The region has the world’s highest rates of femicide, according to the United Nations.Ĭommissioner Margarette May, IACHR president and rapporteur for women’s rights, said Brazil’s 2015 law on femicide was a crucial step in making murders of women more visible. To stem femicide, Brazil passed a law in 2015 giving a legal definition of the crime, with tougher jail sentences of up to 30 years for convicted offenders.īrazil, along with about 15 other countries in Latin America, has introduced laws against femicide in recent years. “The commission calls on the Brazilian state to implement comprehensive strategies to prevent these acts, fulfill its obligation to investigate, prosecute and punish those responsible, as well as to offer protection and comprehensive reparation to all victims,” the Washington-based IACHR said in a statement. Femicide is the killing of a woman by a man because of her gender. The IACHR, the human rights arm of the 35-member Organization of American States, said more must be done to prevent and prosecute femicides in Brazil. Four women have been killed every day so far this year in Brazil, a rate the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) called “alarming” on Monday.
