Femicide, also known as feminicide, is the most
extreme form of gender-based violence (GBV) and is defined as the
"intentional murder of women because they are women."
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO),"most cases of femicide
are committed by partners or ex-partners, and involve ongoing abuse in
the home, threats or intimidation, sexual violence or situations where
women have less power or fewer resources than their partner."
Femicides fall into two categories: intimate and
non-intimate femicide. There is no global, standardized or consistently
recorded data on femicide. The United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime's (UNODC) most recent global report on homicide was published in
July 2019, presenting data from 2017. That year, 87,000 women around the
world were intentionally killed -- more than half of them (50,000) by
intimate partners or family members. The total number is up from an
estimated 48,000 in 2012. But the problem is probably bigger. The "data
gaps mask the true scale of violence" wrote the European Institute of
Gender Equality, whose EU-wide survey results on GBV are expected in
2023.
