Wine and Cheese for Change
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Femicide, Feminicide and the Femicide Law
What is Femicide?
- Femicide is not simply the murder of females but rather the killing of females by males because they are female.
- It is a form of terrorism that functions to define gender lines, enact and bolster male dominance, and to render women chronically and profoundly unsafe.
- Femicide occurs throughout the world – China, India, Middle East, Africa, Latin America
- Approximately 40% of violent deaths of women in Guatemala take place in Guatemala City.
- What is Feminicide?
- Feminicide is a political term. It encompasses more than femicide because it holds responsible not only the male perpetrators but also the state and judicial structures that normalize misogyny.
- Feminicide connotes not only the murder of women by men because they are women but also indicates state responsibility for these murders whether through the commission of the actual killing, toleration of the perpetrators’ acts of violence, or omission of state responsibility to ensure the safety of its female citizens.
- In Guatemala, feminicide is a crime that exists because of the absence of guarantees to protect the rights of women.
- Feminicide is a political term. It encompasses more than femicide because it holds responsible not only the male perpetrators but also the state and judicial structures that normalize misogyny.
- What is Impunity?
It is the failure to bring to justice those that have committed crimes. In Guatemala between 2005 and 2007 only 2% of 2,000 cases
involving the violent deaths of women were
“resolved” (some without convictions).Anabella Noriega of the Human Rights
Ombudsman’s Office also reported that in 2004
Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA
only one case out of 500 resulted in a conviction
(a rate of .002%).Families and victims who denounce crimes
against women are often faced with corrupt or
indifferent police, strong gender bias, and a
dysfunctional judicial system(source: http://www.ghrc-usa.org/Publications/Femicide_Law_ProgressAgainstImpunity.pdf)
- Is there a Law against Femicide?
YES- there is.
- The Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC) and a network of NGOs in DC pushed through a resolution on femicide in the US House of Representatives and Senate.
- House Resolution 100 passed on May 1st, 2007 and Senate Resolution 178 passed on March 11th, 2008.
- This pressured the Guatemalan government to act. Laws against femicide and other forms of violence against women passed on April 9th, 2008.
- Under the Femicide Law, 11 cases have been tried as of February 25th, 2009.
- There has been only one conviction under the Femicide Law:
- Calixto Simón Cum received 5 years in prison for beating his partner Vilma Angélica de La Cruz Marroquín. De La Cruz lived with Cum for three years. During that time he raped and beat her regularly. He threatened to kill her and her four children if she left him.
- Survivor’s Foundation helped De La Cruz to denounce her partner, leading to his incarceration.
- The Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC) and a network of NGOs in DC pushed through a resolution on femicide in the US House of Representatives and Senate.
Richmond, VA 23223
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