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Zorayda Gallegos tells UN News how sexual violence cases in the military end
She described a force in which an order from a superior is treated as binding, including an order that pulls a woman into an officer's private space.
In this story
- Gallegos's report, described to UN News in 2026, follows more than 520 women who reported sexual offenses across 12 years.
- She put the conviction share at 3 percent and said 97 percent of those cases brought no effective sanctions.
- She told UN News the pattern runs from the barracks into military schools, hospitals, and court rulings.
- The UNESCO tally of journalists killed in Mexico is kept apart from those barracks cases.
On 1 November 2026, UN News published an interview by Nathalie Minard in Geneva with investigative journalist Zorayda Gallegos, ahead of the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists on Monday, 2 November 2026. "If an officer says, ‘Come into my bedroom,’ she must go in, otherwise she would be disobeying an order from her superior," she told UN News.
In that 2026 interview, Gallegos told UN News that her report, Sexual violence in the barracks: an X-ray of impunity, tracked more than 520 women who reported sexual offenses over a 12-year period. She told UN News in 2026 that 3 percent of those cases ended in a conviction and that 97 percent of those cases led to no effective sanctions.
Gallegos told UN News that the problem is structural and reaches beyond the barracks into military schools and hospitals. She said she documented how high-ranking officials cover up abuse, and that gender inequality and institutional obstacles discourage victims from filing complaints. Military training, she told UN News, is a very hierarchical, top-down system in which women are always taught to follow orders from their superiors. Female soldiers, she said, are often assigned tasks associated with caregiving and nursing, even though they are qualified for higher-ranking positions.
Women who reach court, she said, meet another layer of the same system. Gallegos told UN News that some judicial rulings contain sexist remarks or lack any gender perspective, and that psychological support offered to complainants is geared toward getting them to forgive their aggressors, forget what happened, and carry on with their military careers. She alleges that the men accused are often given recommendations rather than punishments, and she told UN News that is the maximum. To change the pattern, she said more women are needed in senior military leadership and decision-making roles, and in the judiciary and prosecution services.
UN News says the investigation won her the 2026 Breach/Valdez Award for Journalism and Human Rights, and that the work has made her a target. The outlet says she has faced intimidating remarks, veiled threats, and pressure because of her work. The award carries the names of Miroslava Breach and Javier Valdez. UN News says they were assassinated because of their work. Gallegos told UN News they stood for brave journalism rooted in their communities and committed to telling uncomfortable truths, until it cost them their lives, and that should never have happened.
As of the 1 November 2026 UN News article, UNESCO's count of journalists murdered in Mexico over the past 20 years is 154. UNESCO has confirmed that 8 journalists have been murdered in Mexico so far in 2026. UN News says press freedom groups including Article 19 and Reporters Without Borders put the 2026 toll at 9, after the killing of Hamurabi Huesca Manzano in Oaxaca on 9 October.