Femicide (or feminicide, as it is referred to in some contexts) is defined as an intentional killing with a gender-related motivation. It is different from homicide, where the motivation may not be gender-related.
Spotlight Initiative has played a critical role in addressing femicide, with a strong emphasis on Latin America, where the issue is both highly prevalent and deeply institutionalized. The region has some of the highest femicide rates in the world, making it a thematic focus of the Latin America Regional Programme and national programmes in Mexico, Ecuador, Honduras, and El Salvador. Latin America has also been at the forefront of policy advancements and public discourse on femicide, making it a key area for targeted interventions aimed at structural and cultural change.
The Initiative takes a holistic approach to eliminating femicide, implementing mutually reinforcing interventions across all key areas. Spotlight Initiative worked simultaneously to reform laws, strengthen institutions, shift harmful gender norms, improve services for survivors, generate data, and support women’s rights movements. By working across multiple levels—national, regional, and grassroots—the Initiative ensured that reforms were both sustainable and impactful.
Ecuador provides a clear example of this comprehensive model in action. The country saw the implementation of the Femicide Reparation Policy, which set new legal standards for addressing femicide cases, ensuring justice for victims and reparation for families. In parallel, prevention campaigns such as the Flores en el Aire initiative helped raise awareness by digitally mapping femicide cases and sharing testimonies from families of victims. Improved access to services, including forensic support and protection mechanisms, further strengthened the national response, while enhanced data collection allowed for better monitoring and accountability.
In Mexico, legal reforms were central to the strategy, with 31 federal laws and 49 state laws updated to improve prevention, punishment for perpetrators, and reparation for survivors. These legal changes were accompanied by nationwide public awareness campaigns designed to challenge harmful gender norms and social attitudes that perpetuate violence against women. Institutional strengthening also played a key role, with targeted training for police officers and judicial actors to improve their ability to handle femicide cases effectively. A critical milestone in the region’s efforts to combat femicide was the development of a statistical model for measuring gender-related killings, which was officially approved by UN Statistics in 2022. This model provides a standardized framework for tracking and analyzing femicide data, ensuring that policymakers and institutions have reliable, evidence-based tools to guide prevention and response efforts. The adoption of this model has significantly enhanced national and regional capacities to monitor trends, identify risk factors, and implement targeted interventions.
In Honduras, the Cure Violence Model was implemented to prevent femicide at the community level. This approach involved deploying violence interrupters—trusted community members trained to de-escalate potentially lethal conflicts and mediate disputes. Within its first six months, the programme intervened in 662 violent incidents, safeguarding the lives of 133 women. Over time, it has prevented 1,770 highly volatile incidents, with 65 percent directly related to preventing femicide. The initiative has also facilitated the safe relocation of at-risk women and children, reinforcing the importance of community-led violence prevention strategies.
El Salvador has been another focal point for targeted research and policy interventions. The Initiative supported studies on femicide in vulnerable groups, providing essential data to inform national policies. At the same time, judicial training programmes ensured that legal practitioners were better equipped to investigate and prosecute femicide cases. Strengthening the institutional framework and improving judicial responses have been key to closing gaps in the legal system and providing survivors and their families with greater access to justice.
At the regional level, the Latin America Regional Programme has advanced knowledge production by publishing eight multidimensional studies on femicide in highly vulnerable contexts—such as structural poverty, human mobility, trafficking, disappearances of women and girls, and organized crime. These studies highlight the intersectional impacts of emerging forms of violence and provide guidelines and policy recommendations to generate new actions that respond to the complexity of the phenomenon. By documenting and analyzing these dimensions, the Initiative has contributed to a deeper understanding of femicide as a structural issue, helping shape evidence-based policy responses across the region.
These country-level and regional interventions demonstrate how the Spotlight Initiative’s holistic approach, when implemented at scale, can lead to meaningful change. By integrating legal, institutional, prevention, and service-based interventions, the Initiative has created a model that not only addresses femicide but also provides a roadmap for other regions facing similar crises. The Latin America Regional Programme played a critical role in coordinating efforts across countries, ensuring that best practices and lessons learned were shared to maximize impact. The success of these interventions underscores the nee
View MoreSpotlight Initiative has played a critical role in addressing femicide, with a strong emphasis on Latin America, where the issue is both highly prevalent and deeply institutionalized. The region has some of the highest femicide rates in the world, making it a thematic focus of the Latin America Regional Programme and national programmes in Mexico, Ecuador, Honduras, and El Salvador. Latin America has also been at the forefront of policy advancements and public discourse on femicide, making it a key area for targeted interventions aimed at structural and cultural change.
The Initiative takes a holistic approach to eliminating femicide, implementing mutually reinforcing interventions across all key areas. Spotlight Initiative worked simultaneously to reform laws, strengthen institutions, shift harmful gender norms, improve services for survivors, generate data, and support women’s rights movements. By working across multiple levels—national, regional, and grassroots—the Initiative ensured that reforms were both sustainable and impactful.
Ecuador provides a clear example of this comprehensive model in action. The country saw the implementation of the Femicide Reparation Policy, which set new legal standards for addressing femicide cases, ensuring justice for victims and reparation for families. In parallel, prevention campaigns such as the Flores en el Aire initiative helped raise awareness by digitally mapping femicide cases and sharing testimonies from families of victims. Improved access to services, including forensic support and protection mechanisms, further strengthened the national response, while enhanced data collection allowed for better monitoring and accountability.
In Mexico, legal reforms were central to the strategy, with 31 federal laws and 49 state laws updated to improve prevention, punishment for perpetrators, and reparation for survivors. These legal changes were accompanied by nationwide public awareness campaigns designed to challenge harmful gender norms and social attitudes that perpetuate violence against women. Institutional strengthening also played a key role, with targeted training for police officers and judicial actors to improve their ability to handle femicide cases effectively. A critical milestone in the region’s efforts to combat femicide was the development of a statistical model for measuring gender-related killings, which was officially approved by UN Statistics in 2022. This model provides a standardized framework for tracking and analyzing femicide data, ensuring that policymakers and institutions have reliable, evidence-based tools to guide prevention and response efforts. The adoption of this model has significantly enhanced national and regional capacities to monitor trends, identify risk factors, and implement targeted interventions.
In Honduras, the Cure Violence Model was implemented to prevent femicide at the community level. This approach involved deploying violence interrupters—trusted community members trained to de-escalate potentially lethal conflicts and mediate disputes. Within its first six months, the programme intervened in 662 violent incidents, safeguarding the lives of 133 women. Over time, it has prevented 1,770 highly volatile incidents, with 65 percent directly related to preventing femicide. The initiative has also facilitated the safe relocation of at-risk women and children, reinforcing the importance of community-led violence prevention strategies.
El Salvador has been another focal point for targeted research and policy interventions. The Initiative supported studies on femicide in vulnerable groups, providing essential data to inform national policies. At the same time, judicial training programmes ensured that legal practitioners were better equipped to investigate and prosecute femicide cases. Strengthening the institutional framework and improving judicial responses have been key to closing gaps in the legal system and providing survivors and their families with greater access to justice.
At the regional level, the Latin America Regional Programme has advanced knowledge production by publishing eight multidimensional studies on femicide in highly vulnerable contexts—such as structural poverty, human mobility, trafficking, disappearances of women and girls, and organized crime. These studies highlight the intersectional impacts of emerging forms of violence and provide guidelines and policy recommendations to generate new actions that respond to the complexity of the phenomenon. By documenting and analyzing these dimensions, the Initiative has contributed to a deeper understanding of femicide as a structural issue, helping shape evidence-based policy responses across the region.
These country-level and regional interventions demonstrate how the Spotlight Initiative’s holistic approach, when implemented at scale, can lead to meaningful change. By integrating legal, institutional, prevention, and service-based interventions, the Initiative has created a model that not only addresses femicide but also provides a roadmap for other regions facing similar crises. The Latin America Regional Programme played a critical role in coordinating efforts across countries, ensuring that best practices and lessons learned were shared to maximize impact. The success of these interventions underscores the need for sustained investment in comprehensive strategies to combat femicide and gender-based violence worldwide
In 2024, UNFPA co-hosted a global expert group meeting on femicide alongside UN Women and UNODC, with support from the Centre of Excellence for CRVS and kNOwVAWdata. This meeting brought together experts, activists, and victims' families to address critical issues surrounding femicide. Key topics included:
- Developing conceptual and statistical frameworks for measuring femicide
- The role of feminist review committees in identifying systemic failures and prevention strategies
- Intersections with emerging issues like technology-facilitated GBV, suicidality, and sorcery-related violence
The voices of victims' families were central to the dialogue, grounding discussions in lived experiences and underscoring the urgency of addressing femicide as the most severe form of gender-based violence (GBV). The meeting emphasized data-driven approaches, survivor-centred solutions, and multi-stakeholder collaboration to combat femicide globally.
Follow-up documents are being developed, including a report highlighting key insights around prevention, response, and data, as well as a specific document on the strengths of the statistical framework and potential additional data sources beyond the judicial system.
UNFPA LAC, under the Spotlight Initiative, conducted a series of multidimensional studies on feminicide in vulnerable contexts across Latin America. Notably:
- In Peru, UNFPA supported the development of an inter-institutional protocol for addressing feminicide, attempted feminicide, and high-risk intimate partner violence.
- In El Salvador, the campaign "Traces of Absence" raised awareness of femicide.
- In Argentina, the "We Are More Than Numbers" campaign focused on prevention and awareness of femicide.
In 2024, UNFPA co-hosted a global expert group meeting on femicide alongside UN Women and UNODC, with support from the Centre of Excellence for CRVS and kNOwVAWdata. This meeting brought together experts, activists, and victims' families to address critical issues surrounding femicide. Key topics included:
- Developing conceptual and statistical frameworks for measuring femicide
- The role of feminist review committees in identifying systemic failures and prevention strategies
- Intersections with emerging issues like technology-facilitated GBV, suicidality, and sorcery-related violence
The voices of victims' families were central to the dialogue, grounding discussions in lived experiences and underscoring the urgency of addressing femicide as the most severe form of gender-based violence (GBV). The meeting emphasized data-driven approaches, survivor-centred solutions, and multi-stakeholder collaboration to combat femicide globally.
Follow-up documents are being developed, including a report highlighting key insights around prevention, response, and data, as well as a specific document on the strengths of the statistical framework and potential additional data sources beyond the judicial system.
UNFPA LAC, under the Spotlight Initiative, conducted a series of multidimensional studies on feminicide in vulnerable contexts across Latin America. Notably:
- In Peru, UNFPA supported the development of an inter-institutional protocol for addressing feminicide, attempted feminicide, and high-risk intimate partner violence.
- In El Salvador, the campaign "Traces of Absence" raised awareness of femicide.
- In Argentina, the "We Are More Than Numbers" campaign focused on prevention and awareness of femicide.
OHCHR offers technical assistance to strengthen national legal and policy frameworks by aligning them with international human rights standards. Support includes guidance on translating human rights mechanisms’ recommendations in concrete laws and policies, in building institutional capacities and ensuring multidisciplinary systems are in place to address the root causes and risk factors for femicide, including domestic violence. During the 57th session of the Human Rights Council in September 2024, OHCHR provided technical support in the drafting of resolution on domestic violence (A/HRC/RES/57/18).
View MoreOHCHR offers technical assistance to strengthen national legal and policy frameworks by aligning them with international human rights standards. Support includes guidance on translating human rights mechanisms’ recommendations in concrete laws and policies, in building institutional capacities and ensuring multidisciplinary systems are in place to address the root causes and risk factors for femicide, including domestic violence. During the 57th session of the Human Rights Council in September 2024, OHCHR provided technical support in the drafting of resolution on domestic violence (A/HRC/RES/57/18).
In Southern Africa and South America, two regional consultations on femicide reviews gathered experts to explore the application of multi-stakeholder in-depth review methodologies. UNODC also briefed 40 judges from 19 European countries during a study visit, enhancing their understanding of femicide review practices and improving efforts to address violence against women and girls.
In collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and UN Women, and with support from the Centre of Excellence for Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CoE-CRVS) and kNOwVAWdata, UNODC co-hosted the global expert meeting “Addressing Femicide: Measurement and Accountability”.
View MoreIn Southern Africa and South America, two regional consultations on femicide reviews gathered experts to explore the application of multi-stakeholder in-depth review methodologies. UNODC also briefed 40 judges from 19 European countries during a study visit, enhancing their understanding of femicide review practices and improving efforts to address violence against women and girls.
In collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and UN Women, and with support from the Centre of Excellence for Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CoE-CRVS) and kNOwVAWdata, UNODC co-hosted the global expert meeting “Addressing Femicide: Measurement and Accountability”.