Marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, a joint report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and UN Women reveals that femicide remains a grave global threat, with 83,000 women and girls intentionally killed in 2024 alone. The data shows no significant progress in preventing these gender-based killings.
According to the 2025 femicide report, 60 percent of these victims—around 50,000 women and girls—were killed by intimate partners or family members. This equates to one woman or girl being murdered by someone close to her approximately every 10 minutes, or 137 per day. In stark contrast, only 11 percent of male homicide victims were killed by someone from their family or intimate circle.
“Femicide doesn’t occur in isolation. It is often the final act in a pattern of abuse that may begin with controlling behaviors, threats, or harassment—both offline and online,” said Sarah Hendriks, Director of UN Women’s Policy Division. “This year’s UN 16 Days campaign emphasizes that digital violence can escalate into real-world harm. We need legal systems that recognize these warning signs and intervene early, before it’s too late.”
John Brandolino, Acting Executive Director of UNODC, echoed the urgency: “The home remains a dangerous, and too often deadly, place for women and girls. The 2025 brief is a sobering call for more effective prevention strategies and stronger justice responses that address the underlying conditions enabling this extreme form of violence.”
The report shows femicide is a global issue, with the highest rates of intimate partner and family-related killings occurring in Africa (3 per 100,000 women and girls), followed by the Americas (1.5), Oceania (1.4), Asia (0.7), and Europe (0.5).
Data gaps persist for femicides committed outside the home. To address this, UN Women and UNODC are working with governments to implement a 2022 statistical framework aimed at improving how gender-related killings are identified, recorded, and classified. Reliable data, experts say, is critical for effective prevention, justice, and policy-making.
Although the number of women and girls killed by intimate partners or family members in 2024 was slightly lower than the 2023 figure of 51,100, UN officials caution that this does not indicate real progress. Instead, they attribute the difference to variations in data reporting across countries.
