Access to justice: A fundamental step toward a life free from violence

^{Photo: UN Women/Celsa Calderoni} 

Reporting an assault, accessing protection measures, or initiating a reparations process are steps that largely depend on how justice systems are designed. In cases of violence against women and girls, timely access to these mechanisms determines the possibility of activating institutional responses that prevent further harm, hold perpetrators accountable, and guarantee the restoration of rights.

Globally, women hold only 64 percent of the legal rights granted to men. These legal gaps are also reflected in how justice systems operate, where institutional biases and structural inequalities influence who can access State protection and under what conditions.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, strengthening justice systems has been part of a sustained process of reforms aimed at expanding legal protection for women and girls against different forms of violence. In this context, advancing toward effective access requires not only adequate laws but also institutions capable of implementing them promptly and with a gender perspective.

Mexico: Legal Progress and Technical Support

In recent decades, Mexico has developed a comprehensive legal framework aimed at preventing, addressing, and sanctioning violence against women and girls. This framework includes criminalizing various forms of violence, establishing protection mechanisms, and strengthening specialized services for victims.

As part of its mandate to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment, UN Women has supported this process through various programs, including the Spotlight Initiative, implemented in the country since 2019 in municipalities across Chihuahua, the State of Mexico, and Guerrero, in coordination with federal and state authorities and civil society organizations.

Among other results, this work contributed to strengthening the Gender Violence Alert mechanism through reforms to the General Law on Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence, approved by the Chamber of Deputies on March 8, 2022.

Additionally, in January 2024, amendments to the same law, as well as to the federal Civil and Criminal Codes, were enacted to reinforce protection against vicarious violence. In total, six federal laws and thirty state laws were reformed. At the same time, a proposal for a model criminal classification of femicide was developed in collaboration with the National Institute for Women, now the Ministry of Women, and the National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence against Women (CONAVIM), under the Ministry. Elements of this proposal have been incorporated into legislative initiatives presented in states such as Tamaulipas, Baja California, the State of Mexico, and Querétaro.

From Law to Implementation

One of the core components of this support has been the analysis of municipal, state, and federal legal frameworks to harmonize them with international human rights standards. The Human Rights and Social Justice Action Group A.C. participated in this process, with its legal team, including Karla Micheel Salas and David Peña Rodríguez, contributing to the methodological design used to assess legislation in municipalities such as Ecatepec, Naucalpan, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and Chilpancingo.

“As an organization, we were responsible for designing the entire methodological framework and conducting the stakeholder analysis (…) as well as evaluating regulations at the municipal, state, and federal levels,” explains David Peña.

Based on this diagnosis, proposals were developed addressing issues such as child femicide, the disappearance of girls and women, sexual violence, and services for children and adolescents, to influence provisions related to prevention, response, sanction, and reparation for violence. More than 80 women’s human rights organizations and activists contributed to the diagnostic process.

“If we had focused solely on the issue from a criminal law perspective, we would have impacted only two or three pieces of legislation throughout the entire process (…) the goal was to broaden the scope,” he notes.

The advocacy process also highlighted the importance of coordination among civil society, government authorities, and international organizations. “The presence of international organizations helped significantly (…) it was not the same for authorities to hear it was an NGO project as to know it was part of UN Women’s Spotlight Initiative,” he adds.

This approach enabled political agreements on a single issue to generate impacts across multiple legal frameworks related to States' obligations to protect rights, prioritized by organizations and activists. In practice, this translates into stronger tools to activate protection measures, establish administrative accountability for institutional omissions, and guarantee specialized services for victims.

Rights in Practice

Ensuring that rights can be exercised under conditions of equality requires simultaneous progress in strengthening legal frameworks and institutional capacity for implementation.

Reforms supported with UN Women’s technical assistance have contributed to integrating human rights standards into national and local legislation, facilitating access to legal, social, and administrative services for women and girls facing situations of violence.

Advancing access to justice means translating rights into effective mechanisms for protection, response, and reparation that reflect the lived realities of women and girls in their interaction with justice systems. This is where the call of this March 8 for rights, justice, and action for all women and girls takes on concrete meaning: enabling laws to become enforceable guarantees and ensuring timely institutional responses.