“Legitimate Defense of Honor” - Illegitimate Impunity of Murders - A Critical Study of the Legislation and the Case Law in Latin America

The theme of this article concerns “crimes of honor” – from a feminist, socio-legal perspective of gender and human rights point of view – involving different aspects relating to how the national legislation treats discrimination, especially crimes of violence against women, and, specifically, the way the national courts apply this legislation to concrete cases. Although there were international, regional and national advances in relation to the subject, especially during the nineties, there are still legislation and legal decisions, even in the twenty first century, violating women’s human rights, being marked by the impunity of the offenders and by the incorporation of stereotypes, prejudices and discriminations against women who are victims of violence.