SELF DEFENSE AND GENDER VIOLENCE IN THE PERUVIAN LEGAL SYSTEM
Palavras-chave:
GENDER VIOLENCE, SELF DEFENSE, EQUALITYResumo
Women victims of gender violence are in a situation of constant threat to their integrity because their aggressors can injure them at any time. For this reason, Recommendation No. 1 of the MESECVI (Committee of Experts of the Follow-up Mechanism of the Belém do Pará Convention) has sustained that, from such a dangerous situation produced by the state of subordination of the victim, it follows that the response of these women, even when the aggressor's death is caused, constitutes a case of self-defense. In this context, the MESECVI says that criminal law has formulated self-defense from an androcentric bias, therefore, its definition and scope must be reconsidered for the aforementioned cases. Certainly, if women are required to be imminent in the attack -for example-, then they are condemned to be victims of homicide. On this matter, the Supreme Court of Justice of Peru has ruled in RN 1740-2019 Lima Este and in RN 2145-2018 Lima Norte. In these judicial resolutions, a very preliminary approach to the understanding of legitimate defense with a gender approach is still observed. For this reason, this paper tries to offer, from an analysis of the Court's jurisprudence, criteria to analyze self-defense in these cases according to the special characteristics of gender violence. For this, it will be necessary to analyze judicial decisions and compare them with foreign doctrine and human rights treaties. The paper is expected to demonstrate that Peruvian jurisprudence has not addressed the issue according to the real needs of the victims and, rather, has continued to use self-defense since its original androcentric conception, a situation that leaves women unprotected and revictimized. After this verification, new criteria will be proposed that the Supreme Court of Justice can take into account to deal with these cases with equality and justice. Consequently, the Peruvian penal system will adapt to what is established in human rights treaties, especially those that protect women.
