Femicide is still not yet sufficiently visible in national statistics. This is the conclusion of the policy brief published on Monday 14 July by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) on improving the collection of national administrative data on femicide in the European Union.
According to the document, in 2022 the police services of 22 Member States recorded 1,231 women killed, 678 of them as a result of domestic violence, based on data from 18 countries. This corresponds to almost 13 women every week.
According to data from 17 Member States, 484 of these women were murdered by their partners, i.e. around 10 per week. In 2022, women accounted for the majority of victims of intimate partner homicide (87%) and domestic homicide (60%), but only 42% of victims of homicide by any perpetrator.
Above all, the report highlights the fact that only 11 Member States were able to provide complete data on homicides and their context (gender of the victim and perpetrator, nature of their relationship) for each year between 2018 and 2022.
In other words, only these 11 countries collected sufficiently detailed data to reliably identify cases of femicide during this period.
It should also be noted that these figures only cover part of the problem. And for good reason: murders committed outside the intimate or family circle are rarely identified as femicides because of the lack of a common legal definition.
EIGE therefore recommends the adoption of such a definition in all Member States, in accordance with the directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence, which came into force in June 2024 (see EUROPE 13431/33).
Some countries have already initiated change. Spain, a pioneer in this field, classifies femicide according to different contexts and also includes children killed in the context of gender-based violence.
On 29 June 2023, Belgium adopted a law to combat femicide, which provides for the annual publication of official statistics and regular policy recommendations.
Croatia, Malta and Cyprus have included femicide as a separate crime in their penal codes. In Italy, a draft along these lines was approved last March.
However, according to EIGE, these initiatives are still too few and far between. Harmonisation of practices and monitoring tools at EU level is therefore essential.
Read the policy brief: https://aeur.eu/f/hxx (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)