Femicides in Colombia: the deaths that the State does not count

Colombia has laws for everything, although they are of little use.

For seven years, the Rosa Elvira Cely Law (1761 of 2015) has existed, which punishes femicide as an autonomous crime, with sentences of between 40 and 65 years, with no possibility of reduction, and orders the State to document and monitor these crimes with in order to have figures on this violence.

Like other norms, the one that marked a milestone in the fight against sexist violence in the country is not fully complied with either.

Colombia arrives this November 25, when the International Day to Eliminate Violence against Women is commemorated, without knowing how many women have been murdered.

The Prosecutor's Office speaks of 180, while the Colombian Femicide Observatory, an initiative of civil society, says that there have been 500.

Adriana Alquichides, a lawyer with experience representing victims of violence, explains why Colombian justice still fails to correctly categorize crimes against women in some investigations.

“There are cases that can be made of feminicide, but that are being investigated for intrafamily violence.

That depends a lot on the prosecutor.

When there are sexual attacks, even though they could put the woman's life at risk, they are being investigated for sexual crimes, but not as femicide, ”she points out.

Colombia, unlike countries like Mexico, which, given the terrible record of femicides, has created specialized prosecutors, hardly has expert officials who know how to deal with cases of gender violence.

The few that exist are in the big cities.

In some courts and police stations, femicides are still referred to as "crimes of passion."

The State has failed to communicate its own guidelines.

If a directive issued by the Prosecutor's Office were complied with, impunity would not be 90%, according to UN Women alert.

The entity's order is that any disappearance of a woman must be immediately investigated as an act of femicide and that the first hypothesis of the death of a woman must be femicide.

But it does not always happen that way.

The perpetrators continue to be accused of murder or attempted murder,

in the few cases where there is conviction.

There are also no figures on how many sentences there are for femicides.

According to the Prosecutor's Office, of the 180 cases that it claims to have registered this year, in 176 there have been "advances."

The friends and relatives of the victims undertake the searches for the disappeared women alone, given how difficult it is to do it with the State company.

Dennys, a Venezuelan woman who immigrated to Colombia three years ago, tells how she went looking for her friend.

"On my own account and without even having money for a bus, I set out to find Yajaira," Dennys says by phone.

The victim was 23 years old and she was a neighbor who had become more than a friend.

She loved her like a daughter.

When she disappeared, she walked for hours looking for her in the Medellín neighborhood where they lived.

She went to the clinics, she posted her photo on social media.

In the end, she found her in Forensic Medicine, she had been shot and her body had been dumped in a river.

A month after her murder, they captured the alleged femicide, a man who had been her partner.

The investigation, four months later, has not made any major progress.

Yajaira Herrera had two children.

A poster from the feminist political movement Estamos Listas with information about Yajaira Herrera.

Olga Amparo Sánchez, director of Casa de la Mujer, an organization that has worked for women's rights since 1982, acknowledges that the State has made an effort to move forward, but it has not been enough.

“There is no unified national system that records whether a woman who went to Legal Medicine four times for personal injuries or psychological violence was able to receive care or if she received any protection measure.

There is very little information.

We do not know how many prisoners there are for violence against women or at what stage their processes are.

In crimes against women there is 80% or 90% impunity, ”says Sánchez, who has dedicated her life to defending women's rights.

"The idea persists that women's lives are worth nothing and this is replicated in families, in schools, in the media."

Sánchez says that Colombia needs a cultural transformation, a change of mentality that does not hesitate to condemn sexist violence.

“In this country we believe that we solve everything by law.

We don't need more laws, we need to move forward until violence against women is inadmissible, by any means”.

This November 25, as always, he will participate in the marches that will take to the streets.

The slogan will be "We are lives, we are not figures", announces Sánchez.

“We are tired of being called every November 25 to ask how many women were murdered.

The cases remain at one figure and on the 26th no one remembers what happened anymore.

The Prosecutor's Office and other institutions, such as Legal Medicine, have identified that in most murders of women there is a pattern of brutality that is becoming more frequent.

Dismembered women, thrown onto the public highway, victims of impalement.

Lawyer Adriana Alquichides says that the perpetrators use crimes to send a threatening message to all women.

“One she begins to feel that she is in an insecure world, in an insecure country and that is what the patriarchal structures seek,” reflects the lawyer.

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