According to UN data, in 2022, around 48.800 women and girls around the world were killed by their intimate partners or other family members. This means that, on average, more than 133 women or girls are killed every day by someone in their own family. Globally, an average of five women or girls are killed every hour by someone in their own family. Often their murders are intrinsically linked to the fact that they are women. Violence against women remains a profound and pervasive problem affecting millions of women worldwide.
Published reports and data show that this violence takes many forms, including femicide, rape and harassment, and occurs in different geographic and sociopolitical contexts. Femicide is not just the killing of women, but the killing of women by men simply because they are women. There is no universal definition of this phenomenon, and femicide is broadly defined as the killing of a woman or girl because of her gender.
Femicide occurs all over the world - in China, India, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, especially Mexico and Brazil, and in Europe, in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) as well. Latin America and the Caribbean have some of the highest rates of hatred and murder of girls and women. Even Australia, one of the richest countries in the world, is not immune to femicide and violence against women. On average, two women are killed every week in this country. So far this year, 56 women and 10 children have been killed by their husbands or partners.
The first documented use of the term "femicide" can be found in John Corry's 1801 book "A Satirical Account of London at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century," where it was used to denote the killing of a woman. The term was reintroduced in the 1970s by the late Dr Diana Russell, a specialist in violence against women, who worked to raise awareness of the pervasiveness of male violence and discrimination against women.
She popularized the term "femicide" to emphasize the killing of women "because they are women" and to distinguish these murders from other murders. In its early version, femicide was defined as "the killing of women by men motivated by hatred, contempt, pleasure, or a sense of ownership of women" and "the misogynistic killing of women by men." In 2012, this definition evolved into “the killing of one or more women by one or more men because they are women,” as Dr Russell stated in her keynote speech at the UN Symposium on Femicide.
Dr Russell has studied and researched all forms of violence against women, including rape, incest, child abuse, physical abuse, pornography and sexual harassment, and was among the first to illuminate the links between these different forms of violence against women. In her groundbreaking 1995 essay, "Politicizing Sexual Violence: A Voice in the Wild," she argued that "rape is not a deviant act, but one that is inherently sexist and fits within patriarchal notions of masculinity."
The tip of the iceberg
Dunja Bonacci Skenderović, an independent consultant for combating violence against women, says that "when the cases are analyzed, it can be seen that femicide is intentional murder." "This is not a murder out of passion, but a planned murder. Some women were killed while sleeping, some were waited on when they were going to work or from work, a man came to a woman with a weapon... I don't know of a single case in Croatia where a woman met a man and fired 22 bullets at him. I don't know of a single case where a woman stabbed her intimate partner 88 times with a knife. I don't know a single case where a woman strangled her partner, wrapped him in a carpet, threw him in a septic tank and said for four months that he went to his lover... these are all cases of femicide."
From the tragic cases of femicide in Afghanistan after the Taliban took over, through mass protests in West Bengal, record high violence in Brazil, to the murder of Anđelka M. (34) in Šipovo, the global epidemic of gender-based violence highlights the urgent need not only for comprehensive and effective interventions, but a complete change of consciousness that will finally start to treat this violence globally as a special form of violence against women just because they are women.
Femicide in Afghanistan
Since the return of the Taliban to Afghanistan, and the establishment of the terror of gender apartheid, the country has witnessed a horrific increase in femicide, with more than 300 reported cases of women killed by men. These alarming statistics represent only the "tip of the iceberg," suggesting that the true scale of violence against women in Afghanistan is much higher. The Taliban's restrictive policies and societal attitudes towards women have exacerbated this crisis, as women's rights and protections have been drastically reduced.
The normalization of violence and the suppression of women's voices contribute to a culture in which femicide is not only the result of individual aggressive acts, but also a systemic problem rooted in broader social and institutional frameworks. Recently, the Taliban passed a new law banning women from speaking in public and going out uncovered.
West Bengal Protests: Fighting Impunity
In West Bengal, India, tens of thousands of women took to the streets for several days in strong protests against the rape and murder of an intern doctor at a state hospital in Calcutta. This mass mobilization reflects the growing demand for justice and accountability in the face of heinous acts of violence against women. The crime that triggered these protests is a reflection of the systemic failure of the authorities to stop the perpetrators and stop violence against women.
The situation in Brazil
Violence against women in Brazil is reaching the highest levels recorded in history. Every indicator of gender-based violence increased in 2023, including murder, harassment and persecution. The increase in killings, harassment and persecution reflects a broader trend of escalating violence against women. This trend points to a systemic problem that extends beyond individual incidents, encompassing social attitudes, cultural norms, and institutional deficiencies. Brazilian women between the ages of 20 and 39 face a higher risk of violence, aggression or murder compared to women in other age groups. The main methods of killing women were the use of firearms, blunt/piercing objects, strangulation and suffocation.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
So far this year, 8 women have been killed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The recent case of the murder of Anđelka M. (34), who was killed in Šipovo, and who filed domestic violence reports against her unmarried husband Nikola C. (38) on two occasions became part of the statistics. As many as 83 percent of women killed in BiH were killed by their family members, and more than one third of femicides and attempted femicides occur in the victim's place of residence.
Long-term abuse often precedes murder, which could perhaps have been prevented if the institutions had reacted adequately and in time. Likewise, there is a lack of long-term data collection and monitoring that would help prevent femicide. At the global level, the UN has established Femicide Watch, a body composed of experts from various professions who analyze every case of femicide that occurs.
Women's non-governmental organizations record cases of femicide, such as, for example, the Femicide Memorial, which was started by the Autonomous Women's Center from Belgrade.
Although the perpetrators of femicide are usually former or current intimate partners, mostly husbands or common-law partners, murders of women by their partners do not qualify as femicide, i.e. the killing of a woman by a man motivated by hatred and a sense of superiority, because this term is not legally defined in the BiH judiciary.
The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, the so-called Istanbul Convention, to which Bosnia and Herzegovina is a signatory, defines femicide as a more serious form of murder that is taken as an additional aggravating circumstance when sentencing the perpetrator. "Courts qualify serious murder, or femicide-murder of a wife, as domestic violence because it is a lighter punishment. If it were classified as aggravated murder, a prison sentence of up to 45 years would be possible. We should not forget that femicide occurs in most cases as a result of long-term suffering of violence", believes Lana Jajčević, a lawyer of the United Women's Fund from Banja Luka.
Changing consciousness and cultural norms
The pervasive nature of gender-based violence, as demonstrated by cases of femicide in Afghanistan, protests in West Bengal, rising violence in Brazil and the eighth murder of a woman in Bosnia and Herzegovina, underscores the urgent need for global action. Solving this problem requires a concerted effort by governments, institutions and communities to implement policies that protect women's rights, not misogyny and facilitate murder.
Since the UN adopted Resolution 68/191 in 2013 - Taking action against gender-based killing of women calling on nations to take action against gender-based killings of women and girls, some countries have introduced femicide laws; laws that classify femicide as hatred of women. Costa Rica became the first country to pass a law criminalizing femicide in 2007. A man who kills his wife or partner can be sentenced to 20 to 35 years in prison. Last year, Croatia adopted a special law on femicide, making it a separate crime punishable by ten years or more in prison. Bosnia and Herzegovina is still on the move. How many more women need to be killed before femicide is recognized as a crime and its perpetrators punished with capital murder?
The efforts that women's NGOs have been making for years to recognize this act as a separate criminal offense have been obstructed for years. Thus, twenty-one right-wing and conservative organizations from Republika Srpska expressed their opposition to the law that entered the procedure in the spring in an open letter addressed to the Entity Parliament. That law, among other things, defined the concept of domestic violence and femicide. Although it did not set higher penalties for abusers, the law did set fines for those who do not report abusers or institutions that should deal with the protection of victims of violence, but who do not do their job.
It is incomprehensible that there are still organizations and individuals who oppose the fact that the act of killing a woman just because she is a woman is treated as a separate crime, as aggravated murder. This shows us that not reporting violence is only part of the problem. A much bigger problem to tackle is a change in consciousness; awareness that women are also human beings and that violence against them must never be tolerated.
The author is an associate professor at Griffith University in Australia
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