'Every 10 Minutes'—Research Shows Harrowing Rates of Femicide Around the World
Last year, 137 women and girls were killed by an intimate partner or family member every day, according to new UN data
In 2024, a woman or girl was killed by an intimate partner or family member every 10 minutes—a harrowing data point that’s showing no sign of improving, according to the latest research done by the United Nations.
The research published Tuesday by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime—the UNODC—in collaboration with UN Women, found that last year, a total of 50,000 women and girls worldwide were murdered by an intimate partner or a family member, equating to 137 women and girls being killed every day. Over the same period, just 11% of male homicides were perpetrated by intimate partners or family members.
The 2024 figure is slightly lower than the estimates for 2023, but UNODC and UN Women said that this change is “not indicative of an actual decrease but largely due to differences in data availability at the country level.”
Frequently, the researchers found, violence begins as controlling behavior, threats or harassment online. It then escalates offline, forming what the researchers describe as “part of the same continuum of violence that can end in women and girls being killed.” What underscores the harrowing and pervasive nature of this, is that 1.8 billion women and girls today live in countries that have no legal protection against cyber harassment and stalking.
“To prevent these killings, we need the implementation of laws that recognize how violence manifests across the lives of women and girls, both online and offline, and hold perpetrators to account well before it turns deadly,” said Sarah Hendriks, director of UN Women’s Policy Division.
John Brandolino, acting executive director of UNODC, noted that “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,” Brandolino added.
The report estimates that the highest rate of femicide by an intimate partner or family member occurs in Africa, followed by the Americas, Oceania, Asia and Europe.
UN Women and UNODC said that they are in the process of working with countries to implement a statistical framework developed in 2022, which was designed to enhance the identification, recording, and classification of gender-related killings of women and girls. Better data, they argue, is critical to being able to accurately assess the magnitude and consequences of these femicides, to support effective responses, and to seek justice.
