Femicide: Hidden pandemic claiming 50,000 women per year

After a health, environmental, and food crisis, the world has been hit with the hidden pandemic of femicide.

Although the issue is deeply rooted in history, recent numbers reflect a catastrophic situation of gender-related killings. Behind every statistic is a daughter, a mother, a sister, and a system that failed her.

The term femicide refers to an intentional killing with a gender-related motivation. It is primarily driven by discrimination against women and girls, unequal power relations, gender stereotypes or harmful social norms.

This brutal form of violence can occur on a continuum of multiple and related forms of violence and can take place at any space, including home, workplaces, schools, public places, etc. Intimate partner violence, sexual harassment, and other forms of sexual violence and harmful practices are also included in it.

A study published in the International Journal of Legal Medicine reveals that psychiatric issues and substance abuse are primary risk factors for mental disorders affecting 5-10% of the offenders, while 15-20% suffer from chronic alcohol problems.  

A Worldwide Epidemic

In 2024, around 50,000 women and girls were killed by intimate partners or family members across the globe. The UN Women report cites an average of 137 women being killed every single day. This indicates that femicide is not an aberration. It’s a structural crisis. Despite the staggering numbers, under-reporting, inconsistent criminal justice recording, and a lack of disaggregated data leave countless victims uncounted.

This has now become a global crisis. No region is exempt. In 2024, Africa recorded the highest absolute and relative numbers of intimate partner and family-related femicides, with around 22,600 victims. This makes three per 100,000 women. Comparatively higher rates were registered in the Americas and Oceania at 1.5 and 1.4 per 100,000, respectively, while Asia and Europe have figures of 0.7 and 0.5 per 100,000.

In 2026 alone, various brutal incidents surfaced online from worldwide that showcase how far the global crisis has spread. In Argentina, the feminist movement has spent over a decade mobilising against femicide through the Ni Una Menos (Not a Single Woman Less) campaign, initiated in 2015. Yet in May and early June 2026, the country saw the brutal murders of two teenage girls, Agostina Vega (14) and Dulce Candia (17). Both teenagers were strangled to death.

In Kenya, many marched through Nairobi in June 2026, arguing for the government declaration of gender-based violence a national emergency. The protests intensified following the killing of gospel singer Rachel Wandeto, who was doused with petrol and set alight while walking home in Nairobi. As reported by the Federation of Women Lawyers in Kenya, around 70 gender-based violence cases are reported every week.

Similarly, Brazil also recorded the highest number of femicides in 2025, with nearly four women killed every day. Among them, nearly 70% were committed by current or former partners, while many experienced it within the premises of their homes following documented histories of continuous abuse. Statistics reveal that between 2021 and 2025, around 660 children in a single Brazilian state lost their mothers to femicide.

As per the figures reported by UNODC and UN Women regional reports, around 17,400 women and girls in Asia were killed by an intimate partner or family members in 2024. However, experts say that figures do not represent the actual equation, as the majority of the cases go unreported.

The crisis in the South Asian subcontinent is more structurally entrenched than any other region of Asia. Femicide across Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh is not a deviation from the social order. But in many contexts, it is an enforcement of it.

Who is most at risk?

Although there’s no standard to evaluate the risk a woman faces. But across all regions, certain groups of women face elevated danger. Indigenous women in Canada are killed at five times the rate of non-Indigenous women. Transgender and gender-diverse people face rising targeted killings worldwide.

Women in public life, including politicians, journalists, human rights defenders, environmental activists, etc., face escalating violence online and offline. One in four women journalists globally has received online death threats.

In 2022, 81 women environmental defenders were killed. Technology, once considered a tool of empowerment, is increasingly weaponised, contributing to stalking, coercive control, and image-based abuse, which now frequently precede offline violence, including femicide.

A study cited by UN Women found that three out of four femicide victims were previously stalked by their killers.

Prevention, Not Just Punishment

Although punishment is highly important to hold abusers accountable, criminal law alone can’t end femicide. Heavier sentences may help in satisfying public demands for accountability, but do not address the circumstances that produce violence in the first place.

Effective prevention may challenge the social norms that normalise male control over women’s lives and bodies. It requires community-based interventions, investment in women’s rights organisations, early-warning systems that take reports of violence seriously, and gender-responsive policing that does not re-victimise survivors.

Above all, it requires a political will to treat femicide not as a series of individual tragedies, but as the systemic crisis it is.