Two Mexican lawyers have won a prestigious human rights award for obtaining a landmark judgment recognising a new type of gender-based violence known as ‘femicide’.

David Peña Rodriguez and Karla Micheel Salas Ramirez received the award from the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) after working pro bono for eight years to press for prosecutions in relation to the murder of hundreds of women in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, which borders the US.

The lawyers, who have both been threatened at gunpoint, won recognition of the crime of ‘femicide’ by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2009.

Some 580 women have been murdered in the city since 2006, with another 530 killed in the previous 13 years. The victims have mostly been women aged between 12 and 22, whose bodies have shown signs of sexual violence, torture or disfigurement. The murders occurred against a background of violence between rival drugs cartels and the Mexican armed forces.

Rodriguez said: ‘Men are killing women simply because they can kill them with impunity. They live in constant fear of their own lives, and murdering a vulnerable woman makes them feel empowered.’

Ramirez said: ‘Gender violence aims to keep women at a disadvantage and is condoned by misogynists who think women are somehow to blame for their problems.’

CCBE president Jose-Maria Davo-Fernandez said the lawyers had ‘contributed directly to the development of international human rights law and to the better defence of victims of femicide’.