Legislating on sexual violence with a consent-based approach in Latin America and the Caribbean

The guide provides detailed analysis and in-depth legislative guidance and recommendations, including adding consent as the central element of the definition of crimes of sexual violence, recognizing contexts and coercive circumstances where consent can neither be freely given nor inferred, including situations of power imbalance, dependency, or vulnerability. It calls for the elimination of estupro laws or similar provisions that trivialize the rape of adolescents, as well as the abolition of marital rape exemptions and the removal of statutes of limitations for sexual violence crimes. The brief also highlights the importance of close-in-age provisions to prevent the criminalization of consensual, non-exploitative sexual activity between adolescent peers and advocates for trauma-informed approaches within justice systems to provide better support for survivors.

It is based on Equality Now’s fact sheet Consent-Based Rape Definitions (2021) and its publication Failure to Protect: How Discriminatory Sexual Violence Laws and Practices are Hurting Women, Girls, and Adolescents in the Americas (2021), which includes an Annex of applicable laws on sexual violence in the Americas and Caribbean region.