(CNN) -- Guatemalan authorities must act to stop the high numbers of women being killed in their country and ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice, Amnesty International said.

The human rights organization Monday urged Guatemala to shore up its fight against impunity and address the more than 685 killings of women reported in 2010 alone. Amnesty International's call comes ahead of International Women's Day on Tuesday.

"Women in Guatemala are dying as a consequence of the state's failure to protect them," Sebastian Elgueta, Guatemala researcher at Amnesty International, said in a statement. "High levels of violence and a lack of political will, along with a track record of impunity, mean authorities are both unable to pursue perpetrators, or just don't care. Perpetrators know they will not be punished."

The Central American country's culture of impunity is a legacy of its 36-year civil war that ended in 1996, the organization said. There were hundreds of thousands human rights violations that were never accounted for, Amnesty said.

In a speech last year, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom said his country has made strides in protecting women.

"Today we have tribunals specialized in femicide, we have offices for attention (to women's rights), we have centers, but once again, this will won't be enough until we finally defeat the social scourge of women's murders, regardless of the reason, justification or other type of cheap excuse," Colom said.

Passing laws is not enough, Elgueta said.

"The government must initiate effective investigations into killings, improve police training and ensure prosecutions are effective," he said.

The special tribunals have not been effective, Amnesty said.

"The gender of the woman is often a determining factor in the motive of the crime, the way in which the authorities respond to the case and the way women are killed," the organization said.

Rosa Franco has been fighting for justice after her 15-year-old daughter, Maria Isabel Franco, was raped and killed in December 2001. But no one has been arrested in the case, Amnesty said.

Franco has received death threats and harassment because of her search for justice, the organization said.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights took Maria Isabel Franco's case on the grounds that it was being unjustifiably delayed by authorities.

"If the police had started the investigation early, maybe they would've found Maria Isabel alive," Rosa Franco told Amnesty. "Their attitude, not only in the case of my daughter, but in the cases of thousands of women who have been killed, has been terrible."

On Tuesday, some 60 organizations will march down the principal streets of Guatemala City to commemorate International Women's Day, the state-run AGN news agency reported. The march will start in front of the supreme court.

"With this activity, Guatemalan women will demand the respect and the meeting of their needs and urge plans to solve the problems of poverty, discrimination, lack of opportunities, among others," activist Sandra Moran told AGN.

Professor Ana Silvia Monzon told the news agency that university students will join the march in memory of Emilia Quan, a young sociologist who was killed in November.