The minister’s proposal was presented this Wednesday, June 6, in the Senate, in a scenario in which a minute reforming article 325 of the Federal Penal Code, approved in March 2021 by the Chamber of Deputies, is in the freezer, to establish a model criminal offense for the entire country.
Due to this delay in legislating, 33 different criminal types of femicide persist in the country: one federal and 32 local. The framework is completed by a general law that seeks to combat violence against women, not just femicide.
Due to the diversity of codes that increases the probability of impunity, for the fight against gender violence there is less and less budget.
According to the Ministry of Finance (SHCP), in the first quarter of the year no weight had been exercised in the Support Program for Women’s Instances in the Federal Entities (PAIMEF), which are presumed to be places where women have access to free comprehensive care services, offered by trained personnel and “where they are treated with dignity and in the protection of their privacy.”
Nor had resources been spent on the Support Program for Specialized Shelters for Women Victims of Gender Violence, their Daughters and Sons, which puts 75 centers of the National Shelter Network at risk of extinction, which they denounced at the end of May – they had not been given 420 million pesos already budgeted.
Furthermore, the Specialized Prosecutor for Crimes of Violence Against Women and Human Trafficking responsible for investigating femicides and other forms of violence had resources cut for this year.
Nor have the guidelines been generated for the National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence against Women (Conavim) to access resources. Almost halfway through the year, in May, the guidelines for shelters were issued, and to this is added that there are 25 alerts of gender-based violence against women in 643 municipalities of the 22 entities of the country, but these are not accompanied with resources or policy change.
That is why, among other elements, Tagle values that more than a new law, it is necessary to strengthen the existing one, a budget policy that prioritizes attention to women, and the will to comply with it, from the Executive and Judicial powers, without ignoring that the legislature has pending.
“The main contribution of the Judiciary should be what are they willing to do in the Judiciary so that public ministries, prosecutors and judges act, modify behaviors, ways of judging, and end impunity?”, he considers.
On this, the minister has offered that he will shortly present a guide to investigate femicides with a gender perspective before the prosecutors.
