The killing of women in the context of

global homicides

Convegno scientifico - La violenza sulle donne:

i dati e gli strumenti per la conoscenza statistica

Angela Me

Chief Research and Trend Analysis BranchRoma, 28 marzo 2017

Homicide

• Homicide is the ‘ultimate crime’ with grave

consequences for individuals and society

• Homicide statistics provide a proxy indicator

for other types of violent crime

• The quality and availability of homicide data

are far superior to data on most other types of

crime

• The level of comparability of homicide data

between countries is greater than for most

other types of crime

Who is at risk?

• 79% of homicide victims are male

• 95% of homicide perpetrators are male

But…..Women are victims of partner

and family violence

Women are the most frequent victims of intimate partner violence and they are often killed by family members in all countries and across all cultures

Intimate partner/family-related homicide (IPFM)

• Greater intensity in Americas (higher

rate), larger share of all homicides in

Asia, Europe, Oceania

• 2/3 of all victims are female

• 47% of all female victims of homicide are

killed by these perpetrators

• Those most at risk: women aged 30+

IPFM in 2012:

• Total female victims of homicide:

93,000

• Total female victims of IPFM

homicide : 43,600

47% of all female victims killed

by their intimate partners or

family members

(Compared to 6% of all male

victims killed by IPFM)

Femicide, a bad habit hard to eradicate:

IPFM rather stable overtime, despite other forms of

homicidal and male violence can show remarkable

decreases

The majority of female homicide victims are murdered

by people who are expected to care for them, the

majority of men are killed by people they may not

know

Home is the place where a woman is at highest

risk of being killed

IPFM Homicide: an indicator to monitor the tip of

the iceberg of VAW

But an indicator which can quite easily be regularly monitored over time

The ICCS: a hierarchical framework that groupsand organizes criminal offences meaningfully and systematically.

It allows to:

o Build a comprehensive stat. framework on all criminal offences to facilitate analysis of crime

o Improve comparability across countries and through time

o Improve data consistency within countries: • across entities in federal states• across data produced by successive stages of criminal justice process• across sources (admin. data and surveys)

International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (ICCS)

Additional attributes

Disaggregating variables:

• Event descriptions: Use of weapon, location, organised crime, attempted/completed

• Victim descriptions: natural person (age, sex, age status, citizenship), legal entity/business (economic sector), public entity

• Perpetrator descriptions: ages, sex, age status, citizenship, victim-perpetrator relationship

Data descriptions (Metadata):

• Inclusion of threats, aiding, accomplice, conspiracy, incitament

Additional disaggregations

An example of the impact of the ICCS

An example of the impact of the ICCS

By defining and better developing

statistics to measure femicide,

violence against women can be

brought to light, and data can then be

used to influence policy and programs

to respond to and prevent violence.

Thank you for your attention.