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UNODC and Femicide
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What is the UNODC?
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has been supporting efforts to combat terrorism, drugs, organized crime, and corruption to make the globe a safer place. For two decades, the UNODC has been committed to attaining justice, security, and health by combating these dangers and advancing sustainable peace and well-being as countermeasures.
Highlighting the scale of these global issues is often too grand for states to face alone; the UNODC provides practical services and encourages transnational approaches to enacting meaningful social change. Through various programmes and a network of field offices, the UNDOC offers support in all regions of the globe.
UNDOC's Latest Report: Gender-Related Killings of Women and Girls (Femicide/Feminicide)
The UNODC has released a comprehensive report on the crisis of femicide: "Gender-Related Killings of Women and Girls (Femicie/Feminicide)". The report provides a global estimate of female intimate partner/family-related homicides in 2022.
In the report, the UNODC highlighted some key findings:
2022 recorded an estimated 89,000 intentional killings of women and girls, indicative of the highest yearly number documented in the past two decades.
Gender has been identified as a motivation in the majority of killings of women and girls. 48,000 women and girls globally were killed by their intimate partner or related family member. Thus, 133 women and girls, on average, were killed daily by someone in their immediate familial circle.
While men committed 80 % of homicides in 2022, women and girls are disproportionately impacted by homicidal violence in the home. Women represent approximately 53% of all victims in the home and 66 % of victims in intimate partner killings.
Africa, for the first time since 2013, has an estimated 20,000 victims, surpassing Asia as the region with the highest number of victims in gender-based killings.
With 2.8 victims per 100,000 women, Africa was the region with the highest number of victims relative to the size of its female population; however, the estimates are subject to limited data availability.
Between 2010 and 2022, there was an apparent (21%) average reduction in female intimate partner/family-related homicides in Europe. However, there have been variations among sub-regions and some setbacks in Western and Southern Europe, specifically since the COVID-19 pandemic commenced in 2020.
The Americas have witnessed diverging sub-regional trends in the number of partner/family-related homicides in recent years:
Between 2017 and 2022, Central and South America observed a decline in yearly killings by 10% and 8%, respectively.
Northen America observed a significant increase of 29%.
The Caribbean documented a slight increase of 8%.
(UNODC, 2023)
UNODC Data Collection Instruments
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) uses different tools to gather data on drug use, crime and criminal justice from its Member States. To ensure the collected information is high-quality, UNODC uses multiple statistical instruments to assist in data collection and distribution. Data collection methods vary from surveys to questionnaires. The UNDOC relies on national focal points appointed by Member States to gather and transmit data collection instruments to the UNODC.
The United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (UN-CTS) is a data collection instrument as a result of the request of the ECOSOC Resolution 1984/48 of May in pursuit of controlling the collection and distribution of crime and criminal justice system data. This annual initiative is aligned with the International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (ICCS). This data is fundamental and utilized for multiple analytical products, including the Global Study on Homicide and the Data Matters Series. Additionally, the UN-CTS is a central measurement instrument in collecting data about the perpetrators of femicide.
The Questionnaire for the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons (GLOTiP) was designed to collect information for the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons. The GLOTiP aims to inform what acts constitute "trafficking in persons."
The United Nations Illicit Arms Flows Questionnaire (UN-IAFQ) is a tool developed by the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its Supplementary Protocols. TH UN-IAFQ is used annually to gather firearms-related data from all member states consistently and standardly. Collected data is, in turn, implemented in the Global Study on Firearms Trafficking.
