Women around the globe are at risk – mostly from the men they’re closest to.
Of the 85,000 girls and women murdered by men in 2023, 60% of those crimes were committed by a man who was close to them. Partners, family members, friends… statistics indicate that they pose more of a threat to women than strangers, a study from UN Women has found. That works out to about 140 women dying at the hands of male loved ones each day.
“What the data is telling us is that it is the private and domestic spheres of women’s lives – where they should be safest – that so many of them are being exposed to deadly violence,” Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, UN Women’s deputy executive director, told the Guardian.
And what’s worse, she adds, is that “we see the numbers in this report as the tip of the iceberg.”
Indeed, the organization admits that, due to subpar information collection practices by a number of countries’ governments, it’s difficult to assess the full scope of the problem. But from the numbers they could acquire, researchers found that intimate partners, specifically, were the most common perpetrators, with close male family members following close behind. In the nations where the available data was more robust – for example, France, South Africa and Colombia – researchers found that a “significant share” of the victims had reported previous incidences of violence and abuse by their killers.
One bright spot is that, overall, the number of intentional deaths of women and girls decreased from the 89,000 who died at others’ hands in 2022. But the share of those deaths that came at the hands of the men they’re closest to has continued to rise.
And unfortunately, as researchers noted in the report, the lack of available information dramatically reduces the likelihood that governments will take appropriate action. “Significant efforts to reverse the negative trend in terms of data availability would thus increase government accountability for addressing violence against women,” they noted.
In several countries, women have been taking to the streets to protest the matter themselves, gathering en masse to shout about the danger in which they live, and to cry out for the protection they’ve yet to receive. In Mexico, over 180,000 women gathered to demand change on International Women’s Day (March 8) earlier this year.
One attendee of that rally, Mehida Perez Martínez, talked to Al Jazeera about the pervasiveness and persistence of the problem – and the continued failure on the part of governments and police forces to address it. She noted: “Yes, we are angry, and we have a right to be so.”
