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Lethal Violence Against Women and Girls and Women Against Violence Lethal Chapter of a Post-2015 Development 1

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Lethal Violence Against Women and Girls and Women Against Violence Lethal Chapter of a Post-2015 Development 1 Chapter Three 87 Lethal Violence against Women and Girls n the verge of a post-2015 development This chapter provides an update on the findings framework, and in view of the 20th anni- presented in the 2011 edition of the Global Burden O versary of the Beijing Platform for Action, of Armed Violence (GBAV) by examining the figures the focus on ending violence against women is and patterns of lethal violence against women ever-present in policy and research agendas. globally and in selected cases. In highlighting The Council of Europe 2011 Istanbul Convention the most recent and comprehensive data on spells out the obligation to address and prevent female homicide available, it explores intimate violence against women and domestic violence, partner femicides, conflict-related deaths and building on previous international instruments, sexual violence, and firearm-related killings of LETHAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN such as the 1979 United Nations Convention on women. The chapter finds that: the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination 1 On average, based on data available from against Women (CEDAW). The last few years have 1 also seen a convergence of the international 104 countries and territories, the GBAV esti- agenda on women, peace, and security with that mates that 60,000 women and girls worldwide 2 were killed violently every year, from 2007 to of small arms control, specifically through the 3 adoption of United Nations Security Council 2012. These deaths account for approximately Resolution 1325 and the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) 16 per cent of all intentional homicides com- 4 mitted globally. (Bastick and Valasek, 2014). 5 Since the 2011 edition of the GBAV, the median Yet as countries attempt to forge targeted pro- rate of women killed has decreased slightly grammes to tackle and reduce violence against and female homicide rates have become women and girls, that violence remains wide- polarized, as the number of countries with spread and enduring, with far-reaching conse- very high and very low rates of lethal violence quences for individuals, families, and society at against women increased. large. Despite the increased awareness, there is a persistent lack of data on the killing of women, While much of the lethal and non-lethal vio- whether inside or outside the home. The chronic lence against women and girls takes place in absence of details on circumstances surrounding non-conflict settings, the risk of multiple or female homicides also makes it difficult to under- repeat victimization of women is compounded stand and tackle the phenomenon effectively. during conflicts. Moreover, the lack of standardized guidelines, In countries with high rates of firearm-related categories, and definitions renders cross-country lethal violence the percentage of women killed comparisons difficult. with firearms is also higher. 88 While the majority of homicide victims are Meanwhile, a whistleblower provided evidence men, women are the primary victims of inti- that London’s Metropolitan Police had under- mate partner homicide, including homicide– recorded rape and serious sexual offences by suicide events. up to 25 per cent (BBC, 2013a). Reports from 2015 In countries with low levels of female homicide, Australia and the United States suggest that most killings occur inside the home and are recorded crime data for sexual crimes and domes- generally perpetrated by an intimate partner tic violence were not comparable across jurisdic- or member of the nuclear or extended family. tions because of different processing practices in initial stages of investigations (Australia, 2009, p. 59; Francescani, 2012). In the absence of details on circumstances sur- ARMED VIOLENCE Beyond the numbers: challenges of rounding the killing of women, the accurate to collecting data on homicide and recording of femicide has proven difficult (see violence against women and girls Box 3.1), as has distinguishing between homicide and other crimes. Suicides can be particularly dif- While considerable progress has been made in ficult to categorize. A study of femicide–suicide collecting and disseminating data on violence, in Argentina argues that some cases of female few improvements have been made with respect homicide and intimate partner femicide are mis- to obtaining sex-disaggregated statistics (CCPCJ, GLOBAL BURDEN BURDEN GLOBAL takenly recorded as suicides (Fernandez, 2012). 2014). Limited availability and accessibility of In the case of ‘honour’ crimes, or dowry deaths, sex-disaggregated data stems largely from poor some scholars also speak of ‘forced suicide’ or reporting practices, an absence of standardized murder disguised as suicide (UN Women, n.d.). definitions and coding, underreporting, and insuf- The absence of commonly accepted definitions ficient resources for training and data collection and coding systems for female homicide, femi- in relevant state and non-state agencies. cide, and intimate partner violence complicates With growing media and public attention to statis- cross-border comparisons. tics on crime and violence, police, public health, If data collection on female homicide and vio- and national statistical institutions have come lence against women and girls is difficult in non- under increased pressure to publish and share conflict countries, these efforts are even more relevant data. In some cases, this trend has precarious in conflict zones. The absence of helped to shed light on some problematic prac- adequately trained persons to identify and record tices in crime recording, particularly in relation crime results in patchy record-keeping, if any. to violence against women. One such procedure, Crime data is particularly underreported in con- known as ‘no-criming’, involves the removal of a flict areas, where the focus is, understandably, crime from the record if the victim retracts alle- on conflict-related casualties. gations or police officers conclude that no crime was committed. Indeed, a recent British govern- Fortunately, some national governments and ment report finds that nearly 30 per cent of rape non-governmental organizations in a number of cases that were no-crimed by the Kent Police countries have paid particular attention to improv- should not have been (HMIC, 2013, pp. 4, 16). ing their data collection practices, with an eye to reducing and preventing violence against women on crimes against women, especially among some 89 and girls and female homicide. National or sub- local organizations in Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere national observatories on crime and violence (HarassMap, n.d.; Hollaback, n.d.; WMC, n.d.). collect useful information from a variety of sources. While these tools are innovative, the extent to In addition, crowd-sourcing has emerged as a which they are able to capture the phenomenon method of gathering and diffusing information remains unknown. B ox 3.1 In search of a label: female homicide, extreme category of crime against women, which femicide, and intimate femicide culminates in death (Mexico, 2007, art. 21). Feminist scholars have argued that the term homi- Debates over the definition of femicide have also cide—defined as the ‘intentional killing of a person spurred the emergence of related terms. Feminist by another person’—obscures the gendered dimen- scholar Marcela Lagarde uses feminicide to encom- sion of the killing of women (Geneva Declaration pass the aspect of moral and political responsibility Secretariat, 2008, p. 68; Radford and Russell, 1992; for the killing of women because of their sex. She Sagot and Carcedo, 2000). Introduced by the feminist argues that political and judicial systems also hold movement in the 1970s and popularized in the 1990s, a degree of responsibility for not addressing perva- the term femicide was to expose the hidden power LETHAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN sive violence against women and girls and thus dimension within gender relations. Initially signifying enabling, to some extent, their killings (ELLA, 2013, ‘the misogynous killing of women by men’ (Radford p. 2). Other scholars have opted for a deepening and Russell, 1992, p. 3), the term has since gained rather than a broadening of the term, adopting traction in the legal, criminology, policy, and political 1 ‘intimate partner femicide’ as the preferred term for spheres (GHRC, 2009; Spinelli, 2011; UNGA, 2006). the killing of a woman by her current or former partner 2 A side effect of this wide dissemination is the dilu- on the grounds of her sex. Also called uxoricide— tion of the term to include ‘any killings of women or from the Latin uxor, meaning ‘wife’—the killing of a 3 girls’, irrespective of the circumstances of the killing woman by her husband (or intimate partner) is the (PAHO, 2012). This definition has the advantage of ultimate expression of inequality within the couple 4 increasing the comparability of figures (Alvazzi del (Spinelli, 2011, p. 18). Frate, 2011); however, the use of femicide to mean 5 In the absence of comparable definitions and reliable homicide with female victims has its critics. Feminist scholars place femicide on the continuum of violence cross-sectional, time-series data on femicide, this against women or, more specifically, that of sexual edition of the GBAV focuses more broadly on female violence (Kelly, 1988; Radford and Russell, 1992). homicide, which benefits from a wider availability of sex-disaggregated data. To highlight the need for At the international level, there is no commonly agreed better information and data collection tools that definition of femicide,
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