In Mexico , after a woman is murdered, their families face a string of obstacles to be granted justice , for example, false reports , false information , delays , no developments in the investigations , indifference, discrediting the information provided by the victim's family , negligence while handling evidence , remains have to be exhumed and buried several times, murders that are labeled as suicides or accidents , as well as mockery and mistreatment by prosecutors .
After losing their loved one, these families have to face an ordeal at the hands of the institutions that were supposedly created to support them and find and punish criminals . This is why the victims are shocked when authorities obstruct justice , an attitude that the victims say is a violation of their human rights but also because the origin of impunity for those accused of femicide , who usually receive short sentences , granted amparos , and are even freed and exonerated because the cases were wrongfully put together.
In regards to the violent deaths of women , there are several characteristics that lead to labeling them as homicides or femicides . If the reason behind the crime is not related to gender , it is labeled as a homicide . On the other hand, the crime will be labeled as femicide when the victim is targeted for her gender . Even then, it is almost impossible to establish a detailed judgment since a lot of subjective aspects will come into play, which will make it hard to label the crime as femicide , moreover, the situation becomes even more complicated with the different criminal codes i n every state, especially because in some of them femicide as a legal concept doesn't exist.
Femicides
, which are disguised or mislabeled, start to multiply when authorities don't have the faculty to reclassify the crimes . This is why criminal codes have to be reviewed.
There are some states where families have pressed authorities , especially the victim's mother , and made it necessary to change the laws in places where gender perspective is not applied to the investigation of femicide . This is a pending and urgent issue.
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