Declaration of the CEG-INTEC before modification to the Dominican Penal Code

SANTO DOMINGO.- Yesterday the Chamber of Deputies approved and converted into law the draft amendment to the Criminal Code that had 14 years in debate.

Throughout that period the feminist and women's movement, of which the Center for Gender Studies of Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (CEG-INTEC) is part, it has been trying to influence so that reforms are made in the direction of the recognition of women's rights.

We refer to the recognition of rights in areas where they have traditionally been most vulnerable, such as the right to life, the right to a life free of violence and the right to sexual health and reproductive health.  

In those orders we want to be emphatic in pointing out that the decision taken yesterday by the deputies reiterates the denial of rights that we have been claiming for years. 

Article 100 of the new text of the Criminal Code that establishes the figure of femicide, does so restrictively to those people who have or have had a relationship, and not in the broad sense of the feminicide concept, which includes the murders of women because of his condition as a woman.

That definition is a restriction that may have implications in the classification of the punitive act and therefore, could have a more lax criminal treatment. In this way, the classification of feminicide is also limited to those murders in the context of an intimate relationship, which tends to distort statistical information, reducing the number of cases against reality.

As feminicide (subject to intimacy) is defined in the initiative that legislators have just approved, a negative message is sent regarding the physical, economic and decision-making autonomy of women, when interpreting that autonomy loses value within a couple relationship, and consequently, the purpose of parity as subjects, men and women who treat each other as equals, loses meaning.

The interruption of pregnancy

In relation to the termination of pregnancy, the new penal code maintains the same approach and considerations of the current criminal legislation from 1884, which penalizes any person who intervenes in this practice, including the woman who consents to it.

This article avoids the multiplicity of situations in which it might be essential to perform an abortion to protect the life and health of women. 

This means that the country has an involution of 120 years against the legal framework of women's human rights, at a time when progressive legislation is being imposed on the exercise of human rights. 

We must emphasize that human rights, by definition, must be progressive, which is why these provisions contravene those principles established in our constitutional text and in the international agreements on which they are based.

Center for Gender Studies of INTEC