The duty to prevent in cases of violence against women and girls: From “Cotton Field” to “Veliz Franco”

Abstract

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights laid the foundations of the duty to prevent violence against women and girls in its notorious judgment “Cotton field”. There, the judges applied the concept of “real and imminent danger” and they focused on the importance of the context and required a rapid response of the authorities. In the “Veliz Franco” decision, dealing with the disappearance and brutal killing of a girl, the Tribunal ruled that Guatemala was responsible for not preventing the murder, even though the body was found in less than 48hs after the disappearance and in less than 24hs since its denunciation. The purpose of this article is to analyze the duty to prevent violence against women and to study how the standard has evolved, in particular, in respect of the reactions and due diligence demanded to the States in this kind of circumstances.