Milei wants to eliminate femicide from the Argentine Penal Code; Experts criticize

Femicide is the violent death of a woman at the hands of a man for gender reasons and is rooted in a “social system that (…) preserves the social orders of power, control and oppression of men over women,” explains, explains on its website the Argentine Fiscal Public Prosecution Service.

It was implemented, although not explicitly, in 2012 through a law that changed article 80 of the Argentine Penal Code to aggravate the conduct of a woman who kills a woman through gender violence.

“Killing a woman does not lead to femicide directly, unless she killed her because she is a woman,” a criminal lawyer Gastón Frances told AFP.

“This aggravation, which causes a perpetual penalty, is different from killing a man for his condition as a man,” said Francone, who pointed out that the maximum penalty for a homicide without aggravating circumstances is 25 years, but the perpetual penalty received by a Femicide can reach 50 years.

To modify the Argentine Penal Code, it is necessary to pass a law in Congress, where the party in power is a minority against a strong center-left opposition, in whose government the figure of femicide was introduced.

According to local press, the government would prepare a bill on this topic and to eliminate non -binary identity documents, sanctioned in 2021, and the “trans” quotas “, which establish that the national state should reserve at least 1% of its jobs for transgender people.