From the 2000s onwards, several Latin American nations included feminicide in their legislation, as a result of growing pressure from civil society, which had been denouncing the omission and responsibility of the State in perpetuating violence against women, and from international organizations, which reiterated recommendations for countries to react against the homicide of women.
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While some countries have typified the femicide Through reforms in criminal codes, others have established aggravating factors for the murder of women when the motivation is gender.
Feminicide Law
The word femicide gained prominence in Brazil from 2015, when the Federal Law 13.104/15, popularly known as the Feminicide Law. This is because it criminalizes the murder of women committed based on gender: the victim is killed just because she is a woman.
This law changed the Brazilian Penal Code, including the femicide as a qualifying circumstance for the crime of homicide. In this way, it was added to the list of heinous crimes (Law No. 8.072/1990) – such as rape and genocide – with higher penalties.
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Heinous crimes are crimes that the State considers to be extremely serious, those that cause the most aversion to society, and, therefore, that deserve different and more rigorous treatment than other criminal offenses.
It is important to clarify: not all murders of women are covered by the Feminicide Law. The legislation provides for some situations for it to be applied:
- Domestic or family violence: when the crime results from domestic violence or is committed alongside it, that is, when the perpetrator of the crime is a family member of the victim or has already maintained some type of emotional bond with her;
- Disparagement or discrimination against the status of women: that is, when the crime results from gender discrimination, manifested by misogyny and the objectification of women, whether the perpetrator is known to the victim or not.
recent data
O most recent study of the Brazilian Public Security Forum on feminicides shows that, in 2021, a woman was murdered, on average, every seven hours in the country, just because she was a woman.
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According to 16th Brazilian Public Security Yearbook, released in July 2022, 1.341 cases of femicide in 2021, 68% of victims were between 7 and 18 years old, 44% died at home and 65,6% were black. The perpetrators of feminicides in 62% of cases were the partner or ex-partner.
Furthermore, according to research Perceptions of the Brazilian population about feminicide, carried out by Instituto PatrÃcia Galvão e Locomotiva and published in November 2021, 30% of women have already been threatened with death by a partner or ex and one in every 6 has suffered attempted feminicide.
Curto curation:
- Feminicide Dossier (PatrÃcia Galvão Institute);
- The role of firearms in violence against women (Sou da Paz Institute);
- Seven out of every 10 femicides in Brazil are black women (The Globe 🚥);
- Relatives commit 56% of feminicides in the world, warns UN report (FSP 🚥);
- More than five girls or women are killed every hour on average in 2021 (UN News).
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(🇬🇧): content in English
(*): content in other languages ​​is translated by Google Tradutor
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