Women journalists often targets of violence UN report shows

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 25/11/2024

Women in the public eye, including journalists, those in politics and women human rights defenders are often targets of deliberate acts of violence, both online and offline, a new UN-report says. The report from the  UN Office on Drugs and Crime and UN Women, was released on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on November 25. 

Strengthening financial support to women’s rights organisations is critical in reducing and preventing gender-related killings and all forms of gender-based violence against women and girls, the report says adding: 

• End impunity by holding perpetrators accountable and establishing zero tolerance of violence against women and girls. 
• Adopt, implement and fund National Action Plans to end violence against women and girls.  
• Invest in prevention and women’s rights organisations to ensure rights and access to essential services for survivors. 

Femicide (or feminicide, as it is referred to in some contexts) is driven by discrimination against women and girls, unequal power relations, gender stereotypes or harmful social norms, the report says and continues:

• Women and girls are most likely to be killed by those closest to them. In 2023, around 51,100 women and girls worldwide were killed by their intimate partners or other family members (including fathers, mothers, uncles and brothers). Current and former intimate partners are by far the most likely perpetrators of femicide, accounting for an average of 60% of all intimate partner and family-related killings. This year recorded the  highest number of  femicides perpetrated by intimate partners or family members.
• Femicide is a global crisis that affects women and girls in every country and territory. In 2023, Africa recorded the largest absolute and relative numbers of female intimate partner and family-related killings with an estimated 21,700 victims (2.9 victims per 100,000). The Americas and Oceania also recorded high rates of intimate partner/family-related femicide in 2023, (at 1.6 and 1.5 per 100,000 respectively), while the rates were significantly lower in Asia and Europe (at 0.8 and 0.6 per 100,000 respectively).
• The true scale of femicide is likely much higher. Too many victims of femicide still go uncounted: for roughly four in ten intentional murders of women and girls, there is not enough information to identify them as gender-related killings because of national variation in criminal justice recording and investigation practices.
• Some groups of women and girls face greater risk. Women in the public eye, including those in politics, women human rights defenders, and journalists are often targets of deliberate acts of violence, both online and offline, with some leading to fatal outcomes and intentional killings.
• Women environmental defenders were visible in at least a quarter of all socio-environmental conflicts worldwide as of January 2022, and in 81 of those conflicts, they were killed.
• In 2023, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) alerted that women human rights defenders were targeted twice over, for their work and their gender, both online and offline. OHCHR documented at least 34 women human rights defenders killed in conflict-affected countries in 2022.
• Despite data limitations, the available evidence from Canada and Australia suggests that indigenous women are disproportionately affected by gender related killings. At 4.3 per 100,000 women and girls, the rate of female homicide in Canada was five times higher among Indigenous than among non-Indigenous women and girls in 2021.
• With violence against transgender and gender-diverse people on the rise, the Trans Murder Monitoring 2023 research data showed that 94 per cent of the 321 trans and gender-diverse people reported murdered were trans women or trans feminine people.