Feminicidios en Colombia: una realidad que se escapa de los sistemas penales

Abstract

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Colombia ranks fourth in femicides in Latin America. Characterized by high levels of violence against women, with an annual growth rate of 19% since 2019, according to the National Bulletin of the Colombian Observatory of Femicides, only for the year 2022, 612 femicides were registered in Colombia. Therefore, the present article aims to approach the knowledge about the behavior of crimes established as femicides in Colombia. To do so, from an empirical-analytical perspective, with a quantitative approach, a data matrix was worked on, from which sociodemographic variables such as the victim's age group and the department where she was located at the time of being a victim of femicide were extracted; facts related to the act of femicide such as the year of the complaint and the year in which it entered the accusatory penal system, and finally, the current process of the act of femicide before the penal system and the total count of victims. From the analysis of this data, the deficiency of Colombia's penal system was evidenced, which, despite establishing femicide as a crime since July 6, 2015, with Law 1761 Rosa Elvira Cely, fails to be effective for the judicialization processes. Likewise, it is observed how the Colombian state, despite the implementation of secretariats and organizations, has not been able to reach the most vulnerable spaces of women, as they are still conceived as private matters, preventing the prevention and care that women who may become femicide victims deserve. Finally, it is notable that from political, cultural, and social contexts, the idea that gender violence is not a matter of greater importance in Colombian reality is still preserved, given that the same social structures legitimize femicide acts and configure them to revictimize and blame the victim.