Gender Equality Observatory launches campaign demanding justice for femicide victims

Stephanie Figueroa, executive director of the Gender Equity Observatory of Puerto Rico

By THE STAR STAFF

As part of “No More Violence Against Women” month, the Gender Equity Observatory of Puerto Rico has launched a media campaign titled “Ni Olvido ni Silencio” (“Neither Forgetting nor Silence”), demanding justice for the hundreds of women whose lives were taken by gender-based violence in recent years.

“This effort is not just an act of remembrance -- it is a collective outcry against the State’s indifference, the impunity that persists in the courts, and the lack of public policies that protect the lives of women, girls, and trans people in Puerto Rico,” said Stephanie Figueroa, executive director of the Observatory. “Since 2019, we have documented 455 femicides. Each number represents a name, a face, a story cut short.”

The campaign was launched Tuesday at the Puerto Rico Bar Association with a gathering of allied organizations from the gender equity movement. Representatives took turns displaying the faces and reading the names of the 455 victims documented over six years. The event also served as a platform to advocate for key policy changes, including support for Law 40 in femicide cases, sustained funding for shelters and gender violence research, gender-inclusive education in schools, and resolution of ongoing femicide investigations.

Deborah Upegui Hernández, an analyst at the Observatory, emphasized that the campaign is rooted in the belief that memory is resistance.

“Naming the victims is our refusal to accept indifference,” she said. “Remembering them affirms that their lives mattered, that their absence will not be normalized, and that their families are not alone. This month, we raise their names as banners of dignity. Silence is complicity, and forgetting is injustice.”

The Observatory highlighted data that underscores the scale of the gender violence crisis. For instance, some 113 cases remain under investigation, some for over five years; nine transfemicides, many still unsolved, reflect the vulnerability of trans individuals; about 156 children have been orphaned due to femicides; some 376 attempted femicides have been documented since 2020; and 50 women and girls have gone missing since 2020, with their whereabouts still unknown. The group noted the use of firearms in intimate partner femicides rose from 33% (2014–2019) to 75% in 2024.

In response, the Observatory and its allies are calling for comprehensive measures, including a life free of violence for all women, girls and trans people; reparative public policies for children and families affected by femicide; recognition of all femicides -- direct and indirect -- without stigma or hierarchy; and swift and effective investigations into missing women and minors.

Figueroa also called on the government to take responsibility for cases where institutional negligence has cost lives. She cited examples such as Claribel, who waited over an hour for an ambulance after being attacked; Andrea Costas, who was repeatedly denied a protection order; and Ivette Joan Meléndez Vega, murdered by Hermes Dávila, a convicted violent criminal who had been released under Law 25 based on unverified medical claims.

“The government must defend the laws that protect women and acknowledge the structural nature of gender violence,” Figueroa said. “To deny the term ‘femicide’ or limit its use is to deny the systemic roots of the problem.”