Why counting femicides is a global issue

[Sherman A1]

Femicide is underestimated in most countries because of a lack of reliable data. This month the United Nations adopted recommendations for collecting statistics on crimes targeting women. The guiding principle behind the new framework for data collection, which Switzerland supports, is that a problem cannot be resolved if it cannot be measured.

This content was published on March 24, 2022 - 09:00 March 24, 2022 - 09:00
Pauline Turuban
Other languages: 9

Gone are the days when the term “femicide” was seen as radical because feminist activists were behind the push to use it to describe the murder of women and girls because they are female. Today the United Nations defines femicide as “the most extreme and brutal manifestation of violence against women”.

The international community has set itself the objective of eradicating a problem that “affects all countries”. Until now efforts have been limited by difficulties over how to correctly identify and quantify femicides.

The more recalcitrant argue that the term femicide is meaningless and “homicide” is a sufficient descriptor. Sometimes the definition overlaps with domestic violence. Some feminist groups have called for an even broader definition to include the killing of any woman, even an accidental one, such as death linked to an illegal abortion.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/why-counting-femicides-is-a-global-issue/47456654?view=canonical