Caribbean & Central America - May 2026

In mid-April Honduran women’s rights group Centro de Derechos de Mujeres (CDM) warned that in the first three months of 2026, 59 femicides and violent deaths of women had been registered in the country. The latest stark figures come weeks after women across Central America took to the streets to mark International Women’s Day on 8 March, with marches demanding an end to gender-based violence and improved rights for women being held throughout the region.

The latest figures on gender violence by the United Nations (UN) Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Eclac), released in April, reveal that in 2024, at least 3,770 women were victims of femicide across 26 Latin American and Caribbean countries and territories, with Honduras and Guatemala registering the highest femicide rates in the 17 countries and territories with available data, at 3.1 and 1.9 cases per 100,000 women respectively.

Despite Honduras having the highest rate of femicide in the region, the 2024 rate was nonetheless down from 4.5 cases per 100,000 women in 2020, and 6.8 per 100,000 in 2015. In absolute terms, Eclac reported that 169 women were victims of femicide in the country in 2024, while CDM identified 262 violent deaths of women in 2025. The latest figures come as women’s rights groups expressed alarm on 25 January, Honduras’ national women’s day, that the new conservative Partido Nacional (PN) government led by President Nasry Asfura, which took office on 27 January, will eliminate or weaken state entities dedicated to the defence of women’s rights.

As regards Guatemala, the figure of 1.9 femicides per 100,000 women translates to 175 cases as a raw figure in 2024. The rate is up from 1.1 per 100,000 women in 2020 although in 2015, the rate was higher at 2.3. However, according to official figures cited by local think tank Centro de Investigaciones Económicas Nacionales (Cien), there were 206 femicides in 2025. Yet the centre-left government led by President Bernardo Arévalo, which took office in January 2024, continues to tout its commitment to addressing women’s rights, highlighting gender parity in government, for instance, with women accounting for half of the 14-member ministerial cabinet and half of the country’s 22 departmental governors. While in its latest annual report released on 4 February US-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) highlights that women and girls face “structural barriers to justice, health care, education, and social security” in Guatemala, it nonetheless highlights critical legal victories last year in high-profile cases of violence against women and girls.

• Legal victories in Guatemala

According to the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, in August, six former government officials were sentenced to prison terms for their role in a deadly 2017 blaze following a riot at the Hogar Seguro Virgen de la Asunción children’s centre, in San José Pinula municipality, Guatemala department, that killed 41 girls and injured 15. The victims were locked inside a government-run shelter [WR-17-12]. Among other legal victories, HRW also highlights that in May, three former paramilitaries were convicted by a Guatemalan court of crimes against humanity and sentenced to 40 years in prison for raping six indigenous Maya Achi women, during the internal armed conflict (1960-1996) [SSR-25-07].

El Salvador was not included in the Eclac figures, reportedly due to the lack of access to official data, meaning that measuring the level of violence against women is difficult. Local women’s rights group Organización de Mujeres Salvadoreñas por la Paz (Ormusa) puts the figure at 26 femicides in 2025, with half of these crimes being committed by partners or ex-partners of the victims.

This comes in the context of the country’s state of emergency against gangs, a policy implemented in March 2022 by authoritarian President Nayib Bukele, which remains in place, and which is widely considered to pose a threat to the work of those fighting for women’s rights. A 12 February press release by experts from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (Cedaw) stated that “women human rights defenders faced criminalisation and surveillance in the context of the state of emergency, and the risk of severe penalties threatened the work of women’s organizations”. However, the Cedaw report also adds that the state of emergency has allowed women greater access to education and health services without the fear of gangs, with a reported 68% drop in murders of women over the last five years.

• Abortion rights NGO shutters in El Salvador

On 23 February Salvadorean abortion rights NGO Agrupación Ciudadana por la Despenalización del Aborto announced its closure after more than two decades. The announcement deals yet another blow to abortion rights in El Salvador which, along with Nicaragua and Honduras in the sub-region, has among the most draconian anti-abortion laws in the world, with a blanket ban even in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is at risk. The NGO attributed its decision to close to an “adverse context” and the foreign agents law, which was approved in 2025 and imposes a 30% tax on donations from abroad received by NGOs, among other things. For years, local courts have convicted women who have experienced obstetric emergencies on charges of qualified homicide, which carries a penalty of up to 50 years in prison.

In Panama, Eclac reported that there were 1.0 femicides per 100,000 women for a total figure of 23 in 2024. The femicide rate has decreased in recent years, standing at 1.5 per 100,000 in 2015 and 1.4 per 100,000 in 2020. Despite this trend, the human rights ombudsman still acknowledged “persistent barriers for women to access effective protection” in its 2025 annual report. The ombudsman highlighted that there has been an increase in femicides in some provinces, with women in indigenous, rural or isolated territories particularly affected. Figures released by the attorney general’s office put the total for 2025 at 20 femicides, eight of which occurred in Panamá Oeste province.

Eclac reported 33 femicides in Costa Rica in 2024, at 1.3 per 100,000 women, an increase on the 2015 and 2020 figures of 1.1 per 100,000 and 1.2 per 100,000 respectively. This total is lower than that tallied by the Observatorio de Violencia de Género contra las Mujeres y Acceso a la Justicia, which is part of Costa Rica’s judiciary, and which put the figure at 44 for 2024, 36 in 2025 and 10 so far this year, (as of 1 May).

Like El Salvador, Nicaragua was omitted from Eclac’s figures due to the lack of official data – in this case from the authoritarian government led by President Daniel Ortega and his wife, now co-president, Rosario Murillo. Data from the Nicaragua chapter of regional human rights group Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir however reveals that 91 femicides were recorded in 2024, up from 74 in 2023, according to a report by Nicaraguan human rights NGO Colectivo de Derechos Humanos Nicaragua Nunca Más (CDHNN+). The same NGO reports that of the at least 5,609 civil society organisations shuttered since 2018, when the Ortega government began a brutal crackdown on dissent, 279 of these are described as feminist or women’s support organisations.

Legislative progress

In its latest annual report on human rights, released on 23 April, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) highlighted various examples of efforts in the sub-region to strengthen the legislative framework to protect against gender-based violence.

It notes that in Costa Rica, in January 2025, a law was introduced against vicarious violence, while in Guatemala, in March 2025, the penitentiary regime law and criminal code were amended to prevent and punish the trafficking of girls and adolescents within the penitentiary system. The IACHR also highlights that guidelines to implement the normative and policy framework for the prevention, care, punishment and dignified reparation of victims and survivors of violence against women were adopted that same month in Guatemala.

As regards Honduras, the IACHR highlights that the government adopted a decree last year which allocates specific resources for the creation of gender units in all public institutions, while other measures aimed at strengthening the institutional framework for the prevention of and response to violence include the development of a diagnostic assessment for the reform of the law against domestic violence, inter alia. However, the IACHR also underlines that delays persist with regard to the approval of a comprehensive law on violence against women, and a law on political violence against women, among other pending legislation.

In Panama, the IACHR report notes that two laws were enacted last year which are in line with measures to prevent and protect women against gender-based violence. These are Law 474, which sets out harsher punishment for rape and other crimes related to sexual violence, and Law 478, which incorporates digital crimes such as the dissemination of intimate images without consent. At the same time the IACHR identified a backwards step – the discontinuation of the women’s ministry, which will reportedly be downgraded to a secretariat under the social development ministry.