{"id":873,"date":"2026-09-02T17:06:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T09:06:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/en.uhhc.com.cn\/?p=873"},"modified":"2026-09-02T17:06:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T09:06:25","slug":"femicide-in-mexico-stronger-laws-weaker-enforcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/en.uhhc.com.cn\/index.php\/2026\/09\/02\/femicide-in-mexico-stronger-laws-weaker-enforcement\/","title":{"rendered":"Femicide in Mexico: Stronger Laws, Weaker Enforcement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Wesley Liu<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Outside the National Palace in Mexico City, women hold crosses to protest murders and violence against women. \u00a9 REUTERS\/Edgard Garrido<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Femicide in Mexico is one of the clearest examples of how human rights violations against women can persist even when governments have passed relevant laws. Broadly speaking, femicide refers to the killing of women because of their gender, or killings that occur within a context of gender-based violence and discrimination. In Mexico, the legal term commonly used is feminicidio<\/em>, but in this article I use “femicide” in a broader sense, while using “feminicide” when discussing the legal category. Over the past two decades, Mexico has passed important laws and court rulings aimed at protecting women and improving investigations into their deaths. On paper, this appears to be genuine progress. But the numbers remain high, and many families still have to push authorities just to obtain basic justice. This article argues that although Mexico has established a stronger legal framework against femicide, such violations remain widespread due to inconsistent enforcement, investigations that are often mishandled or misclassified, and the fact that many legal reforms were only implemented under pressure from victims’ families, activists, and international human rights bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand how serious this problem is, one must first look at the statistics. According to official data from the Executive Secretariat of Mexico’s National Public Security System, recorded female homicides have increased significantly over the past several years. Government records show 411 in 2015, 605 in 2016, 742 in 2017, 898 in 2018, 947 in 2019, 948 in 2020, and 981 in 2021. The numbers then declined slightly, to 947 in 2022 and 852 in 2023 (SESNSP). Despite the post-2021 decline, the long-term trend remains disturbing, as the 2023 figure is still far higher than that of 2015. Thus, if one asks whether this violation is increasing, decreasing, or holding steady, the most appropriate answer is that it rose substantially over time and then fell only slightly from its peak. This does not mean the problem is under control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, even these statistics may not tell the full story. One issue in Mexico is that the classification of women’s deaths depends heavily on how police and prosecutors investigate. If investigations are poorly conducted, ignore evidence of prior abuse, or fail to look for gender-based motives, cases may be recorded as general homicides rather than feminicides. This means that official feminicide data may actually undercount the problem. So when people say “these are the official figures,” that is important\u2014but equally important is that official figures are shaped by the very institutions that are criticised for poor investigation. In this sense, the statistics reveal both the severity of the violence and the weaknesses of the system itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Examining the broader context of violence against women also helps to understand the problem, because femicide usually does not occur in isolation. Mexico’s National Survey on the Dynamics of Household Relationships (ENDIREH) found that 70.1% of women aged 15 and over in Mexico had experienced at least one type of violence in their lifetime, with 42.8% having experienced violence in the previous twelve months (INEGI). These figures are alarmingly high. They indicate that femicide occurs within a broader environment in which violence against women is already widespread. A woman who is later killed may have already suffered harassment, threats, physical abuse, sexual violence, stalking, or domestic violence. In other words, femicide is often the endpoint of a chain of violence that the state failed to stop earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scholars studying feminicide in Latin America argue that it should not be understood merely as individual murder, but rather connected to broader systemic issues of gender inequality, impunity, and state failure (Fregoso and Bejarano). This framework is highly applicable to Mexico. The problem is not just that women are killed, but also that institutions often fail before the killing, fail during the investigation, and then fail again when families seek justice. Viewing femicide from this perspective makes it clear why it is not only a criminal justice issue but also a human rights issue. It implicates the rights to life, equality, security, and access to justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this article adopts the perspective of the legal system, the next question is: what laws actually exist to protect women from such violence? Mexico’s current legal framework is indeed more robust than in the past. One of the most important laws is the General Law on Women’s Access to a Life Free from Violence, passed in 2007. This law is significant because it recognises that violence against women is not a private matter and that the state has a responsibility to prevent, punish, and respond to it. It also defines different forms of violence and creates the “Gender Violence Alert Mechanism for Women” (commonly known as the AVGM), which is designed to trigger urgent government action in areas where violence against women is particularly severe (General Law). This was a major legal step forward because it brought the issue into the public and political arena.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another major legal development occurred in 2012, when Mexico reformed the Federal Criminal Code to include the crime of feminicide under Article 325 (Federal Criminal Code). This reform was important because it acknowledged that the killing of a woman can have gender-based motives and should not always be treated as ordinary homicide. The law lists factors that can indicate feminicide, such as signs of sexual violence, degrading injuries, prior violent conduct by the perpetrator, threats, or the disposal of the body in a public place (Federal Criminal Code). By defining feminicide in law, Mexico at least recognised that these killings have a specific social and gender context. This recognition matters because, prior to this, many women’s deaths were ignored, downplayed, or lumped together in a way that erased the role of misogyny and gender violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mexico’s legal framework has also been influenced by significant court rulings. One of the most important international cases was the 2009 judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Gonz\u00e1lez et al. (“Cotton Field”) v. Mexico<\/em>. The case involved the disappearance and murder of women in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, and the Court found that Mexico had failed to prevent violence and to investigate it properly (Inter-American Court). The case became very important because it made it harder for the Mexican state to deny the seriousness of gender-based killings. It also made it clear that the state can be held accountable under human rights law when its response is negligent, indifferent, or discriminatory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is also an important domestic ruling, the 2015 case of Mariana Lima Buend\u00eda<\/em>. Mariana Lima’s death was initially classified as a suicide, but her family argued that the investigation had ignored signs of violence. Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that all violent deaths of women must be investigated from the outset with a gender perspective and in accordance with feminicide protocols (SCJN). This was an extremely significant ruling because it directly addressed one of Mexico’s biggest problems: authorities often conclude too early that a woman’s death was a suicide, an accident, or an ordinary homicide, rather than seriously investigating whether gender-based violence was involved. The Mariana Lima case demonstrated that legal reform is not only about creating new offences on paper, but also about changing the way authorities investigate from the very beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, yes, the legal framework has indeed been modified over time. The 2007 law was a major step. The 2012 criminal law reform was another big step. The 2015 Mariana Lima ruling was yet another significant development because it strengthened how the law should be applied. But if one asks who is responsible for these changes, the answer is not only legislators or judges. Many of these changes happened because of pressure from outside the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Victims’ families have been one of the most important forces driving reform. In many cases, the mothers and relatives of murdered women have had to become activists because authorities failed to do their job. The murders in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez are probably the most famous example. For years, families, feminist groups, journalists, and human rights organisations insisted that these were not isolated murders, and that the Mexican state had failed women. This pressure brought international attention to the crisis and eventually contributed to legal change. The Mariana Lima case followed the same pattern. Her mother, Irinea Buend\u00eda, had to keep fighting after authorities quickly accepted that Mariana had died by suicide. Without the family’s pressure, the case might have been lost in the system like many others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This matters because it reveals a key feature of Mexico’s response to femicide: reform is often reactive. The government often changes laws or procedures only after public scandals, sustained activism, or international pressure. This is obviously better than doing nothing, but it remains problematic because it means institutions are not truly leading the effort. A sound legal system should not need constant external pressure merely to do its basic work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next question is how effective these laws actually are. The fairest answer is that they work in some ways, but not yet enough. They have certainly helped make femicide more visible. Public awareness of feminicide as a specific crime and human rights issue is now much higher. Families and activists have stronger legal language to use when demanding justice. Prosecutors are at least supposed to follow feminicide investigation protocols. Courts have recognised that women’s deaths need to be investigated with a gender perspective. So it would be wrong to say the laws have no effect at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, the laws are not effective enough in the most important areas\u2014actual protection and actual justice. If the legal system were working well, the numbers would not remain so high year after year. Even when cases are investigated, the quality of investigations is often criticised. Reports by the CEDAW Committee have noted that Mexico still suffers from feminicide violence, weak enforcement, and persistent impunity (CEDAW Committee). Human Rights Watch has also continued to criticise the country’s failures in protecting women and ensuring access to justice (Human Rights Watch). These criticisms are important because they show that the gap between law and enforcement is not merely an activist claim, but is also acknowledged by international monitoring bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the biggest reasons the law fails to be fully effective is poor investigation. This is perhaps the most obvious point of systemic breakdown. Laws can be strict, but if police do not collect evidence, prosecutors fail to question witnesses properly, or officials hold sexist assumptions about victims, then the law does not accomplish much. In some cases, authorities have been dismissive about women’s disappearances, as if they might have left voluntarily. In other cases, families report that officials blamed the victim’s lifestyle or relationships rather than focusing on the crime itself. These kinds of attitudes undermine the process from the very start. Once a case is mishandled early on, it becomes much harder to correct later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another problem is that enforcement is extremely uneven across the country. Mexico is a federal system, but a large proportion of criminal investigations are conducted at the state level. This means that the quality of enforcement depends on the state, the local prosecutor’s office, the local police, and local political will. Some states may have more specialised units or better protocols, while others may lack resources or simply not prioritise the issue. As a result, even though the law exists nationwide, women do not have equal access to protection in practice. Where a woman lives can have a huge impact on whether her case is taken seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gender Violence Alert Mechanism is another example of this mixed picture. In theory, the AVGM is supposed to act as an emergency response in areas where violence against women is severe. This sounds powerful, and in some ways it is an important tool because it officially recognises that certain places are facing a crisis. But in practice, the alert mechanism has often been criticised as slow, bureaucratic, and of limited impact. Measures may be declared, but that does not always mean they are adequately funded or implemented. So the mechanism exists, but it is not enough on its own. This returns us to the same problem: Mexico often has the right legal language but lacks consistent implementation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This raises the question of whether the law is actually enforced. The honest answer is that it is enforced, but inconsistently and often weakly. There are prosecutions, and some do result in convictions. It would be inaccurate to say the law is completely ignored. But it is also clear that enforcement is not yet strong enough to protect women at the level it should. The persistently high number of recorded female homicides, the complaints of families, and the repeated concerns of international bodies all indicate that enforcement remains one of the weakest links in the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mariana Lima case is a good example. Mexico obviously already had laws against homicide. The problem in that case was not that murder was legal, but that authorities had failed to investigate a woman’s death seriously and with a gender perspective. The Supreme Court had to intervene and rule that violent deaths of women should be treated differently from the outset (SCJN). This ruling was important, but it also showed how much depends on litigation after the fact. In a better-functioning system, families would not have to fight all the way to the Supreme Court just to get a proper investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It must also be noted that enforcement problems do not affect all women in the same way. Women who are poor, indigenous, rural, migrants, or living in areas affected by organised crime may face greater barriers. They may have less access to lawyers, transport, media attention, or support networks. Some may distrust authorities, and in some cases that distrust is understandable. So even when the law is the same on paper, access to justice is unequal in practice. This makes the human rights dimension even starker, because the state fails more severely in relation to some women than others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, Mexico’s response to femicide is a mix of genuine progress and significant failure. The country has passed laws, recognised feminicide in its criminal code, and established court standards that require a gender perspective in investigations\u2014these are genuine advances. Victims’ families and feminist groups have pushed the issue into domestic and international discussion, and that is also genuine progress. But these developments have not solved the problem. The state remains weak in preventing violence, investigating women’s deaths properly, and delivering justice consistently. A legal framework can only do so much if the institutions that enforce it are themselves weak, negligent, or affected by gender discrimination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, I think it would be inaccurate to say Mexico has ignored femicide, but equally inaccurate to say Mexico has successfully solved it. A more appropriate formulation would be that Mexico has acknowledged the problem in law far more than it has solved it in practice. There is a real gap between what the law promises and what women actually experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In sum, femicide in Mexico illustrates the limits of legal reform when enforcement is weak. Mexico has established a stronger legal framework through the 2007 General Law on Women’s Access to a Life Free from Violence, the 2012 federal criminalisation of feminicide, and significant rulings such as the Mariana Lima decision. These changes are important and should not be overlooked. They have helped make violence against women more visible and given families and advocates stronger tools to demand accountability. Yet the statistics remain high, the official figures likely still undercount the problem, and many investigations are still mishandled or delayed. Although Mexico has established a stronger legal framework against femicide, such violations remain widespread due to inconsistent enforcement, investigations that are often mishandled or misclassified, and the fact that many legal reforms were only implemented under pressure from victims’ families, activists, and international bodies. Ultimately, Mexico has made progress in acknowledging femicide, but acknowledgment alone is not enough if women are still being killed and justice still depends too much on how much effort families are willing or able to put into fighting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

CEDAW Committee. Concluding Observations on the Ninth Periodic Report of Mexico.<\/em> United Nations, 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

C\u00f3digo Penal Federal. Art. 325, Diario Oficial de la Federaci\u00f3n<\/em>, 14 June 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fregoso, Rosa-Linda, and Cynthia Bejarano, editors. Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Am\u00e9ricas.<\/em> Duke UP, 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Human Rights Watch. World Report 2024: Mexico.<\/em> Human Rights Watch, 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

INEGI. Encuesta Nacional sobre la Din\u00e1mica de las Relaciones en los Hogares (ENDIREH) 2021.<\/em> Instituto Nacional de Estad\u00edstica y Geograf\u00eda, 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Gonz\u00e1lez et al. (“Cotton Field”) v. Mexico.<\/em> Judgment, 16 Nov. 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ley General de Acceso de las Mujeres a una Vida Libre de Violencia. Diario Oficial de la Federaci\u00f3n<\/em>, 1 Feb. 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SCJN. Amparo en revisi\u00f3n 554\/2013, Mariana Lima Buend\u00eda.<\/em> Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Naci\u00f3n, 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SESNSP. Informaci\u00f3n sobre Violencia contra las Mujeres: Incidencia Delictiva y Llamadas de Emergencia 9-1-1.<\/em> Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad P\u00fablica, 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(This article was edited by Peter Tian of the UHHC Operations Office. The accompanying images are sourced from the internet; if any infringement exists, we will remove them immediately. All copyrights belong to the author. In the event of infringement, UHHC and the author will pursue legal liability to the fullest extent.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wesley Liu Outside the National Palace in Mexico City, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":874,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/en.uhhc.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/en.uhhc.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/en.uhhc.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/en.uhhc.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/en.uhhc.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/en.uhhc.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":876,"href":"http:\/\/en.uhhc.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions\/876"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/en.uhhc.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/en.uhhc.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/en.uhhc.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/en.uhhc.com.cn\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}