El Salvador approves reform so that femicides do not prescribe

The Congress of El Salvador approved on Tuesday a reform to the Criminal Procedure Code to convert the crime of femicide in imprescriptible and allow the Salvadoran Prosecutor’s Office to open criminal proceedings in those cases regardless of the time that has elapsed since the events.

Salvadoran law punishes as femicide the crime against a woman motivated by hatred or contempt for her condition as a woman. He is sanctioned with penalties of 20 to 35 years in prison and, until today, he was criminally prosecuted as long as 15 years had not elapsed since the events.

The deputies added, with a majority of 76 votes from all parties, femicide and aggravated femicide to the list of crimes that do not prescribe article 32 of the Criminal Procedure Code, in such a way that they are part of the exceptions to the prescription, which is regulated in article 34 of the same.

Since 2008, in El Salvador, the crimes of torture, terrorism, kidnapping, genocide, disappearance and war have been imprescriptible, to which Congress added in 2015 sexual crimes against minors and, in 2021, those of corruption.

After a recess in the legislative session, a second amendment to article 58-A of the Comprehensive Law for a Life Free of Violence for Women is also expected to be approved on Tuesday, which reiterates that criminal action does not prescribe in these cases .

Deputy Marcela Pineda, from the ruling Nuevas Ideas party, recalled that 225 women were “murdered out of hate, for being a woman, for their clothing” in 2018 and that “the only concrete action that the old Legislative Assembly offered was to decree a duel for three days”.

“The number of femicides that have been occurring this year is alarming, we are going to accompany them, but staying punitive is insufficient,” said deputy John Wright Sol, from the opposition Nuestro Tiempo, who proposes to also protect the children of the victims of femicides.

After the Salvadoran Police recorded the death of five women in five days, from February 7 to 11, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele announced on Twitter the design of a strategy against femicides.

The figures of the Salvadoran Prosecutor’s Office record seven femicides in the first 45 days of 2023.

Femicides decreased slightly between 2021 and 2022, from 80 to 53 cases, according to fiscal statistics. The number of people convicted of this crime also dropped from 49 to 23 in the same period, as well as people prosecuted criminally, from 69 to 27.

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