Shocking UN Report: A woman is killed every 10 minutes in 2024 by someone she knows!

83,000 women and girls were killed intentionally last year. 60 per cent – or 50,000 women and girls – were killed at the hands of intimate partners or family members. This means one woman or girl is killed by a partner or family member almost every 10 minutes. In contrast, just 11 per cent of male homicides were perpetrated by intimate partners or family members during the same year.

“The home remains a dangerous and sometimes lethal place for too many women and girls around the world. The 2025 femicide brief provides a stark reminder of the need for better prevention strategies and criminal justice responses to femicide, ones that account for the conditions that propagate this extreme form of violence,” said John Brandolino, acting Executive Director of UNODC.

“Femicides don’t happen in isolation. They often sit on a continuum of violence that can start with controlling behaviour, threats, and harassment, including online,” said Sarah Hendriks, Director of UN Women’s Policy Division. “The United Nation’s16 Days campaign this year underscores that digital violence often doesn’t stay online. It can escalate offline and, in the worst cases, contribute to lethal harm, including femicide. Every woman and girl has the right to be safe in every part of her life, and that requires systems that intervene early. To prevent these killings, we need the implementation of laws that recognize how violence manifests across women and girls’ lives, both online and offline, and hold perpetrators to account well before it turns deadly.”

Women and girls are subjected to this extreme form of violence in every region worldwide, notes the 2025 femicide report. It is estimated that the highest rate of femicide by an intimate-partner/family member was in Africa (3 per 100,000 female population), followed by the Americas (1.5), Oceania (1.4), Asia (0.7) and Europe (0.5).

Though femicides are also committed outside of the home, the amount of data remains limited. To help close these gaps, UN Women and UNODC are working closely with countries in the implementation of the 2022 statistical framework  to enhance the identification, recording and classification of gender-related killings of women and girls. Improving data availability will be vital to accurately assess the magnitude and consequences of these femicides, and to support effective justice responses.