Femicide the legislation of these new laws has helped Guatemala improve the awareness of femicide and reporting of the crime, but enforcement and justice for femicide still has not been totally achieved. Femicide as the socially tolerated murder of women in Guatemala relies on the presence of systematic impunity, historically rooted gender inequalities, and the pervasive normalization of violence as a social relation. Colombia has followed 16 other Latin American Countries by passing a law that define and punish femicide for being a specific crime. On July 6, 2015 the government of Colombia passed a law that legally defines femicide as
Femicide and investigation can often differ based on race of the victim. According to Diana Russell and Jill Radford, lesbicide, also known as homophobic femicide, has a long history of legalized murder of lesbians in many different cultural contexts: Today, lesbianism is no longer a capital crime but it remains criminalized by many governments and condemned by most religions. Torture and murder of lesbians occurs in every part of the world, even in "developed" countries. According to Dr. Susan Hawthorne of Victoria University, "...domination is exemplified in the punishment of lesbians as outsiders in patriarchal culture..." Dr. Hawthorne goes on to