Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and Peru are debating tougher penalties for false reports of sexual assaults, despite such cases being rare, in a move that women's rights groups say could set women back by 50 years. Lawmakers have proposed bills that would toughen punishments and, in some cases, create new procedures for people found to have made false reports, with a particular focus on cases involving domestic, sexual or gender-based violence.
Individually, the measures are presented as safeguards against fabricated allegations. Taken together, women's rights groups say they reflect a growing narrative that women routinely misuse laws intended to protect them, one they say risks making victims too afraid to report abuse in the first place.
Coordinated regional strategy
That the bills have been presented almost in “parallel” suggests that conservative groups campaigning against women's rights are pursuing a broader and coordinated regional strategy, according to Paula Ávila-Guillén, director of the US-based Women's Equality Centre. “The likelihood of it being a coincidence is very low.”
And the proposals are advancing despite scant evidence that such cases of false accusations are widespread – and that false reporting already exists as a criminal offence in each of the countries concerned.
Proposed legislation in four countries
In Bolivia, MPs have proposed an amendment to Law 348, the country's legislation on violence against women, which would introduce prison sentences of up to six years for falsely reporting gender-based violence. Another bill, approved in general terms by senators in July, would toughen penalties for false criminal accusations more broadly, while creating aggravated penalties for allegations involving gender-based violence and sexual offences.
In Argentina, a bill pending before the senate would also significantly increase penalties for false accusations. A version approved by a senate committee in April would raise the current maximum sentence from one to three years, and to as much as six years for allegations involving gender-based violence, sexual offences or violence against children. A newer version removes the explicit reference to gender-based violence, replacing it with “serious intentional crimes” – an undefined category that lawyers warn could still encompass many of the same cases.
Chile has gone further, proposing a special procedure for alleged false complaints arising from family court proceedings, which include cases of domestic violence – and sexual offences. The procedure could be triggered after an acquittal, dismissal or other decision rejecting an allegation, with a finding against the complainant potentially leading to compensation, public retraction and criminal proceedings. In Peru, lawmakers have proposed harsher penalties specifically for false allegations involving violence against women or the family, with sentences of up to six years in prison.
Supporters and critics
In Bolivia, supporters of a similar bill say the measures are necessary to protect people wrongly accused of serious crimes and reinforce the presumption of innocence. Defending the proposal in the legislative assembly, the senator José Manuel Ormachea, from the right-wing Alianza Libre party, said: “We need regulations that counterbalance Law 348 [outlawing violence against women].”
In Chile, senator Vanessa Kaiser presented the bill as a response to what she describes as widespread abuse of the justice system. “Today, false accusations are a tumour in our society, spreading like cancer, claiming more and more victims,” she said on the senate television programme Profundidad de Campos. Kaiser has said she wants to be the first minister in the history of the west to defend men. “I want to defend you against the idea that, simply for being born male, you are guilty,” she said in July, speaking about the proposed bill. “Because now, on top of all the burdens we already had, thanks to those horrible ideologies called feminism and the gender perspective, we have to defend our men.”
But researchers say there is little evidence that false accusations are a serious problem. Official national statistics on false accusations do not exist in Chile. In Bolivia, false-accusation claims accounted for 0.13% of all the cases filed in 2024, according to the public prosecutor's office. In Argentina, a report from the public prosecutor's office found that false-report investigations represented about one in every 1,000 criminal cases examined between 2023 and 2025 – just 0.09%. In jurisdictions able to break the cases down further, only 8% of all false-report cases related to gender-based or intrafamilial violence.
Underreporting remains the greater problem
The far greater problem, critics say, is that violence often goes unreported. In Chile, data shows that most gender-based or sexual violence is never reported at all. In a 2024 government survey, just 12.1% of women who had experienced sexual violence said they had reported their most recent experience. Meanwhile, only 15% of women who were victims of femicide in Argentina in 2025 had previously reported violence, according to the country's national femicide register. Another survey found that among women who had experienced violence from their partner, 77% had not filed a complaint.
“For years women have been afraid to report because nobody believed them,” says Ávila-Guillén. “This risks sending us backwards, even to before the #MeToo movement, where women are not only discouraged from reporting sexual violence and harassment, but now also risk being sent to prison if the accusation is not successful.”
In Bolivia, Martín Vidaurre, a policy coordinator for Ipas, an international non-profit organisation specialising in reproductive health, says women already face significant barriers when reporting violence, from an overstretched justice system to economic obstacles and institutional prejudice. Yet a powerful counter-narrative has taken hold: that women routinely abuse the system through false reports.
“There's a narrative that when you report a case, a man can immediately go to jail. There's a narrative that women use this law against men when they are bad to them, when they want to divorce them,” he says. “They're saying that this law, 348, against the violence against women, is actually a law against men.”
Vidaurre says that in practice women may report abuse but later abandon proceedings because they cannot afford legal costs, while overstretched prosecutors, police and judges struggle with heavy caseloads. Similar conditions exist in Peru. Susana Chávez, a prominent women's rights advocate and director of Promsex, which defends reproductive rights, says victims often report only repeated or extreme violence, and can then face scepticism from police, lengthy court proceedings and a large backlog of cases when they do so. Some abandon their cases because an abusive partner makes continuing to support their children conditional on dropping proceedings. “It's very difficult, already, to confront the issue or speak out against it,” she says.
Part of a larger political battle
It is against such a backdrop that campaigners see the growing focus on false allegations as part of a much larger political battle. Chávez described the proposals as part of “a very organised, very large packet” pushed by an anti-women's rights faction that has also sought to dismantle sexuality education, remove references to gender and eliminate inclusive language. “It's a very coordinated, orchestrated agenda,” she says.
Over the past decade, women's movements have become an increasingly powerful force across Latin America. Ni Una Menos (Not One [woman] Less), which began in Argentina in 2015 as a protest against femicide, spread rapidly across the region, while the “green wave” for abortion rights helped propel important reforms in Argentina, Mexico and Colombia. At the same time, conservative movements have increasingly mobilised against what they describe as “gender ideology” – a label used to challenge policies ranging from abortion and sexuality education to LGBTQ+ rights and protections against violence against women.
“We have a very strong presence of the ultra-conservative sector in the [Peruvian] congress,” says Chávez. “These policies put at risk the entire spectrum of sexual justice and reproductive justice. It is a very complex amalgam that sets women back by at least 50 years.”
In Argentina, Natalia Gherardi, lawyer and director of the feminist organisation Latin American Team for Justice and Gender, sees the proposed bills as part of the same ideological fight. Since taking office, the government of the far-right president, Javier Milei, has abolished the ministry of women, gender and diversity and later shut down its successor office for protection against gender-based violence, while cutting or scrapping a series of programmes aimed at supporting women and LGBTQ+ people. It has also sought to remove femicide from the penal code as a specific category.
“The government in Argentina has built a cultural battle around the idea that feminism has gone too far, and that women should be put back in their place, and that all gender-based violence allegations are an invention of feminism,” she says.
Regional body issues warning
The series of false accusation bills has now attracted the attention of the regional body responsible for monitoring countries' compliance with the Belém do Pará convention, the inter-American treaty on violence against women. In August, the committee of experts of Mesecvi, the convention's monitoring mechanism, issued a strong warning over the initiatives in Argentina and Bolivia. It said the proposed legislation could create an additional legislative barrier to justice, increase fears of retaliation and deepen the re-victimisation of women.
“It is very serious,” says Mónica Maureira, vice-president of Mesecvi. “There is a concerted strategy at the regional level; that is, there are multiple countries in the region that are imposing laws with similar characteristics.” The committee has also been monitoring similar proposals in Guatemala, Uruguay and Paraguay, Maureira adds.
For Gherardi, the danger lies in the effect such laws could have on women considering whether to report abuse at all. “It will prevent women from looking for protection,” she says. “If you can't turn to the judiciary for protection then who will you turn to?”
