UNITED NATIONS: A woman somewhere in the world lost her life at the hands of someone close to her roughly every 10 minutes last year, the United Nations reported on Monday, warning of lack of progress against femicide.
About 50,000 women and girls were killed by intimate partners or family members in 2024, according to a joint report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and UN Women, released to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
The report noted that 60 per cent of women murdered globally were killed by partners or relatives including fathers, brothers, mothers, and uncles. In contrast, only 11 per cent of male homicide victims were killed by someone they knew closely.
The 50,000 figure drawn from data across 117 countries averages out to 137 women each day, or roughly one every 10 minutes, the report said.
Although slightly lower than the number reported in 2023, the decline does not point to a real reduction in killings, the report added, stressing that the shift is largely due to inconsistencies in data availability between countries.
Femicide continues to claim tens of thousands of women and girls annually, with no sign of improvement, and the “home remains the most dangerous place for women and girls when it comes to the risk of homicide,” the study found.
Femicide cases were reported in every region, though Africa once again recorded the highest toll with around 22,000 deaths last year, the report said.
“Femicides don’t happen in isolation. They often sit on a continuum of violence that can start with controlling behavior, threats, and harassment including online,” Sarah Hendricks, Director of UN Women’s Policy Division, said in a statement.
The report added that technological advances have intensified certain forms of abuse and introduced new ones, such as non-consensual sharing of images, doxxing, and deepfake exploitation.
“We need the implementation of laws that recognize how violence manifests across the lives of women and girls, both online and offline, and hold perpetrators to account well before it turns deadly,” said Hendricks.
