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Regulations

Violence laws

Country

The Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean's repository of violence laws currently contains more than 380 legal instruments, classified by country, from 38 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as relevant legislation from Spain and Portugal.

Its content ranges from laws on domestic or intra-family violence, known as first-generation laws; the most recent regulations on integral protection against gender-based violence against women with their recent modifications and reforms-, which currently exist in 13 Latin American countries; the laws that criminalize the crime of femicide in 17 Latin American countries; In addition to regulations on sexual offenses; on harassment in the workplace; specific laws on street harassment and on the dissemination of intimate images by electronic media; also the law against harassment and political violence against women in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, and the law that punishes harassment against women in political life in Peru, the only specific laws in the region.

Also included are laws that criminalize and punish human trafficking and smuggling, regulatory norms of laws on violence against women; those that determine the creation of specialized bodies in different areas of the State; those that establish specific procedural norms for issues of violence on criminal procedure abbreviations, specialized courts, and the inadmissibility of alternative sentences; those that define the implementation of registration systems for cases of violence and those that refer to protection measures for victims, among others.

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  • 2015
    Anguilla

    Domestic Violence Act

    An Act to provide greater protection for victims of domestic violence by empowering the Court to grant a protection order and for other related matters.

    The bill defines domestic violence as any controlling or abusive behaviour in a domestic relationship that harms or may harm the health, safety or well-being of a person or a child regardless of gender or sexuality and includes but is not limited to the following:
    (a) physical abuse or threats of physical abuse;
    (b) sexual abuse or threats of sexual abuse;
    (c) emotional, verbal or psychological abuse;
    (d) economic abuse;
    (e) intimidation;
    (f) harassment;
    (g) stalking;
    (h) ill-treating or threatening to ill-treat any person who has a close relationship with the applicant even though that relationship may not be a domestic relationship;
    (i) causing or threatening to cause damage to or destruction of property; or
    (j) entry into the applicant’s residence without consent, where the parties do not share the same residence.