Women

Rape and Domestic Violence: The law criminalizes rape of men or women, and the criminal code’s definition of rape may apply to spousal rape, at the judge’s discretion. The law requires the Attorney General’s Office to prosecute rape cases whether or not the victim presses charges, and the law does not permit the victim to withdraw the criminal charge. The penalty for rape is generally imprisonment for six to 10 years. Laws against rape were not effectively enforced.

The law prohibits domestic violence and generally provides for sentences ranging from one to three years in prison, although some forms of domestic violence carry higher penalties. The law also permits restraining orders against offenders. Laws against domestic violence remained poorly enforced, and violence against women, including domestic violence, remained a widespread and serious problem.

As of October the Office of the Inspector General reported five cases of alleged rape by police officers and six cases of sexual assault.

Sexual Harassment: The law prohibits sexual harassment and provides imprisonment of up to five years if the victim is an adult and up to eight years if the victim is a minor. Courts may impose fines in addition to a prison term in cases where the perpetrator maintains a position of trust or authority over the victim. The law also mandates that employers take measures against sexual harassment, violence against women, and other workplace harassment. The law requires employers to create and implement preventive programs to address violence against women, sexual abuse, and other psychosocial risks. The government, however, did not enforce sexual harassment laws effectively.

Coercion in Population Control: There were no reports of coerced abortion, involuntary sterilization, or other coercive population control methods. Estimates on maternal mortality and contraceptive prevalence are available at: www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publications/monitoring/maternal-mortality-2015/en/ .

Discrimination: The constitution grants women and men the same legal rights, but women did not enjoy equal treatment. The law establishes sentences of one to three years in prison for public officials who deny a person’s civil rights based on gender and six months to two years for employers who discriminate against women in the workplace, but employees generally did not report such violations due to fear of employer reprisals.

While the law prohibits discrimination based on gender, women suffered from cultural, economic, and societal discrimination. The law requires equal pay for equal work, but according to the 2016 World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report, the average wage paid to women for comparable work was 54 percent, down from 60 percent in 2015, of the compensation paid to men.

Children

Birth Registration: Children derive citizenship by birth within the country and from their parents. The law requires parents to register a child within 15 days of birth or pay a $2.85 fine. Failure to register resulted in denial of school enrollment.

Education: Education is free, universal, compulsory through the ninth grade, and nominally free through high school. Rural areas, however, frequently did not provide required education to all eligible students due to a lack of resources and because rural parents often withdrew their children from school by the sixth grade, requiring them to work.

Child Abuse: Child abuse remained a serious and widespread problem. For additional information, see Appendix C.

Early and Forced Marriage: The legal minimum age for marriage is 18. On August 17, legislators approved a ban on child marriage to prevent child abusers from using legal technicalities to avoid imprisonment.

Sexual Exploitation of Children: Child sex trafficking is prohibited by law. On March 29, the Legislative Assembly approved a reform to the penal code to increase prison sentences for convicted traffickers from four to eight years, to six to 10 years.

The minimum age for consensual sex is 18. The law classifies statutory rape as sexual relations with anyone under the age of 18 and includes penalties of four to 13 years’ imprisonment for violations.

The law prohibits paying anyone under the age of 18 for sexual services. The law prohibits participating in, facilitating, or purchasing materials containing child pornography and provides for prison sentences of up to 16 years for violations. Despite these provisions, sexual exploitation of children remained a problem.

International Child Abductions: The country is a party to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. See the Department of State’s Annual Report on International Parental Child Abduction at travel.state.gov/content/childabduction/en/legal/compliance.html.

Anti-Semitism

The Jewish community totaled approximately 150 persons. There were no known reports of anti-Semitic acts.

Trafficking in Persons

See the Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report at www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/.

Persons with Disabilities

The law prohibits discrimination against persons with physical, sensory, intellectual, and mental disabilities. The National Council for Comprehensive Attention to Persons with Disability (CONAIPD), composed of representatives from multiple government entities, is the governmental agency responsible for protecting disability rights, but lacks enforcement power. According to CONAIPD, the government did not allocate sufficient resources to enforce prohibitions against discrimination effectively, particularly in education, employment, and transportation. The government did not effectively enforce legal requirements for access to buildings, information, and communications for persons with disabilities. Few access ramps or provisions for the mobility of persons with disabilities existed.

According to CONAIPD, there is no mechanism to verify compliance with the law requiring businesses and nongovernment agencies to hire one person with disabilities for every 25 hires. CONAIPD reported employers frequently fired persons who acquired disabilities and would not consider persons with disabilities for work for which they qualified. Further, some academic institutions would not accept children with disabilities due to a lack of facilities and resources. No formal system existed for filing a discrimination complaint involving a disability with the government. The Ministry of Labor’s General Directorate for Labor Inspection imposed 403 fines on businesses between 2014 and 2017 for violations of the labor law that requires the hiring of persons with disabilities.

Indigenous People

According to the 2007 census, the most recent for which this data was available, 0.4 percent of citizens identified as indigenous. A 2014 constitutional amendment recognizes the rights of indigenous people, but no laws provide indigenous people rights to share in revenue from exploitation of natural resources on historically indigenous lands. The government did not demarcate any lands as belonging to indigenous communities. Because few possessed title to land, opportunities for bank loans and other forms of credit remained extremely limited.

Acts of Violence, Discrimination, and Other Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

The law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. On November 13, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal announced new guidelines to protect LGBTI persons from discrimination at election polls. Under the guidelines, individuals cannot be denied the right to vote because the photo on their identification card does not match their physical appearance or gender expression.

On August 30, the attorney general filed charges against eight Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang members for the aggravated homicides of three transgender persons. The in-depth police investigation by a specialized unit produced credible evidence that the victims had been involved in gang-related extortion activities. On February 18, two of the victims arrived at a party in San Luis Talpa, La Paz Department, when perpetrators fired shots from a vehicle. Authorities reported that the gangs killed a third transgender victim on February 21 in Cuyultitan, in La Paz, in retaliation for her participation in the killings of the first two victims. In March the PNC assigned its High Visibility Crimes Unit to investigate the homicides of the three transgender women, and the Secretary for Social Inclusion met with activists to hear their concerns about LGBTI hate crimes. While the crimes themselves were later determined to be gang related, the government and the PDDH issued statements against hate crimes in response to concerns expressed immediately after the crimes by the LGBTI community.

A March 21 hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights focused on anti-LGBTI violence and hate crimes. One NGO told commissioners that at least 600 persons had experienced hate crimes based on their sexual orientation or gender identity since 2004. As of August 31, the PDDH had received six complaints for crimes against LGBTI persons.

NGOs reported that public officials, including police, engaged in violence and discrimination against LGBTI persons. Members of the LGBTI community stated that PNC and Attorney General’s Office personnel ridiculed them when they applied for identification cards or reported cases of violence against LGBTI persons. The NGO Association for Communication and Training of Transgender Women with HIV in El Salvador (COMCAVIS Trans) reported that, as of September, a total of 28 LGBTI persons were attacked or killed because of their sexual orientation.

HIV and AIDS Social Stigma

Although the law prohibits discrimination on the basis of HIV/AIDS status, Entre Amigos, an LGBTI nongovernmental organization, reported that discrimination due to HIV was widespread. As of August 31, the PDDH reported one case of discrimination against persons with HIV or AIDS. The Ministry of Labor reported one case of discrimination against an HIV-positive employee based on the illness in 2016.