Critical analysis of the crime of femicide attributed to trans people from a gender and human rights perspective

Abstract

This article presents a qualitative systematic review on the attribution of the crime of femicide to trans people, approached from an intersectional perspective of gender and human rights. Using the PRISMA methodology, a corpus of 28 documents was analyzed, including case law, doctrine, and regulations from Latin America. The results reveal a marked legal ambiguity, supported by biological approaches that exclude trans people from the protective criminal framework, generating contradictory rulings and regulatory gaps. Through a comparative study of ten rulings in countries such as Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Brazil, disparate criteria were identified regarding the applicability of femicide to trans women, as well as five thematic categories that illustrate the limitations of traditional criminal law in the face of transphobic violence. Consequently, the article argues for the need to rethink the criminal definition of femicide from an intersectional and transfeminist perspective, recognizing that structural violence based on gender identity can constitute femicide. Finally, legislative and educational reforms are proposed to guarantee an effective, inclusive, and non-binary criminal justice system capable of comprehensively protecting transgender victims of violence.