Human Rights Committee

Information received from Uruguay on follow-up to the concluding observations on its sixth periodic report *

[Date received: 4 August 2025]

1.In accordance with rule 75 (1) of the Committee’s rules of procedure, the Government of Uruguay provides the information requested on the implementation of the recommendations made in paragraphs 15 (violence against women and domestic violence), 23 (treatment of persons deprived of their liberty) and 25 (access to justice, independence of the judiciary and right to a fair trial) of the Committee’s concluding observations on its sixth periodic report of Uruguay.

Additional information relating to the concluding observations (CCPR/C/URY/CO/6)

Information relating to paragraph 15 (a)

2.Under the National Budget Act for 2020–2024, the amount allocated to the gender-based violence response system of the National Institute for Women was increased by 50 per cent. This has made it possible to expand and improve the system, which comprises different support services and reaches all women over 18 years of age, including women of African descent, women with disabilities, and migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers.

3.Since 2016, the number of support services within the gender-based violence response system has increased from 18 to 35 nationwide. Since 2023, Montevideo, the country’s capital, has had two service centres, which helps to make services more accessible.

4.The number of local coordination units increased from 18 to 19. The purpose of the units is to provide an initial response and referral service for women victims of violence and to prevent such situations and ensure their early detection. The number of support services for male perpetrators of violence increased from 3 to 15. Such services now operate in 20 locations in the country.

5.The short-stay shelter for women at risk of domestic violence and the Transitional Housing Alternatives Programme, implemented under an agreement with the Ministry of Housing and Land Management, are continuing to operate and have been strengthened. A halfway house, three transitional centres with facilities in Montevideo, Tacuarembó and Maldonado, and a portal for admission to 24-hour centres have been established. In addition, training to facilitate employment and entry into the labour market has been provided in conjunction with the National Institute of Employment and Vocational Training.

6.A telephone counselling and consultation service for women victims of gender-based violence continues to operate. It offers an active and personalized listening service, working directly with women in situations of gender-based violence and with family members and/or professionals who assist women in this situation. Since 2022, the service has operated 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and is free, confidential and available nationwide. In 2023, accessibility measures for deaf women were incorporated into the telephone service. In 2022, the “One Minute of You” campaign, consisting of a video intended to raise awareness and inform citizens about the 0800 4141 telephone counselling service, was implemented.

7.In 2022, the portal for admission to 24-hour centres of the National Institute for Women was established. The portal is a specialized legal and psychosocial mechanism for analysing situations of women at risk of domestic violence with a view to providing them with possible transitional housing. The number of staff hours has been increased by 90 hours per week. Between 2022 and 2024, the number of women referred through the portal increased by 42 per cent.

8.The ninth and tenth divisions of the specialized family courts of first instance were established in November 2019, while the eleventh and twelfth divisions of the courts were established in December 2020. The courts are competent to hear protection proceedings under Act No. 17.514 (on domestic violence), Act No. 19.580 (on gender-based violence) and articles 66 and 117 of Act No. 17.823 (the Code on Children and Adolescents).

9.Currently, the judicial branch has 12 specialized family courts in the city of Montevideo that are permanently open and operate on a double shift basis every day of the year.

10.In late 2019, as part of a plan to restructure its facilities, the judicial branch acquired a large building to be used for the establishment of a planned gender justice centre in Montevideo.

11.Furthermore, eight offices specializing in gender-based violence were established in strategic locations throughout the country:

The first and second divisions of the courts of first instance specializing in gender‑based, domestic and sexual violence of San Carlos have been in operation since 21 February 2022 while the third and fourth divisions of the courts have been in operation since 27 November 2023.

The first and second divisions of the courts of first instance specializing in gender‑based, domestic and sexual violence of Salto have been in operation since 23 October 2023.

The first and second divisions of the courts of first instance specializing in gender‑based, domestic and sexual violence of Rivera have been in operation since 24 June 2024.

Information relating to paragraph 15 (b)

12.Uruguay has a national training school for civil servants, which, under an agreement with the National Institute for Women, provides specific training on gender-based violence and sexual harassment in the workplace.

13.In 2022, the National Institute for Women conducted awareness-raising sessions for teams that support men who commit gender-based violence, teams attached to other mechanisms of the Institute’s response system and members of teams from institutions that work with men who commit gender-based violence.

14.Awareness-raising sessions on trafficking in persons and training on the implementation of the inter-institutional guide for action in situations of trafficking and exploitation of persons in Uruguay were carried out within the framework of the National Council to Prevent and Combat Trafficking in Persons. The activities were aimed at the staff of the agencies that make up the Council and other social workers who deal with the issue.

15.In 2023, a training session was held for technical teams from the National Institute for Women and the National Gender Council with a view to developing a programme-based series of measures to empower women politicians and address gender-based political violence.

16.In 2024, and to date in 2025, the objective has been to provide support to the team members of the Institute’s gender-based violence division and gender-based violence response system by training and strengthening skills to detect possible trauma and its impact on women victims and thus provide better responses that are tailored to the new forms of gender-based violence.

17.The National Institute for Women, in coordination with the Ministry of Education and Culture, the National Public Education Administration and the Centre for Educational Innovation with Digital Technologies, conducted a series of courses under the Training Programme for Equality and Non-Discrimination between Women and Men between 2016 and 2024. The courses were aimed at teachers, students of education and experts working in formal and/or non-formal education in public and/or private schools throughout the country.

18.The Ministry of the Interior, as part of efforts to professionalize police staff in the area of domestic and gender-based violence, has carried out a number of training and capacity-building activities for police officers at the national level.

19.The Supreme Court of Justice has included in its training programmes a number of human rights related courses and workshops that its training bodies have delivered to officials, clerks, public defenders, attorneys and judges.

20.At the Centre for Judicial Studies of Uruguay, a number of basic and in-service training courses have been held to train judges and public defenders in the gender perspective and human rights, especially in relation to violence, domestic violence, gender-based violence, violence against children and adolescents, and the sexual abuse of children.

21.The Attorney General’s Office has conducted awareness-raising and training activities for new employees in the areas of gender policy and the gender perspective as well as in policies for the provision of support and protection to victims who use the services of the Attorney General’s Office. It has also organized training sessions on the investigation and litigation of sexual offences. The Office’s Victims and Witnesses Unit carried out activities to enhance legal understanding of the rights and treatment of victims of offences in the adversarial criminal justice system, with a particular focus on situations of gender-based violence and new contexts of violence. The activities were directed at a number of State and civil society bodies and other institutions. The training of prosecutorial and non-prosecutorial officials in gender-based violence, as one of the main focuses in the area of gender, has continued to be strengthened. Courses on the investigation and litigation of sexual offence have been coordinated. A training session on the investigation and litigation of femicide in Latin America has also been organized.

22.The Ministry of Health, in coordination with the Attorney General’s Office, the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Psychology, has provided training for teams working with victims of violence within healthcare providers with a view to assisting victims of sexual offences and promoting access to justice and comprehensive and specific forms of support.

23.The Ministry of Education and Culture has conducted courses with a view to developing training activities for students, teachers, educators and other professionals working in the public and private sectors of the formal and non-formal education systems. The training relates to the prevention of sexual abuse of children and adolescents in educational settings; violence-free dating; early childhood, gender and violence; and disability, gender and education.

24.The Ministry of Defence has conducted awareness-raising workshops on gender‑based violence for its entire staff.

25.The National Public Education Administration has conducted training sessions on road maps for dealing with situations of violence in preschool, primary and secondary education for resident lawyers and legal representatives from all subsystems of the National Public Education Administration and the Education Training Council.

Information relating to paragraph 15 (c)

26.With regard to the dissemination of information on reporting channels, the Resource Guide of the Directorate for Gender Policy (2022), prepared by the Ministry of the Interior, establishes that 281 police stations throughout the country, and their district offices, are authorized to receive complaints. These include police stations specializing in domestic and gender-based violence, which provide specific capacity-building and training to their officers. The Guide also refers to other channels that receive complaints.

27.The Ministry of the Interior disseminates information on the different reporting channels established for the general public so that they can report any situation that may constitute an offence.

28.The Attorney General’s Office has four prosecutors’ offices for sexual offences and four for offences involving domestic violence and gender-based violence, two of which were established in 2023.The Victims and Witnesses Unit provides information, assistance and support to victims and witnesses involved in situations of gender-based violence. Since the reform of criminal justice proceedings in 2017, the number of offices of the special prosecutor working in this area has continued to increase.

29.Article 80 of Act No. 19.580 of 2017 on gender-based violence against women established that judgments of conviction, in addition to setting out a penalty, would provide for the payment of damages to the victim in an amount equivalent to 12 times the convicted person’s monthly income or, failing that, twelve minimum wages, without prejudice to the victim’s right to pursue the corresponding proceedings in order to obtain full reparation for any harm suffered. Mandatory compensation for victims has been ordered with growing frequency.

30.The Supreme Court of Justice adopted decision No. 8.071 of 11 June 2020 on actions to be taken in protection proceedings under Act No. 19.580, in line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, goal 16 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Brasilia Regulations Regarding Access to Justice for Vulnerable People, among other international instruments.,

Information relating to paragraph 23 (a)

31.The programme-based proposal for 2025–2030 of the National Institute for the Social Inclusion of Adolescents explicitly provides for the institutional restructuring of its residential centres, moving towards a progressive model that avoids grouping together persons in pretrial detention, convicted persons and persons on long-term placements.

32.The proposal is to eliminate the admission centres as they currently operate and transform them into spaces with differentiated functions where adolescents are assessed and referred, depending on their profile, to centres that are technically and programmatically equipped to meet their unique needs.

33.A progressively phased model of confinement is established, with a sustained reduction in the number of hours spent in cells, depending on the progress made in individual social and educational plans.

Information relating to paragraph 23 (b)

34.In 2016, the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Prison System drew up a special report on deaths in custody. Since then, a section of the annual report presented to Parliament contains an analysis of the deaths that have occurred each year. Work is carried out under an agreement with the Department of Forensic Medicine of Udelar, which prepares a report containing an analysis of the causes of death and detailing the cases in which there is evidence of negligence or omission on the part of the State. Since March 2024, the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Prison System has filed a complaint with the public prosecutor’s office for each death of a person deprived of liberty, requesting an investigation.

Information relating to paragraph 23 (c)

35.In December 2024, the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Prison System issued a report on alternative penalties to be applied during the sentence execution period for women with dependent children, and two awareness-raising activities are planned to promote their implementation. With regard to overcrowding, a document setting out recommendations for the reform of the prison system that proposes short-, medium- and long-term measures for addressing this problem was issued in March 2025.

36.The statistical information available on women prosecuted for offences that could be classed as non-violent indicates that increasing use is made of non-custodial sentences (strictly monitored probation, monitored probation and probation).

37.On 14 May 2025, a working meeting was held between the authorities of the judiciary and the National Rehabilitation Institute to establish a forum for exchange between stakeholders in the criminal justice system. The purpose of the forum is to share information, analyse difficulties, identify good practices and promote knowledge of the criteria applicable to the enforcement of sentences.

38.The programme-based proposal for 2025–2030 of the National Institute for the Social Inclusion of Adolescents reaffirms the principle that imprisonment should be used only on an exceptional basis, prioritizing non-custodial alternatives, especially in the case of adolescents, women and non-violent offences.

Information relating to paragraph 23 (d)

39.With regard to this recommendation, it should be noted that in no case are precautionary custodial measures ordered of a judge’s own motion. Rather, they are always adopted at the express request of the Public Prosecution Service after an adolescent’s defence has been heard.

40.Under the current legislation established under Act No. 19.889 of 9 July 2020, adopted under the fast-track legislative procedure, in certain cases, precautionary deprivation of liberty is mandatory until the final judgment is issued. It has a duration of between 12 and 24 months, depending on the type of offence concerned.

41.Notwithstanding the exceptions that determine the actions of judges, and without prejudice to the technical independence of each judge, in recent years, statistics indicate that the use of custodial measures is tending to decrease.

42.In the case of children and adolescents, emphasis is placed on the implementation of a national programme for non-custodial measures, which has a local presence in the 19 departments, and on the strengthening of technical teams that adopt a restorative and human rights approach.

43.With regard to adolescent women, the replacement of custodial penalties with house arrest accompanied by socioeducational support is being considered to avoid infringing the right to motherhood and child-rearing, in line with the Bangkok Rules and the principle of the best interests of the child.

Information relating to paragraph 23 (e)

44.In 2023, the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Prison System made 82 recommendations, 15 of which were brought to the attention of the judiciary as they concerned specific human rights cases requiring the intervention of a judge to order the adoption of measures by the administrative bodies of the prison system. The judiciary were issued with 12 notes to request treatment for inmates engaging in problematic substance use and 17 notes to ensure that reconstructive surgery was carried out on persons who had undergone an ostomy. The habeas corpus mechanism was used on three occasions, including one in which an application for corrective and collective habeas corpus was filed in May 2023 to improve the very poor conditions in cell block 2 of Canelones Prison. The application received a favourable ruling and led to the adoption of urgent measures by the National Rehabilitation Institute. In 2024, two applications for corrective and collective habeas corpus were filed to request mental healthcare for women in facilities in the interior of the country and one application was filed regarding the food in Prison Unit No. 4 in Montevideo, where more than 4,000 people are housed.

45.The National Institute for the Social Inclusion of Adolescents is proposing to undertake a planned and comprehensive overhaul of its built infrastructure in order to close facilities that function on a prison model (such as the pre-release and temporary detention centres) and to relocate programmes to modern socioeducational centres geared towards developing skills, connections and citizenship.

Information relating to paragraph 25 (a)

46.Ensuring that the public defence service is independent of the judicial branch is a matter exclusively for the legislature.

47.Since 2019, the number of public defenders across the country has been increasing. In that year, there were 90 public defenders in the capital and 188 in the interior. Currently, 105 public defenders have been appointed in the capital and 212 in the interior.

48.The judicial branch has 317 public defenders throughout the country who provide free quality legal assistance in all areas of law to persons who cannot afford a private lawyer and in criminal matters to all persons, without any conditions.

49.Optimizing the functioning of the public defence services is one of the goals of the institution and constitutes one of the objectives of the strategic plan for the period 2025–2034, which has been granted the status of a decision (No. 8.221 of the Supreme Court of Justice of 28 November 2024). Specifically, the following strategic measures have been established: improving the service provided to users, making progress in computerizing the management of the public defence services and reorganizing their staffing structures.

50.Against this backdrop, in order to guarantee access to justice, several working meetings have been held this year with all public defenders in the interior of the country to consider the main difficulties and barriers to justice that defendants may encounter with a view to planning strategic measures for improving and guaranteeing genuine access to the justice service for all persons.

51.Lastly, among the measures taken to improve service quality, public defenders and attorneys receive ongoing training at the Centre for Judicial Studies of Uruguay in accordance with decision No. 7.972 of 3 May 2018, which regulates the training of public defenders and attorneys through ongoing training courses and workshops, establishing mandatory participation and a minimum number of hours of training per year.

52.In this regard, courses relating to the areas in which they work are conducted, along with ongoing workshops for discussion and exchange for public defenders and attorneys in all parts of the country.

Information relating to paragraph 25 (b)

53.The Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Prison System files complaints on acts of institutional violence occurring within prison units, and in all cases involving deaths, and takes the necessary steps to follow up on these reports. Since 2022, more than 100 complaints have been filed.

54.The programme-based document of the National Institute for the Social Inclusion of Adolescents addresses the implementation of article 273 BIS of the Code of Criminal Procedure, establishing an educational intervention mechanism from the first point of contact with the criminal justice system, with technical teams that intervene at the detention stage and provide guidance to both adolescents and their families.