Specializing Justice: NGOs, Femicide, and Access to Justice in Latin America

• In Event: Perspectives on Democracy and Insecurity in Central America

Abstract

With the goal of improving access to justice and human rights performance, NGOs in Mexico and Guatemala now provide victims of gender violence accompaniment through legal proceedings and sometimes pro bono litigation. Current research suggests that NGO-led support for victims of crime and violence are crucial and necessary to attend to cases that would otherwise be left unresolved or abandoned by public prosecutors who lack the resources, will, and/or capacity to competently manage their caseload. But have these NGOs had any long-term impacts in terms of enhancing access to justice? In this paper, we address this question by analyzing improvements made for victims of femicide and their relatives by local NGOs in Guatemala and Mexico. Through paired comparisons of “historical” vs. “recent” cases of femicide (killings of women), we show the different paths cases followed as women’s NGOs began to dedicate to victim services and litigation in Mexico and Guatemala.

Authors

• Veronica Michel, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York (CUNY)

• Shannon Drysdale Walsh, University of Minnesota, Duluth