President De La Espriella Signs Law Criminalizing Sexual Abuse of Animals

President Abelardo De La Espriella signed Law 2627 on August 24, 2026, creating Colombia’s first standalone criminal offense for the sexual abuse of animals and making it the only crime against animals in the country’s penal code that does not qualify for pretrial release. The law took effect immediately upon publication and carries a base prison term of 48 to 55 months, rising to as much as 140 months — more than 11 years — when aggravating circumstances apply.

The new Article 339D of the Criminal Code, known informally as the Ley No Más Zoofilia (Spanish for “No More Zoophilia Law”), defines the offense as carnal access to an animal — legally, penetration by a human sexual organ or by any other body part or object. The statute separately defines “acto sexual” (sexual act) as any other sexual conduct imposed on an animal that stops short of penetration, but does not attach an independent criminal penalty to that term in the text as enacted. That is narrower than the original version of the bill, filed in Congress in August 2024, which would have criminalized “acto sexual con animales” on its own, with a lighter 12-to-36-month sentence.

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Beyond prison time, anyone convicted faces special disqualification of two to four years from any profession, trade or business involving the care, possession or handling of animals, an absolute ban on acquiring, possessing, caring for or sheltering animals, and a fine of 30 to 50 salarios mínimos mensuales legales vigentes (the monthly legal minimum wage, or SMMLV) — $52,527,150 COP to $87,545,250 COP, roughly $16,800 USD to $28,000 USD at the Banco de la República‘s exchange rate this week of about 3,126 pesos per dollar.

Sentences increase by half to three-quarters, up to the 140-month ceiling, when the offense is committed by two or more people, involves more than one animal, takes place in a public space or for profit, is repeated against the same animal, is committed by someone abusing a position, job or profession that gave them particular trust over the animal’s care, or is recorded and shared through media, a digital platform or social network in a way that promotes or glorifies the crime. The law also treats abuse carried out with cruelty; as revenge, retaliation, a threat or another form of coercion against an animal’s owner, holder or possessor, or for a base or trivial motive; or against an animal already under institutional custody or in a vulnerable state — because of age, illness, disability, pregnancy, abandonment, recovery from a prior injury or its inability to defend itself — as aggravating circumstances.

The statute explicitly exempts licensed veterinary and zootechnical procedures, along with diagnostic techniques used in animal reproduction and productivity, from criminal liability — a carve-out relevant to Colombia’s livestock and artificial-insemination industries, since practitioners in those fields are also the group facing the law’s professional disqualification if convicted of the new offense. Judges may additionally order convicted offenders into mandatory restorative-justice programs or animal-welfare education, though the law specifies that these measures can never substitute for or reduce the prison sentence and other penalties.

The law gives the national government six months to design a public-education campaign on the new offense, led by the Ministerio de Justicia y del Derecho (Ministry of Justice and Law) in coordination with the health and culture ministries, working with animal shelters and welfare organizations. In the same window, the Fiscalía General de la Nación (Attorney General’s Office) must issue a unified investigative protocol for gathering evidence in these cases and train animal-rights activists and organizations to assist prosecutors in that work.

The bill was sponsored by senators Iván Cepeda and Esmeralda Hernández of the Pacto Histórico coalition, who first introduced it in August 2024. At the time, Hernández pointed to Fiscalía data — 61 cases of sexual violence against animals logged nationwide by the Fiscalía’s Grupo Especial para la Lucha contra el Maltrato Animal (GELMA, or Special Group for the Fight Against Animal Abuse) as of February 2024 — and to research linking abusers of animals to a heightened risk of later sexually abusing vulnerable people. “There is technical and scientific evidence indicating that some rapists of human beings previously engaged in sexually abusive conduct toward animals,” Hernández said when she filed the bill, according to Infobae. The measure cleared its final debate in the Colombian Congress in June 2026 and was sent to the president’s desk for signature on August 6, 2026.

Hernández, the bill’s lead sponsor, told El Tiempo that the new offense’s most significant feature is its exclusion from bail.

“It is the only crime against animals in Colombia that does not qualify for release from custody.”

— Sen. Esmeralda Hernández, the law’s lead sponsor

Sen. Andrea Padilla, a separate animal-rights legislator not among the bill’s listed sponsors, also welcomed the signing on X: “The law that criminally punishes the sexual abuse of animals in Colombia has been sanctioned! Thank you, Mr. President,” she wrote, adding that her own team had worked to make the law’s criminal provisions “penalmente robusta” (criminally robust) — a contribution Finance Colombia could not independently verify.

Colombia’s lack of a specific criminal charge for sexual abuse of animals had already drawn national attention once before. In July 2023, a ceramic sculpture titled Mi Primer Amor (“My First Love”), created by the artist Sebastián Bohórquez, went up in Sincelejo, the capital of Sucre department on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, with a plaque describing it as a tribute to the “hombre costeño ‘mamaburra'” — a phrase referring to a persistent regional folk belief that rural men on the Caribbean coast had their first sexual experience with a donkey. Sincelejo officials ordered the sculpture removed, and it came down within a week of going up, citing the lack of a permit for the public space it occupied, according to Infobae. The episode set off a national debate over a custom long associated with parts of the Caribbean coast; Hernández’s own 2024 bill announcement cited the sculpture as a recent example of the broader conversation her legislation was meant to address.

Within Título XI-A of the Criminal Code — the section covering Delitos Contra los Animales (“Crimes Against Animals”) — Law 2627 also renames its single chapter as Delitos contra la vida, la integridad física, emocional y sexual de los animales (“Crimes Against the Life, Physical Integrity, Emotional Well-Being and Sexual Integrity of Animals”), folding sexual abuse into the same chapter as animal cruelty while keeping it a distinct, more harshly penalized offense within it.