Femicide: a global epidemic

“Every 10 minutes, a woman is killed by an intime partner or family member.” UN Women

A future of competitive wins died amid flames that extinguished the life of 33-year-old Ugandan Rebecca Cheptegei, a long-distance runner who sustained burns over 80 percent of her body following a gasoline attack on Thursday, September 5, 2024, in Kenya, at the hands of an ex-boyfriend. Ironically, he died of burns resulting from the attack.

In an article about Cheptegei’s killing, The New York Times reported “… women’s rights campaigns … have long raised the alarm about an … upsurge in the killings of women in Kenya and other African nations. At least 500 women in Kenya have been victims of femicide — a term used for the killing of women and girls — between 2016 and 2023, according to a report from Africa Data Hub, a group collating cases from Kenyan news media.”

Cheptegel’s tragic death is indicative of the global epidemic of femicide, broadly defined as the killing of a woman or girl because of her gender, and can take different forms, including intimate partner violence (IPV).

According to “Behind closed doors: the deadly reality of femicide,” 85, 000 women and girls were killed intentionally in 2023, and 51,100 of these lives were lost because of an intimate partner or a family member. Crimes against womenare called femicide. “The home remains the most dangerous place for women and girls. While the vast majority of male homicides occur outside the domestic sphere, 60% of female deaths occur within the walls of their own homes. On average, 140 women or girls were killed every day in 2023 by someone in their own family.”

In 2019, Loop, Caribbean News published findings of a United Nations report. “… women in Africa are most likely to be killed by a spouse or family member, with a rate of nearly 70 per cent (19,000 murders), compared to 38 per cent (3,000 murders) in Europe, the region with the smallest share, said the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.”

The Caribbean and Latin America

In Mexico City, shortly before Valentine’s Day in 2020, 25-year-old Ingrid Escamilla’s ex-boyfriend stabbed her to death and her body mutilated after an argument over his drinking.

On August 14, 2013, in Port Antonio, Jamaica, police constable Lincoln McCoy, fatally shot Jessica King, 22, his girlfriend of five years; he then shot himself, but survived. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Loop noted that, “Jamaican women are second on the list of those likely to be intentionally killed, mostly by a partner, according to statistics presented by the United Nations. … Countries topping a UN list of "intentional homicides, female" are mostly in Latin America and Africa, regions which struggle with gang and ethnic warfare, unemployment, and deprivation, according to a media report.”

Likewise, “In the Caribbean, 46 women were victims of lethal gender violence in the seven countries and territories that provided information corresponding to 2022. The highest number of cases by far was in Trinidad and Tobago (43).”

“Of the 19 countries and territories in Latin America that reported the number of femicides or gender-related killings of women in 2022, the highest rates were seen in Honduras (6.0 per 100,000 women), the Dominican Republic (2.9) and El Salvador and Uruguay (1.6) …”

United States

Azsia Johnson, 20, was murdered in broad daylight on New York City’s Upper East Side while pushing her 3-month-old daughter in a stroller. The killer, Issac Argo, 22, was an ex-boyfriend, and the father of the infant, who had convinced Johnson to meet him to pick up items for the baby. The mother of two had hopes of becoming a pediatric nurse.

In the United States, femicide is viewed as an issue affecting low-income countries, however, according to the Sanctuary for Families, an advocacy group for the prevention of gender violence, a study on female homicide victimization among 25 populous high-income countries found that 70% of all cases occurred in the United States.

A 2024 report examined Americans’ beliefs about the incidence of IPV. “While few Americans realize these practices exist here … (research) sheds light on their hidden prevalence and deep roots in American culture. They aren’t “foreign” problems; harmful, abusive gender practices are tragically embedded in American life ….”

Bernadine Waller, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Psychiatry Department at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, was lead author for a study that looked at racial inequities in homicide rates among Black and white women ages 25-44 in the United States, between 1999 and 2020. “As a scholar whose research examines intimate partner violence, I have long known that there were disparities in homicide rates between Black and white women. To uncover the fact that Black women are murdered at rates as high as 20 to 1 is heart-breaking and underscores the urgent need to make substantive structural shift.”

Waller’s study revealed that states with the greatest disparities in homicide rates were in parts of the country with a high proportion of people of low socioeconomic status. “These areas also tend to have histories of slavery and lynching and are places where especially tense Black Lives Matter protests took place at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Who is most likely to die by IPV?

The sad truth is that no woman is exempt from the possibility of IPV, but certain women and girls are greater risk: those living with disabilities, adolescent girls, older women, people who identify as LGBTQ+, ethnic minorities, and refugee or migrant women.

Predictors for femicide

Common predictors of gender-based killings, include estrangement, threats to kill, threats with a weapon, nonfatal strangulation, forced sex and abuse during pregnancy, and stress in the home.

Femicide Watch

Femicide Watch (FW) is a UN Special Rapporteur initiative to address the problem of femicide internationally by focusing on prevention through “the collection of comparable data on femicide rates at national, regional and global levels.”

Established in 2015, FW aims to raise awareness about gender-based violence; educate men and boys about non-violence and equality; advocate for laws that protect survivors, such as gun control and reproductive rights; promote gender equality in education, government, and the labor force; develop social, housing, educational, and economic policies that support families and reduce violence; assist women at risk of violence in finding organizations that offer support.

In a 2025 article for the Yale Law Review, author, Alessia Nicastro, a Ph.D. candidate in International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute, stated, “Femicide is, unfortunately, all but a new phenomenon. What is new, however, is the increased recognition of its global character and the growing use of the term. Despite femicide’s gravity, most states crucially lack specific legislation criminalizing this crime, and existing laws often fail to capture and address the misogynistic underpinnings of violence against women.”

She cautions that in recent cases and statistics from regions such as Latin America, there is an urgent need to address femicide on a global level.

During a speech calling for a global response to femicide, Tarana Burke, founder of the “Me too” movement, quoted poet and activist June Jordan’s “Poem for South African Woman”: “We are the ones we've been waiting for’ And for me that ‘we’ is survivors, especially those of us who are most deeply affected, black and brown, queer and disabled, low wealth and impoverished. We have always had to be our own saviours.”

Wista JohnsonFebruary 8, 2025