This year, the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaign led by UN Women calls for solidarity with women’s rights movements around the world who are bravely resisting attacks against women’s rights and inspiring others to #PushForward.
The 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence is an annual campaign that begins on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and runs through International Human Rights Day on 10 December.
Led by civil society, the campaign is supported by the United Nations through the Secretary General’s UNiTE by 2030 to End Violence against Women initiative. This year, the UN marks the 16 Days under the theme “UNiTE! Activism to end violence against women and girls.”
Violence against women and girls remains the most pervasive human rights violation around the world. Already heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic, its prevalence is now being further increased by the intersecting crises of climate change, global conflict and economic instability.
Against this setting, a backlash against women’s rights is underway around the world. Anti-feminist movements are on the rise, attacks against women human rights defenders and activists are up, and the legal status of women’s rights is increasingly imperiled in many countries. Regressive new laws are exacerbating impunity for perpetrators of domestic violence, governments are using force against femicide and gender-based violence protestors, and women’s rights organizations are being increasingly marginalized.
Despite these discouraging trends, there is more proof than ever that violence against women and girls is preventable. Evidence shows that the single most important driver of policy change is a strong and autonomous women’s movement—making feminist mobilization in the face of anti-rights backlash a literal matter of life and death.
This 16 Days, UN Women is encouraging everyone to get involved: from amplifying the voices of survivors and activists to supporting women’s organizations and strengthening feminist movements, we can all act to empower survivors, reduce and prevent violence against women and girls, and protect women’s rights.
Women and girls are more at risk to be killed at home
A new study by UNODC and UN Women shows that, on average, more than five women or girls were killed every hour by someone in their own family in 2021. The report comes ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on November 25 and is a horrific reminder that violence against women and girls is one of the most pervasive human rights violations worldwide.
Of all the women and girls intentionally killed last year, some 56 percent were killed by intimate partners or other family members (45,000 out of 81,000), showing that home is not a safe place for many women and girls. Meanwhile, 11 percent of all male homicides are perpetrated in the private sphere.
UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous said: “Behind every femicide statistic is the story of an individual woman or girl who has been failed. These deaths are preventable—the tools and the knowledge to do so already exist. Women’s rights organizations are already monitoring data and advocating for policy change and accountability. Now we need the concerted action across society that will fulfill women’s and girls’ right to feel and to be safe, at home, on the streets, and everywhere.”
This year’s figures also show that over the past decade, the overall number of female homicides has remained largely unchanged, underscoring the urgency to prevent and respond to this scourge with stronger actions. Even though these numbers are alarmingly high, the true scale of femicide may be much higher. Too many victims of femicide still go uncounted—given inconsistencies in definitions and criteria amongst countries, for roughly four in ten women and girls killed intentionally in 2021, there is not enough information to identify them as femicide, especially for those killings happening in the public sphere.
As for regional disparities, while femicide is a problem that concerns every single country in the world, the report shows that in absolute numbers, Asia recorded the largest number of gender related killings in the private sphere in 2021, whereas women and girls were more at risk of being killed by their intimate partners or other family members in Africa. In 2021, the rate of gender related killings in the private sphere was estimated at 2.5 per 100,000 female population in Africa, compared with 1.4 in the Americas, 1.2 in Oceania, 0.8 in Asia and 0.6 in Europe. At the same time, the findings suggest that the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 coincided with a significant increase in gender related killings in the private sphere in Northern America and to some extent in Western and Southern Europe.
For the full report please click here.