Sexual violence is a global reality that cuts across borders, cultures, and political systems. Its persistence is not explained by geography or tradition, but by the ways institutions respond when harm occurs. Across the world, survivors encounter systems that are slow to act, difficult to navigate, and uneven in their willingness to prioritize sexual violence as a matter of public responsibility. Public discourse, however, often frames sexual violence in places like Latin America through cultural shorthand. Concepts such as machismo are used to explain patterns of harm in ways that imply regional exceptionalism or cultural inevitability, obscuring the fact that similar dynamics operate in countries the world over, just with different social vocabularies. This framing distorts the problem and narrows the range of solutions by shifting attention away from institutional design, enforcement, and accountability.
The experiences of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica offer an opportunity to examine sexual violence prevention through a different lens. Rather than treating these contexts as cautionary examples, this analysis approaches them as sites of active intervention and institutional learning. Each country has confronted sexual violence within systems shaped by legal constraints, political pressures, and resource limitations that are familiar well beyond the region. When examined together, these cases demonstrate how sexual violence is shaped by institutional choices; how knowledge is translated into action; how justice systems engage survivors; how risk is interpreted and how norms are reinforced or undermined by enforcement. This blog examines those dynamics to identify prevention strategies that are structurally grounded, adaptable across contexts, and relevant to places such as New Jersey, where similar institutional challenges persist.
In Mexico, sexual violence has long been widely recognized by communities, advocates, and survivors themselves. Reports are made and patterns are documented. The challenge has not been cultural denial, but institutional translation and whether what is known is treated as knowledge that requires action. Like many countries, including wealthier Western countries/Global North, Mexico has historically absorbed sexual violence into administrative categories that dilute urgency by reclassifying rape and assault as private disputes, evidentiary complications, or issues better addressed through informal resolution. These practices are not unique. They reflect a global tendency to manage sexual violence through procedural minimization rather than structural response.
Where Mexico does shine in a unique light is in its Gender Violence Alert system (Alerta de Violencia de Género contra las Mujeres, AVGM). AVGM represents a significant intervention precisely because it confronts a shared institutional failure i.e. the tendency to recognize sexual violence without obligating response (Centro de Derechos Humanos, 2022). Rather than relying on political will or moral persuasion, the alert system establishes automatic obligations when gender-based and sexual violence indicators reach defined thresholds. Prosecutorial reforms, forensic protocol changes, budgetary commitments, and public reporting are no longer discretionary. Sexual violence is reframed as a governance issue, a signal that systems are failing, rather than as evidence of cultural deficiency.
However, the AVGM should not be understood as a standalone solution that magically reduces rates of sexual violence. Instead, its effectiveness and impact shines through as a structural governance and accountability mechanism that transforms how violence against women is recognized, documented, and acted upon by public institutions. AVGM was established under Mexico’s ‘Ley General de Acceso de las Mujeres a una Vida Libre de Violencia’ as an emergency trigger (Centro de Derechos Humanos, 2022). When gender-based and sexual violence indicators in a state or municipality exceed defined thresholds, authorities across federal, state, and municipal levels must jointly adopt coordinated actions across justice, protection, and institutional coordination domains (CONAVIM & INMUJERES 2021; Centro de Derechos Humanos, 2022). Between 2015 and 2021, AVGM declarations spanned numerous states and municipalities, generating over 550 mandated measures that formalized investigative protocols, expanded protective mechanisms, and required inter-agency reporting and oversight (Centro de Derechos Humanos, 2022; CONAVIM & INMUJERES 2021). These efforts were not systematically present before the mechanism’s creation. The measurable value of this system lies in its capacity to capture data systematically, compel institutional planning, and elevate compliance reporting where previously responses were discretionary or inconsistent. As of 2021, however, federal monitoring found that only a small portion of recommended measures had been fully completed, with many partially implemented or still in process, underscoring both the promise and the implementation gap of the mechanism (Centro de Derechos Humanos, 2022). While comprehensive statistics linking AVGM directly to declines in sexual violence have not yet emerged (partly due to uneven implementation and underreporting challenges) the mechanism’s real strength is in making institutional failure visible and creating a basis for accountability, improved data collection, and iterative policy refinement over time, representing a critical step toward systematizing prevention infrastructure even as it highlights the ongoing work required to translate mandates into sustained impact (Centro de Derechos Humanos, 2022; CONAVIM & INMUJERES, 2021).
Guatemala’s experience highlights a different but equally global failure, i.e. justice systems that unintentionally reproduce retraumatization and violence by exhausting those who seek protection. Survivors of sexual assault in many countries, from Latin America to Europe to the United States, don’t disengage from legal processes because they doubt the seriousness of the harm they experienced, but because systems demand an undue level of endurance as a prerequisite for credibility. Repeated testimony, prolonged timelines, exposure to their harm doers, and fragmented services are common features of adversarial legal systems worldwide.
Guatemala’s specialized courts for violence against women are notable not because they are exceptional, but because they explicitly reject this model of attrition. These courts are built on the recognition that justice systems themselves can be sites of secondary harm. Judicial training reframes sexual violence as an abuse of power rather than a credibility contest (Bay, 2021). Fast-tracked cases reduce prolonged exposure to retaliation and trauma. Psychological and legal supports are integrated directly into court operations, minimizing fragmentation. The result has been reduced survivor drop-off, increased use of protective measures, and improved prosecution outcomes in sexual violence cases (UN Office on Drugs and Crime, 2014; Bay 2021). Guatemala’s specialized courts institutionalized a different operating logic, including trained judicial personnel, expedited proceedings, and integrated psychosocial support to reduce procedural attrition and survivor withdrawal. The state’s plan to prevent violence against women included guarantees for “victims to access information and comprehensive assistance” (Bay 2021), as well as civil and criminal penalties for public officials who “fail to assist victims or denies or delays providing them information” (Bay 2021). Additionally, “the Decree requires the Public Ministry to create an investigatory division to specifically investigate crimes against the life and physical integrity of women… the Decree charged the Supreme Court of Justice to create specialized courts. These courts have specialized training for the above-mentioned crimes and create a 24-hour court to offer services related to violence towards women…The Decree also assigned the National Coordinator for the Prevention of Intrafamily Violence Against Women (CONPREVI) agency to coordinate, advise, and promote public policies related to VAW. CONPREVI’s role includes overseeing the creation of the “Comprehensive Support Center for Women Survivors of Violence” and training on VAW and ethnic-cultural relevant programs aimed at public officials, especially police and the judiciary.” (Bay, 2021)
Perhaps the most tangible metric of the specialized courts’ efficacy is that, “unlike ordinary criminal courts in Guatemala, where only 10% of femicide cases lead to sentencing, in the specialized courts over 30% of femicide cases have led to sentencing,” (Bay 2021). This distribution reflects substantially higher case progression to resolution within specialized court structures compared to the ordinary criminal justice system, which prior assessments consistently characterized as marked by widespread abandonment and impunity for sexual and gender-based violence cases. While comprehensive national statistics on survivor drop-off and protection order issuance remain limited, UNODC identifies higher conviction rates and sustained case throughout as proxy indicators of reduced attrition within specialized court structures (UN Office on Drugs and Crime, 2014). Guatemala’s contribution is not just moral; its strength lies in its deliberate architecture. It demonstrates that justice systems can be redesigned to retain survivors rather than wear them down.
El Salvador’s prevention efforts address another globally familiar problem, institutional delay rooted in the misinterpretation of risk. Sexual violence rarely begins with a single incident. It often escalates through patterns of coercive control, threats, stalking, or prior assault, that are well documented across contexts. Yet institutions often treat early indicators as insufficient, inconclusive, demanding certainty before intervention. This logic is not unique to El Salvador. It mirrors risk thresholds used in many countries where prevention is deferred until harm becomes undeniable. In an effort to address this, El Salvadorian institutional reform focused on shifting how those early indicators are handled once they are visible to the state. Standardized risk assessment tools were introduced to evaluate risk posed by the person causing harm, not to assess survivor credibility or behavior. These assessments are conducted primarily by police, judicial authorities, and protection services and are designed to identify the likelihood of repeat or escalating violence based on known risk factors, including prior incidents, threats, access to weapons, and patterns of coercive control (MESECVI). Crucially, assessment in this framework functions as an authorization mechanism for early action rather than a gatekeeping exercise. Identified risk activates rapid response protocols directed toward protective interventions for survivors and monitoring or restriction of the person causing harm, including emergency safety planning, expedited protective orders, removal or distancing measures, shelter referral, and increased institutional supervision where warranted (MESECVI). This design responds to a documented reality in El Salvador.
Risk was treated not as an evidentiary problem to be resolved later, but as actionable information requiring immediate protective measures. These tools were not designed to establish guilt, but to authorize interventions such as emergency safety planning, monitoring of known offenders and accelerated survivor protections. Evidence from regional implementation shows that early identification and coordinated response reduce repeat sexual violence and improve survivor safety outcomes (World Health Organization, 2016). The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that coordinated, risk-informed responses (particularly those combining early identification with immediate protective action) are associated with substantial reductions in repeat violence. Across multiple low- and middle-income country settings, WHO reviews found reductions in re-victimization ranging from 20% to 40% when early risk identification was paired with timely protective measures and inter-agency coordination, compared to standard reactive responses (World Health Organization, 2016). These outcomes were strongest in systems that treated risk assessment as a trigger for intervention rather than as a diagnostic or evidentiary exercise. The lesson is structural; institutions do not fail because risk is unknowable, but when known risk is permitted to wait.
Costa Rica is frequently cited for its investment in education, consent-based curricula, and masculinity-focused programming. However, its biggest contribution to sexual violence prevention is not in cultural exceptionalism, but in refusing to isolate norm change from institutional response. Education alone, as global evidence shows, does not prevent sexual violence when it is contradicted by weak enforcement or inconsistent accountability. Beginning in the 1990s and strengthened through the Law against Sexual Harassment in Employment and Teaching (Law No. 7476), Costa Rica embedded school-based prevention education and public norm-shifting campaigns within a broader legal and institutional framework that includes enforceable protections, mandatory reporting obligations in educational settings, accessible complaint mechanisms, and administrative and criminal sanctions for sexual violence (Costa Rica, Law No. 7476; UN Women). Rather than treating education as a stand-alone prevention tool, Costa Rica aligned consent education and public messaging with institutional enforcement, ensuring that new norms were reinforced by clear consequences and procedural follow-through. As UN Women’s prevention framework emphasizes, lasting reductions in violence emerge when educational efforts operate alongside structural measures that translate norms into obligations and consequences, ensuring that prevention is sustained through institutional action rather than relying solely on individual behavior change. Norms shifted not simply because messages were persuasive but because expectations were reinforced by institutional action. Regional policy reviews consistently identify this integration of education and accountability as a defining feature of Costa Rica’s prevention architecture, distinguishing it from models that rely on norm change without enforcement (UN Women). Global evidence supports this design choice. Research consistently finds that educational and prevention interventions are most effective when norm change is paired with structural accountability and visible institutional response, particularly in contexts shaped by gender hierarchy (UN Office on Drugs and Crime, 2014). Costa Rica’s experience affirms the principle that education prepares the ground, but institutions determine whether new norms take hold.
No single country examined here offers a complete or flawless model for sexual violence prevention. Each case is marked by real constraints, such as uneven implementation across regions, gaps between legal frameworks and practice, limited publicly available data, and political or institutional barriers that shape what is measured, reported, and sustained over time. In several contexts, the absence of comprehensive statistics reflects not a lack of impact, but structural realities like underreporting driven by stigma and fear, fragmented administrative systems, and data that remains siloed across institutions or restricted for safety and privacy reasons. These limitations matter and must be acknowledged. They caution against simplistic claims and underscore the need for continued investment in monitoring, evaluation, and transparency.
At the same time, the collective evidence across these four countries reveals something powerful. While no single intervention is sufficient on its own, each context illuminates a critical piece of a larger prevention architecture. Mexico demonstrates how institutional obligation can interrupt systemic avoidance by forcing coordinated action. Guatemala shows that justice systems can be redesigned to reduce attrition and retain cases through resolution. El Salvador illustrates how treating risk as actionable information rather than evidentiary uncertainty can accelerate protection. Costa Rica confirms that education and norm change are most effective when reinforced by enforceable institutional response. Each approach addresses a different failure point along the sexual violence continuum. Taken together, they form a far more robust and coherent prevention strategy than any one model could provide in isolation.
This comparative perspective reinforces a core lesson for prevention work. Sexual violence is not sustained by a single factor, and it will not be dismantled through siloed interventions. Prevention requires a holistic, multi-pronged approach that aligns early identification, mandatory response, accessible intake, protective enforcement, survivor retention, and long-term norm transformation within a coordinated system. The value of this analysis lies in drawing from the collective wisdom of multiple contexts that have confronted similar challenges under different conditions. When these lessons are integrated thoughtfully, they offer a stronger foundation for prevention efforts elsewhere. The task ahead is not to replicate any one model wholesale, but to synthesize what works, address what falls short, and build systems capable of intervening early, acting consistently, and sustaining protection over time.
For practitioners and policymakers, this task is practical and immediate. It requires examining how survivors are positioned within systems meant to protect them. It requires asking whether current approaches rely on individual endurance, discretionary action, or fragmented accountability, and whether those conditions are compatible with meaningful prevention. This framework does not point outward in search of lessons to admire or failures to critique. It turns attention inward, toward the structures that shape everyday decision-making and determine whether harm is interrupted or allowed to persist. Progress in sexual violence prevention depends on institutional choices made consistently and enforced reliably. The question that remains is whether those choices will be made with the urgency and seriousness the issue demands.
Works Cited
Análisis del Mecanismo de Alerta de Violencia de Género contra las Mujeres. Comisión Nacional para Prevenir y Erradicar la Violencia contra las Mujeres (CONAVIM) and Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres (INMUJERES), Gobierno de México, https://igualdaddegenero.cndh.org.mx/doc/Seguimiento/1er_Reporte_AVGM_2021.pdf
Bay Sydney, Criminalization is Not the Only Way: Guatemala’s Law Against Femicide and Other Forms of Violence Against Women and the Rates of Femicide in Guatemala, 30 Wash. Int’l L.J. (2021). https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1863&context=wilj
Centro de Derechos Humanos “Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez” (Centro Prodh). Análisis del Mecanismo de Alerta de Violencia de Género contra las Mujeres (AVGM). Spotlight Initiative, Apr. 2022, https://hchr.org.mx/wp/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ANALISIS_Mecanismo_AVGM_Spotlight.pdf.
Costa Rica. Ley contra el Hostigamiento Sexual en el Empleo y la Docencia (Ley No. 7476). Asamblea Legislativa de la República de Costa Rica, 1995, https://www.asamblea.go.cr/sd/Documents/BIBLIOTECADIGITAL/DOCUMENTOS/LEYES/Ley%207476%20Ley%20Contra%20el%20Hostigamiento%20Sexual%20en%20el%20Empleo%20y%20la%20Docencia.pdf
MESECVI (Follow-up Mechanism to the Belém do Pará Convention). Third Hemispheric Report on the Implementation of the Belém do Pará Convention. Organization of American States, 2017, https://www.oas.org/en/mesecvi/docs/TercerInformeHemisferico-en.pdf
UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Handbook on Effective Prosecution Responses to Violence against Women and Girls. United Nations, 2014, https://www.unodc.org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/Handbook_on_effective_prosecution_responses_to_violence_against_women_and_girls.pdf
UN Women. A Framework to Underpin Action to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls. United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, Nov. 2015, https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/Library/Publications/2015/Prevention_Framework_unwomen_nov2015.pdf.
World Health Organization. INSPIRE: Seven Strategies for Ending Violence against Children. WHO, 2016, https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241565356.
