50,000 Women Killed By Family Members, Partners In 2024

A group, United Nations Women, has revealed that nearly every 10 minutes in 2024, a woman or girl was killed by an intimate partner or family member.

The alarming statistic was highlighted in a press release issued Monday to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

According to the latest femicide brief from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and UN Women, of the 83,000 women and girls intentionally killed in 2024, 50,000 were murdered by someone within their own household.

This averages 137 such killings per day. By comparison, intimate partners or family members accounted for just 11 per cent of other intentional killings.

“A woman or girl was killed by an intimate partner or family member almost every 10 minutes last year,” the statement stated.

“Femicides don’t happen in isolation. They often sit on a continuum of violence that can start with controlling behaviour, threats, and harassment, including online,” said Sarah Hendriks, Director of UN Women’s Policy Division. She added, “Digital violence often doesn’t stay online. It can escalate offline and, in the worst cases, contribute to lethal harm.”

Hendriks called for early intervention systems and stronger legislation to stop the menace.

She stressed, “Every woman and girl has the right to be safe in every part of her life. To prevent these killings, we need laws that recognise how violence manifests across the lives of women and girls, both online and offline, and hold perpetrators to account well before it turns deadly.”

John Brandolino, Acting Executive Director of UNODC, warned that the home “remains a dangerous and sometimes lethal place for too many women and girls around the world.”

He added, “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.”

The report highlighted regional disparities. Africa recorded the highest rate of femicide by intimate partners or family members at three per 100,000 women and girls, followed by the Americas (1.5), Oceania (1.4), Asia (0.7), and Europe (0.5).

UN Women and UNODC noted that femicide outside the home was also widespread, although reliable data remained limited. Both organisations were working with governments to implement a 2022 statistical framework designed to improve the identification and recording of gender-related killings.

Better data, the agencies said, was essential for shaping effective policy responses and ensuring justice for victims. While the 2024 figure of 50,000 killings is slightly lower than the 51,100 recorded in 2023, officials cautioned that this difference reflects variations in data availability rather than a real reduction.

The findings coincided with the launch of the 2025 “16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence” campaign, which focuses on combating digital violence, a rapidly growing form of abuse that includes stalking, online harassment, deepfakes, gendered disinformation, and the non-consensual sharing of intimate images.

The campaign calls on governments, technology companies, and communities to strengthen laws, enforce accountability, and invest in prevention, digital literacy, and survivor-centred support services.