, the new text defines the concept and presents differences between sexual harassment practiced by hierarchical superiors and abuse in which this power relationship does not necessarily exist.
Anyone who gives gifts or manifests in a way that demonstrates sexual interest in a person within public bodies will also be punished. Insinuations about meetings with the same purpose are also prohibited. In addition, if the server uses your private social networks to make your work activities public, it will not be able to restrict or block citizens’ access to your profile.
The law says that it is a public official’s commitment to “consider that social networks can be an extension of people in electronic media” and, therefore, he must “maintain behavior in accordance with public ethics and respect anyone, regardless of their ideology. “.
In addition to harassment, the new code tries to curb corrupt practices, and also treats the employee’s commitments as “refusing any kind of gifts, favors, compensation, donations or similar services that benefit him or his family members up to the fourth degree of consanguinity or affinity” .
Failure to comply with the new rules must be reported to the ethics committees and internal affairs of the public bodies themselves, and the punishments will be defined in accordance with the general law of administrative responsibilities.
The new code is published at a time when women’s demonstrations for the end of sexual harassment and gender violence in the country are multiplying.
This violence also manifests itself outside public management, coming from a group over which the Mexican state has little control: organized crime. According to official figures, Mexico registers an average of ten murders of women per day.
According to the World Bank, which gathers data from 1990 to 2018, the intentional murders of women show a growing trend and are at the highest level in this period.
There were 5.8 women killed per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018, compared to 1.9 per 100,000 inhabitants for 2007, the lowest figure. In the meantime, there was a drop in the metric only between 2012 and 2015.
