Home is one of the most dangerous places on earth for women, a new United Nations report reveals. More than 60 percent of homicides of women are carried out by their intimate partners or by other relatives.
The femicide index just released by the UN Women entity found that at least 51,000 women were killed globally in 2023, and 6 out of 10 women who were victims of homicide were killed by their spouse or another family member. Femicide is the deliberate murder of females because of their gender.
“Each statistic is a person often hidden by society stigma or silenced by fear,” Amina Mohammed, UN deputy secretary-general, told the General Assembly on Nov. 25, during the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the International Day of Elimination of Violence Against Women. “It is my personal conviction that the safest house we always take our victims to should be her remaining in her home and the perpetrator, the man, taken out.”
Mohammed added: “Millions of women start their days filled with trepidations; adjusting their daily routes, their clothing, their conduct, their decisions, not out of choice but out of necessity and fear to protect themselves.”
The report found that attention to the crisis of femicide may have waned in the wake of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. The number of countries reporting on the killing of women by intimate partners or other family members has decreased by 50 percent since that time.
Africa and Asia recorded the highest number of femicide cases in 2023, with an estimated 21,700 and 18,500 victims, respectively.
The report said that while men and women are victims of intimate-partner or family violence, men accounted for 80 percent of all global homicide victims in 2023, but only 12 percent of the deaths were attributed to violence within the family, compared with 60 percent of women.
“Femicide is the most extreme manifestation of violence against women and girls that often represent the fatal and final act in a series of violent acts,” said Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, UN Women’s deputy executive director. The numbers documented in the report might hide the true scale of femicide, she noted.
“Gender-related killing of women and girls is a crime that continues to be underdetected,” Gumbonzvanda added. “We are concerned that efforts to identify femicide seem to be slowing down. We call for further commitment from countries to ensuring that every victim is counted and evidence is generated for a better understanding of the types of gender-related killings of women and girls.”
The report also showed that the most instances of women killed by intimate partners happened in Europe and the Americas. Many of the women had previously reported a form of abuse to the authorities before they were eventually murdered.
UN Women said that in France, 79 percent of female homicides were committed by intimate partners or other family members from 2019 to 2022, with other forms of femicide, such as violent crime or exploitation, accounting for 5 percent of total figures.
“France condemns all forms of violence against women and girls. It defends an approach based on respect for their rights and on the fight against impunity in all circumstances,” Christophe Bigot, secretary-general of the French delegation to the 79th UN General Assembly, said on Nov. 25 at the UN.
“This violence is taking new forms, such as cyberbullying, the dissemination without consent of real or AI-generated intimate content, online sexual exploitation and abuse, or the online propagation of hate speech against women and girls,” Bigot continued. “In response, we must ensure that women and girls’ rights are respected online.”
Recently, France and the Netherlands led a General Assembly resolution to intensify efforts to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls in the digital arena. In the final tally, 170 countries voted yes and 13 abstained, of which 7 were African, including Nigeria, the continent’s most-populous state. Argentina was the only country to vote no.
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Damilola Banjo is an award-winning staff reporter for PassBlue who has covered a wide range of topics, from Africa-centered stories to gender equality to UN peacekeeping and US-UN relations. She also oversees all video production for PassBlue. She was a Dag Hammarskjold fellow in 2023 and a Pulitzer Center postgraduate fellow in 2021. She was part of the BBC Africa team that produced the Emmy-nominated documentary, “Sex for Grades.” In addition, she worked for WFAE, an NPR affiliate in Charlotte, N.C. Banjo has a master’s of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an undergraduate degree from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.
What a shame for the whole humanity! What a shame for Nigeria and Argentina!
A very timely article for this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women! These shocking figures highlight systemic failures to protect against femicide. The need to strengthen commitments to the Istanbul Convention should be emphasized.
There seems to be a linkage between violence against children and violence against women. Austrian peace researcher Franz Jedlicka explains this “intersectionality” in his recent podcast episode (and on LinkedIn). And he also mentions the White Ribbon Campaign – a men’s movement to end violence against women.