Not every killing of a woman is the same. The law has long recognised murder as the unlawful and intentional taking of a human life, regardless of who the victim is or why they were targeted. But when a woman is killed because she is a woman, because someone believed they had the right to control her, punish her or erase her, that is something more specific. That is femicide.
The distinction is not bureaucratic. It is the difference between a crime that could have happened to anyone and one that happened precisely because of the victim's gender. It is the difference between an isolated act of violence and the final, fatal point on a long continuum of abuse, coercion and control.
The legal line between the two
Murder is defined as the intentional and unlawful killing of one person by another. The motive can be anything: financial gain, rivalry, a random attack. The victim can be anyone.
Femicide is narrower and more specific. It is the intentional killing of a woman or girl driven by her gender. The perpetrator acts from a place of hatred, discrimination or a deeply held belief in their right to dominate. Every femicide is a murder. But not every murder of a woman is a femicide. If a woman is killed by a stray bullet during a robbery, it is murder. If she is killed by a partner who could not accept her leaving, it is femicide.
A global crisis that is not slowing down
According to the latest report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and UN Women, released on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, approximately 50,000 women and girls were killed worldwide by intimate partners or family members in 2024 alone. That translates to an average of 137 women or girls killed every day by someone in their own family, or one every ten minutes.
Intimate partners and family members accounted for 60 per cent of all killings of women and girls globally in 2024. The report makes clear that femicide shows no signs of slowing down.
Who is most at risk
Femicide does not follow a single pattern. While the majority of cases involve intimate partners or family members, gender-related killings also occur in connection with sexual violence by strangers, so-called honour killings, hate crimes linked to gender identity, and situations involving human trafficking or organised crime.
Research indicates that three out of four femicide victims were previously stalked by the perpetrator, with technology increasingly being used as a tool of coercive control and surveillance prior to the killing.
Certain groups face disproportionately higher risk. In Canada, the rate of female homicide among indigenous women was five times higher than among non-indigenous women in 2021. Women in public life, including politicians, journalists and human rights defenders, also face elevated risk. Data from the Trans Murder Monitoring 2023 project found that 94 per cent of the 321 transgender and gender-diverse people reported murdered were trans women or trans feminine people.
Africa recorded the highest absolute numbers of intimate partner and family-related femicides in 2024, with an estimated 22,600 victims. Rates were also elevated in the Americas and Oceania, while Europe recorded the lowest rate globally at 0.5 per 100,000.
Why the true scale is likely much higher
The figures presented in the UNODC and UN Women report are widely acknowledged to represent only part of the reality. For roughly four in ten intentional killings of women and girls, there is insufficient information to classify them as gender-related, due to inconsistent recording and investigation practices across countries. A Unified Statistical Framework for measuring femicide, approved by the UN Statistical Commission in March 2022, aims to address these gaps.
Why the distinction matters
Recognising femicide as a distinct crime is not a matter of semantics. It enables societies to track patterns of violence against women, identify warning signs and design targeted prevention policies. Femicide is rarely a sudden or isolated act. It is most often the final and fatal step in an escalating pattern of gender-based abuse, which means it is, in most cases, preventable.
Early intervention, gender-responsive policing, access to survivor-centred support services and the consistent punishment of perpetrators are among the measures identified by the UNODC and UN Women as essential to breaking the cycle before it reaches its most devastating conclusion.
The situation in Cyprus
Cyprus is not immune. Seventeen femicides were recorded between 2020 and 2025, according to police data, with two attempted femicides already documented in 2026. In 2025, 300 women and 347 children were housed in shelters for survivors of violence across the island.
Since 2024, survivors of gender-based and domestic violence in Cyprus have been recognised as a distinct category of beneficiaries of free legal aid, a reform that removes significant financial barriers to accessing justice. The ELPIS application, developed in cooperation with Cyprus Police, provides survivors with a discreet means of contacting authorities in situations of immediate danger.
A Unified Database on gender-based and domestic violence is expected to be completed by 2027, which will enable more systematic monitoring of femicides and more targeted prevention policies.
What needs to change
The UNODC and UN Women report calls on national governments to end impunity by holding perpetrators accountable, adopt and fund national action plans to eliminate violence against women, and invest in women's rights organisations that provide frontline services to survivors.
Behind every statistic is a woman whose life was ended not by chance, but by gender.
With information from the UNODC/UN Women Global Report on Femicide 2024
