14ymedio, Madrid, 8 April 2025 — The doubts expressed last July by the feminist organization Alas Tensas have materialized. The announced “administrative, computerized, and interoperable registry” approved and announced with great fanfare by the Cuban government to monitor gender-based violence will not be made public. In a note signed by two Cuban prosecutors and published Tuesday in the State newspaper Granma, the officials review the legislation applicable to cases of gender-based violence and settle the issue: the indicators will remain hidden from the public.
“At these moments, a multidisciplinary team of experts from the Attorney General’s Office, the Ministry of the Interior, the Supreme People’s Court, and the University of Computer Sciences is developing a computerized and interoperable Administrative Registry, which is not public, on the violent deaths of women and girls due to gender-based reasons,” the notice reads.
Paradoxically, the paragraph follows one that notes the importance of “commitment to the Transparency Law and access to public information” which demands that statistical data be available and of high quality. The prosecutors maintain that these figures will help address the causes and consequences of this type of violence, identify the profiles of victims, and develop prevention strategies.
However, the note suggests—without any criticism—that the information will only be accessible exclusively to the regime, including the government run Federation of Cuban Women, which it expressly mentions, and which has not been known for its demands on the government regarding the problem: that of gender-based violence, with increasing visibility on the island.
The information will only be accessible exclusively to the regime, including the government run Federation of Cuban Women, which it expressly mentions, and which has not been known for its demands on the government regarding the problem
In July 2024, when the official press announced the creation of the registry, Alas Tensas expressed fear that it would not be open to the public. “Transparency and access to statistics on gender-based violence has been a priority for several years for the gender observatories of Ogat (Alas Tensas Gender Observatory ) and YSTCC (Yo Sí Te Creo en Cuba), organizations that have been underreporting femicides in Cuba since 2019, under the regime’s criminalization,” they note in a statement welcoming the census, although they emphasized that it was not clear whether it would be public.
The Cuban regime has closely guarded data on gender-based violence, even in recent years, when it has begun to address the issue more openly. In August 2024, the Cuban Observatory on Gender Equality, part of the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), published what was the first update since the organization’s launch in June 2023. Its website includes data on cases prosecuted for the murder of women, without specifying the dates of the murders.
The website still only contains this data, covering two years ago. Feminist organizations and the independent press are the only ones reporting on cases of gender-based violence, with severe limitations. Only deaths reported on social media are included, while those that were never revealed, much less attacks or complaints, are also not included. Furthermore, some of these organizations have been in serious trouble since the Trump administration decided to end the financial aid they received, and their work is being compromised.
The prosecutors’ statement in Granma maintains that Cuban women have been “dignified by the Revolution,” but questions why “despite the revolutionary work, manifestations of gender-based violence and violence in the family persist.” Although the answer, they assert, is transversal, “the country has a modern and guaranteeing regulatory system, based on equal rights and responsibilities between women and men in the economic, political, cultural, labor, social, and family spheres, supported by the Constitution of the Republic.”
Among the tools available to the justice system, officials cite the Family Code and state that cases of “discrimination and violence within the family require urgent protection.” Furthermore, there is also the new Criminal Code, with “accessory sanctions for the protection of the victim, such as prohibition of contact with the victim, their family members, and close associates, and deprivation or suspension of parental responsibility, removal of guardianship, and revocation of support for persons with disabilities.”
Among the tools available to the Justice system, officials cite the Family Code and affirm that cases of “discrimination and violence in the family environment require urgent protection.”
They also point out that there are aggravating and mitigating factors in these types of crimes, as well as the impossibility of withdrawing a complaint when it is evident that it is the result of the usual pressures that usually occur in these cases.
Feminist organizations have been calling for a comprehensive law against gender-based violence for years, which the government maintains is planned for at least 2026. They have also requested that the crime of femicide be classified, a crime that does not exist, for example, in Spain. In the European country, there were 57 femicides in total in 2024, two fewer than those recorded in Cuba during the same period, although the island has a population one-fifth the size.
So far this year, nine women have been murdered by their partners or ex-partners in Cuba, according to records kept by 14ymedio.
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