The Routledge International Handbook on Femicide and Feminicide [1 ed.] 9781003202332, 9781032064390, 9781032064413

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Figures
List of Maps
List of Tables
List of Boxes
List of Contributors
Foreword
Acknowledgements
About the Cover
Part 1 Introduction
1 Femicide and Feminicide: A Growing Global Human Rights Movement
Part 2 Theoretical Understandings and Perspectives
2 Femi(ni)cide: A Global Archaeology of Knowledge
3 Femicide and the Global Political Economy
4 Understanding Femicide Using a Global Social Ecological Model
5 Femicide and Intersectionality
6 Femicide/Feminicide and Colonialism
7 Femi(ni)cide and Space: Theorising the Socio-Spatial Scripts of Femi(ni)cide
8 Systems of Power and Femicide: The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Extremist Violence
Part 3 Data and Methodological Considerations
9 Data Sources and Challenges in Addressing Femicide and Feminicide
10 Feminicide Data Activism
11 Femicide/Feminicide Observatories and Watches: Perspectives from Argentina, Colombia, Israel, Spain, Panama, and Poland
Part 4 Femicide and Feminicide Across World Regions and Countries
12 Femicide in Afghanistan
13 Femicide in Australia
14 Feminicide in Brazil
15 Femicide in Canada
16 Femicide in Europe
17 Femicide in Georgia
18 Femicide in India
19 Feminicide in Mexico
20 Femicide in Palestinian Society
21 Femicide in the Russian Federation
22 Femicide in South Africa
23 Femicide in Sub-Saharan Africa
24 Femicide in Turkey
25 Femicide in the United Kingdom
26 Femicide in the United States
Part 5 Understanding Femicide and Feminicide Subtypes and Contexts
27 Intimate Femicide/Intimate Partner Femicide
28 Population Control and Sex-Selective Abortion in China and India: A Feminist Critique of Criminalisation
29 Systemic Sexual Feminicide: Colonial Scars in Bodies and Territories
30 “Honour”-Based Femicide
31 Femigenocide
32 Sex Work Feminicide and the Making of #SayHerName Campaign by SWEAT in South Africa
33 Armed Conflict Femicide
34 Feminicide in the Context of Gang-Related Violence in El Salvador
35 Continuities and Discontinuities Between the Concepts of Feminicide and Transfeminicide in Mexico
36 Femi(ni)cide as War as Femi(ni)cide: Violence and Justice-Seeking Beyond Borders
Part 6 Legal Responses to Femicide and Feminicide
37 Femicide/Feminicide and Legislation
38 Femicide and Transnational Law
39 The Latin American Model Protocol for the Investigation of Gender-Related Killings of Women (Femicide/Feminicide): A Partially Achieved Success Story
40 Femicide and the “Heat of Passion” Criminal Doctrine
41 State Accountability and Feminicide
Part 7 Social Responses to Femicide and Feminicide
42 Colonial Femicide: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada
43 Witnessing Across Borders: Truth-Telling About Feminicides in México and the MMIWG2S in Canada and the US
44 North American Necropolitics and Gender: On Black Lives Matter and Black Femicide
45 Femicide, Digital Activism, and the #NiUnaMenos Movement in Argentina
46 Dissident Memories: Feminicide, Memorialisation, and the Fight Against State Cruelty
Part 8 Where to Go from Here in Research, Policy, and Practice
47 Latin American Standardisation of Data on Feminicide
48 Human-Centred Computing and Feminicide Counterdata Production
49 Male Perpetrators’ Accounts of Intimate Femicide: A Global Systematic Review
50 Changing Media Representations of Femicide as Primary Prevention
Index

Citation preview

THE ROUTLEDGE INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK ON FEMICIDE AND FEMINICIDE

This volume explores femicide and feminicide in depth, bringing together our current knowledge on this phenomenon and its prevention. No country is free from femicide/feminicide, which represents the tip of the iceberg in male violence against women and girls. Therefore, it is crucial and timely to better understand how states and their citizens are experiencing and responding to femicide/feminicide globally. Through the work of internationally recognised feminist and grassroots activists, researchers, and academics from around the world, this handbook offers the first in-depth, global examination of the growing social movement to address femicide and feminicide. It includes the current state of knowledge and the prevalence of femicide/feminicide and its characteristics across countries and world regions, as well as the social and legal responses to these killings. The contributions contained here look at the accomplishments of the past four decades, ongoing challenges, and current and future priorities to identify where we need to go from here to prevent femicide/feminicide specifically and male violence against women and girls overall. This transnational, multidisciplinary, cross-sectoral handbook will contribute to research, policy, and practice globally at a time when it is needed the most. It brings a visible, global focus to the growing concern about femicide/feminicide, underscoring the importance of adopting a human rights framework in working towards its prevention, in an increasingly unstable global world for women and girls. Myrna Dawson is Professor of Sociology and Research Leadership Chair, College of Social and Applied Human Sciences, University of Guelph. She is the Founder and Director of the Centre for the Study of Social and Legal Responses to Violence (CSSLRV; www.violenceresearch.ca) and the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice & Accountability (CFOJA; www.femicideincanada.ca). For ten years, Dawson was a Canada Research Chair in Public Policy in Criminal Justice (2008–2018). She has spent more than two decades researching social and legal responses to violence with emphasis on violence against women and children, femicide, and filicide. Saide Mobayed Vega is a researcher interested in the intersections between human rights, violence against women, digital technologies, and data. Her research traces how feminicide is recounted across scales by zooming in on global practices of data collection and local data activism, with a focus on Mexico. In 2017, she co-founded the Femi(ni)cide Watch Platform with the UN Studies Association. She is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Cambridge.

THE ROUTLEDGE INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK ON FEMICIDE AND FEMINICIDE

Edited by Myrna Dawson and Saide Mobayed Vega

Cover image: © gettyimages.com First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Myrna Dawson & Saide Mobayed Vega; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Myrna Dawson & Saide Mobayed Vega to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-06439-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-06441-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-20233-2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332 Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

This book is dedicated to all those who lost their lives to femicide and feminicide, as well as their families, friends, and communities who continue to grieve for their losses. It is also dedicated to the women and girls who continue to face male violence in their lives. We hope that this handbook and the voices represented here join them to actively resist the normalisation of male violence against women and girls. This handbook is also for all of those who have – and continue to – strongly withstand, actively contest, and forcefully speak out against the conditions that enable and perpetuate male violence against women and girls either through research, activism, or many other forms of community and sorority building. This ever-growing global movement against femicide and feminicide would not exist without you. We are indebted to you all. Finally, this handbook is for the new generation of women and girls to come. We hope that when you grow and read these 50 chapters, the conditions around you will be much better, and this collection to be a testimony of darker times that came before you.

CONTENTS

List of Figures xiii List of Maps xv List of Tables xvi List of Boxes xvii List of Contributors xviii Forewordxxxvii Acknowledgementsxl About the Cover xliv PART 1

Introduction1   1 Femicide and Feminicide: A Growing Global Human Rights Movement Myrna Dawson and Saide Mobayed Vega PART 2

3

Theoretical Understandings and Perspectives

15

  2 Femi(ni)cide: A Global Archaeology of Knowledge Saide Mobayed Vega

17

  3 Femicide and the Global Political Economy Alison Brysk and Vitória Moreira

29

  4 Understanding Femicide Using a Global Social Ecological Model Emma Fulu, Victoria Alondra, Xian Warner, Chay Brown, and Loksee Leung

40

vii

Contents

  5 Femicide and Intersectionality Lorena Sosa

50

  6 Femicide/Feminicide and Colonialism Paulina García-Del Moral, Dolores Figueroa Romero, Patricia Torres Sandoval, and Laura Hernández Pérez

60

  7 Femi(ni)cide and Space: Theorising the Socio-Spatial Scripts of Femi(ni)cide Lorena Fuentes

70

  8 Systems of Power and Femicide: The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Extremist Violence Maria N. Scaptura and Brittany E. Hayes PART 3

80

Data and Methodological Considerations

89

  9 Data Sources and Challenges in Addressing Femicide and Feminicide Angelika Zecha, Naeemah Abrahams, Karine Duhamel, Cristina Fabré, María Alejandra Otamendi, Alejandra Ríos-Cázares, Heidi Stöckl, Myrna Dawson, and Saide Mobayed Vega

91

10 Feminicide Data Activism Collectif Féminicides Par Compagnons ou Ex, Feminizidmap, Kathomi Gatwiri, Savia Hasanova, Anna Kapushenko, Lyubava Malysheva, Saide Mobayed Vega, Audrey Mugeni, Rosalind Page, Ivonne Ramírez, Helena Suárez Val, Dawn Wilcox, and Aimee Zambrano Ortiz 11 Femicide/Feminicide Observatories and Watches: Perspectives from Argentina, Colombia, Israel, Spain, Panama, and Poland Vathsala Illesinghe, Ahora Que Sí Nos Ven, Femi(ni)cide Watch Poland, Feminicidio.net, Observatorio de Feminicidios, Observatorio feminicidios Colombia – Red Feminista Antimilitarista, Shalva Weil, Myrna Dawson, and Saide Mobayed Vega PART 4

103

114

Femicide and Feminicide Across World Regions and Countries

127

12 Femicide in Afghanistan Mohammad Ibrahim Dariush, Farzana Adell, and Angelika Zecha

129

13 Femicide in Australia Patricia Cullen, Jenna Price and Natasha Walker

140

viii

Contents

14 Feminicide in Brazil Joana Perrone

150

15 Femicide in Canada Wendy Aujla, Myrna Dawson, Crystal J. Giesbrecht, Nneka MacGregor, and Shiva Nourpanah

160

16 Femicide in Europe Marceline Naudi, Monika Schröttle, Elina Kofou, Maria José Magalhães, and Christiana Kouta

170

17 Femicide in Georgia Tamar Dekanosidze

181

18 Femicide in India Nishi Mitra vom Berg

191

19 Feminicide in Mexico Saide Mobayed Vega, Sonia M. Frías, Fabiola de Lachica Huerta and Aleida Luján-Pinelo

201

20 Femicide in Palestinian Society Rafah Anabtawi, Iman Jabbour and Abeer Baker

214

21 Femicide in the Russian Federation Ksenia Meshkova and Lyubava Malysheva

225

22 Femicide in South Africa Nechama Brodie, Shanaaz Mathews and Naeemah Abrahams

236

23 Femicide in Sub-Saharan Africa Emmanuel Rohn and Eric Y. Tenkorang

246

24 Femicide in Turkey Ceyda Ulukaya and Büşra Yalçınöz Uçan

264

25 Femicide in the United Kingdom Karen Ingala Smith

278

26 Femicide in the United States Jill Theresa Messing, Millan A. AbiNader, Jesenia M. Pizarro, April M. Zeoli, Em Loerzel, Tricia Bent-Goodley, and Jacquelyn Campbell

288

ix

Contents PART 5

Understanding Femicide and Feminicide Subtypes and Contexts

299

27 Intimate Femicide/Intimate Partner Femicide Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Sandra Walklate, Jude McCulloch and JaneMaree Maher

301

28 Population Control and Sex-Selective Abortion in China and India: A Feminist Critique of Criminalisation Navtej Purewal and Lisa Eklund

311

29 Systemic Sexual Feminicide: Colonial Scars in Bodies and Territories Julia E. Monárrez Fragoso

321

30 “Honour”-Based Femicide Aisha K. Gill

332

31 Femigenocide Rita Segato and Lívia Vitenti

342

32 Sex Work Feminicide and the Making of #SayHerName Campaign by SWEAT in South Africa Phoebe Kisubi Mbasalaki

351

33 Armed Conflict Femicide Anna Alvazzi del Frate

360

34 Feminicide in the Context of Gang-Related Violence in El Salvador Silvia Ivette Juárez Barrios and Erika J. Rojas Ospina

372

35 Continuities and Discontinuities Between the Concepts of Feminicide and Transfeminicide in Mexico Sayak Valencia and Liliana Falcón

380

36 Femi(ni)cide as War as Femi(ni)cide: Violence and Justice-Seeking Beyond Borders Dilar Dirik

390

PART 6

Legal Responses to Femicide and Feminicide

409

37 Femicide/Feminicide and Legislation Patsilí Toledo Vásquez

411

x

Contents

38 Femicide and Transnational Law Adriana Isabel López Padilla Tostado and Helene Saadoun 39 The Latin American Model Protocol for the Investigation of Gender-Related Killings of Women (Femicide/Feminicide): A Partially Achieved Success Story Françoise Roth, Mariela Labozzetta and Agustina Rodríguez

422

433

40 Femicide and the “Heat of Passion” Criminal Doctrine Hava Dayan

443

41 State Accountability and Feminicide Cecilia Menjívar and Leydy Diossa-Jiménez

453

PART 7

Social Responses to Femicide and Feminicide

463

42 Colonial Femicide: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada Robyn Bourgeois

465

43 Witnessing Across Borders: Truth-Telling About Feminicides in México and the MMIWG2S in Canada and the US Cynthia Bejarano

475

44 North American Necropolitics and Gender: On Black Lives Matter and Black Femicide Shatema Threadcraft

485

45 Femicide, Digital Activism, and the #NiUnaMenos Movement in Argentina Francesca Belotti, Francesca Comunello, and Consuelo Corradi 46 Dissident Memories: Feminicide, Memorialisation, and the Fight Against State Cruelty Elva F. Orozco Mendoza PART 8

495

505

Where to Go from Here in Research, Policy, and Practice

517

47 Latin American Standardisation of Data on Feminicide Silvana Fumega and María Esther Cervantes

519

48 Human-Centred Computing and Feminicide Counterdata Production Catherine D’Ignazio

529

xi

Contents

49 Male Perpetrators’ Accounts of Intimate Femicide: A Global Systematic Review 542 Dabney P. Evans, Martín Hernán Di Marco, Subasri Narasimhan, Melanie E. Maino Vieytes, Autumn Curran, and Mia S. White 50 Changing Media Representations of Femicide as Primary Prevention Jordan Fairbairn, Ciara Boyd, Yasmin Jiwani and Myrna Dawson

554

Index565

xii

FIGURES

2.1 Worldwide Google search interest over time of “femicide” and “feminicidio” queries (2004–2022). 2.2 Screenshot of Yo Te Nombro feminicide map (by María Salguero). 4.1 Adding global themes to a model for understanding drivers of femicide. 19.1 Classification of feminicide by different state’s jurisdictions (as of 2021). 19.2 Feminicide and male and female homicide rates. 19.3 Number of feminicides investigated in the State Attorney’s Offices (2018–2021). 23.1 Prisma flow chart. 24.1 Femicides rates, by years. 24.2 Femicides percentages, by the victim-perpetrator relationship status. 24.3 Femicide percentages, by the intimate partner relationship characteristics. 24.4 Femicide percentages, by victims’ age. 24.5 Femicide percentages, by the victim-perpetrator relationship status and age. 24.6 Femicide motives. 24.7 Femicide motives, by the victim-perpetrator relationship status. 24.8 The pre-incident processes, by the victim-perpetrator relationship status. 29.1 Systemic sexual feminicide: Ciudad Juárez (1993–2020). 32.1 The figure was taken and supplied by SWEAT. A portrait of Nokuphila Kumalo was commissioned by SWEAT and painted by local artist Astrid Warren, which eventually featured in an exhibition at Iziko Museum. Here, we see it sitting outside the courthouse on the day of the delivery of the verdict in the Mthethwa trial. 36.1 A HDP Women’s Assembly rally following Deniz Poyraz’s killing. 36.2 Front page and content table of the “100 Reasons” campaign main dossier titled “100 Reasons to Prosecute the Dictator: The Feminicidal Politics of Erdogan and the AKP.” 36.3 Front page of Kurdish Women’s Relations Office (REPAK) dossier titled “The AKP’s War on Women: A dossier on the AKP government’s (hostile) policy towards women in Turkey.” 36.4 Front page of Kongreya Star brochure titled “Political femicide: Systematized State assassination of politically organised women.”

xiii

18 25 45 205 208 209 248 267 268 268 269 269 270 270 271 326

356 394

396

397 398

Figures

36.5 Front page of Kongreya Star information dossier, titled “The extra-legal execution of Kongr(ey)a Star activists on June 23rd in Helince village, Kobane.” 36.6 Front page of Kongreya Star dossier titled “Women under Turkish Occupation: Femicide and gender-based violence as systematic practice of the Turkish occupation in Afrin.” 36.7 Front page of Kongreya Star report titled “They can’t break the free will of women: Political femicide of two local activists.” 36.8 Photo of a rally against the Turkish occupation. 36.9 First three pages of Kongreya Star and Women Defend Rojava dossier titled “Self-Defence: The Answer to Gender Based Violence.” 47.1 This flowchart created by Datasketch (2019) condenses the information found on the “Guide to Protocolise Feminicide Identification Processes” for easy reference. 48.1 Screenshot of the Data Against Feminicide Highlighter, a browser extension for the Chrome browser. 48.2 Screenshot of the Data Against Feminicide Highlighter, a browser extension for the Chrome browser. 48.3 Sample email alert delivered from the Data Against Feminicide Email Alerts System. 49.1 PRISMA diagram for male-perpetrated intimate partner femicide.

xiv

399

400 401 402 403 524 537 538 539 544

MAPS

Map 29.1 Mapping the Political Landscape of Terror and Enjoyment

xv

327

TABLES

9.1 10.1 11.1 14.1 16.1 19.1 21.1 21.2 21.3 21.4 23.1 24.1 25.1 29.1 33.1 33.2 45.1 48.1 49.1

Researchers, Professional Roles, and Experience (in Alphabetical Order) Co-authors and Their Feminicide Data Projects Observatory’s Name and Location, Focus, Recent Statistics, and Contributors Laws Regarding Gender-Based Violence in Brazil Information Included in the Quantitative Data Collection Tool Number of Cases in Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Systems by Year and Status (2018–2020) Ages of Murdered Women and Girls Socio-Economic Status and Occupation of Murdered Women Relationship Between Victim and Perpetrator Most Common Femicide Methods Summary of Findings in Published Scholarly Articles Femicide Numbers in Turkey  Relationship Between Victim and Perpetrator Occupations and Representations of Victims of Organised Systemic Sexual Feminicide in Ciudad Juárez (1993–2020) Proportion of Incidents with Female Casualties of Explosive Devices in the Five Most Widespread Conflicts (2011–2018) Female Victims of Violent Death per 100,000 Female Population in Selected Countries (2018) Number of Tweets and Unique Users over the Years Summary of Interviews, Co-design Partners and Pilot Partners Fourteen Articles on Male-Perpetrated Intimate Femicide, Including Perpetrators’ Perspectives, by Year

xvi

93 104 115 151 175 206 230 230 231 231 249 265 281 328 366 367 498 532 546

BOXES

Box 22.1 Defining Femicide in South Africa

237

xvii

CONTRIBUTORS

Millan A. AbiNader is a mixed-methods researcher who seeks to understand the structural factors and social ecology of gender-based violence, with particular attention to intimate partner homicide and rural communities. Before entering academia, Dr AbiNader worked as a community victim services advocate in the fields of sexual violence, intimate partner violence, family violence, and commercial sexual exploitation/trafficking. She delivered primary prevention interventions through college, facilitated support groups in the community and in criminal justice settings, and delivered advocacy services to incarcerated women. Dr AbiNader is currently an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice. Naeemah Abrahams is the Director of the Gender and Health Research Unit at the South African Medical Research Council. Her research focus is on the intersections between gender-based violence and health, including the interface with HIV, and the measurement of violence against women and children. She has a background in public health and has worked in homicide and gender-based violence research for over 30 years and femicide research for over 20 years. Dr Abrahams’ research quantifies the scope of femicide in South Africa and led the development of the first National Femicide Prevention Strategy in 2021. Farzana Adell was born in 1984 in the Bamiyan province of Afghanistan. She has obtained her MBA degree from Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK. She is the founder of the Gender Equality Research Organization in Afghanistan. She has previously worked as Chief of Staff at the Senior Advisory on United Nations Affairs to the president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani. She is a women’s rights researcher, business consultant, electrologist, and make-up artist and has more than 15 years of experience working in different areas with government, local, and international organisations in research of women studies, business management, project management, and corporate social responsibility in Afghanistan. Ahora Que Sí Nos Ven is an observatory of gender violence that aims to make visible and denounce the sexist violence that affects the freedom of women, trans people, transvestites, lesbians, and non-binary people. The information that we develop, reconstruct, and collect has the mission of being an input for the design and implementation of public policies that guarantee our right to live a life free of violence.

xviii

Contributors

Victoria Alondra is a multidisciplinary community worker, postgraduate student, and artist whose work explores the intersections of joy and resistance, identity, displacement, violence, mental wellness, and political discourse. Born in Anáhuac (Mexico), she draws strength and inspiration from her family and applies a critical lens across contexts. Victoria has worked in Canada, Australia, and Anáhuac in community programs and projects that focus on family support, family violence, housing justice, cultural revitalisation, and the arts since 2007. Anna Alvazzi del Frate is a criminologist with vast experience in international comparative studies on crime and violence, with a special focus on armed violence and gender-related matters, which she developed during her career as a UN official at the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (Rome/Turin) and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (Vienna) and as an academic at the Small Arms Survey (IHEID, Geneva). She is a founding director of Kennis: Knowledge for Safety and Good Governance and the 2019–2023 Chair of the Alliance of NGOs on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. Rafah Anabtawi has been a feminist and social activist for over 20 years. Her expertise is in human rights, gender, leadership, and community organising. She holds a BA and MA in social work and community organising. Since 2013, she has been the General Director of the Kayan Palestinian Feminist Organization. Rafah has participated in several prestigious leadership programs, including the Fellowship Programme of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Mastery Foundation School for Leadership. She has participated in several research studies and reports and has written several articles in the field of gender and human rights. Wendy Aujla (she/her) is the Criminology Program Adviser and Field Placement Coordinator at the University of Alberta. As an applied sociologist and community-based researcher, her interests are domestic violence and applying creative knowledge translation techniques. Her published work has explored police perspectives of “honour”-based crimes and forced marriages, revictimisation of South Asian immigrant women experiencing abuse, and vignettes in qualitative research. She has recently collaborated on a research project to examine intimate partner violence service providers’ experiences with trans and immigrant women. She proudly serves on the expert advisory panel for the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability. Abeer Baker has an LLM in public and international law from Tel Aviv and Northwestern University in the United States. She is a Palestinian private human rights lawyer and a legal consultant of Palestinian feminist organisations in Israel. Currently she serves as the head of the Human Rights Legal Clinic in Haifa University’s Faculty of Law. In the past, Abeer served as a senior lawyer at Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel and a former chair of the Legal Clinic for Prisoners’ Rights in the Law Faculty of Haifa University. Abeer mainly litigates Palestinian human rights cases before Israeli courts. Cynthia Bejarano is Regents Professor at New Mexico State University. Her research/advocacy focuses on embodied experiences with violence, including feminicidios at the US-Mexico border. With Rosa-Linda Fregoso, she co-edited Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Américas. She also co-founded Amigos de las Mujeres de Juarez, which worked with feminist and human rights groups, including some Mexican families of disappeared and murdered women/girls. With Sylvia Fernandez, she is co-creating Archiving Feminicide, a project digitally documenting the activist and feminist participation of the first local feminist movements in the Paso del Norte Region. Project collaborators include Julia Monarrez Fragoso from COLEF-Cd. Juarez.

xix

Contributors

Francesca Belotti is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Sapienza University of Rome. Her research interests range from media activism to generational usages of digital media and ICT-related sexist and ageist stereotypes. Her selected publications include Indigenous Media Activism in Argentina (Routledge, 2022), “ ‘I do it my way’: idioms of practice and digital media ideologies of teenagers and older individuals” (New Media & Society, 2022, with M. Fernández-Ardèvol et al.), and “Women, youth, and everything else. Age-based and gendered stereotypes in relation to digital technology among elderly Italian mobile phone users” (Media, Culture & Society, 2017, with Comunello et al.). Tricia Bent-Goodley is Professor Emeritus at Howard University School of Social Work and currently a graduate professor in the Howard University Public Health Program. She is an experienced community-centred intervention researcher and licensed clinical social worker. She is the former program director for the Domestic Violence Homicide Prevention Demonstration Initiative (a community engagement training and technical assistance grant) and a member and immediate past chair of the Prince George’s County Domestic Violence Fatality Review Team. Dr Bent-Goodley is an accomplished scholar, and she served as Editor-in-Chief of Social Work and is currently the Associate Editor for Journal of Interpersonal Violence. Robyn Bourgeois (Laughing Otter Caring Woman) is a mixed-race nehiyaw iskwew (Cree woman) whose Cree family comes from the Treaty Eight (Lesser Slave Lake) territory. She is an associate professor in the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies at Brock, where her scholarly work focuses on Indigenous feminism, violence against Indigenous women and girls, and Indigenous women’s political activism and leadership. She is currently serving as the university’s Vice-Provost for Indigenous Engagement. In addition to being an academic, Robyn is also an activist, author, and artist. Ciara Boyd is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Guelph. Ciara completed her honours BA from Western University with a specialisation in criminology and her MA in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice Policy at the University of Guelph. Her research focuses on exploring and understanding different types of gender-based homicides, with a concentration on mass killings, familicides, and femicides. Ciara’s current research focuses on how media framing of mass killings aligns with how surviving family members and/or friends of victims and/or perpetrators perceive such framing. Nechama Brodie is a multimedia journalist and a lecturer at the Wits Centre for Journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Her research work focuses on the epidemiology and epistemology of fatal violence in South Africa and the Global South, including developing tools that will allow violence researchers to build robust, interdisciplinary, and multi-use databases using news media and other archives. She is the author of the 2020 monograph Femicide in South Africa. Chay Brown has been researching violence against women since 2012, working closely with Aboriginal women’s groups in the Northern Territory (NT) to prevent family violence. Chay’s doctoral research explored what works to prevent violence against women in NT, leading to the development of a NT-specific violence prevention framework. In 2021, Chay was project lead on research exploring experiences of technology-facilitated abuse among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. Chay is lead author of the “Rante rante ampe Marle and Urreye” research report – the first evaluation of primary prevention projects in the NT. Chay has previously worked in safe houses and for an anti-trafficking organisation, supporting women survivors of sex trafficking. Alison Brysk is Distinguished Professor of Global Studies/Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of seven books, most recently The Struggle for Freedom xx

Contributors

from Fear: Contesting Violence Against Women at the Frontiers of Globalization (2018). Brysk has been selected Distinguished Scholar in Human Rights of the International Studies Association and American Political Science Association; Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center; Fulbright Professor in Canada, India, and Oxford; Visiting Scholar in Argentina, Ecuador, Sweden, Japan, South Africa, the Netherlands, Spain, Austria, France, Taiwan; and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Jacquelyn Campbell is the Anna D. Wolf Chair and Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing. She is known for her research on intimate partner violence (IPV) and health outcomes including homicide and IPV contributing to health inequities for marginalised women. Her more than 300 articles and seven books and being PI of or Co-PI of ten major national research grants have provided major contributions to nursing and interdisciplinary science in this regard. She is also known for her mentorship pre- and postdoctoral students through her interdisciplinary preand postdoctoral training program in trauma and violence. María Esther Cervantes has a degree in international relations from Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico, and a master of arts in geography from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Currently, she is a PhD student in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia, studying how the advances in digital technologies contribute to the management of transnational identities and migration decision-making of highly skilled immigrants. She is a researcher at ILDA. Collectif Féministe par Compagnons ou Ex (www.feminicides.fr) is a feminist collective that documents intimate partner feminicide in France. They are volunteers and anonymous. Their work focuses on male violence against women (and their children). As part of their objectives, they aim to raise awareness against feminicide in the media and in society and to get the public authorities to implement a policy of dissuasion (application of the law) and to educate men who commit violence against women. Francesca Comunello is a full professor in the Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, where she teaches internet and social media studies and gender and media studies. Her research focuses on the intersections between digital technology and society, including digitally mediated social relations, ageing and digital communication, gender and digital platforms, digital media, and disaster communication. Her work has been published in journals like New Media and Society, Information Communication and Society, Media Culture and Society, International Journal of Press/Politics, The Sociological Review, Ageing and Society, American Behavioral Scientist, and Violence Against Women, among others. Consuelo Corradi is Professor of Sociology at LUMSA University, Rome, Italy. Her research interests include feminism, violence against women, femicide, and women’s biocapital. Since the inception of the European Sociological Association RN 33 “Women’s and Gender Studies” in 2009, she has been serving as a scientific board member. Her selected publications include “Theories of femicide and their significance for social research” (2016); Femicide across Europe (2018, eds S. Weil, C. Corradi, and M. Naudi); The concept and measurement of violence against women and men (2017, eds S. Walby et al.); and “Motherhood and the contradictions of feminism” (2021). Patricia Cullen is a National Health and Medical Research Council Fellow. Patricia’s research focuses on health, justice, and social inequities that drive injury, violence, and trauma. Her work integrates injury and violence prevention within broader initiatives that address intersecting social determinants. Central to her approach are partnerships and co-produced research with experts by xxi

Contributors

experience. Patricia has been invited to contribute to government and World Health Organisation commissioned reports, submissions to parliament, and national and international conferences, and she regularly engages with media, policy, and community organisations. She is a founding member of the Australian Domestic, Family, and Sexual Violence Recovery Alliance. Autumn Curran CHES®, MPH (Emory University), BS Health Science (California State University Long Beach). Her current research focuses on global femicide perpetration, culturally competent clinical care, and the reproductive health of Atlanta-based refugees. She is a mixed-methods professional specialising in both qualitative and quantitative methodology. Autumn’s work is driven by passionate for ending GBV and improving global maternal health outcomes. Mohammad Ibrahim Dariush was born in 1992 in the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan and has a master’s degree in sociology. He has more than ten years of experience as a gender studies researcher. He is a lecturer of gender studies at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Rana University, Afghanistan. He is a co-founder of the Gender Equality Research Institute in Afghanistan. He is the author of several books, such as An Introduction to Women Movements in Afghanistan after 2001 and Implementation of Transitional Justice in Afghanistan, and articles, such as “Typology of the Identity of the Women’s Movement in Afghanistan,” “Study of the Social Goals of the Women’s Movement in Afghanistan,” and “Examining the Glass Ceiling in Afghanistan’s Social.” Catherine D’Ignazio is Associate Professor of Urban Science and Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. D’Ignazio is a scholar, artist/designer, and hacker mama who focuses on feminist technology, data literacy, and civic engagement. Her 2020 book from MIT Press, Data Feminism, co-authored with Lauren Klein, charts a course for more ethical and empowering data science practices. D’Ignazio is the director of the Data + Feminism Lab, which uses data and computational methods to work towards gender and racial justice. Myrna Dawson is Professor of Sociology and Research Leadership Chair, College of Social and Applied Human Sciences, University of Guelph. She is the founder and director of the Centre for the Study of Social and Legal Responses to Violence (CSSLRV; www.violenceresearch.ca) and the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability (CFOJA; www.femicideincanada.ca). For ten years, Dawson was a Canada Research Chair in Public Policy in Criminal Justice (2008–2018). She has spent more than two decades researching social and legal responses to violence with emphasis on violence against women, children, femicide, and filicide. Hava Dayan, PhD, LLB, heads the MA program in crime, law, and society in the School of Criminology, University of Haifa. Using an interdisciplinary, crimino-legal framework of analysis, Dr Dayan conducts research in the field of criminal law and society, with a particular interest in gender and crime, criminal legislature, femicide, and sexual crimes. Her most recent published papers explore several issues pertaining to lethal violence against women (femicide, uxoricide, battered women who kill their abusers, legal criminal doctrines related to the phenomenon of femicide, and sexual crimes). Fabiola de Lachica Huerta is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Legal Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She employs the methods of discourse analysis and semi-structured, in-depth interviews to study how violent events get configured across time and the processes through which these events catalyse the emergence of particular political subjects in contexts of conflict. She received her PhD in sociology from the New School for Social Research, her MA in political sociology from the Instituto Mora of Mexico, and her BA in sociology from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. xxii

Contributors

Tamar Dekanosidze is a human rights lawyer from Georgia based in Tbilisi. In her capacity as Equality Now’s Eurasia regional representative, she works to ensure women and girls live free from violence and discrimination in the former Soviet Union and that they can access justice for sexual and other forms of gender-based violence. Tamar has 15 years of experience working on various human rights issues, including at GYLA, litigation on violence against women at the European Court of Human Rights, and other international mechanisms. Tamar holds an LLM in international human rights law and is currently pursuing a PhD in law. Martín Hernán Di Marco is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law (University of Oslo). He has a PhD in social sciences (Buenos Aires University), an MSc in epidemiology (Lanús National University), and a BA in sociology (Buenos Aires University). His current research is focused on the study of life stories and trajectories of men who have committed intentional homicide (homicide or femicide) in Latin America. He is keenly interested in unwrapping the narrative reconstruction of these lives, understanding the processes that shape how physical violence is learned and signified, and discussing the methodological specificities of qualitative research on this topic. Leydy Diossa-Jiménez is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at University of California, Los Angeles. She studies international migration and political rights and participation in exile. From a comparative-historical perspective, her research focuses on the effects of political violence in forced migration and political rights enactment in Latin America. Dilar Dirik is a political sociologist and feminist writer. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Cambridge. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher and course convener at the University of Oxford and author of the forthcoming book The Kurdish Women’s Movement: History, Theory, Practice (2022). Karine Duhamel is Anishinaabe-Métis and holds a PhD in history from the University of Manitoba. From 2018 to 2019, Dr Duhamel served as Director of Research for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Upon the conclusion of the Inquiry, she served as Chair of the Data Working Group for the creation of a National Action Plan on missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people. Dr Duhamel is now working nationally to establish ways to measure the safety of Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people as a result of new investments and initiatives. Lisa Eklund is Associate Professor of Sociology at Lund University. Her research is situated in the nexus between family sociology, social policy and population dynamics, with a special focus on sex ratio imbalances both at birth and among the childbearing population in China. She has written extensively about son preference, sex-selective abortion, mate selection, intimate relations, gender and intergenerational relations, and parenting strategies in China and beyond. Dabney P. Evans, PhD, MPH, is Associate Professor of Global Health in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. Her research is focused on gender, health, and human rights, including current projects on intimate partner violence during the COVID-19 pandemic (US), femicide prevention (Brazil), and femicide perpetration (global). Dr Evans has published over 65 scholarly works. Her public scholarship has appeared in Pacific Standard, Ms. Magazine, and The Hill. She is a member of the scientific advisory group for the Lancet Commission on Gender-Based Violence and the Maltreatment of Young People. xxiii

Contributors

Cristina Fabré works as Gender-Based Violence Team Leader at the European Institute for Gender Equality. She is Project Manager of the studies related to administrative data collection on specific forms of gender-based violence and advancing the measurement and the conceptual framework of femicide. Cristina was Head of Unit of the Observatory Against Domestic and Gender-Based Violence and a member of the Equal Rights Commission of the Spanish General Council for the Judiciary (2003–2018). Cristina holds a bachelor’s degree in social and cultural anthropology and in educational sciences and a postgraduate specialisation on applied social research and data analysis. Jordan Fairbairn is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at King’s University College at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. Her research focuses broadly on gender, feminist criminology, violence, and media, with a focus on the role of media in gender-based violence prevention. Dr Fairbairn is a member of the expert panel of the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability (CFOJA) and was previously a co-investigator with the Canadian Domestic Homicide Prevention Initiative with Vulnerable Populations (CDHPIVP). Liliana Falcón, a long-time journalist and professor, has a PhD in cultural studies from the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, CONACYT Research Center. She works as an academic researcher for the National Strategic Program for Human Security (Pronace) of the National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT) in México, and she works hard so that advocacy projects transform the lives of women and communities because vivas nos queremos. Her research focuses on violence, feminism, media, and cultural forbidden places for women. She has given lectured on national and international congress and has published in many journals and book chapters. Feminicidio.net is a civil society observatory against sexist violence, created in 2010 in Spain. Its objectives are to document femicides and sexual violence, apply laws against sexist violence, provide training on forms of sexist violence, do political advocacy and provide strategies or tools for the society of good treatment, and participate in feminist and human rights networks. Feminicidio.net is the national brand of La Sur, a non-profit feminist association. Other projects of La Sur are Geoviolencia Sexual (analysis and awareness against sexual violence) and the International Abolitionist School. Feminizidmap is a database project that documents femi(ni)cides and killings of women and girls in Germany since 2019. We use feminist, intersectional, and decolonial approaches to integrate the data and the topic into the transnational debates and projects on data collection of femi(ni)cides. One of our goals is to provide an open access and interacting database for the civil society to use the data for their research projects and political demands. Dolores Figueroa Romero is a researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Mexico City and a visiting scholar at the Center for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) at York University. Her work focuses on structural, gender, and extreme violence against indigenous women in rural areas in dialogue with anti-racist feminist advocates in Mexico. She has been involved in a SSHRC-funded Partnership Research Project to create collaborative networks among social researchers, technicians, and indigenous women’s organisations to strengthen indigenous-led initiatives to document violence against indigenous women and their peoples in Mexico. Kate Fitz-Gibbon is Director of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre and Professor of Social Sciences in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University. Kate conducts research in the area of domestic and family violence, femicide, responses to all forms of violence against women, and the impacts of law reform in Australia and internationally. The findings of Kate’s research have xxiv

Contributors

been published in books, academic journals, and funded reports and presented at national and international criminology conferences. Kate has advised on homicide law reform and family violence reviews in Australia and internationally. Sonia M. Frías, PhD, is a researcher and professor at the Regional Center for Multidisciplinary Research (National Autonomous University of Mexico). She received her PhD in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin. She conducts research on gender equality, violence against women and children from a gender perspective, and the role of the state in protecting women and children from violence. She is currently the associate editor of the Journal of Latin American Population (Revista Latinoamericana de Población). Lorena Fuentes is Co-Founder/Director of Practice & Advocacy at Ladysmith, a feminist research collective that helps international organisations and their government and civil society counterparts to collect, analyse, and take action on gender data. She is particularly interested in how discourses around femi(ni)cide shape policy/legal responses. Her current research explores how different forms of data on gender-based violence generate visibility and catalyze action. Dr Fuentes’ advocacy work is driven by a commitment to connecting grounded needs/knowledge to policy formulation and service provision. Her writing appears in Gender, Place & Culture, Antipode, and International Feminist Journal of Politics, among others. Emma Fulu is a feminist activist, social entrepreneur, and one of the world’s leading experts on violence against women. Appearing widely across the media including on Al Jazeera, CNN, the BBC, the 7:30 Report, and Q+A. She is the Founder and Executive Director of the Equality Institute, a global feminist agency which works to advance all forms of equality and prevent violence against women through scientific research, innovation, and creative communications. She is the author of Domestic Violence in Asia and publishes widely on gender, violence, and feminist leadership. Silvana Fumega holds a PhD from the University of Tasmania (UTAS) in Australia. She also holds a BA in political science from the University of Buenos Aires (ARG) and a master’s in public policy from the Victoria University of Wellington (NZ). She has served as a consultant for numerous international organisations, governments, and civil society groups. In recent years, she has focused her work on the intersection between data and inclusion. She is currently an independent consultant while also acting as Global Data Barometer project’s Director. Paulina García-Del Moral, originally from Mexico, is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Guelph. Her research focuses on the intersection of law, gender, and power in the transnational processes in Mexico and Latin America, Canada, and Europe. Her work encompasses three empirical areas: the impact of transnational feminist activism on state responses to the killing of women (feminicidio/femicidio), the transnational travel and legal institutionalisation of feminist knowledges, and how the decisions of supranational human rights institutions on states’ policies on gender violence and reproductive rights shape national politics of belonging. Kathomi Gatwiri is a senior social work lecturer in the Faculty of Health at Southern Cross University, President of the Australian Gender and Women Studies Association, and a practising psychotherapist. Her award-winning interdisciplinary research investigates the topics of racial trauma, belonging, blackness, and Africanness in Australia. She is also a co-founder of Counting Dead Women – Kenya, a platform that collates the number of women and girls killed through violence in Kenya. xxv

Contributors

Crystal J. Giesbrecht is Director of Research and Communications at the Provincial Association of Transition Houses and Services of Saskatchewan (PATHS), a PhD candidate in the Department of Justice Studies at the University of Regina, a Vanier Canada Scholar, and a member of the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability (CFOJA) Expert Advisory Panel. Aisha K. Gill is Professor of Criminology, University of Bristol, UK. Her research areas include health and criminal justice responses to violence against Black, minority ethnic, and refugee women in UK, Afghanistan, Georgia, Jordan, Libya, Iraqi Kurdistan, India, Pakistan, and Yemen. She has worked on violence against women and girls, “honour” crimes, and forced marriage at the grassroots level for 22 years. Her recent publications focus on crimes related to murder of women/ femicide, “honour” killings, coercion/forced marriage, child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse in South Asian/Kurdish and Somali communities, female genital mutilation, sex-selective abortions, and intersectionality. Savia Hasanova is a researcher and data journalist from Kyrgyzstan. Since 2018, Savia has been advocating for open data policy in Central Asia and Mongolia. Savia focuses on gender equality issues, including economic opportunities, political representation of women, and gender-based violence. She is an author of her own data journalism projects. In 2021, Savia and her colleague won the international data journalism competition the Sigma Awards for their research of femicide in Kyrgyzstan. Brittany E. Hayes (PhD, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York) is an assistant professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. Her research centres on victimisation and how the broader social context influences individuals’ perceptions and behaviours. Her work has been published in the American Sociological Review, Justice Quarterly, Crime & Delinquency, and the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. Laura Hernández Pérez is a Nahua indigenous woman, daughter of migrant parents who settled in Nezahualcóyotl, State of Mexico. She holds a degree in social work from the UNAM. Hernández is a member of the National Coordination of Indigenous Women (CONAMI), serving as the chair of the Children and Youth Commission (2019–2022). Hernández also belongs to the Continental Network of Indigenous Women of the Americas (ECMIA), representing Mexico. In 2017, 2018 and 2019, she co-organised the seminar “Young Indigenous Women as Social and Study Subject” at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Sciences and Humanities of UNAM. Vathsala Illesinghe is a policy studies PhD candidate at the Yeates School of Graduate Studies, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Canada. An experienced violence against women researcher in South Asia with some of the most cited works from Sri Lanka on gender-based violence, she is working on unravelling the complex intersections of gender, violence, and South Asian women’s experiences of migration to Canada. She was a Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Joseph-Armand Bombardier scholar and serves on the expert panel of the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability (CFOJA) since 2019. Karen Ingala Smith, PhD, is Chief Executive of nia, an East London charity providing services for women, girls, and children who have been subjected sexual and domestic violence and abuse, including prostitution. She is a co-founder and Director of the Femicide Census. She has also been recording and commemorating UK women killed by men since 2012 in a campaign called Counting Dead Women. Karen holds a PhD in sociology looking at men’s fatal violence against women from the University of Durham. She is a trustee for the Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize and a director in Woman’s Place UK and the Femicide Census. xxvi

Contributors

Iman Jabbour is the media coordinator of Kayan, a feminist organisation based in Haifa. Iman completed an MA in political communication at Tel Aviv University, and currently she is a Supplementary-PhD student in contemporary German studies in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Iman has experience in media work for foreign channels and as a reporter and presenter in satellite Arab stations, as well as many years of experience in conducting research for local and foreign press. Prior to joining Kayan, Iman also served as the research director of Gisha, the legal centre for freedom of movement based in Tel Aviv. Yasmin Jiwani is a full professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University, Montreal. She is the author of Discourses of Denial: Mediations of Race, Gender and Violence, lead editor of Girlhood, Redefining the Limits, and co-editor of Faces of Violence in the Lives of Girls. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of journals and anthologies. Her research interests include mediations of race, gender, and violence in the press, as well as representations of women of colour in popular media. She was the Concordia University Research Chair in Intersectionality, Violence, and Resistance. Silvia Ivette Juárez Barrios is a feminist lawyer and human rights defender in El Salvador and the current coordinator of the program a Life Free of Violence for Women from the Salvadoran Women’s Organization for Peace, ORMUSA. Anna Kapushenko is a data journalist and editor-in-chief of the Kloop.kg news media based in Kyrgyzstan. Kloop.kg focuses on investigative and data research and covers important events in Kyrgyzstan on a daily basis. Several data materials by Anna Kapushenko, co-authored by Savia Hasanova, were featured in the tops of the International Journalists’ Network and the Global Investigative Journalism Network. In 2021, Anna and Savia’s material about femicide in Kyrgyzstan won the Sigma Awards. Elina Kofou is a research associate at the Department of Nursing at the Cyprus University of Technology, involved in several projects examining gender-based violence and gender equality. She is a tutor at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus. She is also a part-time research assistant for the European Observatory of Femicide (EOF) and member of the Cyprus team of the EOF. Currently, she is participating in the new EU-funded femicide project, FEM-UnitED. She also worked at MIGS that promotes women’s rights, and she was a board member at the Association for the Prevention and Handling of Violence in the Family in Cyprus. Christiana Kouta is a professor at the Department of Nursing. She is the head of the master’s programme in advanced nursing and community health and care, and she is teaching, at graduate and undergraduate levels, community nursing/health, health promotion, transcultural nursing/health, and family nursing/health. Dr Kouta research and publications combine community and transcultural health in relation to culture and gender. She is currently participating in other EU-funded projects (e.g. IENE 9, Fem-UnitED). She is co-coordinating the European Observatory on Femicide. Dr Kouta is the vice president of the European Transcultural Nurses Association. Mariela Labozzetta is an Argentinian prosecutor, head of the Unit Specialising on Violence Against Women (Unidad Fiscal Especializada en Violencia contra las Mujeres – UFEM) of the Federal General Prosecutor’s Office. Loksee Leung is a gender equality specialist with over 14 years of research, evaluation, and policy experience in Australia, South-East Asia, and the Pacific. Loksee is currently living in and working xxvii

Contributors

on the unceded Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung country (Melbourne, Australia), and Loksee’s areas of focus include applying intersectional feminist approaches to research and evaluation, implementing evaluations of settings-based interventions aimed at preventing violence against women, and monitoring progress in the prevention of violence against women at the population level. Em Loerzel is a White Earth Anishinaabekwe who received her BA in sociology at Elmhurst College and her MSW at Aurora University. Her practice experience includes work in the areas of chronic mental health, homelessness, domestic violence, community organising, and human trafficking. As a fifth-year social welfare PhD candidate at the University of Washington, her work and research are around intimate partner/sexual violence in the Native community and sex trafficking of Native women. She is currently a tribal research assistant on a study that aims to examine risk factors for intimate partner homicide. Adriana Isabel López Padilla Tostado is a Mexican lawyer with an LLB in law from the Universidad Panamericana, a cum laude specialization in Advanced Social, Economic, and Political Studies from the University of Notre Dame, and an LLM in human rights from Columbia University. She worked as an adviser and a deputy director for the Mexican federal government, where she implemented public policy efforts on human rights violations and gender-based violence against women. At the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, she provided technical assistance to government authorities on the prevention, investigation, and sanction of gender-based violence against women in Mexico. Aleida Luján-Pinelo is a Mexican doctorate candidate at the Faculty of Law, University of Turku. Her current research is on femi(ni)cide in Europe (Germany) by drawing on new materialism and decolonial theory. She obtained her master’s degree in the Erasmus Mundus Master’s Program in Gender and Women’s Studies at the Universities of Granada and Utrecht. She completed her bachelor’s degree in philosophy in Mexico City. She has taught degree courses on feminist legal theory, qualitative research methods, and social philosophy. She is a co-founder and co-coordinator of the independent project Feminizidmap, a database on femi(ni)cides in German territory. Nneka MacGregor is a co-founder and ED of WomenatthecentrE, a unique non-profit created by/for women and trans survivors of GBV. A Black intersectional abolitionist feminist, speaker, and trainer, she is an expert advisory panel member of the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability and sits on several advisory boards and committees, including the Federal Advisory Council on the Federal Strategy Against GBV and co-founded the Black Femicide Canada Council. Her research focuses sexual violence, and the intersection of strangulation, TBI, and IPV. She received the 2019 PINK Concussions Award and the 2020 YWCA Women of Distinction Social Justice Award. Maria José Magalhães is a full professor at the FPCEUP and a research member of CIEG and CIIE. She is the recipient of the award Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcelos – Research on Women’s Studies (1990). Maria José main field of research involves gender-based violence and femicide. She is a coordinator and member of several research projects related to these topics. The projects include the EU-funded Bystanders Project on developing bystander responses to sexual harassment among young people and the CEINAV project (Cultural Encounters in Interventions Against Violence). Maria José was also a member of the COST Action on Femicide across Europe and a scientific coordinator of the Observatory of Murdered Women (OMA-UMAR). JaneMaree Maher is Professor of Sociology in the Centre for Women’s Studies and Gender Research and Associate Dean of Graduate Research in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University. Her research addresses gendered violence and family structures with a focus on women’s caring and xxviii

Contributors

employment. Her recent book publications include Towards a Global Femicide Index: Counting the Costs, First Edition (with Walklate, S., Fitz-Gibbon, K., McCulloch, J. London: Routledge) and Policing Hate Crime: Understanding Communities and Prejudice (with Mason, G, McCulloch, J, Pickering, S, & Wickes, R, McKay, C. Routledge: London). Melanie E. Maino Vieytes is a research coordinator at the Center on Gender Equity and Health (GEH) within the University of California, San Diego, where she is supporting ARCHES (Addressing Reproductive Coercion in Health Settings) projects. She holds a master’s in public health from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Her research interests include masculinity studies, intimate partner violence, health in complex humanitarian emergencies, and big data analytics. Lyubava Malysheva is a poet, musician, activist, radical journalist, and researcher of global activism, where she has been working with and analysing femicide in Russia since 2019. She is the creator of the Moscow Women’s Museum and contributor of the Femicid.net project. She is the author of books and articles on civic activism in Norway, France, Spain, Denmark, and the USA, amongst other countries. She currently writes about politics and culture and lives in Spain. She holds a degree in medical education. Shanaaz Mathews is the Director of the Children’s Institute and a professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at University of Cape Town. She is a commissioner on the Lancet Commission on GBV and a member of the International Advisory Board for the UNICEF Innocenti Research Office’s Multi-Country Study on the Drivers of Violence. Her research interests include intersections of violence against women and children using an intersectional feminist lens. She was part of the team that led the South African national study on femicide and child homicide in South Africa. Phoebe Kisubi Mbasalaki is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Essex. Prior to that, she was a postdoctoral research fellow on the GlobalGRACE project (www.globalgrace.net) housed at the African Gender Institute (AGI) and the Centre for Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies (CTDPS) at the University of Cape Town, as well as the NGO Sex Workers Advocacy and Educational Task Force (SWEAT). She was also a lecturer on the gender studies program at the AGI, University of Cape Town. Her research interests are in critical race, gender, class, sexuality, creative activism, public health, and decolonial thought and praxis. Jude McCulloch is an emeritus professor in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University. Jude was the inaugural director of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre from 2018 to 2020. Her research looks at the boundaries between public and private violence and the implications of this for women and the concept of national security. Elva F. Orozco Mendoza teaches political science and women’s gender and sexuality studies at the University of Connecticut and is a 2022–2023 University of Connecticut Humanities Institute Fellow. She is currently completing a monograph titled The Maternal Contract: A Subaltern Response to Extreme Violence in the Americas. Her essay “On Hearing the Daughter’s Call: Feminicide, Freedom, and Maternal Collective Action in Northern Mexico” appeared in Philosophy and Global Affairs. Cecilia Menjívar is Professor of Sociology and Dorothy L. Meier Social Equities Chair at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her work centres on how state power manifests – through legal regimes, bureaucracies, and formal institutions – in the microprocesses of everyday life of vulnerable individuals in various contexts. She has published extensively on socio-legal aspects of gender-based violence laws in Central America. She is the recipient of a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship and xxix

Contributors

an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. She has served as vice president and president of the American Sociological Association. Ksenia Meshkova is a gender studies researcher and lecturer currently living and working in Berlin, Germany. Ksenia has extensive research experience on the topics of femicide, workplace sexual harassment, and intimate partner violence (with a focus on coercive control), as well as violence against people with disabilities. She has been actively involved in several European projects, including COST Action on Femicide in Europe, European Feminist Research Conference, and European Network on Gender and Violence. Moreover, Ksenia has served on the boards of the European Femicide Observatory and the German Gender Studies Association and on the editorial board of Open Gender Journal. Jill Theresa Messing is a professor in the School of Social Work and the director of the Office of Gender-Based Violence at Arizona State University. Dr Messing specialises in the development and testing of intimate partner violence risk assessments. As a social worker, she is particularly interested in the use of risk assessment in collaborative, innovative interventions and as a strategy for reducing intimate partner homicide. She is currently a co-principal investigator on the PAIR Studies, a sixstate series of case-control studies examining risk factors for intimate partner homicide. Saide Mobayed Vega is a researcher interested in the intersections between human rights, violence against women, digital technologies, and data. Her research traces how feminicide is recounted across scales by zooming in on global practices of data collection and local data activism with a focus on Mexico. In 2017, she co-founded the Femi(ni)cide Watch Platform with the UN Studies Association. She is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Cambridge. Julia E. Monárrez Fragoso is a feminist border academician who has studied and researched on violence against women (especially feminicide), social justice, and the nuda vita for inhabitants of Ciudad Juárez, México. She is a research professor at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, an expert before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the Juárez Feminicide Case (2009), a fellow of the Fulbright and the Fulbright-García Robles program for Mexican researchers (2014–2015). Vitória Moreira is a Global Studies scholar and PhD student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her main research interests are human rights, gender violence, culture and ideology, reactionary backlash, and authoritarian populism in transnational and compared perspectives. She has authored multiple peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on women’s movements, gender-based violence, and contemporary populism. Vitória holds a BA in international relations from the University of Brasilia (Brazil) and an MA in international relations from the Federal University of Bahia (Brazil), and her trajectory spans several countries, such as Chile, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. Audrey Mugeni works with young women and adolescent girls from underserved communities both in Kenya and internationally. Her work focuses on safeguarding gender equality, diversity and inclusivity, grant management, and program management. In 2019, together with Dr Kathomi Gatwiri, Audrey co-founded Femicide Count – Kenya, which started as a Facebook initiative to recount femicides in Kenya based on media reports. She is currently studying for a master’s degree in gender and development at Kenyatta University, where she writes her thesis on femicides in Kenya. Subasri Narasimhan is an assistant professor in the Hubert Department of Global Health at Emory University. She utilises mixed-methods approaches to investigate the impact of social determinants

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and policy on sexual and reproductive health, focusing on coercion and violence during pivotal events in the individual’s and couples’ relationship trajectory and the impact of restrictive policy on health system actors. Drawing from frameworks in sociology, gender studies, and health policy, she leverages unique evidence and interdisciplinary methodologies to further contextualise both domestic and international reproductive health challenges. Marceline Naudi is an associate professor at the University of Malta and an activist. She is a social worker by profession and a faculty member at the University of Malta. She lectures and supervises research on gender issues, violence against women (including femicide), LGBTQIA+, and other human rights issues and is active in the same issues, both in Malta and in Europe. She is an ex-coordinator of the European Observatory on Femicide and an ex-board member of the European network of WAVE. She is also the ex-president and an elected member of GREVIO, the Council of Europe monitoring body of the Istanbul Convention. Shiva Nourpanah is a first-generation immigrant from Iran. She has been working for the Province of Nova Scotia (Canada) since 2021 and teaches part-time at the Department of International Development Studies, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax. She worked for UNHCR in Iran, 2000–2008. She holds a PhD in social anthropology from Dalhousie University (2017) and a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Guelph (2021). She has publications in immigration and refugee studies and violence against women. She is a board member of Halifax Refugee Clinic, Dalhousie Legal Aid Services, and the Muriel McFergusson Centre for Research on Family Violence. The Observatorio de Feminicidios (Femicide Observatory) is a data-driven journalism project founded by Irma Planells and Dalia Pichel in November 2020 in Panama. The project’s main goal is to use official data to elevate the conversation about femicides and create a clear, open and accessible record of femicides for the general public. The project consists of different tools, such as an interactive monitor, geolocalised map, and annual reports. The data and analysis provided by the Observatory have served as input for publications in traditional and digital media in Panama. María Alejandra Otamendi is the Coordinator of the Reports and Registries Unit, Women’s Office of the National Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina, which produces the annual report of the National Registry of Femicides of the Argentine Justice (RNFJA). She specialises in the study of gender-based violence, armed violence, punitiveness, and social research methods. She has her doctorate in sociology from the University of Buenos Aires and EHESS of Paris. She holds a master’s degree in global governance and diplomacy from the University of Oxford. She is a researcher and teacher at the Gino Germani Research Institute, University of Buenos Aires. She is a member of the Gender Equality Network for Small Arms control (GENSAC). Rosalind Page is a mother of four beautiful daughters, a grandmother of three, and a nurse with more than 32 years of experience within mental health. Currently, she enjoys gardening, crocheting, hiking, and reading. Joana Perrone is a Dphil candidate at the University of Oxford. She has a BA in international relations from the University of Sussex and a master’s in women’s studies from the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on how feminicide in Brazil is understood and analysed by the media and what impact that has on public policy. She is broadly interested in studying the interplay between law and society and, besides her research, writes for a variety of media outlets.

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Contributors

Jesenia M. Pizarro is an professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. She has worked with various police departments throughout the country in joints efforts to curb violence. Her work focuses on the social ecology of homicide. She published work has appeared in the American Journal of Public Health, Justice Quarterly, Criminal Justice and Behavior, and Homicide Studies. She is a member of the Firearm Safety Among Children and Teens (FACTS) Consortium and the Homicide Research Working Group and is the editor of Homicide Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal. Jenna Price is a visiting fellow at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on violence against women and on media representation of women. She is also a regular contributor to both the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times, where she writes regularly on gender equality and on violence against women. She was a member of the UNESCO-ICFJ team, which conducted research into online abuse of women journalists and media workers. Navtej Purewal is Professor of Development Studies at SOAS University of London. Her research engages with political sociology, development studies, and gender studies, with particular reference to South Asia. She has published on sex-selective abortion, son preference, popular religious practices, and gender/caste structural inequalities. Ivonne Ramirez holds an MA in literature by the University of Bologna with a specialisation in gender studies. She is a reading mediator, workshop facilitator, and writer. Alumni of the International Visitor Leadership Program by the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Since 2015, she has been monitoring and mapping femicides committed in her hometown, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. She has published “Monitoring, recording, and mapping feminicide” in Femicide Volume XII: Living Victims of Femicide (UNSA) and “México, el país más peligroso para ser mujer” in El Atlas de la revolución de las mujeres. Las luchas históricas y los desafíos actuales del feminismo. The Red Feminista Antimilitarista (Antimilitarist Feminist Network) is an organization with 10 years of social and political work in Colombia. Our work is based on the construction of feminist pedagogies and aesthetics, the construction of knowledge, feminist economics and power from and for women. Our purpose has been the generation of collective political practices that contribute to the eradication of systems of domination and oppression through self-management and political autonomy. We generate feminist pedagogical processes with young women in educational institutions, we have a rap school for women, the Colombian observatory of feminicides, feminist economy strategies and aesthetics for feminist mobilization. Alejandra Ríos-Cázares holds a MPhil and a PhD in political science from the University of California, San Diego. For 15 years, she worked as professor at the Department of Public Administration at Center for Economics Teaching and Research (CIDE). Currently, she is Deputy General Director of Development, Analysis, and Indicators of Government, Security, and Justice Statistics at the National Institute of Statistics and Geography – Mexico (INEGI). Her work has focused on comparative analysis of institutions, government accountability, institutions for the advancement of women, and the institutional response to gender violence. Agustina Rodríguez is an Argentinian lawyer and is UFEM’s general coordinator. Together with UFEM, she conducted the adaptation of the LAMP in Argentina and since then has actively promoted its adoption in Argentina and other Latin American countries.

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Emmanuel Rohn is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Guelph. His research interests are in the areas of intimate partner violence, femicide, and social justice. Erika J. Rojas Ospina is a doctoral candidate in the program of International Environment and Development Studies at NMBU (Norwegian University of Life Sciences), Norway. Her research examines the narratives of (in)security of diverse groups of women in San Salvador (including young women, sex workers, and trans women) in their relationships with the police and their communities. Françoise Roth is an international human rights lawyer. She is the co-author of the “Latin American Model Protocol for the Investigation of Gender-Related Killings of Women.” She participated in its adaptation in Argentina, Uruguay, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Helene Saadoun is a French Uruguayan lawyer currently based in Mexico City. She holds an LLB in law and foreign languages from the Université de Nantes and an LLM in international criminal law from the University of Sussex. She developed her professional career in the field of international cooperation and is specialised in gender-based violence and criminal justice. She worked as a specialist on security and justice at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, where she developed public policy and criminal investigation tools on gender-based violence against women in Mexico. Patricia Torres Sandoval is P’urhépecha, native of the community of Pichátaro in Michoacán, Mexico. Torres is a member of the P’urhépecha Zapatista Nation Organization (ONPZ) in Michoacán. She has been politically active since 1999, when she became a member of the National Coordination of Indigenous Women (CONAMI). She is currently a member of the CONAMI’s Council of Women Elders. She was also a founder of the National Network of Indigenous Women Lawyers (RAI) in 2011. Torres is pursuing her MA in social anthropology at the Center of Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Mexico City. Maria N. Scaptura is a PhD student at Virginia Tech, where she received her MS in sociology in 2019. Her research focuses on masculinity, involuntary celibates (“incels”), and violence. These areas converge in her dissertation project, in which she examines the men’s sexual health in relation to their perpetration of violence, erectile dysfunction, and sugar dating. Her work has been published in Crime & Delinquency, Men & Masculinities, and Feminist Criminology. Monika Schröttle teaches at the University of Applied Sciences in Ravensburg-Weingarten, Germany, and leads the master’s course on participation and social work. Furthermore, she is research director for the Institute for Empirical Sociological Research at the University of ErlangenNürnberg, Germany. She is one of the coordinators of the European Observatory in Femicide (EOF) and of the European Network on Gender and Violence (ENGV). Schröttle is an expert in violence against women and violence prevalence research. Furthermore, she works on migration, disabilities, social inequalities, and human rights. Rita Segato is an anthropologist and decolonial feminist who wrote extensively on gender violence and on racial discrimination. She acted as Vienna+20 Ethical Tribunal’s expert (Bilbao, 2013), the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal’s judge on crimes against women in México (2014), the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Guatemala’s expert for the Sepur Zarco case (2014 to 2016), the Tribunal of Justice and Defense of Women’s Rights’ ethical expert at the Pan-Amazonian Social Forum (Tarapoto, Peruvian Amazon, 2017), and expert witness in two lesa humanidad trials for crimes of the dictatorial period in Argentina (2019 and 2021).

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Contributors

Lorena Sosa is Assistant Professor in International Law and Human Rights at Utrecht University. She has published extensively on gender-based violence and intersectionality, including Intersectionality in the Human Rights Legal Framework on Violence Against Women (2017). Her current research, funded by the Dutch Scientific Organisation and previously as a Marie Curie Fellow, explores the inclusiveness of human rights frameworks in relation to gender, gender identity/expression, and sex characteristics in the fields of in gender-based violence and non-discrimination law. Lorena has conducted several studies on gender-based violence for the European Commission, the Council of Europe, and the United Nations. Heidi Stöckl, is a professor in public health evaluation at the Medical Faculty of the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany, with more than 20 years of experience in researching the epidemiology of intimate partner violence, violence-related mortality, and human trafficking, including studies on the global prevalence of intimate partner homicide and perpetrators of child homicide. She is currently running the first longitudinal study among adult women on intimate partner violence in sub-Saharan Africa. She is a global adviser to the UN Trust Fund on Violence Against Women and member of the Sexual Violence and Research Initiative Leadership Council. Helena Suárez Val is a researcher and activist and social communications producer. She has worked for feminist and human rights organisations in the UK, South Africa, and Uruguay. Since 2015, she has been collecting and caring for data about cases of feminicide in Uruguay (FeminicidioUruguay. net). With Catherine D’Ignazio and Silvana Fumega, she leads Data Against Feminicide, a project that seeks to understand the production of feminicide data and support its community of practice. She holds MAs in gender, media, and Culture (Goldsmiths) and social science research (Warwick) and is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick. Eric Y. Tenkorang is Professor of Sociology at Memorial University, St John’s, Newfoundland. His research interests over the past few years have broadly examined the social and cultural determinants of health among at-risk and vulnerable populations in low-income settings. Specifically, he has been interested in intimate partner violence and the sexual reproductive health of youth and women in HIV endemic areas of the world, mostly sub-Saharan Africa. Shatema Threadcraft is Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies, Philosophy, and Political Science at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of Intimate Justice: The Black Female Body and the Body Politic (2016) and the winner of the National Women’s Studies Association’s 2017 Sara A. Whaley Award for the best book on women and labour, the 2017 W.E.B. Du Bois Distinguished Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, and the 2017 Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Organized Section (Best Book in Race and Political Theory). Patsilí Toledo Vásquez is a lecturer, researcher, and consultant specialising on legal responses to gender-based violence. Her research focuses on the criminalisation of femicide/feminicide and sexual violence, especially in Latin American and South Asian countries. She holds a PhD on public law from Autonomous University of Barcelona and a law degree and a postgraduate diploma on women human rights from University of Chile. She has been Adviser on women and LGBTIQ+ rights to the Minister of Equality and Feminisms of the Government of Catalonia (Spain) and is currently adjunct professor on gender and criminal justice at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain). Büşra Yalçınöz Uçan is a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the University of Stavanger, Norway. Her research broadly focuses on gender-based violence, feminist approaches to intervention/prevention work, digital technologies, and women’s agency and well-being. She holds a PhD in clinical xxxiv

Contributors

psychology from Bogazici University, Turkey, and previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She is also a research associate with the Centre for the Study of Social and Legal Responses to Violence at the University of Guelph and an expert panel member of the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability. Ceyda Ulukaya is a PhD student at Istanbul Bilgi University, Department of Communication, Turkey. She also works as a journalist for Turkish daily newspaper Milliyet. Her research focuses on gender-based violence, trial by social media, and data visualisation. Her independent investigative journalism project, “Mapping Femicides Covered by the Media,” became one of the 2016 finalists of the Data Journalism Awards organised by the Global Investigative Journalism Network. Sayak Valencia has a PhD in philosophy, theory, and feminist criticism, from the Complutense University of Madrid. She is Senior Research Professor B in the Department of Cultural Studies of the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, CONACYT Research Center, and a member of the National System of Researchers. She has given seminars on borders, violence, narco-culture, gore capitalism, transfeminism, Chicano feminism, postcolonial feminism, and queer art at universities in Europe and the American continent. His recent works include Gorekapitalismus (2021), Gore Capitalism (2018), and many articles and chapters in Spain, Germany, France, Poland, Mexico, Argentina, the US, and Colombia, among others. Lívia Vitenti is a Brazilian anthropologist currently living and working in Canada, with over 17 years of research in anthropology of health, First Nations and Indigenous studies, gender studies, human rights, and anthropology of the state. She has extensive knowledge of health policies, social policies, legal pluralism, and access to human rights and justice for the Indigenous people in the Americas. She has worked in local and international organisations, advocating for Indigenous rights, environmental sovereignty, gender equality, and health equity. Dr. Nishi Mitra vom Berg is Professor and Chairperson, Centre for Study of Developing Societies, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), India. She is an anthropologist engaged in cross cultural and comparative research on feminist themes in India, Sweden, UK, Germany, Canada, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Afghanistan etc. She has researched and published on gender-based violence, intimate partner violence, sexual violence and marital rape, child marriages, femicide etc. She led the development and launch of the master’s in Women’s Studies and researches gender and housing, minorities on campus, education for social change and inclusion, gender and immigration and women’s enterprise in conflict context. Natasha Walker is a research associate at the University of New South Wales School of Population Health. Her research focuses on the impact of trauma and violence and the factors that contribute to health inequity. She is completing a doctor of medicine degree at the University of Newcastle and is a member of the Australian Medical Students Association Sexual and Reproductive Health initiative. Sandra Walklate is Eleanor Rathbone Chair of Sociology at the University and conjoint Chair of Criminology in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University and lead researcher in the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre. Her research is focused on criminal victimisation and its impact particularly in relation to violence against women. Xian Warner is a gender specialist and feminist researcher on the prevention of violence against women, based in Timor-Leste. With over 15 years of experience across Asia and the Pacific, Xian’s work focuses on conducting large population-based surveys on violence against women; providing technical support to improve policies and programs to prevent violence against women; promoting intersectional feminist approaches to research; helping communities find positive, sustainable, and xxxv

Contributors

context-specific approaches to gender equality and violence prevention; and supporting collaborative and safe spaces for local feminist movements. Shalva Weil is a senior researcher at the Seymour Fox School of Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University, England. From 2013 to 2017, Professor Weil was the chair of COST Action on Femicide across Europe. Her publications include special issues on femicide (Current Sociology, 2016) and femicide from a qualitative perspective (Qualitative Sociology Review, 2016). In 2018, she co-edited Femicide across Europe. Her articles include female geronticide and (with Katerina Standish), femicide and suicide during COVID-19, published in Journal of Gender Studies (2021). In 2020, Professor Weil established the Israel Observatory on Femicide (www.IsraelFemicide.org). Mia S. White has been a librarian/informationist at Emory University’s Woodruff Heath Science Center Library since 1996. As the Medical Education & Technologies Informationist, she worked with the medical students to provide instruction and to provide reference assistance. As the Medical Education & Technology Informationist since 2007, Mia’s role has expanded to include work with allied health, nursing, and public health. She has worked on several scoping and systematic reviews and was a part of a team that updated sections in the 2016 Surviving Sepsis Campaign. She teaches EBM principles to various programs, provides reference assistance, and continues her work with complex literature search projects. Dawn Wilcox is a femicide researcher, activist, and educator. She founded Women Count USA: Femicide Accountability Project in 2016 and is creating the first comprehensive femicide database of all women and girls murdered by men and boys in the United States from 1950 to present. Dawn also works to challenge victim-blaming media narratives of domestic violence and femicide. She has a bachelor of science in nursing from Texas Woman’s University, has been a registered nurse for 27 years, and lives near Dallas, Texas. Aimee Zambrano Ortiz is a feminist, researcher, and anthropologist graduated from the Central University of Venezuela. She is currently studying for a master’s degree in women’s studies. She is the founder of the Utopix Femicide Monitor and a member of the editorial commission of the Utopix community. She has published in journals such as Fecunda, Iberoamérica Social, Revista Venezolana de Estudios de la Mujer, and Correo del Alba. She won the Simón Bolívar National Journalism Award in Graphic Image in 2018. Angelika Zecha is a graduate researcher at the Centre for the Study of Social and Legal Responses to Violence, University of Guelph. Angelika is involved in initiatives relating to femicide, including the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability. Angelika also provides support to the UN Studies Association’s Feminicide Watch Platform. Angelika holds a master of public health from the University of Waterloo and a master of arts in criminology and criminal justice policy from the University of Guelph. Her research examines the role of firearms in Canadian homicides, with a particular focus on intimate partner homicides. April M. Zeoli is a leading expert on the intersection of intimate partner violence and gun violence. Her interdisciplinary research – which aims to bring together the fields of public health, criminology, and criminal justice – is focused on the impact of state-level firearm laws on homicide, particularly intimate partner homicide, and the implementation of those policies at the local level. An associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University, April is on the editorial boards of the scholarly journals Injury Prevention and Criminology & Public Policy and serves as the research expert for the National Domestic Violence and Firearms Resource Center. xxxvi

FOREWORD

I am pleased to write that the Routledge International Handbook on Femicide and Feminicide, co-edited by Myrna Dawson and Saide Mobayed Vega, will provide key resources about gender-related killings of women and girls. I am certain this comprehensive collection, which covers a wide range of topics and all the world regions will contribute to the understanding of this form of gender-based violence against women and girls that should not be hidden under the gender-blind term homicide. Naming and recognising femicide or feminicide is the first step towards its prevention, as noted by the co-editors in Part 1 of this handbook. From the conceptual evolution of femicide and feminicide to understanding the main data collection challenges, this collection significantly adds on to this prevention, this handbook brings together various voices from across the globe to shed light on the unprecedented efforts to render femicide and feminicide accountable, including the various subtypes and contexts, legal and social responses, and where to go next. I started my mandate as the United Nations (UN) special rapporteur on violence against women and its causes and consequences (SRVAW) (2015–2021) with the Femicide Watch Initiative. On 25 November 2015, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, I called on all member states to establish a Femicide Watch to monitor and document the killing of women and girls. In my subsequent report to the UN General Assembly of 2016 (A/71/398), I laid out the modalities for establishing such a mechanism.1 Prior to this, the UN treated separately different forms of gender-related killings of women and girls, such as honour crimes and dowry-related killings. My predecessor, Rashida Manjoo, framed such killings as “gender-related killings of women,” while I started to use the term “femicide or gender-related killing of women” in order to connect and merge those two concepts. I have also stated that femicide is gender-related killing of women. I have used this term both in my call for the establishment of the Femicide Watch Initiative and in the 2016 report to the UN General Assembly (A/71/398), which included modalities for its establishment. For this purpose, I defined femicide, or the gender-related killing of women, as the killing of women because of their sex and/or gender that constitutes the most extreme form of violence against women. Using the term “femicide” or “feminicide” and identifying it as a human rights violations is a prerequisite for elaborating on states’ responsibility to prevent and combat it in line with the international human rights framework. Although international human rights instruments do not use the term “femicide,” they do use the term and concept of “gender-based violence against women.”

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Under the international human rights framework, with the central role of the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW),2 states have a human rights obligation to prevent and combat gender-based violence against women, including femicide, as its most extreme form that constitutes a violation of, among others, the right to life, gender equality, and non-discrimination; the right not to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; and the right to a life free from violence.3 The UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women of 1993 defines violence against women as gender-based violence. As such, femicide is included because it is a form of gender-based violence against women that shares the same root causes as other forms of such violence. The latter stems from the historical and ongoing unequal power relationships between women and men together with the long-term patriarchal system that renders women and girls as inferior to men. Extending our understanding of these root causes, Part 2 of this handbook provides sophisticated yet accessible knowledge on the theoretical approaches and explanations for feminicide and femicide. Under international human rights law, states must prevent and protect individuals from human rights violations within their jurisdictions, punish perpetrators, and compensate individuals for such violations. Framing femicide as gender-based violence and a human rights violation is crucial for understanding the state’s obligation for combating and preventing femicide. In this respect, I have called for the application of the human rights framework for establishing a national preventive mechanism. This Femicide Watch is an interdisciplinary body mandated to collect and publish comparable data on femicide and examine patterns in these cases to detect shortcomings and provide recommendations for prevention. Previously, at the statistical level, femicide was treated as homicide and not as gender-based killings distinguishable and visible as a separate category of killings of women and girls because they are women and girls. I have seen this lack of collection of comparable data on femicide as the key obstacle to the development of meaningful prevention strategies. This is also the focus of Part 3 of this handbook, which addresses these challenges from different perspectives from various countries and world regions. This was one of the reasons I launched the Femicide Watch Initiative, which is both a practical tool and an invitation to all states and other stakeholders to publish data on the number of women victims of femicide or gender-related killings of women during the year, disaggregated by the age and sex of the victim and the perpetrator, as well as the relationship between the victim(s) and the perpetrator(s) under three categories: (1) intimate partner femicide, (2) family-related femicide, and (3) other femicides for which there was no intimate partner or family relationship. The use of the new disaggregation of femicide data in this way aims to enable the collection of comparable femicide data on intimate partner and family-related killings of women. As noted in Parts 4 and 5 of this handbook, these two broad categories encompass various feminicide and femicide subtypes and contexts for which further understanding within and across countries can contribute to prevention efforts. In addition to this, the Femicide Watch Initiative calls for national bodies to adhere to the mandate and recommend measures to the governments to prevent femicide focusing on determining gaps and shortcomings and legislative improvements, as well as adequate services and measures for victims. These femicide watches should draw their recommendations from the analyses of femicide cases from a human rights perspective focusing on states’ accountability to combat and prevent all forms of femicide and feminicide using international human rights instruments, such as the CEDAW Convention. The countries and world regions featured in Part 4 of this handbook also contribute significantly to this knowledge base. Analyses and research on femicides should result in recommendations for the adoption of legislative and other measures to prevent femicides and to raise awareness of its root causes. This also xxxviii

Foreword

includes its remembrance and commemoration in the frame of the International Day on the Elimination of Violence Against Women on 25 November, including the subsequent 16 Days of Activism. In this collection of information, analyses, and publication of research on feminicide and femicide, states should cooperate with NGOs and independent human rights institutions working in this field, academia, victims/survivors’ representatives, and relevant international organisations and other actors. The 16 Days of Activism should be used to present such research, data, and prevention strategies to generate dialogue and subsequent collaborations. Data should be publicly available at the national level, while the UN (UN Women, UNODC, OHCHR) and other organisations should ensure global and regional publication. Since the first call for the establishment of the Femicide Watch Initiative and the thematic report on modalities of their work in 2017, I have issued yearly calls for states, national human rights institutions, and other stakeholders to submit data on femicide and information on the establishment of femicide watches and observatories. Through this, the SRVAW mandate started building an online database documenting femicide under the categories: (1) intimate partner femicide/homicide, (2) family-related femicide/homicide, (3) other femicide/gender-related homicide of women, and (4) legislative models or operational guides for the investigation of gender-related killings of women.4 This call was later expanded to include good practices regarding the collection of data on femicide and landmark jurisprudence from international, regional, and national courts on this matter. This latter topic is addressed in comprehensive and innovative ways in Part 6 of this handbook. The UN SRVAW initiative and yearly call for inputs now form a rich database which is also a valuable resource for the UN Femicide Watch Initiative. The current SRVAW, Reem Alsalem, has continued to carry on with the OHCHR/SRVAW Femicide Watch database which comprises all of the received submissions. These efforts complement the many other local and global initiatives that are ongoing, some of which are highlighted in Part 7 and 8 of this handbook. Furthermore, the outcome document of the Beijing+25 regional review meeting organised by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in October 2019, in its part on violence against women, includes recommendation 31(j), which calls on all countries to “establish multidisciplinary national bodies such as Femicide Watch to actively work on the prevention of femicide or gender-related killing of women.”5 Finally, measures and activities against femicide and feminicide further contribute to preventing other forms of gender-based violence against women and girls. Both the Femicide Watch Initiative and the Routledge International Handbook on Femicide and Feminicide stand as vivid and illustrative examples for such purposes. Dubravka Šimonović Former UN SRVAW, 2015–2021

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The idea for this collection arose, evolved, and came to fruition during one of the worst pandemics of our lifetime – COVID-19. For many of us represented in this collection, however, we have been fighting another equally persistent pandemic for most of our lives. This handbook is • • • • •

an expression of our conviction that male violence against women and girls is not inherent to our society and we will continue to fight; tangible proof that the historical and contemporary movement to combat male violence against women and girls is stronger than ever and it will not wane; a caring tribute and commemoration to those that have come before us and a call to action for those who are now joining us and will come after; one form of resistance among many locally and globally to eradicate male violence against women and girls; and a memorialisation of those women and girls for whom the impacts of resistance were too late.

And this handbook would never have been possible without our history, our present, and our sisters and allies in both our professional and personal lives. Although we sometimes feel overwhelmed, especially in the current moment when the pendulum of progress appears at times to be swinging back, we cannot forget the progress that has been made on many fronts and in many parts of the world. This progress and its recognition will give us the energy to keep going. Therefore, the purpose of this book is to allow us to pause for a moment, to reflect on where we are now, and to strategise for the future we would like to see. We believe that the voices in this handbook – the survivors, family and friends of femicide and feminicide victims, activists, researchers, academics, government, and others – help to shine a light on the past and our future. Most importantly, we hope it shows that we and you are not alone no matter where in the world we are because there is an ever-growing global movement against femicide, feminicide, and all forms of male violence against women and girls. We hope readers will find this handbook to be a useful contribution to their own efforts in your part of the world as we continue to resist male violence using whatever motivations, skills, platforms, and/or knowledge that we have at hand. It takes all of us. As co-editors, we are indebted to so many people who provided support along this journey – a journey made more difficult when the topic speaks so directly to the experiences of all women and girls. xl

Acknowledgements

We have no doubt been significantly impacted by the many years of formal and informal discussions with colleagues around the world, regardless of whether we always agreed. This is a global thank you to all of you! You have all contributed to our thinking about this book and we hope you will find it useful to your advocacy, activism, teaching, and research. We are most grateful to all the authors for their submissions, and we want to acknowledge the collective quality of their contributions. Each one of them demonstrates a passion for the work that they do and a continuing commitment to resisting and preventing femicide and feminicide. We are humbled by their collective expertise and appreciative of their varied backgrounds, which have helped produce a collection of which we can all be proud. Because of the depth and diversity of their experiences, we feel this collection will speak to multiple audiences and answer many of the questions that are being asked about femicide and feminicide. Gratitude also goes to the support provided by Routledge and especially Lydia de Cruz and Medha Malaviya. During the past two years, from the initial proposal stage to the submission of the final manuscript, we have been guided by their knowledge and timely responses. We also thank the anonymous reviewers of our proposal who provided many helpful critiques and comments that we have worked to incorporate. Many thanks also to the Routledge production team, including those whom we have not met or communicated with but who we know were integral to moving this from a Word document to a handbook. We also wish to acknowledge those committed individuals who, even with their busy schedules, agreed to be reviewers for one or more chapters providing insightful suggestions that have enhanced the depth of the chapters in so many ways. Some reviewers asked to remain anonymous, and we respect their wishes. We thank the following reviewers (in alphabetical order): Diane Govindsamy, Vathsala Illesinghe, Yasmin Jiwani, Ilaria Michelis, and Helena Suárez Val. We also wish to thank Alan Mendoza Sosa for the wonderful translations of various chapters. The core support team at the Centre for the Study of Social and Legal Responses to Violence (CSSLRV), University of Guelph, deserve a special mention as they were integral to bringing this collection to fruition. Three individuals, in particular, deserve note: Abigail Mitchell, Angelika Zecha, and Haleakala Angus. They were unfailingly there when we needed their help, whether it was proofing chapters, suggesting revisions, editing abstracts, sending emails, or just responding to our seemingly endless need for clarification on various book-related issues. We could not have asked for a better “editorial team” on the ground. Your efforts are and will continue to be appreciated. Finally, we are thankful for the work of the Femi(ni)cide Watch Platform, a global initiative that brought us together, Myrna and Saide, and allowed us to recognise our joint commitment to naming femicide and feminicide as one small but important step to preventing male violence against women and girls. It is here where this journey began.

Myrna Research and advocacy to prevent femicide has become a 30-plus year journey for me and, along the way, I have been influenced by many individuals and have had many supporters and allies – the most recent of which has been my co-editor, Saide Mobayed Vega. We took a chance on each other with only minimal knowledge about each other, including who we were as individuals and as scholars. Indeed, like many during the past two years, our interactions have all been virtual. However, what evolved was one of the most rewarding collaborations that I have experienced in my years as an academic. I have learned from you, Saide, and have developed a deep respect for you as a scholar and as a person. The movement in the years to come is in good hands and this handbook would not be what it is without you. My journey began during the last year of my BA in the mid-1990s when I read what was for me the most impactful book of my undergraduate degree, Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing xli

Acknowledgements

(1992), an edited collection by Jill Radford and the late Diana E. H. Russell. At the same time, I became aware of a report on intimate femicide in Ontario, Canada, that had recently been released based on a ground-breaking study spearheaded by a group of eight women working in shelters for abused women. Each had lost a woman to male violence. On the cusp of entering graduate school, I volunteered to work on the grassroots feminist project and so began my ongoing research on femicide which culminated in the establishment of the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability (CFOJA) in 2017. Therefore, the biggest influences with respect to my early career advocating for the recognition and prevention of femicide are the work of Diana Russell and my work with the Women We Honour Action Committee and, specifically, Maria Crawford and my PhD supervisor, Rosemary Gartner. Maria and Rosemary were project leads for the early intimate femicide research and generous with their knowledge and guidance. It was an experience that set the course of my career. This early experience also shaped who I am as an academic, one who believes in research for social change, advocacy, and activism, which cannot be achieved without equitable collaborations across non-academic and academic communities and groups. More recently, I have been inspired and reinvigorated by the activism and research occurring in Latin America. Too many to name, it is the work of these wonderful grassroots initiatives, feminists, activists, and/or advocates that gave me the energy I needed to establish the CFOJA. In response to the call by the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences in 2015, the CFOJA is, simultaneously, the most rewarding and the most difficult initiative that I have ever taken on. We will continue to #CallItFemicide until someone listens. To the first feminist in my life, I thank my Mom, Phyllis Christine Dawson (1933–2023), also my first friend and one of my best friends throughout my life. You are in everything that I do and forever in my heart. Finally, during these 30-plus years, my biggest supporter and ally is my partner, Gord Hovey. Your love and support have anchored me as you travelled with me through the good days and the bad days. From that first cup of coffee that you smilingly offer me in the morning (and the hour alone I typically need to wake up) to the welcome glass (or two) of red wine we often share at the end of the day, our conversations (and debates) and your encouragement and understanding help to regenerate me when I need it the most. We have learned together, laughed together, and (at times) cried together. Regardless of the moment in time, this journey is always more meaningful and fun with you at my side. Thank you.

Saide Co-editing this handbook has been a journey like no other I have embarked on. Looking back at these two years feels both daunting and rewarding. I would not be writing these words had it not been for the (almost blind!) trust Myrna Dawson placed in me when she extended the invitation to join as a co-editor – and travel companion – of such a tremendous project. Thank you, Myrna. It is difficult to describe how much I have grown, both personally and professionally, from your care, patience, and solidarity. Despite the bumpy roads and at times uncertain turns, I always felt reassured by your experience behind the wheel and, at the same time, will forever cherish the confidence you boosted in my ability to steer the course of this handbook. I guess that is the best analogy for a mentor I have come to think of. Over the last seven years, I have intimately researched femicide and feminicide. My choice has neither been fortuitous nor easy. I could not be doing this without the incredible feminist work against femicide and feminicide that has both preceded and accompanied me in this ride: Esther Chávez Cano, Julia Monárrez Fragoso, Marcela Lagarde, Diana Russell, Myrna Dawson, Irinea Buendía, Manuel Amador, Catherine D’Ignazio, Helena Suárez Val, Fabiola de Lachica Huerta, xlii

Acknowledgements

The process of reading and editing this collection has deeply reverberated into the core of who I am, where I am at, and where I want to go. Earlier this year I learned about the Pomuch, a Mayan community in Campeche, Mexico, that every year exhume the remains of their beloved ones to carefully clean, closely wrap, and slowly place their bones in an ossuary. The care with which they remember those that are gone and the connection with what we have done in this collection has not left me since. Each time I despair about the current conditions of women and girls, I find a sense of solace in this handbook. I like to think that in the work here contained, we, together with the over 120 contributors, have carefully cleaned, closely wrapped, and slowly placed the remains of women and girls whose lives were cut short by male violence. In Spanish recordar means “to remember.” The Latin etymology is recordare, which joins the prefix re, “again,” with cordare (from cordis), “heart.” Recordar means to go through the heart, again. Indeed, in these 50 chapters, we remember through the heart, again. My sincere gratitude to you all. None of this would have been possible without the wonderful women in my life who have inspired and been with me in this ride as either muses, counsellors, proof-readers, witnesses and everything in between: my mom, Norma Vega; my PhD supervisor, Dr Ella McPherson; and my wonderful friends and colleagues Nina Guerra, Lluvia Lozano, Valentina Pérez, Josefina Jaureguiberry, Miriam Kienberger, Helena Suárez Val, Ayala Panievsky, Ilaria Michelis, Charis Idicheria Nogossek, and Jarrah O’Neill, Gracias. Your care, love, support, and sorority are the fuel to my soul. I would like to thank my parents and siblings, Fadia and Nabil Mobayed Vega. Thanks, mom, for showing me the value of resilience. Thanks, dad, for teaching me the meanings of water. Your tools have kept me sailing. A special dedication to my niece, Farah Mobayed Vega, who was born while publishing this work. I hope that when you are old enough to read the handbook, the world around you will be kinder towards women and girls. Finally, a wholehearted thank you to my dearest life explorer and inspiring companion, Alex Cullen, for your thoughtful feedback, patient listening, gentle care, and for reminding me daily that love is “more thicker than forget”.

Notes 1 A/71/398 of 23 September 2016 addresses the topic of femicide, or the gender-related killing of women, and proposes the establishment, at the global, national, and regional levels, of femicide watches and observatories on violence against women 2 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, adopted 18 December 1979, GA Res. 34/180, UN GAOR, 34th Sess., UN Doc. A/34/46 (1980), 1249 UNTS 13 (entered into force 3 September 1981), hereinafter CEDAW. 3 General Recommendation 19, Violence Against Women, adopted 30 January 1992, UN GAOR, CEDAW Committee, 47th Sess., Supp. No. 38, UN Doc. A/47/38 (1992). 4  www.ohchr.org/en/calls-for-input/calls-input/femicide-watch-initiative-2021. 5  See Report of the Beijing+25/Regional ECE Geneva, October 2019.

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ABOUT THE COVER

If putting together a global collection about femicide/feminicide was challenging, representing it in one image was equally daunting. Representation is a political act with rippling consequences. Deciding what to include on the cover meant to discern, to exclude, to leave out. How does one represent femicide/feminicide without favouring or harming communities, without falling into victimhood tropes, and/or without singling art from one region over others? We were adamant not to have any violence depicted – as we have unfortunately seen elsewhere. No cornered women. No battered bodies. No blood. No violence. Agency, strength, and women at the centre were some keywords we wanted to see pictured. However, after looking at dozens of stock images of women in protests with their fists up in the air (often white, often young, often abled), we ended with the same disarray: Who are we leaving out and/or who are we favouring? Then, we came upon this cover photo. If femicide/feminicide is about exploring the shapes of death, it is also about the contours of resilience. Something about a nascent plant filtering through the cracks of a rusty wall reminded us that, despite the corrosiveness of patriarchy and the toxicity of misogyny, life resists and persists. This handbook is as much a testament to the former as it is to the latter. Even in dark times, there remains hope and seeds of growth.

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PART 1

Introduction

1 FEMICIDE AND FEMINICIDE A Growing Global Human Rights Movement Myrna Dawson and Saide Mobayed Vega

Introduction • •

• • • • • •

In Argentina, a woman is kidnapped, attacked, dismembered, and burned after going out to walk her dog. Her body is found in the neighbour’s house. In Canada, an Inuit woman pursuing her dreams to become a nurse, moved to the city to attend college, where she is fatally stabbed and sexually assaulted by her roommate whom she met after answering his rental advertisement. In Egypt, a woman is shot to death by a man who then turns the gun on himself after she rejected his marriage proposal. In Iran, a Kurdish woman dies after being detained by the morality police enforcing strict hijab rules. In Mexico, a trans woman’s body is found with signs of torture. She died of asphyxiation. Her aggressor/s are still free. In Nigeria, a group of students beat and burn alive a young woman because of an alleged “blasphemy” against religion. In Pakistan, a woman is killed by her husband because he thinks she is “having an affair.” In South Korea, a woman is stabbed to death by a stranger in a public restroom at a subway station.

These stories are not fictional. We wish that they were. They are a small sampling of the deaths of women and girls pulled from global headlines at the time of writing this chapter in late 2022. These women and girls are individual victims of unrelated incidents in separate parts of the world, but their deaths are intricately connected to each other and to the killings of other women and girls. Their cases share similar root causes that stem from, and are related to, their sex or gender. These killings are also intricately related to women and girls globally who have not (yet) been killed but who experience male violence daily in its various forms. Their experiences of everyday male violence exist along a continuum from public harassment to physical violence. The violence perpetrated against them is often accepted, condoned, and even supported by patriarchal social structures, governments, and institutions, which, when combined with colonialism and other overlapping discriminations and oppressions, impacts some groups of women and girls more profoundly. This includes the everyday microaggressions and abusive behaviours experienced by women and

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-2

3

Myrna Dawson and Saide Mobayed Vega

girls which continue to be justified and normalised by our misogynist society, evident in all world regions, but more pronounced in some. These killings are further connected to the lives of most, if not all, women and girls who worry daily about threats to their safety and who structure their everyday activities (if they can) with the conscious or subconscious hope that their actions will reduce their own risk of male violence. Indeed, the examination of the killings of women and girls historically and today – the patterns and characteristics of which have changed little – reinforces how entrenched societal norms defined and supported by dominant patriarchal institutions continue to structure and determine what it means to live – and to die – as a woman or a girl. And the impacts of these norms are most acutely felt by women and girls who live and die at the intersections of race, poverty, ability, sexuality, and/or other social identities. Each time a woman or girl is killed by men and tolerated by patriarchal social structures, another fracture occurs in the fabric of society. Each death is an experience that ripples within and through the communities in which the women and girls live and beyond to broader society, more so now in a globalised world. Looking at the killing of women and girls as an experience grants us the possibility to understand (and to feel) the disruption not just of what has been taken but also to recollect the remaining pieces.

Enter the COVID-19 Pandemic Always evident, at least to some, women’s and girls’ experiences of male violence were starkly underscored as the idea for this handbook germinated in my (Myrna’s) mind early in 2020 while the COVID-19 pandemic began to rage across the world. The impacts of COVID-19 on populations, and some groups specifically, vividly highlighted the ongoing and debilitating inequalities that exist in society. Many were already painfully aware of these inequalities. Some became more attuned and/or began to recognise their privilege for the first time as they were able to reduce their exposure and keep their loved ones safe – or at least safer than others were able to do. For women and girls, these inequalities and impacts were demonstrated through their increased burdens of care related to children, the elderly, and the sick, the latter now in unprecedented numbers. These inequalities were highlighted further by the occupational and economic losses experienced by women who left the workforce, not always by choice, to take up some of these increased burdens of care, including the education of their children. Other women saw their jobs eliminated altogether or were sent home – at least for a time – while their male counterparts were more likely to remain employed. Yes, both women and men were impacted, but research clearly demonstrates that the consequences of COVID-19 for women were, and continue to be, more pronounced than for men (Mooi-Reci and Risman, 2021; Tomsick and Smith, 2022; United Nations, 2020). Already high, the ongoing pandemic and its fallout increased the levels of poverty for women and those they continued to care for, now making them even more reliant on men and the patriarchal institutions which created and continue to sustain the historical and contemporary inequitable conditions in which women and girls lived pre-COVID-19. The exacerbation of these and many other worsening societal conditions, each a contributor separately and in combination to the documented rising levels of male violence experienced by women and girls, prompted local and global institutions to refer to this violence as the “shadow pandemic” (UN Women, 2021). Most of those working in this field were painfully aware that this was no shadow pandemic. This was an often-invisible pandemic to many, yes, but it has been ongoing for decades. Within a patriarchal societal arrangement, however, what is deemed worthy of attention is often not what is experienced by women and girls. Therefore, the conditions of our lives – and deaths – continue to be structured and determined by these norms, keeping this pandemic invisible to most of society – until recently. 4

Femicide and Feminicide

The last 40 years have witnessed a change to these norms, even in the face of what seems to be rollbacks on the rights of women and girls, amidst an environment of backlashes against our gains. At times, especially in the current moment, it feels like the proverbial “two steps forward, one step back,” but progress is undeniable and so is hope. Continued progress and hope require that we, as women and girls, along with our allies, recognise our agency and power to continue to change these norms with an awareness of the intersectional conditions that make some, more than others, at greater risk of experiencing violence. And while our relative agency and power varies throughout the world, women and girls are resisting these norms daily in both small ways and big ways. Their every effort contributes to this growing global movement. The Routledge International Handbook on Femicide and Feminicide is both part of and a way to document this movement as it traces the shifts, variations, and expansion of femicide and feminicide historically and today. This collection looks back at what has been done as it brings together research and action about femicide and feminicide to accurately define, classify, and document its variations; to better collect comprehensive information and data; to successfully determine appropriate sanctions and prevention initiatives; and to productively examine how different countries have responded. This handbook also moves us forward by showcasing the most up-to-date grassroots and civil society responses, together with research and policy efforts, to tackle the killing of women and girls. By focusing on the killings of women and girls because they are women and girls, we name the problem – femicide or feminicide, depending on the country or world region. We draw attention to how and why women and girls are killed, mostly by men. We also use feminicide and femicide to underscore how our states and governments often facilitate and, at times, encourage these killings through inadequate responses to such violence or, in many countries or world regions, no response at all. The first step in prevention is naming and thereby publicly recognising the problem – making femicide and feminicide worthy of attention.

Why Both Femicide and Feminicide? On 26 November 2012, the Vienna Declaration on Femicide was signed by participants at a one-day symposium convened by the Academic Council on United Nations System (ACUNS). This symbolic event came more than 40 years after the late violence-against-women feminist pioneer, expert, and activist, Diana Russell, introduced the term at the International Tribunal of Crimes Against Women. Professor Russell’s use of the term in 1976 was meant to bring attention to the violence and discrimination perpetrated by men against women, although she did not explicitly define this phenomenon until 1990 as “the murder of women by men motivated by hatred, contempt, pleasure, or a sense of ownership of women” (Caputi and Russell, 1990: 34). Several years later, Radford and Russell (1992) defined femicide as misogynistic killings by men with a three-fold purpose: (1) to capture the pervasive violence women and girls experience from men, (2) to bring people together to address the problem, and (3) to urge governments to legislate against femicide and to sentence killings appropriately. By 2001, the definition evolved to the killing of females by males for being females, encompassing all forms of male sexism, including entitlement, pleasure, or expectation of compliance, different from previous definitions focusing on misogyny (Russell, 2001). She argued that using “female” instead of “woman” and “male” instead of “man” acknowledged that infants, young girls, and adolescents are also killed for sex- or gender-related reasons. There has been periodic and important research on femicide since then; however, from the 2000s onwards, we have witnessed a clear increase in feminist, grassroots, academic, and/or government attention to this phenomenon. In part, this is due to efforts of those concerned about high femicide 5

Myrna Dawson and Saide Mobayed Vega

and feminicide rates in some countries, leading to legislative efforts and initiatives to better respond to these killings. Arguably, the most active in its resistance has been those in Latin America where some of the highest rates of feminicide and femicide are found alongside some of the best examples of efforts at social change. In this context, Marcela Lagarde introduced the term “feminicide” (or feminicidio) in Mexico to better highlight the state’s role in omitting, neglecting, and even colluding in these violent crimes against women and girls, particularly those who are rendered more vulnerable (e.g., Indigenous women, poor women, women working in the sex trade). To understand the conceptual reclaiming of feminicide, we need to look at the patriarchal domination and impunity of the state’s institutions which fail to bring justice and accountability to the victims and their families in these contexts. Expanding on Russell’s approach, using “feminicide” instead of “femicide” underscores not just the state’s oppression but also means “the death of a female being or one with female characteristics, whether or not she is a woman” (Monárrez Fragoso, 2019: 89). The term “feminicide” also stresses government non-responsiveness to the killings of women and girls (Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010; Sanford, 2008). While primarily used in Latin America, some European countries, such as Spain and Italy, have recently adopted feminicide as a term (Spinelli, 2011), and arguably, it is appealing globally as other countries begin to focus more attention on the states’ culpability and inadequate responses to the killings of women and girls worldwide. Both femicide and feminicide focus our attention on the political nature of these killings by emphasising societal norms and/or related state responses, or lack thereof, as facilitating or, at least, allowing these killings to continue with impunity. As will also become evident throughout this handbook, definitions of and approaches to femicide and feminicide continue to differ by varying degrees, depending on each activist, advocate, academic, and/or researcher’s intersectionality, positionality, discipline, and location. Across most definitions, though, one commonality exists – femicide and feminicide refer to the killing of a woman or girl in which there are sex- or gender-related elements. All definitions recognise that these killings are not “isolated, sporadic or episodic cases of violence; rather they represent a structural situation and a social and cultural phenomenon deeply rooted in customs and mindsets” (CEDAW, 2005, 27). As succinctly described in the “Latin American Model Protocol for the Investigation of Gender-Related Killings of Women (Femicide/Feminicide),” these killings are rooted in sex and gender discrimination, often overlapping with other social identities like race, religion, sexuality, and ability, further supported by patriarchal notions of women and girls as property or objects to be owned or used by men.

Understanding the Prevalence and Characteristics of Femicide and Feminicide The most recent global estimates provided by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimated that there were 81,000 female victims of homicide in 2020. Of these, 47,000, or 58% of the total number of women and girls, were killed by their intimate partners or family members, primarily men. Although serious challenges concerning underreporting and measuring variations persist between member states, UNODC’s report suggests that, globally, one woman or girl is killed by someone close to them, on average, every 11 minutes. There has been much attention to this number and rightly so – women and girls should be safe from those closest to them. What gets less attention, and what also requires examination, are the remaining 42% of women and girls who are also killed mostly by men, often involving sex- or gender-based motivations or factors. We do not know exactly how often because of the global gaps in official and unofficial data sources. For example, countries that fail to report the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator – often those with higher degrees of impunity and lack of accountability – were not included in UNODC’s results. 6

Femicide and Feminicide

What we can conclude, however, is that significantly more than one woman or girl is killed every 11 minutes because of their sex or gender. More accurately, one femicide or feminicide occurs at least every 11 minutes and, depending on the country or world region and definitional parameters adopted, it may be closer to one femicide or feminicide every six minutes. As such, by the time you finish reading this chapter1, two to four women or girls have been killed somewhere in the world because of their sex or gender. Despite these figures, many argue that femicide and feminicide numbers remain low, especially when compared to the number of men and boys killed; thus, it does not require specific attention. Our response to the minimisation of femicide and feminicide as a serious social and human rights issue worthy of focus is five-fold. First, violence prevention is not a competition, nor should it be so. The killing of any individual is a loss to society and, thus, warrants attention. To support a specific focus on femicide and feminicide does not negate male victimisation nor its importance as a serious social issue. The killing of men and boys has also been the focus of significant research and prevention efforts. One consistent finding is that, like women and girls, men and boys are also victimised primarily by men. This is important for the development of appropriate social and legal responses. Second, regardless of the rates at which women and men are killed, our efforts do not and should not focus simply on those forms of violence which occur most often. If we did, we would not concern ourselves with heart attacks or cancer as much as obesity since the latter occurs more often than the former in some populations. Similarly, because women and girls may not be killed as often as men and boys does not mean their deaths should be ignored, particularly in the violence prevention field. Their deaths, regardless of numbers, have significant impacts on their own but also on those they leave behind, their communities, society more generally, and indeed, world peace (e.g. Hudson et al., 2012). Third, we do not focus on femicide or draw attention to feminicide to contend that it occurs more often than the killing of men and boys. We use the term “femicide” or “feminicide” to underscore how and why women and girls are killed which is distinct from how men and boys are killed. Recognising these distinctions is necessary before we can develop more nuanced and informed prevention initiatives. Fourth, while the number of women and girls killed represents only a small proportion of the violence experienced by women and girls overall, it provides a window through which to understand more clearly the contributors and potential solutions to male violence against women and girls. Put another way, femicide and feminicide serve as a social barometer of sorts for understanding the violence experienced by that much larger, and still yet to be adequately estimated, group of women and girls which does not lead to their deaths. Their experiences might be considered a form of slow death for many of them, however. Finally, their killings serve as a reminder to all of us – women and girls globally – of what can happen if we do not “stay in our lane,” or even if we do because there are no guarantees of our safety from male violence. This fact alone ensures that gender equality or gender equity cannot be achieved until we can live a life that is not wholly or, at least, partially structured by our experiences or threats of male violence.

The Handbook’s Guiding Frameworks The journey throughout the making of this handbook has not been easy. With a total of 50 chapters and at least 120 contributors,2 one would think we had exhausted all possible contributors and topics related to femicide and feminicide. That is far from the case. We could have filled two volumes easily, despite the generous leeway given to us by Routledge. Deciding on which pathways to take as we embarked on this colossal task resulted in wonderful collaborations and pleasant encounters 7

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between contributors, yet this also meant alternating possibilities, missing opportunities, and losing some passengers along the way. Recognising that we had to limit the scope so that readers could physically lift the book if they wished to do so, we made a concerted effort to ensure that we had contributors from a broad range of countries and world regions. We also strived to focus on as many facets of this phenomenon as we could while, at the same time, making more visible those women and girls often rendered invisible in research, data, and discussions about male violence. We identified this handbook’s basic criteria for contributions as the use of the terms “femicide,” “feminicide,” and “feminicidio” and the incorporation of a feminist, critical, and intersectional analysis. We wanted a mix of established and emerging scholars to show the longevity and vibrancy of this field while, at the same time, showcasing that there is a next generation of feminists joining the global movement. Therefore, we also encouraged contributors to seek out collaborations with others, including PhD students and emerging scholars, and many chapters are the culmination of these existing or new collaborations or partnerships. We also encouraged collaborations across geographic boundaries and regions. Indeed, we, as co-editors of this handbook, are reflective of such a partnership. Myrna joined this movement in the mid-1990s when, as a graduate student, she became involved in a feminist, grassroots initiative in Canada that conducted one of the first studies of intimate femicide (Crawford and Gartner, 1992; Crawford et al., 1997). Her research and advocacy over the past several decades culminated in the establishment of the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability in 2017. Growing up in Mexico, Saide was aware of the impact of violence against women and girls. In 2016, she started collaborating with the Femicide Team (then part of ACUNS, now part of the UN Studies Association) – who leveraged the Vienna Declaration on Femicide at the UN level. The team has also been responsible for producing over 13 volumes of the FEMICIDE publication. Since then, she has been researching on and working with femicide and feminicide. In 2017, together with Andrada Philip, Henrike Landré and Michael Platzer, Saide co-founded the Femi(ni)cide Watch Platform (FWP) (https://femicide-watch.org), a volunteer-based team of activists, advocates, practitioners, researchers, and academics who curate, categorise, and contextualise all kinds of content related to femicide and feminicide. In 2021, with a great team of students from the University of Guelph, Canada, the FWP was relaunched with both of us as project leads and Myrna as a senior adviser. It is in this global intersection that we met and started our collaboration as co-editors of this handbook. Despite being situated – and thus informed – by different contexts and places, we both were and continue to be moved by an ethos of solidarity and care. We are committed to recognising and naming femicide and feminicide as the first step to preventing male violence against women and girls. The following considerations were also of utmost importance to us when identifying contributors and topics for this handbook.

From the Local to the Global It is commonly stated that femicide and feminicide are global phenomena, but they may also have local concerns and considerations. Therefore, we wanted regional and geographic lenses while achieving a global dialogue that could bring those involved in the movement closer together. In the process of increasing globalisation, the word “global” is frequently used, yet there is little discussion about what it means to say that something is “global” in its coverage. If we take it to mean relating to or involving the entire world, ambiguity remains as to what the “entire world is.” Within this frame, then, we made the decision to ensure that all world regions were represented and that the voices or countries within these regions were as diverse as possible. 8

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The UNODC identifies five world regions: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. Each of these are represented as are various sub-regions. For example, in Part 4, focusing on femicide and feminicide, country-specific chapters focus, in turn, on Afghanistan, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Georgia, Germany, India, Mexico, Palestine, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States. The world regions of Europe and sub-regions of sub-Saharan Africa and the United Kingdom are also included in this section. However, in other sections of this handbook, additional countries are represented in various contributions: Argentina, Botswana, China, Colombia, El Salvador, France, Germany, Ghana, Israel, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Panama, Poland, Rwanda, Spain, Venezuela, and Zambia. We are pleased with the geographic representation; however, we also acknowledge that those countries not represented in this handbook tell a story as well beyond just space limitations. Their story may be that there is an inability to focus on this issue due to a lack of resources or researchers. The story may be of those who have the passion and commitment to do so but live in political and social regimes that prevent them from following through on their desire to draw attention to male violence against women and girls. Furthermore, given that we were looking for contributors at the beginning of and throughout the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with its catastrophic impacts for many, particularly in some world regions, the story may be that of individuals who were just not able to take on or follow through with their commitment to contribute to this collection. Regardless of their story, particularly with respect to the latter narrative, given ongoing contributions to this field, big and small, their voices will no doubt resonate with those contained in these chapters.

Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Lens Feminicide and femicide, and violence more generally, are recognised public health issues which require interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary lenses to develop nuanced and comprehensive understandings and responses to inform its prevention. To our understanding, an interdisciplinary focus aims to integrate knowledge, theories, methodologies, and methods from within and across different disciplines, adopting a genuine synthesis of approaches. Somewhat different but similar in goals, a transdisciplinary focus attempts to unite intellectual frameworks beyond disciplinary perspectives. Taking on these concepts and aims, we wanted this handbook in its entirety to reflect an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary understanding of the phenomenon of feminicide and femicide. While not an exhaustive list, from a review of our contributors’ biographies, you can see that over 30 disciplines/subdisciplines are represented (in alphabetical order): anthropology, communication studies, criminal justice, criminology, cultural studies, development studies, education, epidemiology, gender, women and/or sexuality studies, gender and development, geography, global governance, history, human-computer interaction, information sciences, international relations, international environment and development studies, journalism, law, literature, medicine, nursing, philosophy, political science, psychology, public health, public policy, social policy and social practice, social work, sociology, and urban science and planning. The interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach of this handbook also included the relentless work of activists and individuals leveraging policy-making on the ground to prevent, attend to, and sanction femicide and feminicide. Their knowledge is as equally valuable as that produced within academic institutions, and we recognise that the two realms are not always mutually exclusive. These perspectives are highlighted, specifically in Part 3, where we joined voices and sparked conversations with people engaging with femicide and feminicide data either through digital activism or as part of university observatories and government institutions. It is our hope that, upon reviewing the contributions in this handbook, the multiple lenses through which femicide and feminicide are viewed will contribute to the necessary interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary understanding of this phenomenon. The contributors and chapters represented 9

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reflect how this field is rapidly expanding in the growing global human rights movement to address feminicide and femicide with few disciplines and sectors not directly involved. We believe this handbook achieved its interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary objectives, both in its entirety and in many, if not most, of its chapters.

Accessibility The prevention of femicide and feminicide together with other forms of male violence against women and girls requires multi-sector responses and collaborations, as well as increased public awareness and education of broader professions, publics, and audiences. As such, it was our desire that this handbook would be accessible across various readers and audiences, including members of the community, government, researchers, and academics, as well as those most impacted – survivors of male violence against women and girls, including the family and friends of those women and girls who did not survive. The global femicide and feminicide movement would not exist without these groups and, most notably, the many survivors, family, and friends who have turned their losses into prevention efforts, advocacy, and activism. Reflecting this, many of the contributors also represent these groups. Accessible information is vital for individual, community, and societal knowledgebuilding and recovery and, in turn, our efforts to prevent further violence.

The Handbook’s Structure Following this introduction (Part 1), this handbook is organised into seven major sections: (Part 2) theoretical understandings and perspectives on femicide and feminicide, (Part 3) data and methodological considerations, (Part 4) femicide and feminicide across world regions and countries, (Part 5) understanding femicide and feminicide subtypes and contexts, (Part 6) legal responses to femicide and feminicide, (Part 7) social responses to femicide and feminicide, and (Part 8) where to from here in research, policy, and practice. We identified these sections as core to providing a comprehensive framing of the issues that could contribute to better understandings of this phenomenon. Within each section, key topics were identified, and established and emerging global experts were asked to summarise the historical and contemporary understandings, as appropriate, of their topics and related research. It is expected that some sections will be of more interest to some readers than others, but all chapters are intended to provide a summary of or accessible resources to the latest thinking on theory, data, methods, contexts, responses, and future directions for activism, advocacy, and prevention as they relate to femicide and feminicide.

Theoretical Understandings and Perspectives A rich body of theoretical work has been devoted to better understanding femicide and feminicide. Part 2 of this handbook brings together a wide range of perspectives and disciplines to shed light on the conceptual variations, frameworks, approaches, and epistemological considerations to address male violence against women and girls. Given the goals of this handbook, it was important for us to include recent trends to explain why feminicide and femicide occur and to showcase how theoretical work could help us elucidate and elaborate on these explanations. Part 2 opens with a global archaeology of femicide and feminicide to show the expansion and variations of both concepts. This is followed by a chapter that reads femicide through a political economy framework and another to understand it using a global social ecological model. Intersectionality, colonialism, spatialisation, and other systems of power (such as race, gender, and extremist violence) represent the key topics covered in the remaining four chapters.

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Data and Methodological Considerations In the past decade, particular focus has been drawn to data quality issues and gaps inherent in the examination of femicide and feminicide, and all male violence against women and girls more generally. Some data gaps and the obstacles to addressing them are similar across world regions, yet there are also local and regional particularities which are important to recognise and understand. Attention has primarily focused on official data sources but, more recently, with growing efforts to respond to these gaps globally by individuals and members of grassroots and civil society organisations, concern with data and methodological considerations has increased exponentially. Today, it is no longer simply states and governments who collect such data and monitor trends and patterns in feminicide and femicide. To reflect this situation, Part 3 is divided into three chapters, focusing first on official data, primarily collected by states and governments, followed by a chapter that documents the experiences of individual and group activists and activism to address ongoing data gaps and to increase state accountability. The final chapter captures the rise of femicide and feminicide observatories and watches which, aligned with and involving many activists and advocates, also work to increase public education, awareness and accountability of states and perpetrators. Each chapter brings together a group of contributors who were invited to collaborate and co-author a chapter about data work in their specific contexts, representing the perspectives of various countries or world regions and capturing the global commonalities and specificities that may be inherent in feminicide and femicide data. Across all three chapters, each contributor – individual or group – were provided with a series of questions (outlined in each chapter) for which written responses were requested. Their submissions were analysed for themes and written up in draft form and recirculated to all co-authors for feedback with some virtual meetings throughout. This reiterative process continued until all agreed that the chapter was complete with data issues and challenges reflecting multiple voices, not just one group or one part of the world.

Femicide and Feminicide Across World Regions and Countries As noted earlier, in a handbook on feminicide and femicide, documenting the experiences across nations and world regions is crucial given that, while the phenomenon may exist in all parts of the world, how it occurs, who is most affected, and whether and in what way states and governments respond will vary considerably. The 15 chapters included in Part 4 were intentionally drawn from various world regions to further our understanding of how women and girls experience feminicide and femicide differently or similarly, depending on who they are and/or where they live. For these chapters, we asked all contributors to (1) briefly discuss the history and country (or world region) context of the femicide or feminicide movement, (2) describe trends and patterns from available data and research, and (3) identify the varying risks of femicide or feminicide for specific groups of women and girls with a specific emphasis on those most marginalised, vulnerable, and/or invisible. We acknowledge that the breadth and depth of Part 4 only begins to tease out the complexities of these local and global experiences, however. Not all who were invited were able to contribute, and in some parts of the world, we could not identify anyone who could (often safely) speak for women and girls in their country or region. We will continue to seek those experiences as part of the growing global movement of which this handbook is part – to bring together our voices and to raise those of our sisters in our efforts to prevent the killings of women and girls.

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Understanding Femicide and Feminicide Subtypes and Contexts We have made clear that no country is exempt from femicide and feminicide. However, zooming in on contextual particularities is key to understanding its variations, triggering conversations across differences, and highlighting best (or worst) practices to tackle this phenomenon. We tried to be as exhaustive as possible whilst considering not only the space limits but also regional representation. We are aware the subtypes and contexts described do not suffice to capture all the variances of femicide and feminicide, yet they do begin to showcase the extent and pervasiveness of male violence against women and girls amidst patriarchal power structures. The ten chapters in Part 5 of this handbook bring together a wide range of examples that situate the impact of and attention to femicide and feminicide. China, India, Mexico, the UK, Guatemala, South Africa, El Salvador, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria serve as some examples to touch on topics such as sex-selective abortion, systemic sexual feminicide, honour-based femicide, femigenocide, sex-work feminicide, gang-related feminicide, transfeminicide, and femicide and feminicide as war. Other chapters take a global approach to intimate partner and armed conflict femicide and feminicide.

Legal Responses to Femicide and Feminicide The way states and governments respond to feminicide and femicide has become the focus of local, regional, national, and international attention, stemming in large part from changing legal environments in Latin America, where more than half the countries with high femicide rates are located (Laurent et al., 2013; Nowak, 2012). However, no country is free from this type of violence. This underscores the need to understand how states are responding to femicide and feminicide, regardless of world region. Some countries have passed legislation pertaining to femicide or codified feminicide as a crime (Laurent et al., 2013). It is acknowledged that this is only one step in the many structural changes that must occur to respond to the killing of women and girls globally and that not all efforts have yet to achieve their goals. Regardless, legislative and other legal changes can be seen as positive steps because it is recognised that those who impose the law must acknowledge the seriousness of violence before society can effectively respond. The five chapters in Part 6 provide a sampling of what has occurred in recent decades, focusing in large part on the world region where many of those changes have occurred. All countries, however, can learn from varying discussions and/or experiences with legislative responses, the role of transnational law, model protocols for investigating and prosecuting feminicide and femicide, dominant criminal doctrines used to respond to such killings, and in short, state accountability to address femicide and feminicide.

Social Responses to Femicide and Feminicide We could not be talking about feminicide and femicide without the role of grassroots and civil society in naming and making it visible. The relentless work from activists on the ground (many of them mothers, families, and friends of victims) all around the world is what has shaped and crafted this unstoppable and ever-growing movement to prevent the killing of women and girls. We could dedicate an entire handbook to the incredible amount of street protests, digital activism, art, performance, installations, and so many other forms of rendering femicide and feminicide visible and accountable. In Part 7, we recognise, acknowledge, and collect only a handful of the social responses against femicide and feminicide in the hopes of creating memory and inspiring new generations. For example, in Canada, the colonial femicide of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) movement is brought to the fore. In North America, black femicide and methodologies of truth-telling about feminicide are recalled demanding justice and accountability. In Argentina, the

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importance of the #NiUnaMenos digital activism is covered. In Mexico, memorialisation against feminicide serves to fight the state’s cruelty and impunity. We admire the resilience, care, and solidarity that both trigger and enable these and many other practices to resist and prevent femicide and feminicide.

Where to Go From Here in Research, Policy, and Practice The road to prevent and ultimately eliminate femicide and feminicide is still being paved. The four chapters in Part 8 demonstrate cutting-edge and necessary research to address and prevent femicide and feminicide. We start by discussing the feminicide data standardisation efforts developed by ILDA (Open Data Initiative in LATAM). The next chapter presents how human-centred computing to design technologies support and sustains counter-data-collection efforts against feminicide. In what follows, a comprehensive literature review describes male perpetrators’ accounts of femicide and feminicide. The final chapter is centred on how changing media representation frames is one of the many potential pathways to prevent femicide and feminicide globally.

Concluding Thoughts As a final note, that we, with the contributors to this handbook, were able to pull this collection together throughout the COVID-19 pandemic is a testament to the importance of this issue to all of us and for our global audiences. Individually and together, we faced the pandemic and other major obstacles occurring in our own lives, as well as throughout the world, the latter severely impacting the lives of women and girls. The herculean efforts of those represented in this book have provided us with the hope that is often waning in what can often be dark times. It is our collective hope that with these efforts, coupled with ongoing ground-breaking and innovative research and thinking, we will no longer read global headlines describing women being burned, shot, or stabbed because they dared to say no to patriarchy. The passion, commitment, and determination of each contributor to this handbook and their concern with improving the lives of women and girls will keep both of us going for some time to come.

Notes 1 This chapter is about 6,000 words, and it takes an average reader (with English as a first language) 20 minutes to read 6,000 words. 2  Some contributors are organisations with multiple individuals involved, which is why 121 is a minimum.

References Caputi, J. and D. E. H. Russell (1990). Femicide: Speaking the unspeakable. Ms. The World of Women 1(2): 34–37. CEDAW (2005). Report on Mexico Produced by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women Under Article 8 of the Optional Protocol to the Convention. New York: United Nations. Crawford, M., R. Gartner, M. Dawson, and Women We Honour Action Committee (1997). Woman Killing: Intimate Femicide in Ontario 1990–1994. Toronto: Women We Honour Action Committee. Crawford, M., R. Gartner, and Women We Honour Action Committee (1992). Woman Killing: Intimate Femicide in Ontario 1974–1990. Toronto: Women We Honour Action Committee. Fregoso, R. L. and C. Bejarano (2010). Introduction: A cartography of femicide in the Americas. In: Fregoso R. L. and C. Bejarano (eds.), Terrorizing Women: Femicide in the Americas. London: Duke University Press, pp. 1–42. Hudson, V. M., B. Ballif-Spanvill, M. Caprioli, and C. F. Emmett (2012). Sex & World Peace. New York: Columbia University Press.

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PART 2

Theoretical Understandings and Perspectives

2 FEMI(NI)CIDE A Global Archaeology of Knowledge Saide Mobayed Vega

1 Introduction As shown in Chapter 1, research to define and classify femi(ni)cide1 has grown exponentially in the last 40 years. What started as a name to address the killing of women by men in the late ’70s grew into an unstoppable global human rights movement of resistance to this fatal form of violence. Yet, how did femi(ni)cide come to be? This chapter illustrates the different approaches given to femi(ni)cide through an archaeological exploration (Foucault, 1972), by tracing its emergence, classification, change, and movement across scales – that is, from the local to the global. The work here contained contributes to the sociology of knowledge and science and technology studies (STS), as it advances current theorisations of femi(ni)cide. The first section of the chapter acknowledges femi(ni)cide as “a global issue that demands action” (Laurent et al., 2013), foregrounding an increase of interest over time in this phenomenon. Then, drawing on an archaeological method (Foucault, 1972), an overview of the changes, variations, and continuities of femi(ni)cide across time, place, and scale is presented as they calcify in policies, reports, resolutions, papers, and databases, amongst other forms of knowledge production. Building on this, six epistemic worlds that dispute and negotiate the meaning-makings of femi(ni)cide are described: the institutional, the social, the legal, the criminological, the statistical, and the theoretical. Next, the chapter outlines how femi(ni)cide as a boundary object (Bowker et al., 2015; Bowker and Star, 1999; Leigh Star, 2010; Star and Griesemer, 1989) allows it to maintain its presence across epistemic worlds by distinguishing four of its affordances: porosity, materiality, topology, and friction. The chapter concludes that tracing femi(ni)cide as a boundary object allows us to see changes, expansions, and variations; places relationality at the core; and repurposes it as a matter of care.

2  Femi(ni)cide: A Global Issue that Demands Action [A]n analysis of the murder of women requires an analysis through the paradigm of feminicide. – Julia Monárrez Fragoso, Strengthening Understanding of Femicide, 2008: 79

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-4

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We are all aware that femicide remains a global concern. – Ambassador Lourdes O. Yparraguirre, Opening Statement of the Symposium on Femicide, 2012

How did femi(ni)cide become a paradigm to classify the killing of women and girls and when did it become “a global concern”? Chapter 1 grounded femi(ni)cide as a growing human rights movement, from Diana Russell’s public enunciation of femicide in 1976 and Marcela Lagarde’s feminicidio (feminicide) in the mid-’90s to the current UN efforts to compare the global scope of the genderrelated killing of women and girls (UNODC, 2018; UNODC and UN Women, 2022). Attempts at defining and categorising femi(ni)cide have exponentially grown over the last 30 years. The rise of this interest over time can be grasped using Google Trends2 (Figure 2.1). Results show that feminicidio has been more widely searched than the English femicide. This could be explained by its presence and influence in Latin America, the only region where femi(ni)cide has been legislated and criminalised in 18 countries as of 2022 (CEPAL, 2019). Interestingly, the year 2020 seems to be the one with more online searches of both terms, which could potentially be explained due to concerns of violence against women and girls (VAWG) being exacerbated with the COVID-19 pandemic (Arenas-Arroyo et al., 2021; Evans et al., 2020). In that context, UN Women referred to femi(ni)cide as “the shadow pandemic.”

Figure 2.1  Worldwide Google search interest over time of “femicide” and “feminicidio” queries (2004–2022). Source: https://trends.google.com/

3  Femi(ni)cide: A Global Archaeology through Epistemic Worlds The gender-related killing of a woman is not an isolated event but the result of a continuum of violence (Manjoo, 2012). Aided by an archaeological method that seeks to define discourses in their specificity (Foucault, 1972), this section showcases how femi(ni)cide has changed, varied, and continued by using examples from various forms of knowledge production across six epistemic worlds.

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3.1  What is Archaeology as a Method? Archaeology as a method3 seeks to define not the thoughts, representations, images, and themes but the discourses in their specificity, to show both the shared affirmations and to describe the spaces of dissension. This enables us to compare discourses in their multiplicity rather than as totalities (Foucault, 1972). Archaeology is not necessarily linear but cross-sectional, and it is concerned with the epistemes that move around different fields. This method is fruitful to trace – or dissect – how words, concepts, categories, and so on – in this case femi(ni)cide – come to be, together with the positions and materiality that influence such knowledge-makings.

3.2  What are Epistemic Worlds? Femi(ni)cide can be considered an episteme, that is, a comprehensive “set of relations,” which, at a particular time, links discursive practices that give rise to scientific theories and other ways of knowing (Foucault, 1972). The use of “epistemic” here is further informed by Karin Knorr Cetina’s work (1999, 2007), whose focus is not on what knowledge is produced but on the “knowledge settings” or “machineries of knowledge” that enhance such possibilities. Thus, knowledge about femi(ni)cide suggests a close look at the multiple and diverse elements and sceneries (in this case, worlds) that grapple with it. Understanding how femi(ni)cide came to be requires not just tracing its conceptual definition, legal categorisation, or criminal classification but rather how what we know about femi(ni)cide is influenced by the epistemic worlds it ripples across. Epistemic worlds are “universes of discourse” (Strauss, 1978) where people “do things together” (Becker, 1986) as they interpret, explain, justify, and believe in shared perspectives that generate knowledge and trigger collective action (A. Clarke, 2005; A. E. Clarke and Leigh Star, 2008). For example, someone working at an international institution in Europe processing comparable data on the killing of women will most likely experience and feel these data differently than an activist mapping femi(ni)cide in their hometown in Mexico (i.e. Ellas Tienen Nombre by Ivonne Ramírez). Their epistemological background, that is, how they know what they know influences and permeates how they assess, communicate, and generate ways of knowing femi(ni)cide. In what follows, six epistemic worlds that craft, contest, and negotiate femi(ni)cide are put forward: the institutional, the social, the legal, the criminological, the statistical, and the theoretical. Two things are acknowledged. First, this choice of categorisation is not fixed but rather open for crafting, contestation, and negotiation. Second, the borders of these epistemic worlds are not rigid, and actors influence and simultaneously take part in many.

3.3  Femi(ni)cide: Six Epistemic Worlds The six epistemic worlds described here engage with femi(ni)cide’s definition, classification, categorisation, and measurement. They were determined through an analysis of over a hundred secondary sources,4 some of which are weaved in to illustrate what these epistemic worlds produce. Given the scope of this handbook, this chapter tries to showcase various world regions and forms of knowledge production.

1  The Institutional This is composed of groups in political decision-making positions at established (and thus legitimised) institutions (e.g. governments, international organisations [IOs]) that leverage and distribute resources related to the prevention, sanction, and eradication of femi(ni)cide. Being part of an institution either constrains or expands their political actions as there are often various stakeholders, opinions, and interests to negotiate with. Actors (e.g. politicians, individuals working in IOs) are

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present across scales, from local regents to global agencies. The type of knowledge they produce tends to bind, advise, or inform other countries on how to do or implement processes and procedures that are normally in the shape of policies, guidelines, protocols, reports, reforms, resolutions, programmes, surveys, and studies. Globally, most of the documents, reports, and resolutions produced at the UN would fit into this epistemic world. Based on an exploration of the UN databases, the first time the word “femicide” appeared in a UN Women document is in 1994, as part of the priority themes of the yearly Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) (E/CN.6/1994/4). Yet as previously mentioned, academic and civil society initiatives also permeate the institutional epistemic world, such as the first of its kind Symposium on Femicide, organised by the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) at UNODC’s headquarters in Vienna in 2012. One year later, the Vienna Declaration on Femicide petition was presented at the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) (E/CN.15/2013/NGO/1). Latin America remains a prominent region concerning femi(ni)cide knowledge production. One document which has been of important influence in this epistemic world, is the 2015 “Latin American Model Protocol for the Investigation of Gender-Related Killings of Women (Femicide/Feminicide),” published by the OHCHR and UN Women. Another regional effort in this space (which touches on all the other epistemic worlds as well) was the establishment of the COST Action on Femicide (2013–2017), considered the “first pan-European coalition on femicide” (COST, 2013). Nationally, governments in other regions have politically mobilised against femi(ni)cide. In 2019, South Africa’s government declared femicide a “national crisis” (Khumalo, 2019).

2  The Social This epistemic world refers mostly to the role of civil society (e.g. non-governmental organisations, activist groups, communities, artists, feminist/human rights advocates) in gathering and articulating together to bring about social, cultural, legal, and/or political change against femi(ni)cide. They do so by mobilising it through global, regional, local, and social media campaigns, artistic installations, and other forms of activism to trigger social change. These worlds often contest the state’s narratives with justice and accountability at the core of their actions. Their knowledge production is communicated through social media campaigns, data activism, art installations, reports, and studies, amongst others. This has been a highly influential epistemic world from the global to the local. Both Diana Russell’s enunciation of femicide in 1976 and Marcela Lagarde’s feminicidio proposal in the mid-’90s could fit into this category, intertwining with the theoretical. Another example in the social epistemic world that has mobilised femi(ni)cide is Rita Banerji’s 50 Million Missing Campaign, launched in 2006, to address the killing of female foetuses in India. Civil-society practices to render femi(ni)cide visible and accountable abound in the shape of performances, multimedia installations, and documentaries, to mention a few. A mechanism to do so has been by generating databases to recount the extent of femi(ni)cide (and thus also of the statistical epistemic world). Esther Chávez Cano pioneered this when, in 1993, she started collecting newspaper clips about women being killed and thrown out onto the barren desert of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico (Tabuenca C., 2014). With the advent of digital technologies and methods, activists have taken these actions to the digital space. By September 2022, Helena Suárez’s project Feminicidio Uruguay has documented over 80 different databases across the world that recount femi(ni)cide. Chapter 10, “Feminicide Data Activism,” zooms in on initiatives in nine countries. Similarly, as social media expanded, so did social activism against feminicide stressing its global dimension. Chapter 45, “Feminicide, Digital Activism, and the #NiUnaMenos in Argentina,” poignantly discusses the role of Twitter in organising these protests. 20

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3  The Legal In this epistemic world, international, regional, and national legal systems are concerned with better sanctioning, regulating, and criminalising femi(ni)cide using the rule of law where lawyers, legislators and judges craft and negotiate laws, codes, and sentences to better attend and sanction femi(ni) cide. This is tightly closed to the institutional epistemic world, yet it specifically deals with topics related to the law. Part 6 of this handbook, Legal Responses to Femicide and Feminicide, thoroughly explores a multiplicity of knowledge produced in this epistemic world – yet some are worth mentioning here. By 2022, Latin America remains the only region with femicide/feminicide in their legislation (18 countries). In 1999, Costa Rica became the first country to incorporate femicidio (femicide) into its national legislation. At the regional level, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) has been key to rendering states accountable for their omissions and honouring the international treaties and conventions they have abided by. In 2009, the IACtHR issued the ground-breaking Cotton Field case holding the State of Mexico responsible for violating the human rights of three women in Ciudad Juárez (see Chapters 19 and 38). Another relevant case prosecuted by the IACtHR has been the transfeminicide of Vicky Hernández when the State of Honduras was held accountable for such crime.

4  The Criminological Here, criminologists, detectives, police officers, forensics and laboratory experts, criminal investigators, and public prosecutors (amongst others) are concerned with gauging femi(ni)cide as a crime, including the whole investigation process. It is tightly connected to the legal and statistical epistemic worlds. Their knowledge tends to result in reports and case files. Globally, UNODC has been crucial in setting parameters for the criminalisation of femi(ni)cide. In December 2018, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 68/191 Taking Action Against Gender-Related Killing of Women and Girls, which urged member states to end impunity for crimes committed against women. In Latin America, at the national level, the criminalisation of femi(ni) cide widely varies. A total of 18 countries criminalise femi(ni)cide, Costa Rica (2007) and Guatemala (2008) were first, followed by Chile and El Salvador in 2010, and Argentina, Mexico, and Nicaragua in 2012 (Pasinato and de Ávila, 2022).

5  The Statistical This epistemic world looks to quantify femi(ni)cide (both by state and non-state agents) using (but not limited to) surveys and other data processing software. They aim to assess patterns of behaviour, which could be compared both longitudinally and across regions resulting in databases (including those produced by civil society using news media), reports, and studies. Major outcomes have happened in this epistemic world at the global level, many of them described in the next section. In 2015, the former UN SRVAW, Dubravka Šimonović, called for Member States to implement the Femicide Watch Initiative to generate better data on the genderrelated killing of women and girls (see preface and Part 3 of this handbook, “Data and Methodological Considerations”). In 2018, UNODC published an unprecedented global report to compare the extent of femi(ni)cide. After two big consultations in 2019 and 2021, UNODC and UN Women presented a statistical framework to include femi(ni)cide in the International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (ICCS). 21

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6  The Theoretical Composed of academics and public intellectuals that define, describe, and understand femi(ni)cide, often from (but not limited to) a sociological, philosophical, and cultural perspective. Their knowledge production often materialises in research articles, books, and in-depth studies. The next section discusses in depth different efforts produced in this epistemic world to define and classify femi(ni)cide. Some relevant books in this regard further include Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing, by Jill Radford and Diana Russell (eds.) (1992); Trama de una Injusticia: Feminicidio Sexual Sistémico en Ciudad Juárez, by Julia Monárrez Fragoso (2009); Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade and La Frontera, by Alicia Gaspar de Alba y Georgina Guzmán (2010); and Terrorizing Women: The Victims of the Ciudad Juárez Feminicide, by Rosa-Linda Fregoso and Cynthia Bejarano (eds.) (2010), to mention a handful. Despite the attempt to cover a global perspective, the risks of the all-encompassing illusion that the concept of “global” might entail is acknowledged: who is contained in the “global” and how can we account for those missing? While this chapter does not provide an answer (it certainly does not equate global with universal) and because the word limit of the work is pressing, recognising such limitations opens the possibility for layers of meaning to blossom. In this section, exercising an archaeological method allowed us to empirically infer that interest in femi(ni)cide has grown in time (as shown in Figure 2.1) and that it has further expanded across borders and disciplines by introducing six epistemic worlds that shape and craft such knowledgemakings – from naming femicide in Brussels in the late ’70s to classifying feminicidal violence as a crime in the Mexican Penal Code in 2012. The next section puts forward a theoretical intervention (and invitation) to grasp how femi(ni)cide came to be by understanding it as a boundary object5 (Bowker et al., 2015; Bowker and Star, 1999; Leigh Star, 2010; Star and Griesemer, 1989).

4  Femi(ni)cide: A Boundary Object We speak of classifications as objects for cooperation across social worlds, or as boundary objects. . . . Boundary objects do not claim to represent universal; transcendent truth; they are pragmatic constructions that do the job required. – Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences, 1999: 15 and p. 152

The definition of a boundary object has been a robust contribution of Susan Leigh Star and James Griesmer (1989) to the field of STS that has had many reiterations since (Bowker et al., 2015; Bowker and Star, 1999; Leigh Star, 2010). Boundary objects are sufficiently strong to retain a uniform identity across sites while also being flexible enough to adapt to the specific local needs and limitations of different parties using them. Even though their meaning varies according to the context of use, their structural similarities allow for recognition between these and thus allow them to function as a translation device (Star and Griesemer, 1989). Following Leigh Star (2010), “object” here is used not in the sense of material thing-ness but as the actions that enable them to be articulated. Femi(ni)cide as a boundary object suggests understanding it as “a theory [that] may be a powerful object” (Leigh Star, 2010: 604), in particular, as a way to classify (and thus address) the intentional killings of women and girls. Practices of classification – the act of ordering categories based on certain criteria – produce meanings in action that are grounded over time, ubiquitous, material, and needed to be understood “according to the networks within which they are embedded” (Bowker and Star, 1999: 42).

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Femi(ni)cide as a boundary object renders theoretical flexibility because it situates its classification as a process embedded in a myriad of actions and methods that transforms them (Lury, 2020), whether as a concept to be defined in an academic paper (e.g. Corradi et al., 2016), as a category within legislation (e.g. Laporta, 2012), or as a classified crime (UNODC and UN Women, 2022). Considering femi(ni)cide as a boundary object enables us to evaluate its variations between scales and settings to better situate contextual particularities – that is, how it “travel[s] across borders and maintain[s] some sort of constant identity” (Bowker and Star, 1999: 16). To illustrate, let’s explore femi(ni)cide as a boundary object for statistical data, a subject of interest and dispute across epistemic worlds. In recent years there have been multiple efforts to identify sex-/gender-related motivations for data collection improvement (Dawson and Carrigan, 2020), as well as to standardise regional and global comparisons (Fumega, 2019; UNODC, 2018; UNODC and UN Women, 2022) (Silvana Fumega, 2019; UNODC, 2018; UNODC and UN Women, 2022). For instance, the ground-breaking 2018 femi(ni)cide data report, UNODC’s “Global Study on Homicide: Gender-Related Killing of Women and Girls” showcases the first approach to generate global comparisons of femi(ni)cide. Given severe underreporting challenges and missing data between member states (Dawson and Carrigan, 2020), UNODC mostly accounted for intimatepartner/partner-related femi(ni)cide as this was the strongest available proxy to compare the genderrelated killing of women and girls. This suggests the classification of intimate-partner/partner-related femi(ni)cide as the only constant identity across the analysed data. In March 2022, UNODC and UN Women (2022) presented a thorough statistical framework for measuring this phenomenon to the UN Statistical Commission to be included in the ICCS, expanding the previous report. According to this research, three main types of femi(ni)cide ought to be statistically identified: “women and girls killed by an intimate partner, women and girls killed by other family members, and women and girls killed by other perpetrators (known or unknown) according to modus operandi or context indicative of gender-related motivations” (UNODC and UN Women, 2022: 12). Other pragmatic units of analysis to evaluate femi(ni)cide as a boundary object have taken place in the theoretical epistemic world, where we can ground a varied body of academic work engaged with defining and classifying femi(ni)cide (Alvazzi del Frate, 2011; Bueno-Hansen and Fregoso, 2010; Corradi et al., 2016; Dawson and Carrigan, 2020; Luján Pinelo, 2018; Walby, 2022). For example, Aleida Luján Pinelo (2018) carries out a philosophical exploration of both femicide and feminicide, merging them into femi(ni)cide “to avoid conceptual hierarchies or to give the appearance of supporting one side of the discussion” (p. 45) – as intended in this chapter as well. Consuelo Corradi et al. (2016) outline five theoretical frameworks that theorise femi(ni)cide: feminist, sociological, criminological, human rights, and decolonial. Other scholars have engaged with the frictions of defining femi(ni)cide from the local to the global. These include the work of Anna Alvazzi (2011), who recognised that “while the concept has drawn attention to special ways in which women are selectively targeted, the definition has progressively become diluted and confused” (p. 116). Pascha Bueno-Hansen and Rosa Linda Fregoso (2010) support the view that generalisations of the circumstances that result in femi(ni)cide “tend to gloss over complex details, weakening the international coherence of the campaign, making it necessary to ground its usage in every analytical level, from international to regional to national” (p. 308). Such “universal” versus “particular” tensions in conceptualising femi(ni)icide as a global indicator are also explored in Walby’s (2022) article “What is Femicide?” This section described the changes, variations, and continuities of femi(ni)cide as it ripples across epistemic worlds as a boundary object. Building on this, the next and final section of this chapter explores four affordances that allow for femi(ni)cide to maintain a common identity between epistemic worlds.

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5  Femi(ni)cide Affordances: Porosity, Materiality, Topology, and Friction Boundary objects can inhabit diverse communities while also retaining a common identity. Affordances are qualities that make certain actions possible. Thus, it is argued that femi(ni)cide as boundary object is porous, material, topological, and frictional, allowing it to be “plastic enough to adapt to local needs and constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites” (Bowker and Star, 1999: 297). Similar to the epistemic worlds previously outlined, and given that knowledge is always situated and temporal, these affordances are always contingent, invariably constrained, and continuously changing by the time and place in which such knowledge is produced. •

Porosity

Femi(ni)cide as a boundary object is porous insofar as it can absorb “things,” elements, or features from other disciplines, other concepts, other systems of classifications, and other categories. Porosity suggests malleable borders, soft bridges. Yet it also implies a leeway of void space, a potential to fill in. Femi(ni)cide grows and shrinks pending on how it traverses across scales of meaning. The more porous femi(ni)cide as a boundary object is, the more space it offers for interpretation and inclusion of “other” categories. Applying porosity to processes of standardising femi(ni)cide data suggests that when you try to include heterogeneous classifications coming from different countries, you reduce its porosity and thus absorb the space for potential “others” to come in. This has been the case with UNODC’s (2018) consideration of intimate-partner femi(ni)cide as the only proxy to render its global comparability. •

Materiality

Classification – and its consequences – produce and are produced by material forces that cannot be understood separately from the symbolic (Bowker and Star, 1999). Materiality – pens, papers, computers and software, the Internet – enables and constrains the production of meanings. Grounding the materiality of femi(ni)cide can not only broaden our understanding of the different ways in which epistemic worlds get to know and interpret how they approach femi(ni)cide but also allow us to contemplate regional inequalities in such knowledge production. This provokes questions such as the following: Is it the same to gauge femi(ni)cide on the ground as it is through coding statistical data in an office or judging a case in court? What is the material weight of such practices? •

Topology

Topology studies space invariances under transformation and analyses how change and continuity operate together (Lury, 2020; Lury et al., 2012). Stéphane Gros et al. (2019) recall how anthropologists have used topology to refer to methodological issues around comparison, generalisation, dynamism, intensity, and transformation to better comprehend relations, continuity, and structural dynamics. In their work on “becoming topological,” Celia Lury et al. (2012) assert topology – change as a shared condition – is intrinsic to culture insofar as it is structured following its adaptability, that is, “of ordering by means of continuity” (p. 5). This overlap between change, continuity, and order is of value when thinking about femi(ni)cide as a boundary object and how such features remain present (robust) across epistemic worlds. To illustrate, let’s use the topological feature of femi(ni)cide to classify different types of genderrelated killings using digital technologies, such as interactive maps (tapping into the statistical and the social epistemic worlds). In 2016, María Salguero, a Mexican geophysicist, started Yo Te Nombro, 24

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an interactive digital map to document femi(ni)cides in Mexico using Google Alerts and Ushahidi software. Femi(ni)cide operates as a boundary object that is topological as it orders change and continuity by locating femi(ni)cide cases as points that ripple through the geography of Mexico. The website’s affordances also enable us to see changes in time, as seen in Figure 2.2, which, on the left side, shows how many women have intentionally been killed in Mexico as red dots on a map and, on the right side, the different categories and classifications of such killings.

Figure 2.2  Screenshot of Yo Te Nombro feminicide map (by María Salguero). Source: http://mapafeminicidios.blogspot.com

•

Friction

Femi(ni)cide emerged to name the gender-related dimension to the killing of women from the bottom up. This handbook is only possible due to the relentless activism of feminists and human rights grassroots movements. As femi(ni)cide connected globally, from protests in Ciudad Juárez to sentences given by IACtHR, so did the approach to its prevention, sanction, attention, and quantification. Anna Tsing’s (2005) use of friction offers a useful way to understand these connections attending to the “historical contingency” and “unexpected conjuncture” brought by “encounters across difference.” Femi(ni)cide as boundary object is frictional whilst its movement tends to be only possible through resistance and/or contestation (normally vis-à-vis opaque or corrupt states). Zooming in on the 25

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frictions that result from global connections allows us to critically inquire about pursuits for universality and homogeneity. The movement between femicide to feminicidio exposes this frictional feature. Because scalability is only possible through friction (Tsing, 2012) we must remain attentive to which “truths” or “narratives” prevail when “globalising” knowledge. What happens in countries like Mexico where women are being killed and disposed in the public space because of organised crime violence? How are they (or not) included in global accounts of the gender-related killing of women? Paying attention to the frictional affordance of femi(ni)cide might grant us the option not to homogenise but to diversify how knowledge is produced.

6 Conclusions This chapter has described how femi(ni)cide came to be by understanding it as a boundary object that ripples with and through six epistemic worlds: the institutional, the social, the legal, the criminological, the statistical, and the theoretical. This resulted from an archaeological method where over 100 different types of knowledge production that categorise, define, compare, quantify, and contest femi(ni)cide were analysed. Four affordances of femi(ni)cide as a boundary object that grant it sturdiness between epistemic worlds were described: porosity, materiality, topology, and friction. The importance of the theoretical undertaking embarked on in this chapter is threefold. First, it grants us the possibility to see changes, expansions, and variations. Concepts are, after all, living memories (Guzzini, 2013). Yet the politics of naming can also be dangerous as they turn all-encompassing, constraining, and dividing – for some more than for others. Despite knowledge about femi(ni)cide being produced in many world regions, the reverberance of such meaning-makings does not equally permeate its access and reproduction. We faced this challenge when we first started with the process of designing this handbook and were in a position to decide what goes in (and ultimately what stays out) and why. Jack Halberstam (2018) accurately suggests how “getting the name right” obfuscates the possibility of becoming “alert to the multitude of possible uses, possible contexts, the wings with which each word can fly” (p. 9). This takes us to the second advantage of looking at femi(ni)cide as a boundary object: it places relationality at the core of meaning-makings. Looking at femi(ni)cide as porous, material, topological, and frictional is in line with Shawn Wilson (2008) who argues for an “epistemology where the relationship with something is more important than the thing itself ” (p. 73). These affordances also have the potential to unbundle and harvest a relational accountability in our decisions to include/exclude. Finally, looking at femi(ni)cide as a boundary object repurposes it as a matter of care (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017; Suárez Val et al., 2022), given its ability to amplify affect (Suárez Val, 2022). Assembling knowledge on the killing of women because they are women – as both this chapter and this handbook are doing – at times feels like recovering neglected artefacts. Digging into the meaningmakings of femi(ni)cide across epistemic worlds entails a careful measure of its porosity, a considerate evaluation of its materiality, a curious assembling of its topology, and an inquisitive recalling of its friction. When becoming global archaeologists of femi(ni)cide, we might open new boxes, erase overlooked silences, and contribute to an archive against forgetting. Doing a global archaeology of femi(ni)cide, perhaps with this handbook as its best testament, is a plea to memory, to an abiding devotion to the past enacted in the present, with the will to change what may come.

Notes 1 For the purposes of this chapter, femi(ni)cide is used to acknowledge the place-based theoretical and epistemological contributions of both femicide and feminicide. For more about the conceptual usages of femi(ni) cide, see Aleida Luján Pinelo’s (2018).

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Femi(ni)cide: A Global Archaeology 2  According to Google, Google Trends “provides access to a largely unfiltered sample of actual search requests made to Google. It’s anonymized (no one is personally identified), categorized (determining the topic for a search query) and aggregated (grouped together)” (https://support.google.com/trends/ answer/4365533?hl=en). This is a “quick” way to do “search as research” online (Marres, 2017; Rogers, 2019). 3 Both genealogy and archaeology were methods developed by Michel Foucault in his quest to understand the historicity of discourses. Lynn Fendler (2010) offers a clear distinction between these two: “Foucault’s use of the term genealogy is usually distinguished from archaeology. However, by most reckonings, genealogies are based on archaeologies. While archaeology works to understand how artifacts fit together in a historical moment, genealogy works to figure out what kind of people would fit into that set of artifacts. Foucault’s genealogies are generally based on archaeological-type studies” (p. 38). 4 Much of the data examined for this chapter has been collected in an ongoing, reiterative process which started as a timeline/database in 2015 when the author began collecting different forms of femi(ni)cide knowledge production. I would like to thank and acknowledge the fantastic work of Hale Angus and Andie Rexdiemer, who contributed to and expanded this database in the frame of the Femicide Watch Platform student volunteering group (2021–2022). 5 Other scholars have engaged with the concept of boundary objects and VAWG. For example, Sally Engle Merry (2016) considers victimisation surveys to measure VAWG as boundary objects insofar as they enhance possibilities for comparison between countries. Sylvia Walby (2022) repurposed an understanding of indicators on VAWG as “assets” rather than boundary objects “to invoke the social relations of property and power rather than technical neutrality” (p. 6).

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Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 32(4), 361–375. https://doi.org/10.1179/030801807X163571 Laporta, E. (2012). El feminicidio como categoría jurídica: De la regulación en América Latina a su inclusión en España. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Laurent, C., Platzer, M., & Idomir, M. (Eds.). (2013). Femicide Volume I: A Global Issue that Demands Action. Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS). Leigh Star, S. (2010). This is not a boundary object: Reflections on the origin of a concept. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 35(5), 601–617. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243910377624 Luján Pinelo, A. (2018). A theoretical approach to the concept of femi(ni)cide. Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.22618/TP.PJCV.20182.1.171003 Lury, C. (2020). Problem spaces: How and why methodology matters. Polity Press. Lury, C., Parisi, L., & Terranova, T. (2012). Introduction: The Becoming Topological of Culture. Theory, Culture & Society, 29(4–5), 3–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276412454552 Manjoo, R. (2012). Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences [Dataset]. United Nations General Assembly. https://doi.org/10.1163/2210-7975_HRD-9970-2016149 Marres, N. (2017). Digital Sociology. The Reinvention of Social Research. Polity Press. Merry, S. E. (2016). The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence, and Sex Trafficking. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226261317.001.0001 Monárrez Fragoso, J. E. (2008). An analysis of feminicide in Ciudad Juárez: 1993–2007 in strengthening understanding of femicide. Using Research to Galvanize Action and Accountability. https://path.azureedge.net/media/ documents/GVR_femicide_rpt.pdf Pasinato, W., & de Ávila, T. P. (2022). Criminalization of femicide in Latin America: Challenges of legal conceptualization. Current Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1177/00113921221090252 Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017). Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds / María Puig de la Bellacasa. University of Minnesota Press. Rogers, R. (2019). Doing Digital Methods. SAGE Publications. https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/ doing-digital-methods/book261134 Star, S. L., & Griesemer, J. R. (1989). Institutional ecology, `translations’ and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s museum of vertebrate zoology, 1907–39. Social Studies of Science, 19(3), 387–420. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631289019003001 Strauss, A. (1978). A social world perspective. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 1, 119–128. Suárez Val, H. (2022). Affect amplifiers. Feminist activists and digital cartographies of feminicide. In Networked Feminisms. Activist Assemblies and Digital Practices (pp. 163–186). Lexington Books. Suárez Val, H., Martínez Cuba, Á., & D’Ignazio, C. (2022). Datos de feminicidio, trabajo emocional y autocuidado. www.4sonline.org/datos-de-feminicidio-trabajo-emocional-y-autocuidado-feminicide-data-emotionallabor-and-self-care/ Tabuenca C., M. S. (2014). From accounting to recounting: Esther Chávez Cano and the Articulation of advocacy, agency, and justice on the US-Mexico Border. In D. A. Castillo & S. A. Day (Eds.), Mexican Public Intellectuals (1st ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. Tsing, A. L. (2005). Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton University Press. Tsing, A. L. (2012). On nonscalability. Common Knowledge, 18(3), 505–524. https://doi.org/10.1215/ 0961754X-1630424 UNODC. (2018). Global study on homicide: Gender related killing of women and girls. UNODC. www. unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/GSH2018/GSH18_Gender-related_killing_of_women_and_ girls.pdf UNODC, & UN Women. (2022). Statistical Framework for Measuring the Gender-related Killings of Women and Girls (also referred to as “femicide/feminicide”). UNODC, & UN Women Walby, S. (2022). What is femicide? The United Nations and the measurement of progress in complex epistemic systems. Current Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1177/00113921221084357 Wilson, S. (2008). Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods (Illustrated ed.). Fernwood Publishing Co Ltd.

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3 FEMICIDE AND THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY Alison Brysk and Vitória Moreira

Introduction The definition of femicide employed in this chapter is the systematic killing of women, associated with their gender identity and roles. As discussed in Brysk (2018), Latin American activists often use the term “feminicide,” which emphasises the role of the state in both perpetrating and neglecting violence against its female citizens. Femicide is the most extreme manifestation of a broader spectrum of gender-based violence that is rooted in interrelated patriarchal inequities, political economy, power relations, and social reproduction. While in many regions, femicide is associated mainly with intimate partner violence and impunity for domestic abuse, in some locations the murder of women is frequently a result of criminal activity, and in others as socially mandated discipline for deviation from traditional roles (Brysk, 2018). The social meaning and impact of femicide radiate from a core of mass murder to a penumbra of chronic disabling abuse and trauma, generating a culture of fear that permeates society and distorts women’s mobility, empowerment, and self-determination in the home, marketplace, and public sphere. Although femicide is usually perpetrated by private individuals in private spaces, it is frequently located in the most globalised societies and ungoverned areas: borderlands, free trade zones, and refugee camps (Brysk and Faust, 2021). Gender-based violence has economic costs – not only for girls and women but also for their societies. A worldwide estimate of the costs of gender violence is over $4 trillion, comprising over 5% of global GDP (Hoeffler and Fearon, 2014). A World Bank estimate suggests that femicide causes more deaths than cancer and more illness than malaria and accidents combined for women in the 15–44 age group – working women in the prime of their lives (Duvvury, N., Callan, A., Carney, P., and Raghavendra, S. 2013). While poverty increases vulnerability to violence, conversely violence undermines both individual economic and social well-being and development. Gender-based violence is associated with other costly forms of crime and conflict (Haugen and Boutros, 2014). Violence creates individual and social costs for medical care, policing, legal systems, social services, lost wages and workplace productivity, and relocation and displacement (Siddique, 2011). Reducing violence against women is also an important part of removing barriers to economic development. It can lower social costs, increase mobility, open access to certain jobs, decrease absenteeism, and improve workforce productivity by alleviating long-term trauma and mental health issues (True, 2012: 49). This chapter will outline how femicide is a product of a social structure of power relations embedded in the global political economy. We will examine the global political economy as the ensemble of relations of production, exchange, investment, labour, and migration that produce and

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-5

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allocate value across borders. These economic relationships of money, goods, services, and work are gendered. The global political economy depends on and generates unequal roles, rewards, and power for men and women in households, in nations, and globally. These gendered inequities are linked to social conflict, and femicide is one manifestation. This chapter will trace the global political economy drivers, prevalent patterns, and leading cases of femicide. Then we will examine the economic impact and global responses to femicide along with the broader spectrum of gender-based violence. Globalisation and economic modernisation are often accompanied by structural changes that can cause gendered social conflict due to redistribution of resources, rural-urban migration, changes in employment patterns, and a breakdown in traditional social structures. Feminist analyses trace the impact of unequal economic development on female labour force participation, feminisation of poverty, and commodification of sexual and family relations and link these changes to violence via gender disparities that challenge men’s economic and social status (Tripp, Marx Ferree and Ewig, 2013). In less developed and more traditional societies with lower gender equity, women’s economic dependency or precarious employment may make them vulnerable to violence in the home or informal economy (Enloe, 2014). Differently, in the middle range of development, women’s rising incomes may lead to a backlash by men threatened in traditional gender roles and their “breadwinner masculinity” – before women’s resources increase enough to offer options for self-sufficiency and power balance (True, 2012). Women may be punished by intimate partners for trying to exercise sexual and reproductive self-determination to pursue education or employment, and case studies such as those highlighted here show frequent increases in assault precisely when women’s economic mobility and community status are rising but not yet firmly established (Taylor and Jasinski, 2011). Thus, the backlash literature shows that different levels of gender equity and economic empowerment, associated with different levels of development and modes of political economy, may sometimes ameliorate and sometimes worsen lethal gender-based violence (Whaley et al., 2013). We can map the relationship between these dynamics of development and gendered social conflict that generate gender-based violence by analysing the “gender regimes” – configurations of gender roles, rules, and beliefs that support different modes of production, development, and globalisation. A global model of gender violence advanced in Brysk (2018) is based on surveys of global literature and systematic comparative case studies of Brazil, Mexico, India, South Africa, Turkey, and the Philippines, with additional reference to Yemen, Russia, China, Canada, and the US. This model situates the prevalence and location of femicide within the broader patterns of disciplinary violence that maintain particular typologies of gender regimes: patriarchal, transitional, and liberal. According to this model, in the least developed countries at the periphery of the global economy, the logic of patriarchal gender regimes is to generate value and status hierarchies through reproductive exchange. In this scheme of political economy, marriage is linked to land rights, exchange of resources between households, reproduction, and inheritance (also see Hudson, Bowen, and Nielsen 2020). Therefore, the forms of femicide prevalent in the least developed societies will be oriented towards disciplining the rules of marriage and family relations essential to the society’s security and political economy – such as honour killings and dowry deaths that maintain obedience to social norms. (Brysk 2018) Following the analysis of this model and review of Latin American and Asian cases, at a higher level of development, modernising middle-income countries in the dependent semi-periphery of the world order host semi-liberalised gender regimes – with growing female labour participation and migration but stratified household roles. For emerging economies, the focus of femicide is policing the contested boundary between women’s shifting public and private roles – and the gendered impact of social conflict around illicit economies, such as human trafficking (Brysk 2018). Finally, in the dominant developed democracies at the core of the global economy, women’s public political participation and production become most functional for the system and there are non-violent channels for social discipline. Thus, in liberal/neoliberal capitalist economies, such as the US and Canada, generally, femicide is concentrated in disciplining women’s private roles, such 30

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as intimate partner violence. This helps to explain why in advanced capitalist countries, femicide occurs more often among the minorities, migrants, and global subalterns within developed countries who remain marginalised from public citizenship and labour to support the reproductive sphere, such as domestic workers (Brysk, 2018). The panorama of femicide is situated in the global political economy. Femicide is a coercive concomitant of economic stratification that keeps women “in their place” – whether that place is their own home, reproductive labour in someone else’s home, sex work in the streets, unregulated sweatshops in borderlands, or sustaining the service sectors of global cities. All persistent patterns of violence perform a social function, and the work femicide does is relative to regional, intersectional, and rural-urban patterns of political economy.

Drivers of Femicide: The Global Political Economy Connection Within and across societies, globalisation is translated through gender regimes and roles to violence and femicide. Scholars identify an interconnected “ecosystem” of drivers of gender-based violence that operate simultaneously at the individual, family, community, and societal levels (Heise, 1998). Numerous studies show how the nested “ecological model” of violence against women is embedded in the global political economy, with intersecting layers of national, community, household, and individual level economic risk factors (Morrison, Ellsberg and Bott, 2007; Abramsky, T., Watts, C.H., Garcia-Morena, C., Devries, K., Kiss, L., Ellsberg, M., Heise, L. 2011). These studies track how macro-level drivers, such as lack of economic opportunities for men, cultural norms that support violence, and high neighbourhood crime rates, frame micro-level family dynamics of production and reproduction, as well as individual gender roles, psychopathology, and decision-making patterns. At the level of the national economy that shapes individual and household dynamics, a feminist analysis depicts gender-based violence as a mechanism of patriarchal control – especially under conditions of threats to men’s livelihoods and social status. Recent research in Turkey, for example, establishes a strong correlation between an increase in inflation – an indicator and driver of economic crisis – and an increase in femicide (Cigdem, 2021). Countries worldwide report linkages between the murders of women and factors such as male unemployment (Brysk, 2018). For example, the World Bank’s 2012 World Development Report traces male economic stress situated in national economic policies as a driver of violence in Brazil, Chile, Croatia, and India (The World Bank, 2012; Muñoz Boudet, Petesch, Turk and Thumala, 2013; True, 2012). At the community level, unequal and dependent development generates economic inequality, urban crowding, and crime, which is most pronounced in rapidly globalising middle-income societies. Brysk and Mehta (2014) find that these factors are associated with higher levels of gender-based violence, as measured annually by the Womanstats Physical Security of Women index (The WomanStats Project, latest version modelled in 2019). According to UN studies of urban security, women in urban areas are more likely than men to experience violence – both from violent crime and household abuse (Gangoli and Westmarland, 2011). In rapidly growing cities in the Global South, newly mobile young women are vulnerable to public assault as they migrate from villages or shantytowns to domestic work in city centres or distant neighbourhoods, employment in assembly zones such as Mexican maquiladoras, or service sector jobs like Indian or Philippine call centres (McIlwaine, 2013; International Development Research Centre [IDRC], 2017). Along with the ensemble of global environmental and health crises, the COVID-19 pandemic has posed new worldwide challenges for women’s intertwined economic and physical insecurity. The response to COVID-19 has resulted in a surge in women displaced from precarious and minimum wage service sector employment, gendered curfews, and selective harassment of marginalised populations for breaking restrictions, an increase in women’s uncompensated care work resulting in loss 31

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of wages, and gendered vulnerability to domestic abuse – with declining access to state services such as shelters (Sekalala, S., Forman, L., Habibi, R., and Meier, B. M. 2020). The Gender Gap report of the World Economic Forum warns that the combined impact of these declines in women’s wages, employment, professional placement, and the “double shift” of care work will have long-term effects, which it labels labour market scarring (World Economic Forum [WEF], 2021). COVID-19-era regression in economic empowerment is interdependent with women’s insecurity and has already resulted in worldwide increases in reports of violence and femicide (Brysk, 2022).

Migration, Globalisation, and Gender Violence Across borders, gendered migration is also a vector of femicide. Studies of the disproportionate deaths of migrant domestic workers situate their double vulnerability to femicide as precarious workers and privatised household dependents (Al-Hindi, 2020). One of the world’s largest flows of women migrants generated by dependent development goes from the Philippines to the Mideastern Gulf states, where femicide is so frequent that the Philippine embassies have created special programs to shelter abused migrant survivors, renegotiate bilateral accords for their protection, and repatriate the bodies of those murdered by their employers each year (Brysk, 2018). Forced and post-conflict migrations are also important contributors to femicide worldwide, especially in the MENA region, Central Africa, and South Asia. Fear of femicide is also a driver of migration – that in turn increases risk of gender violence, including femicide and trafficking. Some interviews with survivors suggest that women’s motivation to migrate is often connected to escaping gender-based violence from both intimate partners and gangs, especially in the Americas (Ahmed 2019). This is affecting increasing numbers of women. According to the US Border Patrol (United States Border Patrol [USBP], 2019), the number of women caught crossing the Mexican border rose to nearly 300,000, and the proportion of women leapt to over half. At the southern US border, the current wave of immigration is the largest wave of women and children in US history (Westbrook, 2020). Migration of all kinds puts women at greater risk of violence that may culminate in femicide – in the migration process, in border areas, and in illicit economies and exploited labour in the destination country. In countries where women face restrictions on their agency due to patriarchal gender roles and/or armed conflict, they are more likely to resort to irregular migration channels or to the services of people smugglers, which exposes them to additional risks of human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and gender-based violence (United Nations General Assembly [UNGA], 2019). Once established in their destination, migrant women are especially vulnerable to exploitation and intimate partner violence due to barriers to employment and consequent legal and economic dependency on their spouses, barriers to reporting and access to justice and protection, low language skills and poor understanding of legal systems, lack of social support networks, fear of deportation and undocumented status, community control and pressure, and racialised bias from authorities dealing with violence against migrant women (European Network of Migrant Women [ENOMW], 2019).

Global Prevalence and Pattern of Femicide How has the global political economy impacted the global prevalence and pattern of femicide? Recent figures indicate that more than 80,000 women are murdered each year (United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime [UNODC], 2019) – about the same number as worldwide combat deaths. In a measure of one important component of femicide, in 2017, 50,000 women were killed by intimate partners or other family members (UNODC, 2019: 10). As we would expect given the distribution of violence in the global political economy, the prevalence of femicide is ranked as highest in the developing countries, according to the Womanstats 32

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project 2019 Murder Rate of Women scale: sub-Saharan Africa, Brazil, the Andean countries, Mesoamerica, Russia, and Pakistan. As of 2016, Latin America and the Caribbean accounted for 14 of the 25 deadliest nations in the world for women (Widmer and Pavesi, 2016). We note that these regions of femicide frequency are not the least developed but rather comprise the most unequal nations with the highest levels of income inequality and disparities in wealth and well-being (The World Bank, 2019). The patterns of femicide in the regional hot spots of Central America are strikingly similar to Mexico, originating in free trade zones and migration flows, but currently more associated with gang violence rather than intimate partner abuse (Prieto-Carrón et al., 2007). Although femicide comprises more than homicide perpetrated by intimate partners or other family members, the lack of data on other forms of gender-based killings at the country level and the lack of a standardised definition of femicide means that it is not possible to precisely quantify the number of femicides outside the family at a global level (UNODC, 2019). However, the information available shows that, other than gender-related killings in conflict settings, femicide outside the family is relatively uncommon in comparison to killings perpetrated by intimate partners or other family members (UNODC, 2019: 12). Though women of all races, ethnic groups, and economic backgrounds experience intimate partner violence in all types of societies, women in disadvantaged demographic groups experience violence more often and have less access to services in every nation. Groups who are historically persecuted or marginalised on the basis of intersecting race, class, disability, and migration status have higher levels of gender-based violence and femicide of all types (Walby, Armstrong and Strid, 2012).

Case Illustrations of Patterns of Femicide Femicide is a global phenomenon, with notable country cases that illustrate trends and patterns of its varying forms. The more public form of femicide is associated with criminality and migration situated in the growth of free trade and illicit economies, which is epitomised at the US-Mexico border discussed further here. The term “feminicide” (feminicidio) was introduced by feminist activists as a label for the borderland mass murder of women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico – originally identified in the 1990s. From the mid-1990s through the present, thousands of young women have disappeared in Mexico’s border areas – and hundreds of them have been found murdered, often sexually assaulted, and mutilated (Gaspar de Alba and Guzman, 2010). By 2012, the UN reported 740 femicides in Ciudad Juarez alone since the pattern was identified, with 25% evidence of sexual assault (Manjoo, 2012). From the mid-2010s, femicide metastasised across Mexico beyond the border, with major spikes in Acapulco, Guerrero, and the State of Mexico. As over 35,000 people were killed in all forms of violence in Mexico in 2019, around 10% are considered femicides by scholars – thousands beyond the officially registered 947 (Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública [SESNSP], 2021). The overall pattern and field reports by advocates suggest that thousands of women now are being murdered each year across the country, and 21 of Mexico’s states have declared a gender-based violence alert (Observatorio de Igualdad de Género. Comisión Económica Para América Latina y el Caribe [OIG], n.d.; Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres, 2021). These femicides have been intertwined with problems of the global political economy: the growth of North American Free Trade, women’s employment in border assembly plants, and the drug trade. About one-third of known victims worked in the maquiladora border factories and were often forced to commute on unsafe transportation from far-flung shantytowns to work long hours (Gaspar de Alba and Guzman, 2010). Subsequently, in the context of tens of thousands of drugrelated disappearances and murders in 21st-century Mexico, others point to a growing overlap in Mexico and Central America between violence against women migrants, domestic violence, and narco-trafficking – including the murder of women as “disposable” participants in the drug trade (Santamaria, 2014). As Santamaria (2021) outlines, traffickers may force women into prostitution 33

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and murder them, dispose of women used preferentially as drug mules, and target the women of rival gangs as a strategy of conflict. Femicide in Mexico has now spread across the country following the patterns of gang conflict. A further doubling of femicides from 2015 to 2021 also incorporates additional levels of victimisation of Central American migrants in Mexico and police killings of women political activists (Hincapie, 2019; Kloppe-Santamaria, 2021). A parallel but distinct pattern of femicide accompanying rapid globalisation emerges in several of the middle-income, semi-liberal gender regimes – a set of countries that host a majority of the world’s population – profiled in the Brysk 2018 model. These transitional regimes are hot spots of both intimate partner violence and public disciplinary gender-based violence associated with conflicted development and contested modernisation of women’s public and private roles. This pattern is epitomised by the emerging economy called the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), as well as similar waves of femicide in Argentina, Turkey, and the Philippines (Brysk, 2018). For example, Brazil is typical of a middle-income but highly unequal semi-liberal regime with one of the highest rates of femicide in the world – and the largest number in the Americas. Public pressure and international norms culminated in a landmark 2006 state reform of domestic violence laws sparked by the charismatic campaign of survivor Maria da Penha. Although femicide remains high in Brazil, follow-up measures show the law and improvements in police, courts, consciousness, and social services have reduced some of the violence (Brysk, 2018); a 2015 study indicated that the law appears to have led to a decrease of 10% in femicide in domestic settings in the country (Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada [Ipea], 2015; Cerqueira et al., 2015; Teresi, 2017). But these sources show that services are less institutionalised in less-developed regions of the country and that femicide remains highest in the most economically disadvantaged sectors and regions, reflecting Brazil’s continuing struggles with distorted development and economic inequality. (Agência Câmara de Notícias, 2021) In the developing world, race and ethnicity intertwined with class contribute to women’s vulnerability to femicide and other forms of gender-based violence (Instituto Patrícia Galvão, n.d.). In many countries, economically disadvantaged Black women are often disproportionately victims of human rights violations. For example, in Brazil, where five women were killed per day in 2020 (Jucá, 2021), Black women represent 58.8% of the women victims of domestic violence and 68.8% of women murdered as a result of aggression. They have almost twice the rate of femicide, and their risk has increased over 50% between 2003 and 2013 (Instituto Patrícia Galvão, n.d.). In Mexico, femicide has increased at a higher rate in typically poorer Indigenous than non-Indigenous municipalities over the past two decades (Frias, 2021). Similarly, in India, caste-based discrimination makes Dalit women, who make up 16% of India’s female population, face higher risks of gender and caste-based violence (Godbole, 2020). Positioned at the bottom of the social hierarchy, Dalit women are more vulnerable to violence because they make up the majority of India’s landless labourers and scavengers, and a significant percentage of them are forced into prostitution or sold into brothels (Godbole, 2020). Furthermore, violence against these women by upper-caste men is normalised, which makes it difficult for them to seek access to justice and for local administrators to hear and prosecute cases (Godbole, 2020). Even in the developed countries with liberal gender regimes, such as the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, economically and socially marginalised Indigenous women are more likely than the average national population to experience gender-based violence. Indigenous women’s vulnerability to violence is intertwined with Indigenous peoples’ collective loss of territories, forced displacement, and labour exploitation (Burnette, 2015). In Canada, for example, Indigenous women are disproportionally represented among the victims of murder and disappearances. Although they represent only 4% of all women in the country, their homicide rates per 100,000 population were more than five times higher than non-Indigenous women (Heidinger, 34

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2021; Statistics Canada, 2021). In 2019, a national inquiry considered the violence against Indigenous peoples in Canada a “Canadian genocide” that targets particularly Indigenous women, girls, and LGBTQI people (National Inquiry Into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls [National Inquiry], 2019). In New Zealand, among the major ethnic groups, Māori women have the highest lifetime prevalence of physical and/or sexual IPV, accounting for 57% of reported cases (Simon-Kumar, 2019).

Responding to Femicide At the global level, there has been some progress in legal recognition, international resources, and government programs to address femicide – but much less attention or leverage for the larger patterns of global political economy that generate violence and the patriarchal economic inequities that undermine legal response. International programs by UN agencies that recognise the interdependence of development crisis and femicide – prominently including UN Women, the UN Population Fund, and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime – provide direct assistance to victims, models for national programs and legislation, funding to governments for protection, police and judicial training, and educational and empowerment programs for at-risk populations. At the regional level, the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Convention mandates a periodic follow-up reporting system of Latin American member states that has resulted in the adoption of national action plans by at least nine Latin American countries – including Mexico’s system of femicide alerts and targeted intervention. At the national level, there is an imbalance between socio-legal responses and political economy drivers of femicide. Some protection, prevention, and harm reduction for the family violence components of femicide can be achieved through shifts in laws and policies, but for maximum effectiveness, these measures must be complemented by attention to the socio-economic patterns generated by the global economy: social and economic support, adequate and accessible shelter, and economic empowerment for women reporting violence. One-stop integrated service centres for victims that provide coordinated shelter, counselling, medical care, job training, and legal support under one roof based on the “Minnesota model” have been adopted throughout the Americas, in South Africa, and to some extent in other countries in Eastern Europe and South-East Asia. However, even progressive programs face funding problems, social inequalities of access to justice, rural-urban gaps, and women’s economic dependency (Brysk, 2018; Goel and Goodmark, 2015). Thus, targeted economic empowerment programs for women are important initiatives in fighting vulnerability to both public and private sphere gender-based violence (The World Bank and Sexual Violence Research Initiative, n.d.). While women’s labour force participation has mixed effects in different settings, recent reviews of targeted cash transfer programs suggest a positive effect in lowand middle-income countries (Buller, A. M., Peterman, A., Ranganathan, M., Bleile, A., Hidrobo, M., Heise, L, 2018). In middle-income South Africa, the IMAGE (Intervention with Microfinance for AIDS and Gender Equity) intervention program aims to prevent HIV, reduce domestic violence, and promote women’s economic and sexual well-being by facilitating access to microfinance (Désilets, 2019). Similarly, in Mexico, non-profit organisations such as Fondo Semillas seek to improve the status of women in the country by promoting women’s labour and labour rights (Fondo Semillas, n.d.). In a more developed East Asian context, Taiwan’s Garden of Hope runs shelters, legal services, employment workshops, and a “go the second-mile” program of job placement and social service follow-up programs for survivors (Garden of Hope, n.d.). Taiwan’s Garden of Hope organisation also provides an Asian regional model as the secretariat for the Asian Network of Women’s Shelters (ANWS), a regional alliance of anti-violence groups. Women’s movements and civil society protests in response to femicide have been an important factor in garnering attention and legislative response, notably in Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, India, and 35

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the Philippines (Brysk, 2018). Htun and Weldon (2012) show that feminist mobilisation has been the critical factor driving policy change on gender-based violence worldwide. While many feminist movements incorporate critiques of the global political economy, in 2020 protests against femicide specifically leveraged “women’s strikes” to demonstrate women’s essential role in the workforce and vulnerability to violence – in Mexico, Argentina, Turkey, and Poland (Margolis, 2020). The Mexican protest was known as #UnDiaSinNosotras – one day without us women – highlighting the interdependence of women’s labour in economic development and the importance of addressing gender-based violence to protect women workers.

Going Forward Femicide is a product of and contributor to global, national, and gender inequality situated in the global political economy. Violence emerges from the interaction between different forms of globalisation that generate insecurity and the social patterns and beliefs of a gender regime that assigns lesser value to women’s lives and disciplinary power to men. Femicide is surging precisely in the regions, societies, and sectors at the frontiers of globalisation where gender roles are most contested, and women’s emergence into the public sphere is most threatening. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated all of these trends and contributed further to the chronic economic disempowerment of women. Because femicide is costly for societies and impedes economic development, global institutions and national governments have crafted policy responses, although prevailing legal models do not fully address the socio-economic roots and context of gender-based violence. Economic empowerment programs for women represent a more holistic approach but are usually restricted to the micro-level. System-level change in the global political economy is the foundation for progress in all human rights and especially women’s struggle for freedom from femicide.

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Femicide and the Global Political Economy Cigdem, G. (2021). A look at femicide from economic perspective: An empirical test of the relationship between inflation & currency and femicide: The case of Turkey. Istanbul International Scientific Research Conference, January 8–10. Istanbul, Turkey. Désilets, L. (2019). Exploring the impacts of women’s economic empowerment initiatives on domestic violence: A summary report for Oxfam’s knowledge hub on violence against women and girls and gender-based violence. Oxfam Research Reports. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/620867/ rr-womens- economic-empowement-domestic-violence-120919-en.pdf;jsessionid=AA44F1B894BE8D 42D6FDF40EBDD5A265?sequence=2. Duvvury, N., Callan, A., Carney, P., & Raghavendra, S. (2013). Gender Equality and Development. Geneva: World Bank. Enloe, C. (2014). Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. European Network of Migrant Women [ENOMW]. (2019, Dec.). The killing of a woman because she is a woman: Femicide of migrant women. Retrieved from: www.migrantwomennetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/FEMICIDE-2019-FINAL-.pdf. Fondo Semillas. (n.d.). Work. Fondo Semillas. Retrieved from: https://semillas.org.mx/en/work/. Frias, S. (2021). Femicide and Feminicide in Mexico: Trends and Patterns in Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Regions. Feminist Criminology 1–21. DOI: 10.1177/15570851211029377. Gangoli, G. & Westmarland, N. (Eds.). (2011). International approaches to rape. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Garden of Hope. (n.d.). Our Work. Garden of Hope. Retrieved from: www.goh.org.tw/en/p1-about.asp. Gaspar de Alba, A. & Guzman, G. (eds.) 2010. Making A Killing: Femicide, Free Trade and La Frontera. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Godbole, T. (2020, October 28). Why India’s Dalit women are vulnerable to sexual violence. Deutsche Welle. Retrieved from: www.dw.com/en/why-indias-dalit-women-are-vulnerable-to-sexual-violence/a-5 5423556. Goel, R. & Goodmark, L. (2015). Comparative Perspectives on Gender Violence: Lessons from Efforts Worldwide. Oxford University Press. Haugen, G. & Boutros, V. (2014). The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence. Oxford University Press. Heidinger, L. (2021). Intimate partner violence: experiences of First Nations, Metis, and Inuit women in Canada, 2018. Statistics Canada. Retrieved from: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2021001/article/00007eng.htm#r.23 Heise, L. (1998). Violence Against Women: An Integrated, Ecological Framework. Violence Against Women, 4 (2), 262–290. DOI: 10.1177/1077801298004003002. Hincapie, S. (2019). Women’s Human Rights in the Armed Conflict in Mexico: Organized Crime, Collective Action, and State Responses. In: A. Anaya-Muñoz & B. Frey (Eds.), Mexico’s Human Rights Crisis (63–85). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hoeffler, A. & Fearon, J. (2014). Conflict and violence assessment paper: Benefits and costs of the conflict and violence targets for the post-2015 development agenda. Retrieved from: www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/ files/conflict_assessment_-_hoeffler_an d_fearon_0.pdf. Htun, M. & Weldon, L. (2012). The civic origins of progressive policy change: Combating violence against women in global perspective, 1975–2005. The American Political Science Review 106 (3), 548–69. DOI: 10.1017/S0003055412000226. Hudson, V. M., Bowen, D.L., & Nielsen, P.L. (2020) The First Political Order. Columbia University Press. International Development Research Centre [IDRC]. (2017). Gender and violence in cities. Retrieved from: www.idrc.ca/en/research-in-action/gender-and-violence-cities. Instituto Patrícia Galvão. (n.d.). Violência e racismo. Retrieved from: https://dossies.agenciapatriciagalvao.org.br/ violencia/violencias/violencia-e-racismo/ Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (Ipea). (2015, March 4). Pesquisa avalia a efetividade da Lei Maria da Penha. Ipea. Retrived from: www.ipea.gov.br/portal/index.php?option=com_content&id=24610. Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres. (2021). Alerta de Violencia de Genero contra las Mujeres. Government of Mexico. Retrieved from: www.gob.mx/inmujeres/es/acciones-y-programas/alerta-de-violencia-de-generocontra-las-mujeres-80739. Jucá, J. (2021, March 4). Por dia cinco mulheres foram vítimas de feminicídio em 2020, aponta estudo. CNN Brasil. Retrieved from: www.cnnbrasil.com.br/nacional/2021/03/04/por-dia-cinco-mulheres-foram-viti mas-de-feminicidio-em-2020-aponta-estudo. Kloppe-Santamaria, G. (2021, April 7). Impunity and Police Brutality Characterize Rise in Femicides in Mexico. IPI Global Observatory. Retrieved from: https://theglobalobservatory.org/2021/04/ impunity-police-brutality-femicides-mexico/

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Alison Brysk and Vitória Moreira Manjoo, R. (2012). Report of Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, A/HRC/20/16. Retrieved from: https://undocs.org/A/HRC/20/16. Margolis, Hillary. (2020, November 27). In a Year of Pandemic and Pain, Women Fight Back. Open Global Democracy. Retrieved from: www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/year-pandemic-and-pain-women-fight-backmass-protests/. McIlwaine, C. (2013). Urbanization and gender-based violence: exploring the paradoxes in the global South, Environment and Urbanization, 25 (1), 65–79. Morrison, A., Ellsberg, M., & Bott, S. (2007). Addressing gender-based violence: A critical review of interventions. The World Bank Research Observer, 22(1), 25–51. DOI: 10.1177/0956247813477359. Muñoz Boudet, A. M., Petesch, P., Turk, C. & Thumala, A. (2013). On Norms and Agency: Conversations about Gender Equality with Women and Men in 20 Countries. Washington, DC: World Bank. National Inquiry Into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls [National Inquiry]. (2019). Reclaiming power and place: The final report of the national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. Available from: www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/. Observatorio de Igualdad de Género. Comisión Económica Para América Latina y el Caribe [OIG]. (n.d.). Feminicidio. Comisión Económica para América Latina (CEPAL). Retrieved from: https://oig.cepal.org/es/ indicadores/feminicidio. Prieto-Carrón, M., Thomson, M & Macdonald, M. (2007). No more killings! Women respond to femicides in Central America. Gender & Development, 15(1), 25–40. DOI: 10.1080/1 3552070601178849. Santamaria, G. (2014). La otra cara de la violencia: Mujeres y delincuencia organizada en Mexico y Centroamerica. Foreign Affairs Latinoamerica 14 (1), 29–35. Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública [SESNSP]. (2021). Información sobre violencia contra las mujeres. Government of Mexico. Retrieved from: www.gob.mx/sesnsp/articulos/informacionsobre-violencia-contra-las-mujeres-incidencia-delictiva-y-llamadas-de-emergencia-9–1–1-febrero-2019. Sekalala, S., Forman, L., Habibi, R., & Meier, B. M. (2020). Health and human rights are inextricably linked in the COVID-19 response. BMJ global health, 5(9). Retrieved from: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ PMC7496572/pdf/bmjgh-2020-003359.pdf. DOI: 10.1136/bmjgh-2020–003359. Siddique, K. (2011). Domestic violence against women: cost to the nation. Retrieved from: www.carebangladesh.org/ publication/Publication_5421518.pdf. Simon-Kumar, R. (2019). Ethnic perspectives on family violence in Aotearoa New Zealand. New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse, Issue Paper 14, 1–34. Statistics Canada. (2021). Table 35-10-0156-01: Number, percentage and rate of homicide victims, by gender and Indigenous identity. Statistics Canada. Available from: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv. action?pid=3510015601&pickMembers%5B0%5D=1.1&pickMembers%5B1%5D=2.3&cubeTimeFrame. startYear=2015&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2020&referencePeriods=20150101%2C20200101. Taylor, R. & Jasinski, J. L. (2011). Femicide and the Feminist Perspective. Homicide Studies 15(4), 341–362. DOI: 10.1177/1088767911424541. Teresi, V. (2017). La violencia de género en Brasil: Un balance de la Ley “Maria da Penha” (2006–2016). Revista CIDOB D’Afers Internacionals (117), 101–122. DOI: 10.24241/rcai.2017.117.3.101. The WomanStats Project. (2019). Rate of Murder of Women [data file]. Available from: www.womanstats.org/ new/ The World Bank. (2019). Gini index (World Bank estimate). The World Bank Group. Retrieved from: https:// data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?name_desc=false&view=map. The World Bank. (2012). World development report: Gender equality and development. Retrieved from: https:// openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/4391. The World Bank & Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI). (n.d.) Economic Empowerment to Address Gender-Based Violence. Retrieved from: www.worldbank.org/en/programs/development-marketplaceinnovations-to-address-gender-based-violence. Tripp, A. M., Marx Ferree, M. & Ewig, C. (Eds.). (2013). Gender, violence, and human security: Critical feminist perspectives. New York, NY: New York University Press. True, J. (2012). The Political Economy of Violence Against Women. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. United Nations General Assembly [UNGA]. (2019). Violence against women migrant workers: Report of the Secretary-General. Retrieved from: https://undocs.org/en/A/74/235. United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime [UNODC]. (2019). Global Study of Homicide: Gender-related Killing of Women and Girls. Vienna. Retrieved from: www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/gsh/Booklet_5.pdf. United States Border Patrol [USBP]. (2019). U.S. Border Patrol Fiscal Year 2019 Sector Profile. Retrieved from: www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2020-Jan/U.S.%20Border%2 0Patrol%20Fiscal%20 Year%202019%20Sector%20Profile_0.pdf.

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Femicide and the Global Political Economy Walby, S., Armstrong, J., & Strid, S. (2012). Intersectionality: Multiple inequalities in social theory. Sociology, 46 (2), 224–40. DOI: 10.1177/0038038511416164. Westbrook, J. (2020). The migrant crisis. The New Humanitarian. Retrieved from: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/ news-feature/2020/02/27/Femicide-migration-Central-America-Mexico-US-Mexico-women-violence Whaley, R. B., Messner, S., & Veysey, B. (2013). The relationship between gender equality and rates of interand intra-sexual lethal violence: An exploration of functional form. Justice Quarterly, 30(4), 732–754. DOI: 10.1080/07418825.2011.624114. Widmer, M. & Pavesi, I. (2016). A Gendered Analysis of Violent Deaths. Small Arms Survey Research Notes, 63. Retrieved from: www.smallarmssurvey.org/resource/gendered-analysis-violent-deaths-research-note-63 World Economic Forum. (2021). Global Gender Gap Report. Retrieved from: http://www3.weforum.org/ docs/WEF_GGGR_2021.pdf?utm_campaign=wp_todays_worldview&utm_medium=email&utm_ source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_todayworld.

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4 UNDERSTANDING FEMICIDE USING A GLOBAL SOCIAL ECOLOGICAL MODEL Emma Fulu, Victoria Alondra, Xian Warner, Chay Brown, and Loksee Leung Introduction Violence against women (VAW), including femicide, is a global issue, influenced by global trends and patterns1. Migration, technological advances, the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, mining, and environmental destruction all have complex and contradictory impacts on VAW, including femicide (Adanu and Johnson, 2009; Fulu and Miedema, 2015). Recently, femicide in Indigenous communities, South Africa, and Latin America has gained global attention due to women’s movements and through social media (Starr, 2017; Garza, 2020). The integrated ecological model is arguably the most commonly used model for understanding VAW violence as being influenced by factors operating at individual, family/relationship, community, and societal/structural levels (Heise, 1998, 2011; Our Watch, 2021). Individual- and familylevel factors, such as gun ownership, mental health issues, alcohol and drug misuse, and leaving abusive relationships are some of the risk factors linked to the perpetration of and victimisation related to VAW (World Health Organization, 2012). However, there is significantly less literature on factors that may more often drive the murders of Indigenous women and gender-related mass killings, such as structural drivers of VAW. This chapter tries to fill that gap. Building upon the work of Fulu and Miedema (2015), which proposes a globalising the integrated ecological model for VAW, this chapter explores the linkages and relations among globalised phenomena and femicide. Using two case studies, the structural elements of VAW, including social movements, colonisation, capitalism, extremism, and backlash and their impacts on femicide are examined. The first of the two case studies is a personal and profound narrative on missing and murdered Indigenous women to highlight the intersection of femicide with colonisation, structural racism, and economic injustices. The second focuses on mass shootings to highlight the intersections between femicide and global politics, extremist movements, backlash, and the media.

Case Study 1: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Across many countries surviving the continuation of colonisation, such Australia, United States, Canada, and México, Blak, Black, and First Nations, 2SLGBTQI+ folks, and women are targeted, disbelieved, or murdered or made to disappear at higher rates than white women (Toulou, 2016; ANROWS, 2019). For example, First Nations women are murdered and go missing in the wake 40

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-6

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of US mining camps predominantly staffed by non–First Nations men(Harvard, 2015). México and Canada face epidemics of femicide and violence against Indigenous women (Toulou, 2016; Kubik and Bourassa, 2021; Frias, 2021; National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, 2019). Australia and other colonial nations report patterns of violence against First Nations women (Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, 2019; Olsen and Lovett, 2016; Our Watch, 2018; Kubik and Bourassa, 2021). This chapter focuses on cases studies from Canada and Australia through the lived experiences of the authors grounded in Indigenist feminist framework, where Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing are centred (Brown, 2021; Kite and Davy, 2015; Ball and Janyst, 2008). This chapter is, therefore, informed by positionality, lived experience, and opinion. In keeping with its Indigenist standpoint, this case study begins with a statement of positionality.

Positionality Identity is complex and fluid, firmly rooted and yet ever-flowing. Nehua nocota (Nahuatl for “my name is”) Victoria Alondra. I am a Mexican woman who would be commonly identified in México as mestiza, or mixed-race, of First Nations and European ancestry. Our national identity is complex. People who identify as mestizo do not usually identify as First Nations. In my experience, I have observed that Mexicans identify as First Nations2 if they speak one of the 350 native dialects, live in a traditional community, or have the political praxis to unpack and locate their identity. While growing up my mother told me we were not First Nations but rather mestizos. I lived under this identity until I reconnected with my uncle, my mother’s brother, after 17 lost years due to forced displacement from my homelands in Mexico. It wasn’t until I could politically deconstruct my roots and upbringing that could understand my proximity to racialised violence and femicide. My uncle’s role in my life, his guidance and ceremony, the teachings of my radical Mami, Abuela, and Tía and all the wisdom shared by my ineffably amazing peers and mentors helped integrate what I had believed to be incidental and individual experiences of violence. With time, my fragmented memories and grief transformed into an intersectional feminist framework in which I could understand and articulate my lived experiences as a non-white woman. I commit violence unto my relations3 and other communities when I identify as a queer mestiza/ First Nations woman without locating my light-skinned, Western (Canadian) passport, and cisgender privileges. If I adopt a colonial lens it homogenises and reduces our vast and varying experience into a one-dimensional story. Locating myself in my privileges rather than my oppressions allows me to use my privileges as a tool to dismantle colonialism, capitalism, racism, and the cis-heteropatriarchy. I am required to be accountable for my shortcomings and my blind spots as someone not living in a community and a privileged space.

Lived Experience For generations, the women in my immediate family have experienced gender-based violence in the forms of forced marriages, military violence, domestic violence (DV), kidnapping and attempted assassinations. Even in Canada, racialised violence continue to occur in my family and community. These stories are not mine to share, yet I have witnessed first-hand how this violence has caused irreparable trauma and loss within my family. When I was four years old, my family and I, fleeing right-wing political violence in México, moved to the lands of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Stó:lō, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations (Vancouver, Canada) as refugees. My parents are survivors of massacres and attempted assassinations. Shortly after our arrival, my mother and I separated from my father and my brother and moved to the Downtown East Side (DTES) of Vancouver, a culturally diverse yet impoverished neighbourhood at the time. 41

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We have lived with the effects of colonial violence daily because of our identities; long before the 2019 National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered [Canadian] Women (National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, 2019), my relations and I knew something was happening to First Nations women that was not happening to white women. In the early 2000s, I accompanied and saw how the police dismissed my friend’s and her mother’s desperate concerns and pleas for help to find a missing relation in the wake of the infamous serial killings by Robert Pickton (Butts, 2017). Pickton’s terror hung over the streets of the DTES like a dark cloud, and years later, we found out that the police never filed the report and the relation is still missing. On 9 December 2007, Pickton was convicted of second-degree murder in the deaths of six women, accused of first-degree murder in the deaths of 27 other women, and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole (Butts, 2017; Kubik and Bourassa, 2021). An overwhelming number of these victims were First Nations women. The high-profile Pickton case brought public attention to the problem of missing and murdered Indigenous women with calls from within the community to address the structural inequalities and root causes of the high rates of violence against First Nations women: poverty, disparate health outcomes with non-Indigenous populations, and inadequate housing, among others (Kubik and Bourassa, 2021). The lack of societal and police accountability in the Pickton case allowed more men, almost always from outside of our community, to continue terrorising women with little to no repercussions (National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, 2019). I remember envying the police responses to white women. Five times, I supported friends to file rape reports with the Vancouver Police Department and none resulted in an investigation; all my friends were First Nations or non-white. Reporting my personal experiences of violence to the police became a non-option across the span of my life. I grew up witnessing police violence against my community and, at 16, experienced explicit state-sanctioned violence for the first time. On a cold winter night, two white male police officers strip-searched me on the side of a busy public road, claiming I might be carrying heroin or crack-cocaine, and inserted their gloveless fingers into me. Finding nothing, they gave me what I later discovered to be a fake report and left me to put on my clothes, feeling violated and humiliated. I’ve heard hundreds of similar stories from non-white women across Canada, the US, México, and Australia. In my work with Aboriginal women, I have heard first-hand how in Mparntwe (Alice Springs) Australia, white police officers take intoxicated Black women out of town, strip them naked, and leave them to walk back home, undignified. These reports are not unique, as recent accounts have shown that incarcerated First Nations women in parts of Australia are strip-searched twice as much as non-Indigenous women (Collard 2021; Evans, 2021). VAW is inescapable. During my trip to México City in 2019, I observed men waiting for their partners, friends and relations, 2SLGBTQI+ folks and cis women outside train stations to escort them safely home. Initially, I was appalled, shocked, and saddened at the apparent chauvinism; however, the collective consciousness of assumed danger when walking unprotected as a non-cisgender woman was far greater than the more visible patriarchal culture. A few weeks into my trip, turning speculation and fear into a tangible experience, I witnessed a young woman getting kidnapped at a train station. I immediately phoned the police but was dismissed; a news report about the incident was published less than a week later. A few days before leaving México, I would find a drawer full of small papers at my aunt’s place, where my aunt wrote down what I was wearing, what time I left, what direction I took, a description of the taxi or bus I used, and even descriptions of the people around me one from each day I left the house. As First Nations women, our lived reality is that we live with targets on our backs, for nothing other than being First Nations and women; we constantly look over our shoulders because we could 42

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disappear at any time. It’s a haunting experience to look at the photos of thousands of missing and murdered women and imagine how seamlessly your face could fit alongside stolen relations. The power dynamics that create our realities affect us in the physical and metaphysical world. When we speak about our grief, what we describe is neither a metaphor nor an abstract nor an alternative reality that can be examined or consumed by external eyes. Institutional racism and policies built off the back of genocide (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997; Stanley et al., 2019; August, 2011) exacerbate the loss and violence (Williams et al., 2019; Rhodes, 2018); we carry this pain daily.

Case Study 2: Mass Shootings/Murders Targeting Women Driven by MRA/Incel Ideology Gendered Dimensions of Mass Shootings Mass shootings are, perhaps, one of the most unrecognised forms of femicide in the United States; perpetrators explicitly target women and victims are more likely to be women (Fox and Levin 1998; Issa 2019). Mass shootings are “a profoundly masculine act” (Madfis, 2014; Issa, 2019), almost exclusively carried out by white men; they are associated with hegemonic masculinity and hyperconformity to violent forms of masculinity and perceived challenges masculine identity (Kalish and Kimmel, 2010; Kimmel and Mahler, 2003; Silva et al., 2021; Ging, 2019; Scaptura and Boyle, 2020; Fox and Levin, 1998; Issa, 2019). The inability to attain ideals of hegemonic masculinity and the perceived emasculation associated with it in terms of financial success, social dominance, and sexual prowess often trigger mass shooters (Issa, 2019). Such “aggrieved entitlement” is a gendered emotion, with a moral obligation and entitlement to reclaim “lost manhood” (Kalish and Kimmel (2010: 454), a notion nurtured within pervasive patriarchal cultures reinforced by male peer support networks (Marganski, 2019: 10). The two largest waves of mass shootings in the US have coincided with periods of global economic recession and social changes have shifted gendered power dynamics and expanded women’s empowerment (Duwe, 2004; Silva et al., 2021). Although many mass shooters also have a prior history of DV perpetration (Geller, Booty and Crifasi, 2021; Scaptura and Boyle, 2020; Zeoli and Paruk, 2020; Everytown Research & Policy, 2019; Chang, 2018), this association is frequently overshadowed in the media and policies by a focus on mental health issues (Chang, 2018; Issa, 2019). Labelling (mass) shooters as “aberrations to the norm creates the illusion that VAW is not as pervasive a threat as it really is” Chang (2018: 500). This erasure of the gendered drivers of mass shootings keeps attention focused on individuals rather than the structural inequalities which produce them.

Extremist Movements and Misogynistic Mass Shootings The “manosphere” – an online network of various men’s interest groups – is a salient example of peer support networks with “aggrieved entitlement” (Kalish and Kimmel, 2010). The manosphere includes a variety of extremist backlash movements against women’s empowerment, including men’s rights activists (MRAs) and involuntary celibates (incels), as well as white supremacist movements, such as the alt-right (Ging, 2019; ADL, 2018; Hoffman, Ware, and Shapiro, 2020). While perpetration of VAW has been linked to a backlash against global women’s rights discourses (Fulu and Miedema, 2015), recent research suggests that the growth of the online anti-feminists and racist movements has increased connectivity between previously disparate groups, leading to more extreme misogynistic ideologies and a marked increase in targeted death threats against women (Ging, 2019). Evidence is clear that individuals with gender inequitable views are also more likely to hold racist and/or homophobic views (Webster et al., 2018). 43

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As online misogynistic backlash movements to feminism are on the rise globally, these are also increasingly being associated with mass shootings (and other mass killings, such as the Toronto van attack) (Scaptura and Boyle, 2020; Ging, 2019; Tomkinson, Harper and Attwell, 2020; Cecco, 2021). So far, self-identified incels have killed 50 people in mass shootings in the US (Hoffman, Ware, and Shapiro, 2020; Cecco 2021; Kelly, DiBranco and DeCook, 2021). Although the victims of these incel attacks are female and male, all shooters/attackers have been men and their rationalisations for the violence have been overt retribution against women (Byerly 2020; Kelly, DiBranco and DeCook, 2021). All the recently identified incel-affiliated attackers had a history of hostile online sexism (Scaptura and Boyle, 2020). The online manosphere and mainstream social media have been used by several mass shooters to deliver their pre-massacre misogynist messages. One-third of all recent mass shooters have a history of misogyny; abusing, harassing, or stalking women; and/or specifically targeting women in their massacres (Follman, 2019). Some shooters are hero-worshipped within the incel community, often encouraging each other to emulate their attacks (Hoffman, Ware, and Shapiro, 2020; Scaptura and Boyle, 2020). As the Atlanta spa shootings in 2021 illustrate (Lang, 2021), there are also increasing overlaps between anti-women, racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigration movements in the US, and the same anxiety that fuels the misogyny of many mass shooters also fuels their racism (ADL, 2018; Chang, 2018).

Most Mass Shootings are Familicide and Occur in the Home Familicides are mass shootings defined as single incident gun attacks having a death toll of four or more victims4 involving multiple family members (Fox and Levin, 1998; Jeltsen, 2015; Liem and Reichelmann, 2014). One study estimated that familicides, in which the primary target is the shooter’s current or former female intimate partner and then children, parents, or other family members, are committed an average of 23 times per year in the US (Liem and Reichelmann, 2014). Between 1999 and 2013, familicides were twice as frequent as public shootings and had increased over time (Krouse and Richardson, 2015). There is also evidence that the majority (70%) of mass shooting incidents occur at home (Jeltsen, 2015) and that fatality rates are almost 17% higher in DV-related mass shootings and those in which the shooter had a history of DV, compared to those not related to DV (Geller, Booty and Crifasi, 2021). However, the lack of a common definition (Booty et al., 2019) for mass shootings means that the link between mass shootings and femicide is often unnoticed. Many databases and academic studies and most media coverage on mass shootings do not include familicides and intimate partner homicides in their calculations because they occur in private spaces, despite mass murders of family members being much more common (Fox and Levin, 1998; Krouse and Richardson, 2015; Marganski, 2019). As Marganski (2019: 2) notes, this is problematic because [r]estricting mass murders to only those in the public setting distorts realities and ignores many victims of private killings while also overlooking the relevance of “private violence” to public events. Such exclusions further serves to obscure men’s perpetration of intimate partner violence (IPV) as a private family matter – a framing that contributes to the impunity for men’s violence and blaming women for the violence that men use against them (Marganski, 2019).

Implications for Theory, Policy, and Practice The two case studies illustrate some key structural and global factors that contribute to femicide. These factors intersect with other drivers at the individual, interpersonal, community, and societal 44

Understanding Femicide Using a Global Social Ecological Model

Model for understanding drivers of femicide 05 Global 1.Structural racism and colonization 2.Capitalism 3.COVID-19 pandemic and other emergencies 4.Backlash, extremism and fundamentalism

05 04

04 Society Perceptions of impurity Lack of measures redressing gender inequality War and confict settings Lack of women`s rights recognition Lack of access to justice

03 02

03 Community Celebration of aggressive Masculinity Loose social ties in neighbourhoods Devaluation of women's roles Isolation Lack of multi-agency coordination for victims' protection

01

02 Interpersonal Prior violence by/against partner Coercive control by/against partner Estrangement, divorce

01 Individual Witnessing domestic abuse in family of origin Low level of education Abuse of Alcohol and drugs Violating protection order Mental health problems

Figure 4.1  Adding global themes to a model for understanding drivers of femicide.

levels. We propose four key themes for integration into a global model for understanding femicide as illustrated in Figure 4.1.

Solutions The two case studies presented in this chapter illustrate femicide cannot be solved without abolishing capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal systems of power. IPV should be recognised as both a risk factor for mass shootings (Gonzalez-Guarda et al., 2018) and a category of mass shootings. Enforcing laws that restrict firearm purchase by men with a history of VAW and removing access to guns can likely reduce the number of intimate femicide mass shootings (Liem and Reichelmann, 2014; Zeoli and Paruk, 2020). All misogynistic-motivated mass shootings should be charged as terrorism or hate crimes, recognising they are driven by hegemonic masculinity terrorising and controlling women and other historically marginalised communities (Chang, 2018). The rise of extremist misogynistic movements, such as incels, MRAs and the alt-right, and their association with public mass shootings, may be an opportunity for femicide and other VAW – too often ignored as private issues – to be recognised as public threats (Tomkinson, Harper and Attwell, 2020). Addressing the deep misogyny behind extremist movements, and the complex intersections with racism, will require larger social norm changes, but greater monitoring – or official securitisation (Tomkinson, Harper and Attwell, 2020) – of online manosphere spaces could help stem the spread of these movements. An in-depth understanding of the interconnectedness of power systems, accurate data collection, truth-telling initiatives, First Nations and abolitionist frameworks towards accountability, grassroots community safety networks, and healing for perpetrators of violence are all examples of ways to work towards the reduction and elimination of femicide. Countering dominant society, some community-led organisations have taken a stand to address the epidemic of VAW to show the importance and influence of place-based social movements in 45

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both highlighting the problem and in prevention efforts. The Zapatistas, an Autonomous Mayan First Nations collective, have prioritised the safety of women and children in their communities by implementing the Zapatista Women’s Revolutionary Law (EZLN, 1994; Harijan, 2005). Cheran, a community in Michoacan, México, borrowing and adapting Zapatista ideology, have also led feminist social movements to address femicide and VAW (Elakbawy, 2018). Other groups, such as the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre in Vancouver (Women’s Coalition, 2014) and the Tangentyere Women’s Family Safety Group in Mpartnwe, are fiercely advocating for community reform to eliminate VAW (Brown, Homan, Simpson and Leung, 2021). As we have attempted in this chapter, survivors’ voices, families, and whole communities’ experiences must be centred and prioritised in meaningful ways. Individually we must examine our identities and privileges and begin accountability processes within ourselves and as a society to stop the global epidemic of femicide and VAW. This writing is dedicated in loving memory of the women lost to femicide. The grief lives on with us eternally. Until our spirits meet again.

Notes 1   This chapter uses “femicide” to refer to and include all gender-related killings of women and girls. 2 The authors of this chapter use the term “First Nations” to recognise the self-determination of Indigenous peoples throughout colonised lands and to acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded and that there can be many nations within a country. 3 The term “relations” is used to recognise and centre Indigenous ways of knowing, doing, and being and to show respect for Indigenous kinship systems and relationships, which are often intricate, complex, and founded in connection, as opposed to the Western sense of “relatives,” which focuses on blood relationships. 4  Some definitions of mass shootings state that there are three or more victims.

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5 FEMICIDE AND INTERSECTIONALITY1 Lorena Sosa

Introduction During the last 30 years, feminist scholars and activists have introduced the theoretical concepts of femicide and feminicide to pin down the systematic killing of women because of their gender. The resolve to name the systematic gender-related killings of women as femicide derives from the need to make women’s realities visible and relates to a socio-political process of recognition of the human rights of women and their right to a life free from violence (Carmona López et al., 2010). Defined as the misogynistic killing of women by men (Radford and Russell, 1992), the concept of femicide was revised in the early 2000s to highlight the structural and political nature of the murders, their connection with gender, and the inaction of the state (Lagarde, 2006). Other scholars have emphasised that, while femicide foregrounds the killing of women, it also calls attention to the progression of violent acts that end in death, such as emotional and psychological abuse, beatings, insults, torture, rape, prostitution, sexual harassment, child abuse, domestic violence, and institutional violence (Monárrez Fragoso, 2002). Different authors have nevertheless questioned the capacity of the theoretical notion of femicide and its judicial and legal adoption to recognise women’s diversity and the various structures of gender inequality that exist in different geopolitical arrangements (Bueno-Hansen, 2010; Cullen et al., 2021; Romero Figueroa, 2019; Sosa, 2017a). Incorporating intersectionality can help to fulfil such conceptual gaps since it seeks to reveal “the interaction between gender, race, and other social categories of distinction in individual lives, social practices, institutional arrangements, and cultural ideologies and the outcomes of these interactions in terms of power” (K. Davis, 2008: 68). By capturing the diversity of women, how power relations are constructed and sustained, and the impact of geopolitics on gender-based violence, intersectionality can strengthen the structural and systemic dimension that the theoretical concept of femicide attempts to bring to the fore. Multiple disciplines, including human rights law, increasingly recommend adopting an intersectional approach to address discrimination and violence against women (Sosa, 2017b). That said, the translation of the conceptualisations of femicide into legal terms, particularly concerning criminal law, reveals symbolic (whose systemic experience of violence is recognised and captured) and material tensions (how to identify and document those cases). Moreover, by highlighting women’s diversity and the structural causes of the violence, these tensions are sometimes intensified by the intersectional approach, revealing new challenges and the need to “expand” the concept and introduce these considerations. 50

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This chapter will first explore the theoretical commonalities and points of departure between the concept of femicide and intersectionality, followed by an overview of how femicide has been adopted in law, case law, and policies at the international, inter-American, and European levels. Finally, the chapter concludes with a brief reflection on the shortcomings and limitations that emerged from the analysis and possible strategies to incorporate an intersectional perspective in the analysis, criminalisation, and prevention of femicide.

Conceptualizing femicide in law There is no universally agreed-upon definition of femicide (Dawson and Carrigan, 2020; Weil et al., 2018). However, in general terms, femicide refers to the gender-related killings of women that remain in impunity due to the omission or negligence of state authorities to prevent and eradicate these crimes. As mentioned in the introduction, the theoretical concept of femicide attempts to make the systematic murder of women visible, highlighting the structural and systemic character of these deaths (Bandelli, 2017; Olivera, 2006; Radford and Russell, 1992), which result from the power imbalances and discriminations women suffer and the inaction or insufficient response of the state to prevent it (Lagarde, 2005, 2006; Lagarde and Roberts, 2018). The concept, thus, is dynamic, shaped by the interaction of other theoretical concepts key to feminist thought, such as patriarchy, gender, woman, inequality, and violence, which are in constant revision and transformation. Although these concepts have been often deployed (and developed) in history, sociology, literature, philosophy, anthropology, feminist studies, ethnic studies, and queer studies, they have also been discussed in legal studies and even incorporated into laws. However, incorporating those concepts into the legal structures often leads to inaccuracies and tensions with established legal principles. Regarding femicide, these relate to the principle of legality or legal certainty in criminal law. Difficulties are also observed in the way states have legislated on femicide and how courts interpret such legislation. However, incorporating femicide in law, particularly criminal law, can convey a strong message to society that such violence is unacceptable, counteracting impunity and gender biases that see violence as something natural and belonging to the private sphere. Looking at femicide from a criminal perspective, the “Latin American Model Protocol for the Investigation of Gender-Related Killings of Women” (the Protocol) (Bernal Sarmiento et al., 2014), developed by UN Women and UNODC, has provided a helpful overview of the main characteristics of the crime, guiding its domestic implementation and contributing to its definition. Similarly to the 2012 report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women (UN SRVAW) on femicide, the Protocol recognises two categories of femicide: an active or direct forms of femicide, which include intentional killing, armed-conflict-related killings, female infanticide, and killings based on the sexual orientation and gender identity of women, and passive or indirect forms of femicide, which include maternal mortality and other forms of deaths resulting from neglect disproportionally affecting women or as the result of harmful practices (Bernal Sarmiento et al., 2014: 14). In addition, the Protocol recognises different types of femicide: femicide where the perpetrator had a relationship or intimate connection with the victim (intimate femicide), femicide in which the perpetrator had no relationship with the victims, femicide committed because of the association/connection with the woman, and femicide derived from trafficking, smuggling, prostitution, or other stigmatised occupations (Bernal Sarmiento et al., 2014: 15–16). While these different types of femicide may overlap, they recognise the different contexts and domains in which they are perpetrated, suggesting different configurations of power imbalances and inequalities. The Protocol also recognises the existence of racist, lesbophobic, and transphobic femicide, acknowledging the relevance of categories, such as race, sexual orientation, and gender identity in the subordination and oppression of women, besides gender. It even explicitly points out “the intersectionality of discrimination” and the benefits of an “intersectional analysis” of the violence 51

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and victims and witness statements and testimonies (Bernal Sarmiento et al., 2014: 16, 43). This attention to intersectionality has allowed the Protocol to point out specific groups of women2 whose characteristics can influence the context and circumstances of the crime. The Protocol, however, fails to unleash the potential of intersectionality to understand and tackle femicides. This chapter argues that a conception of intersectionality that encourages an interdisciplinary examination of the interaction of gender and other social categories of distinction and highlights the individual, social, and institutional dimensions of inequality provides a more comprehensive understanding of femicides. The following section clarifies the main theoretical notions underlying intersectionality and highlights the main implications for analysing femicides.

Intersectionality Propositions and Their Potential for Cases of Femicide The term “intersectionality” was coined by Kimberlee Crenshaw to address the intersecting inequality affecting African American women due to the convergence of race and gender (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991). It draws from Black, Chicana, and lesbian feminist critiques of the idea that women share common, inherent attributes and experiences regardless of differences based on race, class, or sexual orientation (Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1983; Anzaldúa and Moraga, 1981; Combahee River Collective, 1983; A. Davis, 1981; Dill, 1983; Hill Collins, 1990; hooks, 1989, 2014; Kanuha, 1994; Lorde, 1984). Intersectionality explores how categories used to distinguish and differentiate between individuals and groups, such as gender, race, or class, are created and used, how they interact with each other, and how they interconnect to different systems of oppression. Intersectionality advances an overarching notion arguing that individuals (and groups) are affected by multiple systems of oppression based on various grounds of distinction rather than by discrimination based on one ground at a time. This notion reveals how multiple intersecting categories of difference, such as gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, and other social categories, shape inequalities women face and the complexity of the violence they suffer (Crenshaw, 1993). Therefore, gender-based violence, including femicide, cannot be investigated and analysed based on only one category of difference – gender – while precluding others because social categories intersect and interlock in multiple systems of oppression that collectively affect an individual’s life (Sokoloff, 2008). The murder of transgender women helps illustrate this since they require exploring how gender identity and expression in combination with gender shapes their experiences, determines their social positioning, and often results in violence. Conceptualisations of femicide that exclusively focus on gender result too limited to address such complexity, leading the trans movement to propose alternative conceptualisations such as “transfemicide” or “travesticide” (Radi and Sardá, 2016; Sosa, 2020). Two of the propositions of intersectionality challenge and simultaneously complement the underlying notions of the theoretical concept of femicide. Firstly, intersectionality highlights that we find diversity and contrasting characteristics within each category of difference. This internal diversity makes it impossible to refer to any category of difference, such as gender, or groups of individuals, such as women, as homogeneous. Moreover, portraying a group or category as homogenous tends to exclusively relate to the dominant elements of such group. The famous criticism that “all women are white and all Blacks are men” perfectly illustrates this by highlighting how the characteristics, needs, and desires of white, middle-class, heterosexual women have often been taken as representative of all women, while characteristics, needs, and desires of Black men have been often taken as representative of all African Americans (Hull et al., 1982). This proposition of intersectionality, thus, challenges established notions in law, such as listing vulnerable groups, which usually include migrant women, minority women, older women, or groups of women who face specific types of violence, since doing so pre-empts the examination of their subordinate position in the intersections of systems of power. Instead, intersectionality inquires how these groups are affected by the intersection of race, nationality, gender, age, class, and other categories. 52

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Intersectionality goes beyond the analysis of “intersecting identities” or women’s “qualitatively different experience” (Crenshaw, 1991). It highlights the socio-structural nature of inequalities by pointing out that social categories of distinction are shaped by social and cultural norms; the dynamics within each social, economic, and political system; and institutional arrangements. At the same time, these social, economic, cultural, and institutional structures interlock, creating a complex system that sustains (and perpetuates) inequality (Dempsey, 2007). Thus, “structural intersectionality” examines the dynamics and processes that create categories of difference leading to subordination (Crenshaw, 1991). Women, or any group, are “made vulnerable” by the structures and systems of power. The same dynamics are at play in contexts of violence. While recognising the specific barriers that some women may face due to their intersectional positioning, structural intersectionality highlights how these categories are created and interlock to prevent them from accessing justice, support services, or protection orders. This structural view is entirely in line with conceptualisations that argue that femicides are not incidental and sporadic cases but rather represent a structural situation and a social and cultural phenomenon deeply rooted in customs and mindsets (CEDAW, 2005, para. 159), based on a culture of violence and discrimination (González et al. [“Cotton Field”] vs Mexico, 2009, para. 133). Nevertheless, the principle of intersectionality, suggesting that the hierarchy between categories of difference cannot be determined a priori (Hancock, 2007: 67), challenges conceptualisations of femicide. While recognising that gender, race, and class intersect, one cannot assume that gender is per se predominant over race, class, or other categories, and vice versa. This idea questions the assumption of gender as the primary source of discrimination affecting all women and the definitions of femicide, such as “the systematic murder of women because of being women.” Instead, it calls for a comprehensive examination of the multiple systems of oppression and inequalities involved in a case and how these are at play in a specific context. For instance, how did globalisation, the emergence of the maquila industry, drugs, sex and human trafficking and smuggling “shape” gender, age, origin, ethnicity, and socio-economic class in Ciudad Juarez? How did these interactions impact women? Which women faced excessive exposure to violence? Intersectionality, thus, moves the analysis beyond patriarchy and incorporates other systems of oppression, such as racism, heteronormativity, cisnormativity, and class inequality. By introducing different dimensions of analysis, intersectionality addresses the layered nature of oppression and the complexity of inequality. It sheds light on the intricacy of femicide and leaves traditional onedimensional understandings behind. In sum, intersectionality suggests that certain groups of women at the intersection of two or more social categories of difference are made more vulnerable to (specific types of) violence and/or face specific difficulties. However, it demands an examination of the structural elements that place them in such a position and the recognition that some women may have different standings, experiences, or needs within the same group. Intersectionality also contributes to understanding femicide as the result of multiple forms of oppression, or in legal terms, multiple discriminations or inequalities. It confirms the connection of femicide with structural (institutional and social) inequalities, which can take place in multiple policy domains (family, workplace, educational institutions, and other realms). Furthermore, by acknowledging the interconnection of systems of oppression operating through multiple categories of distinction, intersectionality shifts the focus exclusively from the outcomes (discrimination, violence, or death) promoted by traditional legal approaches. Instead, it introduces a structural analysis of inequality that calls for long-lasting transformative changes in the dominant social and institutional arrangements, providing “a template for intervention” that “traverses the fields of thinking and acting” (Crenshaw, 2011: 232). Applied to femicide, intersectionality demands attention to prevention and protection from violence in addition to the investigation and punishment of the crimes. 53

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Approaches to Femicide in International Law, Case Law, and Policies Gradually, gender-based violence against women has entered the realm of international human rights law, both at the international and regional levels (Edwards, 2013; Sosa, 2017b). In the last decades, the notion of femicide has entered international human rights systems and domestic legislation. These developments suggest an institutional awareness of the violence, yet how have femicides been conceptualised, and what implications have these conceptualisations brought into practice? To what extent has intersectionality, being formally and institutionally recognised (Kantola and Nousiainen, 2009; Koldinská, 2009; Sosa, 2017b; Verloo, 2006), informed the interpretation of femicides and the initiatives to tackle them? This section will provide an overview of the different international and regional experiences with the formal recognition of femicide considering the intersectional approach discussed in the previous section. In 2013 and 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted two resolutions expressing concern about the gender-related killing of women and girls and drawing attention to “the alarming proportions reached by this phenomenon in all its different manifestations” (Taking Action against Gender-Related Killing of Women and Girls, 2013; Taking Action against Gender-Related Killing of Women and Girls, 2015). They also recognised the efforts made by states to address gender-related killings, including passing national legislation incorporating the concept of femicide or feminicide. The resolutions resonate with the theoretical conceptualisations of femicide, formally recognising the gender-based nature of the killings and highlighting the need to eliminate impunity. They also recommend “adopting an integrated, multidisciplinary and gender-sensitive approach to the prevention, investigation, prosecution and punishment of gender-related killing of women and girls” (Taking Action against Gender-Related Killing of Women and Girls, 2015, para. 41.ff), and more specifically, they call for the implementation of the Protocol. They highlight the importance “to identify groups at high risk” (Taking Action against Gender-Related Killing of Women and Girls, 2015: 8) and mention practices of disaggregated data collection (Taking Action against GenderRelated Killing of Women and Girls, 2015: 9). The resolutions point to “aboriginal females in Canada” or specific crimes, such as honour-related and dowry-related killings and organised crime. However, the resolutions do not adopt a fully intersectional approach since there is no recognition of what categories intersect to make women vulnerable to violence and how these result in such vulnerability. Femicide has also become one of the thematic priorities of the UN SRVAW. Mandate holder Rashida Manjoo (2009–2015) focused on the conceptualisation of femicide, its prevalence, and the global trends and initiatives. She underlined the same conceptual elements discussed in the introduction: the systemic nature of the violence, the state’s role either in perpetrating or condoning the violence, the existence of impunity, and the fact that death is the culmination of a continuum of violence against women. She recognised direct and indirect femicide, and similar to the Protocol proposed an ecological model to understand the discriminatory nature of femicides that entails multiple intersecting and concentric circles (structural, institutional, interpersonal, and individual) (United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women Its Causes and Consequences, 2012, para. 17). She proposed adopting an intersectional approach to the gender-related killing of women, highlighting how important it is to “disaggregate data by factors such as race, ethnicity, education, sexual orientation and economic status, among others, to establish systemic patterns that exacerbate existing vulnerabilities” (United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women Its Causes and Consequences, 2012, para. 18). “The blindness to structural inequalities and the complex intersecting relations of power in the public and private sphere,” she argued, are main gaps in states’ preventive programmes (United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women Its Causes and Consequences, 2012, para. 103).

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Manjoo’s successor, Dubravka Šimonović (2015–2021), also expressed concern about the increased prevalence of gender-related killings of women. Mindful that to prevent gender-based violence against women, the documentation of violence becomes crucial, she issued a report on femicide emphasising data collection and the establishment of crime observatories (United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women Its Causes and Consequences, 2016). She has then called annually on states, public institutions, and civil society to submit information on legislative models or operational guides to investigate gender-related killings of women, good practices in data collection, and landmark jurisprudence.3 The 2016 report of the special rapporteur builds from the International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (ICCSP), in which femicide falls under the classification of intentional homicide – namely, unlawful death inflicted upon a person with the intent to cause death or severe injury – indirectly reducing the focus to direct femicides. The ICCSP classifies the killings concerning the situational context (which would still distinguish between intimate and non-intimate femicide), the relationship between victim and perpetrator, and the killing mechanism (modus operandi). The report notes other relevant aspects of victims to track, such as whether she was a human rights defender, homeless, indigenous or her sexual orientation (United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women Its Causes and Consequences, 2016, para. 59). The intersectional approach, however, is not fully transposed to the data collection process, since Šimonović calls for the disaggregated collection of victims’ data only by their age and ethnicity (in addition to gender) and the gender of the perpetrators (United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women Its Causes and Consequences, 2016, para. 29). However, collecting data on victims and perpetrators disaggregated by categories, such as nationality and residence status, sexual orientation and gender identity, occupation, place of residence, and other elements indicating their social positioning, could significantly contribute towards an intersectional view and response to femicide. In the Americas, the notion of femicide has been instrumental in bringing attention to the extreme levels of violence affecting women (García-Del Moral, 2016; Gonzalez and Deus, 2019; Pinos and Ávila, 2012; Toledo Vásquez, 2019). As a result, the Organization of American States (OAS) elaborated a normative and policy framework on femicide, mainly through the Committee of Experts monitoring the implementation of the Belém do Pará Convention (MESECVI), the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR), and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). The Declaration on Femicide (Follow-up Mechanism to the Belém do Pará Convention (MESECVI), 2008), the Model Law on Femicides (Follow-up Mechanism to the Belém do Pará Convention (MESECVI), 2018), and the Latin American Protocol conform to the conceptualisation of femicide described in the introduction. Moreover, the IACtHR found violations to the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence Against Women (Belem do Pará Convention) in four landmark cases addressing femicide: González et al. [“Cotton Field”] vs Mexico, 2009; Veliz Franco et al. vs Guatemala, 2014; Velasquez Paiz et al. vs Guatemala, 2015; Vicky Hernández v. Honduras, 2021. The Cotton Field case introduced the notion of femicide to address the systematic murder of women in Ciudad Juárez, who were young, underprivileged, working-class women – often employed in the maquila – students or migrants (González et al. [“Cotton Field”] vs Mexico, 2009, para. 116). In Veliz Franco and Velázques Paiz, the Guatemalan context indicated a combination of gender and class inequalities, made evident by the contrasting social background of the victims. In Vicky Hernandez, concerning the murder of a trans woman sex worker living with HIV and human rights defender, the court considered that she was in “a particularly vulnerable situation where numerous factors of discrimination converged intersectionally” (Vicky Hernández v. Honduras, 2021, para. 135).

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The court held that these cases revealed an ineffective institutional response to VAW, which confirmed the gender stereotyping attitudes of the authorities, encouraged impunity, and facilitated the repetition of acts of violence (González et al. [“Cotton Field”] vs Mexico, 2009, para. 401–402; Veliz Franco et al. vs Guatemala, 2014, para. 45–50; Velasquez Paiz et al. vs Guatemala, 2015, para. 180). The court’s anti-stereotyping approach, however, focused on gender stereotyping alone, without considering assumptions based on the victims’ class, age, or origin, failing to incorporate an intersectional approach (Sosa, 2017a). Moreover, despite the indications of the greater danger for specific groups of women, the court focused on the disproportionality of women victims without looking at the overrepresentation of some women. This is a limitation in the court’s reasoning since although it recommends that states improve data collection by disaggregating data based on gender, it has not included other categories that may reveal other patterns of discrimination and inequality, despite recognising their relevance. That said, the IACtHR examined the social context of the violence in these cases to discover the existing patterns of inequalities and discrimination and the extent to which the characteristics of the victims fell under those patterns. This attention to context offers great potential for a more comprehensive and intersectional understanding of femicides. Femicide is also getting more attention in Europe. Although the Council of Europe (CoE) Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention) has not explicitly referred to femicide, and GREVIO, the body monitoring the implementation of the Istanbul Convention, is still to provide a conceptual elaboration of femicide, several states have included information on the measures adopted to tackle femicide in their reporting procedure. GREVIO commends member states’ efforts to provide information on the issue (Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO), 2019b, p. 30) and invites them to comply with the recommendations of the UN SRVAW (Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO), 2019a, para. 236, 2020, para. 195). Similarly, the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) encourages and supports the member states in collecting data regarding femicide (European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), 2017b, 2017a). EIGE recognises the connection of the killings with gender inequality and the role of the state in perpetrating or tolerating the violence while concerning itself with intimate and non-intimate forms of femicide (European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), 2017a, p. 17). However, it proposes a working definition for data collection that reduces femicide to intimate femicide because it appears “most feasible in terms of measurability” (European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), 2017a, p. 28). No references are made to the disaggregation of data based on other social categories of distinction besides sex, thus not contributing to an intersectional examination of femicides. Despite these developments at the institutional level, judicial recognition of femicides is still pending in Europe. While the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) recognised the intentional killing of women as a form of gender discrimination in Opuz v. Turkey (Opuz v. Turkey, 2009), it has not incorporated the terminology of femicide. In fact, the recognition of violence against women as a form of gender discrimination largely depends on the availability of reports providing a prima facie indication that such violence affects mainly women and that the general attitudes of the local authorities create a climate conducive to it (Opuz v. Turkey, 2009; Valiulienė v. Lithuania, 2013; Talpis v. Italy, 2017; Volodina v. Rusia, 2019; Kurt v Austria, 2021; Tkhelidze v. Georgia, 2021). Moreover, the ECtHR hardly uses the term “structural discrimination” or refers to intersectionality, disregarding the impact that intersecting categories can have in cases of violence (Kurt v. Austria, 2021, dissenting opinion Judge Elósegui, para. 8).

Conclusions This chapter identified three main elements characterising the definitions of femicide proposed by feminist movements and scholars. The first one is the systematic nature of the killings of women in a social and institutional context of gender inequality. Secondly, femicide definitions highlight the 56

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responsibility of the state in perpetrating, tolerating, or fostering impunity of these killings. The understanding of femicide as the culmination of a continuum of violence is the final distinctive element. The chapter argues that adopting an intersectional approach to femicide can strengthen these constitutive elements of the concept of femicide by highlighting structural inequalities and the power dynamics at play in the different settings where femicides occur. It also broadens the scope to other inequalities affecting women based on other social categories of distinction, such as race, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, or disability. All legal frameworks discussed have acknowledged the systemic nature of the killings and states’ responsibility. However, a short review of international and regional initiatives reveals a contrast between the understandings and approaches to femicide in these systems, certainly from an intersectional perspective. On the one hand, European initiatives fail to reflect an intersectional approach by focusing exclusively on gender and reducing working definitions to intimate femicide. On the other hand, the inter-American system has formally encouraged an intersectional approach to femicides but shows shortcomings in practice. Lastly, the United Nations’ interest in femicide is led by the UN SRVAW, with a strong emphasis on data collection. There are several technical and theoretical shortcomings in these normative and policy frameworks. While recognising the importance of prevention, these frameworks emphasise criminalisation and data collection. This forcefully shifts the focus towards individual criminal responsibility and away from the responsibility of the state. Only transformative measures, including prevention, can tackle the systemic nature of the killings. In doing so, an intersectional approach can help highlight social, institutional, and structural arrangements (stereotypes and inequalities) that lead to violence and examine how racism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia connect and contribute to it. Case law suggests that attention to context can promote such transformative intersectional understanding of violence. In addition, collecting data with an intersectional perspective by including multiple categories of difference in addition to gender would better capture the diversity of victims. This would not only show the relevance of intersecting categories on victims’ (lack of) access to justice, services, or protection but also indicate how they interact to make women vulnerable. By comparing the legal and policy practice at different levels, the chapter shows that attempts to connect the conceptualisations of femicide and intersectionality call for conversations across regional systems. Hopefully, this edited volume will contribute to creating theoretical and methodological approximations.

Notes 1 The research for this publication was financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) as part of the project Proud and Safe (project number 016.VENI.197.218/6838). 2 The protocol identifies girls, older women, women with disabilities, Indigenous women, trans women, and migrant women. 3 Only 25 states responded to the 2020 call (Algeria, Andorra, Argentina, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Cyprus, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden), as well as 14 public entities and eight civil society organisations.

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6 FEMICIDE/FEMINICIDE AND COLONIALISM Paulina García-Del Moral, Dolores Figueroa Romero, Patricia Torres Sandoval, and Laura Hernández Pérez

Introduction What is the relationship between femicide/feminicide and colonialism? And what are its implications for feminist activism and scholarship? In this chapter, we argue for a transnational intersectional approach for answering these questions. Colonial processes are transnational (Glenn, 2015; Lugones, 2007; Patil, 2018), as are the various activisms that combat femicide/feminicide (B. Anderson et al., 2010; ECMIA, 2013; Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010; García-Del Moral, 2016; Hernández Castillo, 2016; Kuokkanen, 2012; Nagy, 2016). As these activisms gain momentum, it is important for scholars and activists to collaborate in producing knowledge on femicide/feminicide to decolonise it. A transnational approach “from below” centres the voices and experiences of racialised and Indigenous women in the Global South and North (Alexander and Mohanty, 2010; Stephen and Speed, 2021; Grewal and Kaplan, 1994; Sieder, 2021). It reveals the insidiousness of colonial violence in their lives, their interactions with the state and other national or supranational institutions, their relationship to feminisms, and their efforts to resist it (ECMIA, 2013; Figueroa Romero and De Marinis, 2020; Guimont et al., 2020; Hernández Castillo, 2016; Jiménez-Estrada et al., 2020; Kuokkanen, 2019; Sieder, 2017, 2021). We understand colonialism as a structure that has operated transnationally in various modalities through violent political, economic, cultural, and epistemic projects linked to the making of empires and nation-states (Glenn, 2015; Lugones, 2007; Quijano, 2007). The resulting gendered and racial hierarchies manifest differently in specific domestic or local contexts and yet are interconnected (Patil, 2018). These hierarchies rely on the imposition of Western forms of cognitive, symbolic, and social power as superior over other forms of life and knowledge, constructing colonised cultures and peoples as uncivilised and disposable (Cumes, 2014; Lugones, 2007; Nahuelpán, 2013; Quijano, 2007). This conceptualisation of colonialism unveils some of the articulations of different forms of racial and gendered oppression that must be dismantled as the basis for cross-border alliances and solidarities in the struggle against femicide/feminicide. We take the view that decolonisation is “a necessary goal to achieve gender and racial justice” (Glenn, 2015, 52) and thus reject an emphasis on gender as the sole determinant of violence against women. We adopt instead an intersectional perspective that views femicide/feminicide as the outcome of multiple, mutually constitutive and reinforcing violences that encompass interpersonal acts, as well as institutional and structural processes and systemic inequalities often rooted in colonial legacies (García-Del Moral, 2018; Figueroa Romero, 2019; Figueroa Romero and De Marinis, 2020; Menjívar and Walsh, 2017). 60

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-8

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This chapter reviews the scholarship on femicide in Palestine, feminicide and Indigenous women in Mexico, and missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) as genocide in Canada to examine the relationship between colonialism and the killing of racialised and Indigenous women and girls. The chapter also points to the limits of the concepts of femicide/feminicide when they fail to consider colonialism and its attendant violence seriously. We conclude by discussing the potential that a transnational intersectional approach “from below” that centres Indigenous women’s voices of resistance has for decolonising feminist activism and scholarship on femicide/feminicide.

Femicide and Colonialism in Palestine Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s (2002, 2003, 2004; Shalhoub-Kevorkian and Daher-Nashif, 2013) research into the honour-related killing of Palestinian women represents some of the earliest work exploring the relationship between femicide and colonialism. For Shalhoub-Kevorkian, femicide constitutes not only “the murder of girls or women for allegedly committing ‘crimes of family honour’ ” (2002: 577) but also the process leading to the killing itself (2003: 581). Femicide amounts to Palestinian women’s “death-in-life” or “inability to live” on account of their “perpetual fear” of being killed under the justification of honour (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2003: 581). Colonialism is constitutive of the process that scaffolds women’s fear and the patriarchal notions of honour that underlie it. Although Palestinians living in the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip, or within Israel have different experiences of colonisation, Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2002, 2003, 2004; Shalhoub-Kevorkian and Daher-Nashif, 2013) argues that the relationship between femicide and colonialism manifests in the intersection of Israeli political control and patriarchal socio-cultural dynamics. In the context of the Israeli occupation, spatial segregation, the denial of political rights, poverty, and the underdeveloped infrastructure of social services have strengthened the patriarchal authority of the family and of tribal and clan heads (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2002, 2003). Consequently, even when Palestinian women and girls participate in resisting the occupiers, men exercise social control over their bodies and sexuality in ways that legitimise acts of violence as “protective behaviour rather than criminal actions” (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2002: 598). This social control is naturalised as a means of preserving the “purity” and “honour” of women and girls because they symbolise the nation, and their personal sexuality and morality are considered forms of hamula, or clan property (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2002, 579; Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2003, 583). Moreover, the historical-cultural association of women’s bodies with “honour” carries “overtones of resistance” given the efforts of Western colonisers of Arab countries to render “the colonised culture inferior by co-opting the issue of women” (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2003, 591). Femicides, as “honour crimes,” are “linked to national honour in the context of a nationalist struggle” (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2003, 583). Women and girls’ fear of being killed is related to the lack of access to help if they are abused and to the institutionalisation of impunity through victim-blaming in the Palestinian and Israeli criminal justice systems. Women and girls know they will be blamed for their abuse if they disclose their experience (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2003). Since being perceived as “impure” is akin to a “death sentence,” disclosure carries the risk of being killed (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2003). Additionally, the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC), Equality Now, and the Palestinian NGO Against Domestic Violence (Al Muntada) (2017, para. 36) document that “Even when women do seek assistance, honour will so often prevent them being treated fairly. . . . In Palestinian culture and in the legislation that governs it, victim-blaming persists.” Examples of victim-blaming abound in the Jordanian Penal Code No. 16 of 1960, which is applied in the West Bank as part of an amalgamation of laws that govern it and the legacy of Palestine’s history of colonisation (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2002). For example, until it was repealed by presidential decree in 2011, Article 340 excused men who killed their female relatives if they caught 61

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them engaging in adultery or extramarital sex (WCLAC et al., 2017). While Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2002, 586) found that Article 340 was seldom used, when tried under Articles 326 (intentional murder) or 328 (premeditated murder), men who killed their female relatives were still able to benefit from reduced punishments due to a “mitigating excuse” if there was “proof of provocation,” or an “extenuating circumstance” (WCLAC et al., 2017). Until 2014 men could argue under Article 98 that the killing was the result of a “fit of fury,” and until 2018, judges could reduce a sentence by half if the victim’s family waived its right to seek prosecution (WCLAC et al., 2017). The message sent was that families “forgave the perpetrator for his crime of femicide, thus there was no need for further punishment, [signalling] that society was no longer obligated to acknowledge the occurrence of a crime” (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2002, 590). In cases of femicide, impunity becomes legally authorised. For Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2002), this “confused legal policy” to address crimes of femicide can be partly attributed to Palestinians’ lack of full control over their legal system due to colonisation. Yet Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2002) also identifies the Palestinian Authority’s investment in gendered nationalist discourses as a barrier to eliminating gender discrimination in the criminal justice system. Meanwhile, for Palestinians living in Israel, law and the criminal justice system have been instruments of colonisation. Orientalist discourses that associate honour-related violence with “Arab culture” and position it as inferior to “civilised” Israeli culture permeate the administration of justice (Shalhoub-Kevorkian and Daher-Nashif, 2013, 297). As such, police fail to investigate when death threats against women and girls are reported. Concerns over “security” further tend to obfuscate police officers’ response to these threats (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2004). When murders do take place, police characterise them as “cultural” and private family matters that are outside their purview. And as in the West Bank, murderers are often pardoned or able to enter plea bargains (Shalhoub Kevorkian and Daher-Nashif, 2013). In sum, “femicide constitutes one of the modalities of power in colonised areas” (ShalhoubKevorkian and Daher-Nashif, 2013, 308). The process leading to the killing of women and girls, including their fear, cannot be reduced to interpersonal violence. The interplay between patriarchal socio-cultural dynamics and colonial domination structures both Palestinians’ internalised understandings of the relationship between honour, women’s bodies and the nation, and the institutional response to violence against women and girls, whether within or outside of Israel. The implications of this understanding of femicide are not without significance; women and girls are further silenced when the production of academic knowledge follows “masculine structures of analysis” that consider gender in a limited way or when it relies on Orientalist discourses to interpret their experiences (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2003, 586).

Feminicide, Intersectionality, and Colonialism from the Perspective of Indigenous Women in Mexico In Mexico, the murder of women for “gender reasons” in a generalised climate of social and legal impunity is known as feminicide (feminicidio) (Lagarde, 2010; Monárrez, 2010; Castañeda, 2016). Mexican feminist activists and scholars in the 1990s coined this term to denounce the systemic killings of young female workers in northern border cities marked by neoliberal capitalism, like Ciudad Juárez (Monárrez, 2010; Wright, 2011). Through feminist advocacy at the national and transnational levels, this extreme form of gender violence and the complicity of the state in it eventually became visible as a social and legal problem affecting all Mexican women (Castañeda, 2016; García-Del Moral, 2016). An understanding of feminicide as a “state crime” and a violation of women’s human rights thus emerged (Lagarde, 2010). Despite the remarkable legacy of the Mexican feminist struggle against feminicide on women’s access to justice, its genealogy has been inspired by a universalist perspective of women and violence 62

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against them (Figueroa Romero, 2019; Del Jurado and Don Juan Pérez, 2021). Though there is an emphasis on the intersection of gender and class in early analyses of feminicide, there has been a failure to incorporate a focus on colonialism and the systemic racism/discrimination that shape the experiences of violence of Indigenous women and their peoples. Yet as Indigenous women have argued, considering the ongoing coloniality of violence is necessary to dismantle the epistemic blindness hindering the recognition of the vulnerability that marks the life cycles of poor, racialised, and rural Indigenous women (Cumes, 2014; ECMIA, 2013). This epistemic blindness further undergirds feminist activists and scholars’ failure to question the institutional tolerance to Indigenous women’s suffering (Cumes, 2014; Lugones, 2007; Mora, 2017). To dismantle these barriers, it is necessary to decolonise the concepts with which we work, like gender violence and feminicide, and to redefine them from the perspective and lived experience of Indigenous and racialised women as social actors (Frías, 2021; Méndez Torres, 2009). Recent collaborative work between Indigenous women and feminist anthropologists has begun to remedy this failure (see De Marinis, 2020; Del Jurado and Don Juan Pérez, 2021; JiménezEstrada et al., 2020; Sierra and Figueroa Romero, 2020; Sieder, 2021). This work has revealed how feminicidal violence against Indigenous women and girls is entwined with other forms of violence, like violence against Indigenous territories and peoples, racist and discriminatory constructions of Indigenous identities in relation to the Spanish-speaking mestizo society, and the upsurge of violence accompanying the war on drugs. These forms of violence are linked both to the Spanish colonisation of the Americas in the 16th century, which forcibly transformed Indigenous peoples’ ways of life, cosmovision, and social orders through the physical and epistemic imposition of Western reason, and to the making of the Mexican nation-state following the 1810 War of Independence (Gil, 2019). State violence against Indigenous peoples has been legitimised by portraying them as obstacles to national development, thus requiring the assimilation, transformation, and/or disappearance of their traditional ways of life, as well as the dispossession from their lands (Mora, 2021). In this context of threats to both Indigenous lives and Indigenous collectivity, Indigenous women have hence argued that it is multiple forms of violence that affect them, not just gender violence. Indigenous women have identified their communities and the attendant collectivity, communal fabric, and culture as the basis of their resistance (Mora, 2017; Tzul Tzul, 2019). The defence of their life in the community is paramount in their conceptualisations of social and gender justice since it counters the racist stereotypes marshalled by state institutions. These stereotypes assume that they are always victimised by men in their communities and/or that they are trapped in their traditional culture, which prevents them from accessing the social benefits of the state on an equal level (Herr, 2020). Indigenous women’s resistance is also exemplified in the political platform that Zapatista women and other Indigenous women’s collectives organised as the Coordinadora Nacional de Mujeres Indígenas (CONAMI) (National Coordination of Indigenous Women) have developed to claim for women the right to a life free of violence in their communities and in their interactions with state institutions. The Ley Revolucionaria de Mujeres Indígenas (Indigenous Women’s Revolutionary Law) and the Agenda Política de Mujeres Indígenas de México (Mexican Indigenous Women’s Political Agenda) (CONAMI, 2012) enshrine the principles for preventing and denouncing violences (De Marinis, 2020). These instruments reflect a complex discourse of rights that is directed at the state and at the authorities of their peoples to reveal the systemic nature of patriarchal domination (Sánchez Néstor, 2005). They hence challenge the state’s attempts to use women’s human rights discourses to intervene in spaces of Indigenous self-determination and self-government (Sierra, 2004). Against this background, Indigenous women have raised the following questions: How do Indigenous women position themselves vis-à-vis feminicide in Mexico? How have they approached the feminicides of Indigenous women? What are the analytical perspectives that they use to measure and talk about the violences against Indigenous women in a more inclusive and interconnected way? In 63

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the remainder of this section, we address these questions from the perspective of the CONAMI’s young leaders and their political reflections on feminicide. The CONAMI embraced the theme of gender violence in the aftermath of the war against drug cartels and its relationship with the precarisation of the peasant economy (Del Jurado and Don Juan Pérez, 2021). Previously, Indigenous women did not talk about feminicide; female elders had focused their energies on rendering visible the “other” violences that affected them. Moreover, there is no translation of feminicide as a Western concept in Indigenous languages, although there are different ways to name murder or death. Therefore, the new generations have been tasked with defining and interpreting the concept of feminicide so that it reflects their intersectional realities (Crenshaw, 1991). They have done so creatively and with new technological resources available to them. Exemplifying these efforts is the initiative Emergencia Comunitaria de Género (ECG), or Community Gender Emergency. The ECG operates as a virtual space on Facebook that allows the compañeras of the CONAMI and its affiliates to post news articles and family reports to document and raise awareness of the escalation of violence against Indigenous women in the country. It thus constitutes a tool for digital political activism. The ECG has a two-fold aim. First, it collects local and regional news articles on violence against Indigenous women and peoples to gather information from diverse territories. Second, it responds to the need to document gender violence and feminicide locally. This innovative platform for digital political activism relies on creative, artisanal, and collaborative methodologies that are adapted to the resources that the compañeras have. The CONAMI’s organisation as an umbrella network facilitates this exercise through resource and information exchange among regional coordinators. Through the preliminary systematisation of data, the ECG has shed light on the different violences that Indigenous women experience: physical, psychological, sexual, and patrimonial. The ECG further situates these experiences alongside reports of collective violence against Indigenous peoples, like land and territorial dispossession, the presence of paramilitaries and organised crime in Indigenous zones, the theft of knowledge and epistemic extractivism, as well as the criminalisation of defenders of the human rights of women and Indigenous peoples. This exercise allows for a better understanding of the contexts in which the feminicides of Indigenous women and girls take place. This work’s methodological, ethical, and political challenges are large, but the collaboration with allied feminist academics has allowed for continuous monitoring of the data collection process. This collaboration can pave the way for future comparative analyses and for perfecting this digital tool in the service of the fight against the feminicidal and other violences affecting Indigenous and racialised women in Mexico. In short, centring the intersectional experiences and interpretations of the violences affecting Indigenous women and girls reveal epistemic blind spots in the conceptualisation and mobilisation of feminicide as a vocabulary feminist resistance. These blind spots are tied to the failure to recognise the historical role that colonialism and systemic racism have played in structuring the lives of Indigenous women and girls. Indigenous women’s resistance to the state and its failed institutional response to the violences that traverse their lives and to gender inequality within their communities should be the basis for more ethical and fruitful alliances with feminist scholars invested in combating femicide/feminicide.

Femicide/Feminicide, Genocide, and Colonialism in Canada Despite a lack of clarity as to the precise numbers of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG), this is a widespread problem in Canada. In fact, the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) estimated that this number could be as high as 4,000 (Tasker, 2016). This staggering figure exists in a context in which Indigenous women and girls are 12 times more likely to be murdered or go missing than non-Indigenous women and 16 times more so than white women (Buller et al., 2019, 55). 64

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Indigenous women, activists, and scholars have argued that ongoing settler-colonial relations are the root cause of MMIWG (K. Anderson, Campbell, and Belcourt, 2018; Green, 2017; LavellHarvard and Brant, 2016; Lucchesi, 2019). Yet though colonialism has been at the centre of analyses of MMIWG, references to these cases as femicides are uncommon (but see B. Anderson et al., 2010; CFOJA, 2020; Dawson, 2016). To date, only García-Del Moral (2018) has used the concept of feminicide to refer to these murders from an intersectional and decolonial perspective. Instead of using the terms “femicide” or “feminicide,” Indigenous women, activists, and scholars have argued that MMIWG constitutes genocide. This conceptualisation emerges from an understanding of settler colonialism as “a dominant system of oppression” (Bourgeois, 2018) that has organised Canadian society by upholding intersecting racial and gendered hierarchies, often through violence against Indigenous bodies (Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill, 2013; Kuokkanen, 2008; Million, 2013; Smith, 2005). The historical violent dispossession of Indigenous peoples of their land by British and French settlers and the creation of a socio-legal order based on racist and heteropatriarchal ideologies underpin this system. In this context, violence against Indigenous women and girls “is not simply a tool of patriarchal control, but also serves as a tool of racism and colonialism” (Smith, 2005, 1). Violence against Indigenous women and girls accompanied land dispossession, and it was legitimised through attacks against the power that they held within their communities. Settlers undermined Indigenous women’s power by representing them as “licentious and morally corrupt squaws” and thus inferior to white women, whose moral and racial purity needed to be protected (Carter, 1997, 162). This racist and sexist depiction of Indigenous women conflated them with prostitutes, authorising sexual violence against them and inaction on the part of authorities to punish it to this day (Carter, 1997, 187; Razack, 2002, 2016). Police have often dismissed reports of missing Indigenous women and girls, especially if they are perceived to lead a “high risk” lifestyle (Culhane, 2003; Eberts, 2017). Indigenous activists have also pointed out that most of the murders of Indigenous women and girls remain unsolved and that charges are not always laid (NWAC, 2010). Even more disturbing is that law enforcement agents routinely abuse Indigenous women and girls with impunity (Lindberg, Campeau, and Campbell, 2012; Palmater, 2016, 274). Although the Indian Act only applies to First Nations, it further illustrates settlers’ attempts to undermine Indigenous women’s power by codifying heteropatriarchal notions of family and property. Enacted in 1876, the Indian Act governs the relationship between First Nations peoples and the government of Canada, determining who has legal status as “Indian” and is deserving of treaty obligations (Bourgeois, 2018). The Indian Act disenfranchised First Nations women within their communities and authorised gender discrimination (Bourgeois, 2015; Jacobs, 2018). First Nations women who married out lost their Indian status, their corresponding ability to pass on status to their children, and the right to live on a reserve, yet First Nations men did not upon marrying out. First Nations women and their descendants were effectively excluded from their communities and from the governmental resources to which they were entitled. The gender discriminatory and racist provision of the Indian Act and the Canadian state’s resistance to removing it demonstrates the “symbolic and physical threat” that Indigenous women and their ability to reproduce the nation has always posed to the colonial order (Lavell-Harvard and Brant, 2016, 3).1 Ultimately, for Indigenous feminists the implications of the Indian Act have been genocidal since they have attempted to eliminate First Nations women symbolically and they allowed land theft to continue not just for settlement but extraction projects, by virtue of legally reducing the population that would be “Indian” (Knott, 2018; Lavell-Harvard and Brant, 2016, 4; Smith, 2005). The implications have also been genocidal because the loss of Indian status has systematically placed First Nations women in precarious socio-economic conditions over generations. Being cut off from resources has sometimes led First Nations women to resort to survival sex work, contributing to conditions that allow them to be trafficked, which has been linked to MMIWG (Bourgeois, 2015; 65

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Lucchesi, 2019). Additionally, poverty and economic precarity have curtailed First Nations women’s ability to mother their children and pass on their culture, exacerbating the intergenerational trauma of residential schools, which forcibly removed children from their families (Lavell-Harvard and Brant, 2016). Intergenerational trauma is further related to the normalisation of physical and sexual abuse among First Nations women and girls (Knott, 2018). In sum, the conceptualisation of MMIWG as genocide reflects the ongoing devaluation of the lives of Indigenous women and girls in a settler-colonial regime that benefits from violence done against them. The failure of state institutions like courts and police to address this violence is not accidental but rather the product of the intersection of systemic racism and heteropatriarchal material and cultural processes that have naturalised colonial oppression. The significance of the term genocide to conceptualise MMIWG for Indigenous feminist scholars and activists is clear; it is a means for healing and for resisting the Canadian state’s efforts to depoliticise and disavow this violence (Jacobs, 2018; Lavell-Harvard and Brant, 2016). This interpretation ultimately raises questions as to the applicability or political usefulness of the terms femicide or feminicide in this context. If these terms fail to capture Indigenous women and girls’ experiences in Canada (or elsewhere), they may strengthen, as opposed to undoing colonial projects (García-Del Moral, 2018, 2020). It is to this point that we turn in our conclusion.

Conclusion By reviewing three different sites of struggle against the killing of racialised and Indigenous women – Palestine, Mexico, and Canada – we have examined the relationship between femicide/feminicide and colonialism. While the Palestinian scenario reveals the potential to redefine these concepts to encompass colonial processes, the Mexican and Canadian scenarios point to their epistemic limits and blind spots. Read in conversation with each other, these three scenarios point to the need to establish transnational dialogues to interrogate the production of knowledge on femicide/feminicide that does not incorporate an analysis of the effects of colonial violence on Indigenous and racialised women. Reverting this omission through the documentation of these women’s experiences of violence at the local level is salient (CONAMI, 2012; De Marinis, 2020; Sierra and Figueroa Romero, 2020). In turn, building transnational alliances between activists and scholars may facilitate the exchange of advocacy strategies and alternative rights discourses to dismantle the universalist and homogenising gaze of hegemonic feminism (Alexander and Mohanty, 2010; Grewal and Kaplan, 1994; Guimont et al., 2020; Jiménez-Estrada et al., 2020; Sieder, 2021). Such a transnational intersectional perspective “from below” may bridge the political and epistemic distance that often exists between Indigenous and racialised women’s activism and feminist projects (Crenshaw, 1991) by critically rethinking what these feminist projects should be in the first place. Likewise, it can contribute to challenging states’ use of women’s human rights discourses as a mechanism to disqualify Indigenous ways of life and knowledge. To conclude, we want to briefly introduce an example of such a transnational dialogue – namely, the collaboration between a group of Indigenous activist leaders and allied feminist researchers from Mexico and Canada. This collective involves the participation of CONAMI leaders, Anishinaabe women from the Indigenous Women’s Anti-Violence Task Force (IWAVTF) of Baawating (Sault St Marie), and researchers from various Mexican and Canadian universities (see Guimont et al., 2020; Jiménez-Estrada et al., 2020). This dialogue has aimed to decolonise conceptualisations of gender violence and feminicide, as well as the strategies to denounce, document, prevent, and resist them. This dialogue has entailed a powerful reflection on the political and ethical dimensions of producing knowledge across borders and its attendant challenges. These challenges are related not only to geography and resources for meeting but also to language barriers and the different positionality of

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its participants (Jiménez-Estrada et al., 2020, 57). Ongoing critical reflection has been the basis for developing both solidarities and new methodologies for documenting the feminicides of Indigenous women in Mexico and Canada from an intersectional perspective. Transnational collaborations like these, we argue, can be a model for others to follow as they strive to combat femicide/feminicide without ignoring its relationship to colonialism.

Note 1 The Indian Act was amended in 2019 to remove all forms of gender discrimination per the ruling of the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

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Paulina García-Del Moral et al. Figueroa Romero, D., & De Marinis, N. (2020). Perspectivas interseccionales y comparadas de la (in)justicia de género y violencia extrema contra mujeres afro e indígenas. Abya Yala: Revista sobre Acceso a la Justicia y Derechos en las Américas 4(1), 7–29. Fregoso, R.L., & Bejarano, C. (Eds.). (2010). Terrorizing women: Feminicide in the Americas. Durham: Duke University Press. Frías, S. (2021). Violencias de género en contra de mujeres y niñas indígenas en México en contextos institucionales, públicos y privados. Mexico: CRIM/UNAM. García-Del Moral, P. (2016). Transforming feminicidio. Current Sociology 64(7), 1017–1035. https://doi. org/10.1177/0011392115618731 García-Del Moral, P. (2018). The murders of Indigenous women in Canada as feminicides. Signs 43(4), 929–954. https://doi.org/10.1086/696692 García-Del Moral, P. (2020). Mujeres y niñas indígenas desaparecidas y asesinadas. Abya Yala: Revista sobre Acceso a la Justicia y Derechos en las Américas 4(1), 95–130. https://doi.org/10.26512/abyayala.v4i1.32197 Gil, Y.E.A. (2019). Resistencia. Una breve radiografía. Abya Yala Dossier/Revista de la Universidad de México. April, 20–27. Glenn, E.N. (2015). Settler colonialism as a structure. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1(1), 52–72. https://doi. org/10.1177/2332649214560440 Green, J. (Ed.). (2017). Making space for Indigenous feminism, (2nd ed). Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing. Grewal, I., & Kaplan, C. (1994). Scattered hegemonies: Postmodernity and transnational feminist practice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Guimont, S., Figueroa Romero, S., Jimenez-Estrada, V., & Rice, R. (2020). Approaching violence against indigenous women in the Americas from relational, intersectional and multi-scalar perspectives. Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 45(1), 5–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/08263663.2020.1690769 Hernández Castillo, R.A. (2016). Multiple injustices: Indigenous women, law, and political struggle in Latin America. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Herr, R.S. (2020). Women’s rights as human rights and cultural imperialism. Feminist Formations 31(3), 118–142. https://doi.org/10.1353/ff.2019.0033 Jacobs, B. (2018). Honouring women. In Anderson, K., Campbell, M., & Belcourt, C. (Eds.), Keetsahnak/ Our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Sisters. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press. Jimenez-Estrada, V., Don Juan Pérez, N., Torres Sandoval, P., & Figueroa Romero, D. (2020). Diálogos binacionales sobre los retos para documentar la(s) violencia(s) contra mujeres indígenas en México y Canadá. Abya Yala: Revista sobre Acceso a la Justicia y Derechos en las Américas 4(1), 30–61. https://doi.org/10.26512/ abyayala.v4i1.32350 Knott, H. (2018). Violence and extraction. In Anderson, K., Campbell, M., & Belcourt, C. (Eds.), Keetsahnak/ Our missing and murdered indigenous sisters (pp. 147–160). Edmonton: University of Alberta Press. Kuokkanen, R. (2008). Globalization as racialized, sexualized violence. The case of indigenous women. International Feminist Journal of Politics 10(2), 216–233. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616740801957554 Kuokkanen, R. (2012). Self-determination and indigenous women’s rights at the intersection of human rights. Human Rights Quarterly 34(1), 225–250. https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2012.0000 Kuokkanen, R. (2019). Restructuring relations: Indigenous self-determination, governance, and gender. New York: Oxford University Press. Lavell-Harvard, D.M., & Brant, J. (Eds.). (2016). Forever loved: Exposing the hidden crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Canada. Canada: Demeter Press. Lagarde, M. (2010). Preface: Feminist keys for understanding feminicide. In R.L. Fregoso & C. Bejarano (Eds.), Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Américas (pp. xi-xxv), Durham: Duke University Press. Lindberg, T., Campeau, P., & Campbell, M. (2012). Indigenous women and sexual assault in Canada. In E. Sheehy (Ed.), Sexual Assault in Canada: Law, Legal Practice, and Women’s Activism (pp. 87–110). Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Lucchesi, A.H. (2019). Mapping geographies of Canadian colonial occupation. Gender, Place & Culture 26(6), 868–887. Lugones, M. (2007). Heterosexualism and the colonial/modern gender system. Hypatia 22(1), 186–209. Méndez Torres, G. (2009). Miradas de género de las mujeres indígenas en Ecuador, Colombia y México. In A. Pequeño (Ed.), Participación y políticas de mujeres indígenas en contextos latinoamericanos recientes (pp. 53–72). Ecuador: FLACSO. Menjívar, C., & Walsh, S.D. (2017). The architecture of feminicide. Latin American Research Review 52(2), 221–240. http://doi.org/10.25222/larr.73 Million, D. (2013). Therapeutic nations: Healing in an age of indigenous human rights. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

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7 FEMI(NI)CIDE AND SPACE Theorising the Socio-Spatial Scripts of Femi(ni)cide Lorena Fuentes

Introduction Across their seminal work on violence and representation, Judith Butler (1993a; 2004; 2010) reminds us that violence is not a phenomenon that is merely seen or not seen but that it is read on and through the bodies that bare it. How this “reading” of violence proceeds relates to the dynamics of how intersecting norms and power relations manifest and get reproduced in particular contexts. A central methodological provocation that emerges from Butler’s approach is that reading for the “event” of violence is insufficient: scholars of violence must re-read for the “schema that orchestrates and interprets it” (1993b, p. 20). Space is a key component of that schema. In other words, one cannot approach violence aspatially. This is most certainly the case with femi(ni)cide1, which refers to “the gendered [and racialised] terror practices that culminate in socially tolerated murder” of women (Carey and Torres, 2010: 143). As feminist geographers have emphasised, the politics of space are inextricably entwined with the politics of gendered death (Fluri and Piedalue, 2017; Martin and Carvajal, 2016; Wright, 2011). Indeed, space is a key coordinate in the meaning-making processes that circulate around femi(ni) cide, as the implicit or explicit invocation of space lays important ideological scaffolding for how victims emerge (or fail to emerge) representationally. In this way, feminist geographers have shown how meanings around femi(ni)cide are refracted through socio-spatial logics that reflect and inform the often hierarchical political, legal, and societal responses for differently situated subjects of violence. It is not only feminist geographers who have emphasised the visibilising effect of attending to space in studies of violence. The work of Indigenous feminist and postcolonial scholars has provided essential historical texture to spatial theorisations of femi(ni)cide, highlighting how ongoing land and territorial dispossession and spatial segregation provide the foundational backdrop against which this gendered and racialised violence is enabled (Cumes, 2012; Deer, 2015; Shalhoub-Kervorkian and Daher-Nashif, 2013; Simpson, 2016; Smith, 2005; Tzul Tzul, 2015). Indeed, empirical studies from countries around the world – and from contexts which traverse colonial, settler, genocidal, and conflict dynamics – shed light on how space and spatial logics help to normalise and bolster impunity for femi(ni)cide. Building off of these studies, and more broadly upon the work of scholars of violence in feminist geography and beyond, this chapter is dedicated to theorising the relationship between femi(ni)cide and space. I seek, in particular, to bring into perspective the ways in which bodies and spaces are woven together in the production of “socio-spatial scripts” of femi(ni)cide and suggest that resisting 70

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-9

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this violence and the impunity that so often follows it requires carefully attending to these scripts (Fuentes, 2020a). Indeed, as scholars of violence, our efforts to “make bodies count” require thinking through the spatial, not to naturalise the physical geography of death, but to render visible how femi(ni)cidal violence is spatially constituted – and often spatially rationalised (Martin and Carvajal, 2016). The task is thus not only to “re-read” femi(ni)cide through a socio-spatial lens but to recognise the productive power of spatial logics in shaping the responses (or the lack of responses) to this violence.

Relocating Femi(ni)cide Through a Feminist Geographical Approach A crucial starting position for critical human geographers is that space does not precede the social world that brings it into being (Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 1994). In other words, space is not some physical backdrop against which social relations occur and people experience events; instead, geographic analyses help show that these processes – and the inequalities that shape them – are spatially constituted and organised (Fluri, 2018; McKittrick, 2006). More specifically, feminist geographers of violence shed light on how interpretations of violence unfold both through representations of embodiment and through discourses that ascribe disparate meaning – and, crucially, disparate value – to different geographies and spatialities (Fuentes, 2020a; Wright, 2011). How these discourses manifest in a particular context is of course an empirical question; the constant, however, is that there are always discursive practices that respond to and attempt to account for violence, and certainly femi(ni)cidal violence. Because these discourses emerge in key sites of governmental power (news media, public policies, the state, etc.), they have significant bearing on how the broader body politic is socialised to interpret femi(ni)cides. This is a central explanatory framework for understanding why femi(ni)cides are registered or “read” differently or, indeed, hierarchically. Consider, for a moment, the different scripts that are mobilised in our minds when we learn about a victim whose lifeless body was discovered in her marital home, in a ditch next to a highway, in a hotel room, or near a factory where she worked. Across these scripts – which, again, will manifest according to the particularities of the empirical context – space provides crucial ideological scaffolding for the interpretation that unfolds. This is because as we read the spatial coordinates (e.g. home, highway, hotel, factory) a series of other coordinates are mobilised around the violence: for instance, around the perpetrator (an intimate partner perhaps, or maybe a stranger, and the broader social or identity profile they fit into within our imaginations), the modality (whether we assume that sexual violence or torture was involved), or the expected/unexpected nature of the violence (whether we believe the violence is “normal” or exceptional for the context and/or the subjects assumed to be involved). Of course, the process by which our assumptions about these other coordinates are confirmed (or challenged) and thus by which the scripts of femi(ni)cide are crystallised in our minds is not straightforward. They unfold, on the one hand, according to the normative frameworks through which we have been socialised and through which our perspectives on our social worlds get saturated and, on the other hand, by the frameworks that emerge across sites of governmental power in response to femi(ni)cide (to confirm or challenge those perspectives). So how and why do these socio-spatial scripts unfold in our minds as we “read” femi(ni)cides? A central tenet of feminist geography is that gender and space are co-produced and must be studied as such (Nagar et al., 2002). For example, while gender norms manifest somewhat differently across empirical contexts, they are consistently spatialised, denoting roles and behaviours that are or are not considered “appropriate” for men and women. In particular, feminist geographers have drawn attention to the productive power of socio-spatial practices that distinguish between “public” and “private” (Landes, 1998), which are viewed as naturalising and helping to reconstitute hierarchies between types of labour (e.g. paid versus unpaid domestic or caring labour) and between types of 71

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women (e.g. women in the public sphere who are negatively juxtaposed to women who remain in the private sphere, often as maternal figures) (Cookson, 2018; Fuentes, 2020a; Jiwani and Young, 2006; Wright, 2011). This literature – much of it coming from the socialist feminist tradition – draws attention to the role of class in shaping how women’s relationship to space is represented. To be sure, it is inconceivable that these processes are not also racialised (Mbembe, 2003; McKittrick, 2006; Razack, 2000). Indeed, Black feminist and postcolonial geographers have emphasised that it is not only gender but race, that is spatially organised. Theorising the relationship between violence and space, therefore, requires attending to the multiple and intersecting ways in which bodies are marked “by way of different geographies” (Fluri, 2018: 31). The implication of the feminist geographical socio-spatial ontology is that aspatial approaches to phenomena like femi(ni)cide “dislocate” this violence from its spatial and temporal context, invisibilising important logics and power dynamics (Fuentes and Cookson, 2020).

Why a Feminist Geographical Approach to Femi(ni)cide is Necessary By directing analytical attention towards the relationality of space and bodies, feminist geography provides a crucial epistemological intervention into how we theorise femi(ni)cide. This theorisation, in turn, opens a pathway for visibilising and resisting socio-spatial scripts which might lend themselves to the normalisation or rationalisation of extreme forms of gendered violence, and, relatedly, which might be leveraged by states and other powerful actors or institutions in ways that drive further violence and exclusion. Importantly, taking the feminist geographical position that femi(ni)cide requires a spatial analysis is not a call to train our attention on the physical geography of gendered violence and death to inform security or health risk analyses, or data collection methods, for instance (for these approaches, see San Sebastián et al., 2019; Sepúlveda Murillo et al., 2018; Vives-Cases et al., 2016). To be sure, these latter types of analyses can help to shed light on implementation gaps in laws or policies related to femi(ni)cide – for example, between urban and rural contexts (Beyer et al., 2013). They can also inform discussions about the utility of different contextual variables or indicators for measuring and tracking femi(ni)cide, which have significant bearing on legal and policy responses (Dawson and Carrigan, 2020). Perhaps most importantly, when performed by activists fighting against impunity for femi(ni)cide, mapping or “counter-data” mapping exercises do crucial work to help visibilise and track otherwise obscured femi(ni)cides (D’Ignazio and Klein 2020: 34–9). It is, however, important to take caution with approaches that might intentionally or unintentionally reify assumed linkages between violence and particular spaces and geographies. Indeed, the risk with these approaches is first, that femi(ni)cides become naturalised in certain contexts. For instance, if particular geographies are marked as “violent” or “conflict-affected,” femi(ni)cides might be interpreted as inevitable, which might foster non-responses from the state. Alternatively, if particular areas are marked as sites of violence, this might catalyse extreme responses from the state (and other actors), for whom the lack of boundaries between bodies and geographies feeds into social cleansing logics that frame violence against/control over some of the most marginalised populations as a means for eradicating the source of violence in those spaces (Alves, 2013; Ferreira da Silva, 2012; Fuentes, 2020a; Wright, 2011). It is similarly important to take caution with culturalist approaches, which also tend towards reproducing racialised conflations between the subjects and geographies of violence. At best, cultural framings simplify and obscure the historical, social, and political dynamics that enable femi(ni)cide; at worst, they actively contribute to orientalising and racist discourses that can serve as pretexts for militarisation and policing of particular groups of men and particular geographies framed as inherently violent (Evans and Giroux, 2015; Gregory, 2013). In addition to relying on racialising tropes,

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culturalist approaches are not helpful as explanatory frameworks for femi(ni)cide. They misdirect our attention away from the structural roots of violence and, relatedly, from the historical processes that have shaped how and why patriarchy and misogyny manifest as they do in particular geographic and temporal contexts (Martin and Carvajal, 2016; Shalhoub-Kervorkian and Daher-Nashif, 2013; Tzul Tzul, 2015). For example, referencing “machista culture” or “macho men” does very little to help us explain femi(ni)cide in Latin America; similarly, “honour crime” is not a sufficient explanatory framework for femi(ni)cide in Arab and Muslim contexts. These latter types of cultural framings rely on imaginary (and Western-centric) geographies where extreme forms of gendered and patriarchal violence are only located in societies that are culturally “other” (Shalhoub-Kervorkian and DaherNashif, 2013: 297). The motivation for a feminist geographical approach is therefore manifold: to highlight that violence is spatially constituted and rationalised, to render visible how the logics which infuse sociospatial scripts of femi(ni)cide also shape policy discussions and governance decisions and, crucially, to identify pathways forward for crafting narratives and strategies of resistance.

The Socio-Spatial Scripts of Femi(ni)cide While remaining suspended above any specific empirical context here, I would like to propose that the meanings, interpretations, and responses that circulate around femi(ni)cide – in other words, the scripts – are highly discrepant upon how victims emerge socio-spatially. Indeed, while it is important to avoid the temptation to make deductive analytical transfers which assume that the processes that we have tracked in one context (in my case, in Guatemala and elsewhere in Latin America), are necessarily taking place in another, the socio-spatial ontology from within feminist geographical, Indigenous and Black feminist, and postcolonial traditions invites us to think about how space is a central “framing device” irrespective of context (Hubbard and Kitchin, 2011). Our task when theorising the relationship between femi(ni)cide and space is to think about (“re-read”) how bodies and geographies are always already imbued with meaning and are woven together. Space, in other words, is no less saturated with gender, race, and class meanings than are the bodies that are represented within and through those spaces (Fuentes, 2020a). We are not only tasked with thinking through bodies and spaces but with thinking through spatialised bodies and embodied spaces. It follows, then, that the empirical task is to track how these processes unfold in specific contexts while remaining attentive to the linkages across contexts. These include the foundational spatial logics and historical processes that shape and constrain the conditions of possibility for whether or not, and how, femi(ni)cide is responded to – such as the gendered nature of the public/ private divide or the processes of racialisation and segregation that feature across diverse settler colonial contexts (Cumes, 2012; Pratt, 2005; Razack, 2000; Shalhoub-Kervorkian and Daher-Nashif, 2013). And indeed, from Guatemala to Mexico (Fuentes, 2020a; Wright, 2011), from Canada to the United States (Saramo, 2016; Threadcraft, 2017), from Brazil to Palestine (Hume and Wilding, 2015; Shalhoub-Kervorkian and Daher-Nashif, 2013) and beyond, spatial thinking has emerged as a core frame of reference for theorising femi(ni)cide and its perpetuation and also for understanding the hierarchies in the nature of responses to this violence and its victims.

Bleeding Boundaries: Bodies in Violent and Disposable Spaces and the Production of Violent and Disposable Bodies What happens when the boundaries between bodies and spaces dissolve? What happens when a victim of femi(ni)cide is (discovered or left by the perpetrator) in a space where violence is assumed to always already be taking place?

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How does it come to pass that a victim whose body is in a space marked as violent emerges as a violent body? How does it come to pass that a victim whose body is in a space marked as degenerate or disposable emerges as a degenerate, disposable body? Of course, the point of adopting the socio-spatial ontology is precisely to highlight that these corporeal/geographic boundaries are never “real” to begin with. Indeed, if we begin by recognising that bodies and violence are necessarily spatialised and that space and violence are necessarily embodied, we will be better equipped to identify, understand, and where needed, challenge, the scripts that follow. It seems to me that our analysis of the socio-spatial scripts of femi(ni)cide must proceed by asking not only what but who is being imagined or projected onto the spaces and geographies where victims emerge, as well as who or what is absent. In other words, our theoretical task is to examine what work the invocation of a particular spatiality does in tethering or severing certain connections between a victim and additional coordinates of violence beyond space, such as the victims’ (and assumed perpetrators’) identity profile, their family or social circle, profession, the assumed drivers and modalities of the violence, and the expected/unexpected nature of the femi(ni)cide. For example, what meanings are being mobilised when a victim is described as having been discovered in the house she shared with her husband and children? How might these meanings differ for a victim who is described as having been discovered by police in a parking lot? What if we learned about a femi(ni) cide of a young migrant woman during her journey from Caracas, Venezuela, to Cúcuta, Colombia (a humanitarian border context), as opposed to a femi(ni)cide of a young woman who was out for an evening run in a park in London, England? In each of these cases, what kinds of identity markers (for both the victim and assumed perpetrator) are mobilised? How shocked (or not shocked) are we about the violence? And then, we must ask, what are the consequences of these (dis)connections? While I do not doubt that this list is non-exhaustive, I would like to offer some suggestions for where scholars might turn their analytical attention to identifying these socio-spatial scripts of femi(ni)cide. Key sites of governmental power across which discourses that evoke femi(ni)cidal violence might emerge include (1) the news media (e.g. in coverage of cases, what types of visual or narrative devices are used to report on the violence, the victim, and the alleged perpetrator [see Fuentes, 2020b]); (2) public policy (e.g. how is femi(ni)cide framed in policies to tackle violence and insecurity?) and (3) the data upon which the latter are, in theory, designed (e.g. how do statistics, mappings, and state intelligence create territorialised frameworks for anti-violence security policies, including those related to policing?); and (4) rhetoric from political leaders and state or other powerful interlocutors (e.g. who or what is blamed for violence and insecurity, and do these actors ever directly respond to/engage with specific cases of femi(ni)cide?). And so, without centring on a specific empirical location, let us briefly consider two scripts – acknowledging of course that there are many others and that these are constantly in flux. The first script relates to bodies that are marked within “violent spaces,” and the second script relates to bodies that are marked within spaces marked as “disposable”; the two are, of course, related. I propose that where governmental power marks particular spaces or geographies through these frames, this works to lay ideological scaffolding whereby victims of femi(ni)cide who emerge within those sites are absorbed into the same frame of reference so that they too are conceptualised as violent and disposable. From anything broadly conceptualised as the public sphere to more specific sites, like the workplace, hotels/motels, and streets, to border contexts or particular regions, countries, cities, zones, or neighbourhoods, feminist geographers of violence have noted that there are certain spaces “where violence is an assumed characteristic” (Saramo, 2016: 206). This reading is inextricably linked to the gendered and racialised assumptions about the “types” of individuals and social groups that exist in those spaces – often considered violent and degenerate bodies. Similarly, Indigenous and postcolonial feminist scholars have discussed how certain geographies are conceptualised as disposable or as 74

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“wastelands” (Castro and Picq, 2017) and have highlighted how this reading is tied to settler logics through which Indigenous, racialised, and poor women’s bodies – like Indigenous lands – are prefigured as “already violated” and thus “violatable” (Simpson, 2016). From this socio-spatial perspective, the disposability of femi(ni)cide victims is intimately tied to logics that mark Indigenous lands as lacking social worth or as representing “empty” or otherwise “abandoned” spaces. Specifically, this scholarship has been critical for shedding light on the structures and processes through which Indigenous women and racialised bodies are neglected or (legally) abandoned by the state (Pratt, 2005; Simpson, 2016). But whether the frame of reference is a spatiality marked by power as “violent” (script 1) or “disposable” (script 2), or more likely a combination of the two, femi(n)]cide can emerge as a form of violence that is in some way guaranteed: a logical outcome of a woman’s presence in that space or of belonging to a social group that exists in that space and is thus not worthy of concern. On the one hand, patriarchal norms related to the gendered divide between public and private tend to dictate that the former is always unsafe and potentially violent for women. At the same time, some spaces/geographies get further layered with additional markings of “violent” by media, data, public policy, and government rhetoric – as sites of both danger and degeneracy. Let us consider a few potential examples from the first script related to bodies in violent spaces: Her body was discovered in a neighbourhood which, according to political leaders and media coverage, is frequented by gangs who are in a conflict for control over the area. Her body was discovered in a zone that has been identified – by state intelligence and regional security analyses – as having high rates of violence. The zone is frequently policed by special government security task forces. In these scenarios, we have two spatialities that could potentially represent any number of places around the world – from Guatemala to the Philippines, from the United States to Brazil. In the first script, the victim (or victim’s body) quickly fades into the background as more coordinates around the violence unfold: the citation of a group of actors who, depending on the empirical context, our minds will fill out with social and identity details, such as race and age or their proclivity to use violence. The additional coordinates may be mobilised in our minds merely off the basis of these details: such as the victim’s profile and the modality of the violence. In both examples, the question of the unexpected/expected nature of the femi(ni)cide is answered for us: this neighbourhood and this zone are violent because they are frequented by violent subjects and because the state and other powerful actors identified them as such. Therefore, it follows that if violence – and even agency for violence – is interpreted as something that spreads like a cancer (Gregory, 2013), then this script leaves no room for innocent victims. In this scenario, the victim can emerge as someone who chose to situate herself in a violent space, and as a result, she is at fault for her demise. Worse still, the victim can herself emerge as a violent subject (e.g. a gang member or gang member’s partner), and therefore, her death represents a net positive for the security (moral and physical) of the “good” members of the body politic (see Fuentes, 2020a; Wright, 2011). This also underscores why the co-produced reading of space and body does so much work: it matters less what or who a victim was or was not – in terms of her identity, her profession, her family, and so on – because the spatial mobilises excess meanings around the victim and her life and the circumstances surrounding her death. These “excess meanings” craft connections between the victim and the alleged perpetrator(s) and between the victim and the public sphere, which in turn carries with it certain gendered, racialised, and classed assumptions about the victims’ social status. These “excess meanings” sever connections, too. In the following scenario, which is exemplary of the second script related to bodies in disposable spaces, the location of the victim’s body becomes the proof that she sold sex and that she was morally lacking since patriarchal norms dictate that women 75

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working in prostitution, sex work, or survival sex are not worthy of respect or dignity, let alone protection (Jiwani and Young, 2006). Her body was discovered in the nude in a motel in what the police and locals refer to as the neighbourhood’s “red light district.” Indeed, in such instances, we need to consider how the reference to a spatiality marked as “public” symbolically disconnects the victim from the space where a (“good”) woman is “supposed” to be (the private, domestic sphere) and from the gendered ideals and expectations concerning her role in that sphere (where heteronormativity dictates that she is caring for her children and husband), thus excluding her from the “protection” that is conditionally offered to some women under patriarchy (Fuentes, 2020a). Of course, we need to only glance at the existing global data on domestic violence linked femi(ni)cides to understand that such “protection” is symbolic rather than substantive (United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, 2019). This also underscores one of the violent myths that undergird the public/private divide and the gendered norms and expectations that flow from it: that women must avoid the public sphere because it is dangerous, while the private sphere is not. And indeed, this is why the feminist geographical approach requires attending to the counter scripts for femi(ni)cides that emerge in the so-called private sphere of the home, for example, since these socio-spatial scripts are necessarily entwined.

Implications of the Socio-Spatial Scripts of Femi(ni)cide In the first script – bodies in violent spaces – I suggest that femi(ni)cide can emerge as a kind of spatialised punishment for victims who “chose” to inhabit certain (violent) spaces and to exist within certain (violent) social circles. In the second – bodies in disposable and degenerate spaces – and owing to the ongoing processes of racialisation at play especially in settler contexts, I suggest that femi(ni)cide can emerge as a confirmation of a priori disposability for victims who are marked as already dead and violated. Their bodies simply reify that marking rather than provide evidence of a violation, let alone evidence of a crime (Simpson, 2016; Threadcraft, 2017). In other words, if a victim is located within, or is seen as embodying certain spatialities that are considered violent, degenerate, disposable, or abandoned, any reference to the spatiality of her death is part of the process by which this prior marking is reconfirmed. In each case, victims are delegitimised and dehumanised to the point that they cannot emerge as “true victims” of violence (Boesten, 2014: 89). In addition to the profound dehumanisation that can unfold, these socio-spatial scripts of femi(ni) cide matter because they “locate” – or indeed, mislocate – the problem of femi(ni)cide, and violence more broadly, within particular bodies and particular spatialities in ways that re-entrench gendered and racialised exclusions, as well as neglect. In other words, these scripts offer a theory of the problem, and these often come accompanied by implicit or explicit solutions or modalities for responding to the alleged source of the violence (or not responding). Indeed, my rationale for focusing attention on these two broad scripts pertains to both the notable ways in which their logics appear to emerge across different geographic and temporal contexts but also because I believe that attending to them is a scholarly imperative if we want to understand and challenge some of the consistently harmful state responses that can emerge in the aftermath of femi(ni)cide: (1) militarised or violent responses and (2) neglect or “legal abandonment” (Pratt, 2005). In the first script, the femi(ni)cide is normalised because it transpired in a space where violence is expected, even guaranteed, and further violence deployed by the state or other actors in response (e.g. state security forces that target those conceptualised as the perpetrators of violence) is rationalised as a mechanism for ensuring the safety of the broader body politic. In the second script, the femi(ni)cide is normalised through state neglect and non-response. Moreover, beyond the 76

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response of the state and other powerful actors and institutions, a dangerous combination of social apathy or indifference towards the victims, and social cleansing logics about the need to rid the body politic of particular groups (violently, if necessary) can accompany these latter state responses. These scripts have a clear bearing on the framing and outcomes of policies around violence because the spotlight of responsibility and accountability for the femi(ni)cide is largely turned away from the state and towards the victim and her social circle. This, in turn, can enable responses that are driven by the states’ desire for greater control over certain geographies and spatialities (i.e. leveraging police, security, or military forces), and which reinforce forms of oppression and exclusion.

Conclusion Socio-spatial scripts of femi(ni)cide can enable the dehumanisation and neglect of femi(ni)cide victims, as well as the normalisation of the violence itself. Indeed, for femi(ni)cide and impunity for femi(ni)cide to be considered acceptable within a society requires that the harmful logics that undergird socio-spatial scripts persist undisturbed in the grey space of discursive and governance practices that shape responses to this violence. As scholars of violence, it is my view that we have a unique imperative to ensure that our research is useful and responds to the situated realities and needs of anti-femi(ni)cide activists and policy advocates. This requires marshalling the rich theoretical tools from feminist geography and from Indigenous feminist, Black feminist, and postcolonial feminist traditions to render visible and resist the processes and practices through which femi(ni)cidal violence is spatially constituted and spatially rationalised in specific empirical contexts. Across the world, there are diverse anti-femi(ni)cide movements that are attending to and challenging harmful socio-spatial scripts that emerge in the aftermath of this violence2. Whether calling out discourses about victims’ having “bad families” and for being in any way deserving of their fates because of their social circles, or for the personal or professional activities they participated in, or challenging discourses about victims’ deaths being the inevitable outcome of the contexts they lived in, these movements are redirecting attention towards and relocating responsibility on, the state and other powerful institutions for their role in enabling the violence. We need only look to the efforts to break cycles of impunity and to visibilise victims by feminist movements like #NiUnaMenos and Indigenous movements and organisations like the Sovereign Bodies Institute to see how, just as femi(ni)cide is spatialised, so too is resistance to femi(ni)cide3. Indeed, across contexts, we are bearing witness to the spatialised practices of anti-femi(ni)cide movements that deploy diverse artistic and political modalities to reclaim public spaces. These movements are re-traversing the boundaries – spatialised, gendered, racialised, classed, and otherwise – that so many victims were seemingly punished for having crossed. And in so doing, they are reclaiming a “space of the absent” (Campos-Medina et al., 2020) to bring into public view not just the bodies, but the lives lost, to commemorate, mourn, and mobilise for non-violent futures.

Notes 1 I use “femi(ni)cide” to hold space for the variations in how the concept of femicide/feminicide is deployed across different geographic contexts and to acknowledge that the term is not only conceptual in nature but is also codified in laws, leveraged for movement slogans, and more. Indeed, even the way that femi(ni)cide as a concept travels or lands in a particular geography (or does not) speaks to the importance of applying a spatial lens. 2 To be sure, not all of these movements deploy the language of femi(ni)cide. For example, First Nations and Native American movements in Canada and the United States often use the framework of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG). 3 See, for example, http://niunamenos.org.ar/; www.sovereign-bodies.org; www.uihi.org/projects/our-bodies-our-stories; https://feminicidiosmx.crowdmap.com; www.aapf.org/sayhername.

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8 SYSTEMS OF POWER AND FEMICIDE The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Extremist Violence Maria N. Scaptura and Brittany E. Hayes Introduction and Importance According to the World Health Organization (WHO; 2012), femicide is defined as intentional violence against women that results in murder. Risk factors of femicide include but are not limited to histories of intimate partner violence (IPV), unemployment, presence of a gun in the home, mental illness, and/or substance abuse (Campbell et al., 2007; Campbell et al., 2003; Koziol-McLain et al., 2006). While men are more likely to be victims and perpetrators of murder in general, when women are murdered, they are more likely to be murdered by a male intimate partner (Azziz-Baumgartner et al., 2011; Fox and Fridel, 2017). The unequal dynamic of women’s lethal victimisation requires study into the reasons why women who experience lethal violence often do so at the hands of somebody that they know. In addition to the gendered nature of femicide, its intersection with race offers a multifaceted analysis to women’s victimisation and men’s perpetration in which Black, Latina, and indigenous women are murdered at higher rates than white, non-Hispanic women (Azziz-Baumgartner et al., 2011; Daher-Nashif, 2021; García-Del Moral, 2018). White men are more likely to perpetrate public mass shootings – but when considering mass shootings (e.g. four or more people are murdered) more broadly, the racial composition of offenders closely mirrors that for murder generally (Lankford, 2016). Thus, the racial and gendered intersection of femicide provides insight to the structural nature of men’s perpetration of these crimes. Stated differently, structural gender and racial inequalities enhance women’s risk of lethal victimisation. Men’s privileged position in society is what Connell (1987) coins the “gender order,” meaning men see their position as vulnerable to outside threats from women (p. 134). Men’s dominant position in society leads to the preservation of this hierarchy, leading to reassertions of masculinity through any means necessary to maintain status over minoritised groups, including women (Allison and Klein, 2021; Isom Scott and Stevens Anderson, 2020; Rosenstein, 2008). The dominant social structure privileges not only men but white men in particular, insulating them in racial, gender, and often class privilege from challenges to their dominant position in society (Rosenstein, 2008). However, these same privileges are not afforded to minoritised groups, including people of colour or women. As seen in the recent series of mass violence attacks tied to offenders who had histories of violence against women (like 2021 Colorado Springs, 2017 Sutherland Springs, 2016 Orlando Pulse shootings), abusive men may turn to women- or minority-targeted extremist violence as a means to regain masculinity and dominance associated with hegemonic masculinity. White men’s targeting 80

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of women – particularly women of colour – in acts of violence can allow them to re-establish their multi-privileged position in the racial and gender order. By murdering women in targeted ways, male perpetrators enact a structurally privileged position in the racial and gender hierarchy. These behaviours may serve to combat perceived attacks upon the dominant power structure and in turn work to maintain the established “gender order” (Connell, 1987: 134). This chapter proposes that male extremists use femicide and violence against women more broadly in targeted ways – against partners or against women as a group and other minoritised groups – to regain masculinity as a form of corrective action against perceived threats against them. Extremist perpetrators’ use of femicide as a means of corrective action is established through case studies and examples of extremist violence, particularly among far-right perpetrators and the socalled involuntary celibate, or incel, mass violence. By asserting dominance through mass violence and violence against women and minoritised groups – who white men are structurally in positions of power over – male extremist perpetrators and/or incels aim to reinforce a specific white male hegemony associated with their privilege and status.

Whiteness and Threatened Masculinity The gender binary (i.e. that there are only two genders associated with biological sex – male and female) and norms associated with the gender binary ultimately feed into broader systems of oppression that uphold white supremacy, ableism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, and other inequalities. According to West and Zimmerman’s (1987) concept of doing gender, gender is a constant performance in need of maintenance. While femininity often emphasises the importance of the outward appearance and empathy for women, masculinity stresses posturing and displays of dominance (Harris et al., 2011). Traditional gender roles based on the gender binary reinforce strict gender socialisation claiming certain traits are innate to men and women: men are naturally aggressive, and women are naturally caring. Men and their gender performance are seen as always in a precarious state, according to Vandello and colleagues (2008). That is, men’s gender and masculinity need constant preservation as it can easily be lost (Bosson et al., 2009; Vandello et al., 2008). When confronted with threats to their masculinity, men may overcompensate with traditionally masculine traits to relay to others that they are sufficiently masculine. In experimental tests of men’s responses to threats, Willer et al. (2013) and Bosson et al. (2009) found that men respond with hyper-aggression and attitudes reflective of male dominance. More broadly, men have been known to be competitive, lack emotional empathy, be homophobic, have violent fantasies, and possess or convey sexual dominance over women to appear more masculine (Bird, 1996; Dahl et al., 2015; Heinrich, 2012; Scaptura and Boyle, 2020; Willer et al., 2013). In this way, men respond to threats to masculinity by conforming to dominant cultural displays of masculinity. Further, men’s responses to these threat – vis-a-vis through forms of violence – often attempt to re-establish dominant power structures that situate men in positions of power. Men turning to violence or aggression to boost their “fragile” masculinities reflects contemporary displays of manhood that dehumanises others, particularly based on race/ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality (Myketiak, 2016; Willer et al., 2013). Men’s use of violence as a response to their failed pursuit of masculinity is supported by Allison and Klein (2021), who find that men experiencing strained masculinity are more likely to engage in violence against homeless persons – another minoritised and marginalised group. Allison and Klein (2021), through Agnew’s (1992) general strain theory, propose that the often-unattainable standards of masculinity in the US leave men “strained” in the pursuit of their appropriate manhood. Thereby, extremist violence against homeless persons becomes a “corrective action” for men to regain degrees of masculinity. Performance of gender intersects with race and other identities, leading to varying expectations for men, women, and non-binary individuals. That is, these roles associated with the gender binary 81

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are only available to white men and white women when they choose to use them but are more strictly enforced for men and women of colour. In particular, Collins (2004) and Davis (1983) argue that Black women are often held to standards set by and enforced by white women. The media, politics, education, and other institutions are set to white standards, expecting people of colour to fit this mould. However, men and women of colour are limited in their gender expression by those with the power to enforce it. This double standard is also apparent in the expectations for white masculinity and masculinity for men of colour. This idea of “proper” masculinity is often performed through displays of aggression, toughness, control, or even violence (Bosson et al., 2009; Reidy et al., 2014; Willer et al., 2013). However, these same expectations of masculinity are not equally applied to men of colour. For example, when Black men use anger or aggression, they are seen as “hyper-masculine” and “dangerous” by those wielding power. These gendered expectations are therefore intertwined with expectations based on race, affecting how people of colour are perceived and victimised by those in power.

Mass Shootings and Femicide as an Extension of (White) Masculinity As discussed earlier, men’s perceived precarious position in the gender and racial hierarchy may leave white men feeling vulnerable to threats, either from women or other men. Research (e.g. Bosson et al., 2009; Dahl et al., 2015; Moore et al., 2008) has demonstrated that some men respond aggressively to these threats, often resorting to displays of violence. Considering that 94.4% of mass violence attacks are committed by men (Fox and Levin, 1998, 2003), Marganski (2019) and Rottweiler et al. (2021) argue that men’s perpetration of mass violence is linked to their pursuit of masculinity. Particularly, men may engage in mass violence when they feel they have failed in other, conventional avenues to achieve status. Madfis (2014) argues that white men in particular are in a precarious state as they are “triple entitled”: their racial, gender, and class privilege provide them systemic advantages; however, this privilege also sets them up for more challenges from others (Madfis, 2014; Wise, 2005). When confronted with threats from other men or women to their position in this racial, gender, and class hierarchy, threatened white men embody cultural ideals of manhood to secure their privilege and dominance. And when all other mechanisms fail, mass violence against women and other men may become the last resort to regain their (dominant) masculinity. Consequently, some perpetrators pose dual threats of violence – that is, threats to current or former romantic partners and to public safety more broadly defined. By definition, femicide targets women – both partners in intimate partner homicide (IPH) and also women as a group in mass murder. Misogyny, which is inherent to patriarchal systems, is central to both of these forms of femicide (Rodriguez, 2010). Attempts to re-establish a dominant masculinity through femicide and/or mass violence against women and minoritised groups offers perpetrators an opportunity to take “corrective action” against threats to them, their manhood, and their position in society.

Femicide and Targeting of Women, in General Violent men who target women as a broader group – rather than strictly targeting their current or former partner – often have histories of IPV prior to their attacks. It is possible that men who target women enact their various political, social, and personal grievances through their violence. For instance, the targeting of women as a group is apparent in the incel-linked acts of violence in North America: the 2015 Umpqua Community College shooting, the 2018 Tallahassee yoga studio shooting, the 2018 Toronto van attack, and the 2014 Isla Vista shooting. In each of these cases, the perpetrators targeted women as the symbol of their frustrations associated with failed manhood (Langman, 82

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2020; Marganski, 2019; Williams and Arntfield, 2020). In particular, these men murdered women (and sometimes men) who they believed to be the cause of their “involuntary celibate” status (Williams and Arntfield, 2020). In each of these aforementioned cases, women became the scapegoat and thereby target of violence for these men’s frustrations. As an example, the perpetrator of the 1989 Ecolè Polytechnique mass shooting targeted women at the Ecolè engineering school, declaring, “You’re all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists,” before opening fire (Eglin and Hester, 1999: 255). In his attack, which shows the overlap between these forms of violence (i.e. mass violence and violence against women as a group), the perpetrator separated a classroom between men and women before killing the women and sparing the men (Eglin and Hester, 1999). His explicit targeting of women at the university provided the perpetrator a means to fight back against women’s progress and to rectify his grievances against them (Eglin and Hester, 2006; Fox and Levin, 2003). In this way, mass violence became a means of “corrective action” to reassert his status as an “aggrieved” white man. In another case of femicide, the perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista shooting blamed women for not dating him, forever sealing his identity as the “kissless virgin” (Langman, 2014; Vito et al., 2018). His prior history of violence against women and couples (acquaintances or random passers-by) indicates an ongoing perpetration of violence against women who he felt had wronged him. Ultimately, these grievances led to his act of mass violence where he purposefully targeted the “hottest sorority on campus” (Langman, 2014; Vito et al., 2018). The shooter started his killing spree by murdering his Black roommate and friends, who he had previously described in his manifesto as “ugly black filth” and “was able to have sex with a blonde white girl . . . while I’ve had to suffer virginity all my life” ([redacted]1, 2014: 84). Not only did the Isla Vista shooter feel entitled to white women’s bodies and affections, but he also saw himself as protecting white womanhood from the men he considered inferior to him and his whiteness (Langman, 2014). Again, it is important to reiterate that while these cases focused largely on women, it did intersect with the offender’s beliefs about race. The targeting of women in general, whereby men are not targeted and/or explicitly spared from violence, demonstrates misogyny on the part of perpetrators of mass violence. In the cases of incelaffiliated and anti-feminist attacks, perpetrators blame all women, not just those who have turned them down, for their perceived plights in life (whether it is political or romantic; Eglin and Hester, 1999; Langman, 2014; Vito et al., 2018). Overall, the mentioned cases in this section do not target a single woman in particular that the offender perceived to have wronged them. Instead, the offenders target a group of women who serve as a scapegoat for their broader ideologies aligned with perpetuating (white) manhood.

Femicide and Targeting of Partners/Former Partners Violence against women offers abusive men the opportunity to both exert control over women and re-establish their position of power (Rodríguez-Menés and Safranoff, 2021). Through fear, violence, and emotional manipulation, male perpetrators of IPV can counteract these threats to their masculinity. Often in cases of IPH, male perpetrators express loss of control in relationships, citing suspicions of cheating and involuntary separation as a strain leading to jealousy and rage (Abrunhosa et al., 2021; Eriksson and Mazerolle, 2013). While loss of control for male perpetrators in IPH may be interpreted as a means to correct these emotions, scholars also argue that violence against women and IPH are acts to regain control and, thereby, efforts to demonstrate power (Campbell et al., 2007). In this way, male perpetrators of violence against women and IPH are enacting violence as a means of corrective action to gain masculinity and power against their partner. Scholarship has long noted that the process of separation for victims of IPV is a dangerous and complex time (Campbell et al., 2007; DeKeseredy et al., 2017; Hayes, 2012; 2017). When considering abusive men who may also be extremist and/or incel, these cumulative perceived losses of 83

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power and control across structural, situational, and temporal contexts can intersect with the loss of control associated with the separation process (Campbell et al., 2007). Given the intersection of strained masculinity in both extremist violence (Allison and Klein, 2021) and violence against women (Moore et al., 2008), women whose intimate partners are extremists may be a greater risk of victimisation, especially during this already dangerous time. According to Duwe (2017), the most frequent form of mass murder is categorised as familicides (47%), where perpetrators murder multiple family members. While it is unclear if this form of mass violence is driven by the process of separation, research on honour killings indicate separation plays a crucial role (Hayes et al., 2016).

The Targeting of Minoritised Groups in Femicide and Mass Murder In regard to femicide and mass violence, whiteness and misogyny may be embedded in men’s attempts to uphold these systems of oppression. When men – particularly white men – murder women of colour in an attempt to rectify their “aggrieved entitlement” through corrective action, they are establishing themselves in positions of dominance over women and people of colour (Kalish and Kimmel, 2010). In this act of violence, white male perpetrators can be acting in ways that maintain a white male hegemony, consistent with maintaining control and power over others (Peralta and Tuttle, 2013; Rodríguez-Menés and Safranoff, 2021). Public mass shootings are disproportionately committed by white men, as perpetrators’ targeting of victims is typically motivated by entitlement associated with their white male privilege (Lankford, 2016). Specific cases of public mass murder involving white male perpetrators and victims of colour are often motivated to correct social and political grievances. Perpetrators of extremist violence murder strangers (as opposed to partners, acquaintances, or family) to justify their actions with their far-right beliefs, blaming perceived grievances against themselves and white men more broadly (Gruenewald, 2011; Parkin et al., 2015; Piazza, 2017). These perceived social and political grievances are known to overlap with misogyny, racism, and other inequalities, especially when they lead to violence. Ultimately, white perpetrators of femicide aim to maintain their “triple privilege” status that positions them above women and men of colour (Madfis, 2014). In this way, white men take threats to the social order as threats to their own status and authority (Rosenstein, 2008). Drawing from the strained masculinity perspective, men with prior histories of IPV and ties to far-right groups and white supremacy may ultimately feed into threats of violence against minoritised groups (which can include male victims). Far-right extremist offenders patterned sense of loss of control and the perceived need to take corrective action in their pursuit of white manhood may engage in murder as a form of corrective action. Maintaining the traditional form of masculinity also fosters an unequal power dynamic with women and men of colour, above whom white men position themselves. Enforcing these rigid gender and racial dynamics through violence is one avenue for white men to maintain positions of power over other socially disadvantaged groups.

Intersection of Misogyny and White Supremacy in Femicide At the heart of these issues of misogyny and white supremacy in femicide is the uniquely intersectional nature of this violence. In the cases of mass violence documented earlier, male perpetrators targeted women in their attacks but in some cases also held racist views. Mass violence perpetrators’ motivations can be shaped by both racial and gendered power structures that place white men in privileged positions. As an example, in one case of extremist violence, the offender targeted women of immigrant status. The far-right extremist who feared “the demise of the white race” believed Black, Latinx, and Jewish people were to blame for many of society’s problems, thereby targeting them as a form of retributive violence (Holthouse, 2009). This rape and murder spree highlights the intersectional nature of race and gender. In an additional effort to make his white supremacist and 84

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anti-Semitic beliefs clear, he carved a swastika into his forehead before his trial. His violent extremism became a mechanism to enact his beliefs that whiteness and traditional values are declining in society. However, he targeted women of colour to “correct” behaviour he considers incongruent to traditional gender dynamics associated with white masculinity. The perpetrator murdered sex workers – women of colour in particular – to correct this perceived injustice against himself and “traditional values” (Holthouse, 2009). His use of violence to “save” the “white race” indicates that he is maintaining rather than saving a white supremacist, misogynistic power structure. This demand power is thus not limited to gender but can intersect with social structural systems associated with race. Depending on the perpetrator, greater emphasis may be given to one or more structural systems. In the 2011 mass shooting in Norway, the perpetrator believed the “Nordic race was superior,” claiming they were “on the brink of extinction” (Langman, 2020: 75). Like the Isla Vista and Ecolé incel shooters, the Norway perpetrator believed society needs to restore patriarchal gender roles with men in control of women, even to the point of wanting to outsource childbearing to women in the Global South (or in his words, “poor” countries; Langman, 2020: 75). Forcing women in the Global South to bear the children of women in the Global North represents a politicised violence beyond that within the confines of mass shootings. The global context of outsourcing reproductive labour represents international contexts of supremacy, recreating existing colonial violence (Dados and Connell, 2012). Further, it puts reproductive decisions in the hands of white men in the Global North, thereby maintaining the unequal global power relations. The intersected relationship of misogyny and racism in femicide – and violence against women more broadly – demonstrates one method of corrective action for perpetrators who seek to re-establish and/or maintain socio-structural power systems. In cases where offenders target both women (especially current and former intimate partners) and people of colour, their violent actions can simultaneously encapsulate complex sets of personal grievances (e.g. IPV, IPH) and social and political grievances (e.g. revenge on perceived racial and gendered attacks for “equality”). These perpetrators share a gendered racism proposing the use of violence as a method of corrective action against women and minoritised groups, within the global patriarchal structures. In a few cases, perpetrators’ argument for the domination and control of women’s reproduction encourages violence against women across the globe as a means of securing colonial power.

Conclusion It is crucial that we not only recognise the severity of the problem of men’s violence, but the specific gendered and racialised nature of this violence. We know almost nothing about if and how these forms of violence (e.g. gender violence and racial violence) overlap. Systems of oppression underlie both of these types of violence (Azziz-Baumgartner et al., 2011; Stark and Hester, 2019), so bringing an intersectional approach to the forefront of future research of women’s victimisation and policy can lead to a more comprehensive picture of men’s perpetration of femicide (Dawson and Carrigan, 2021; García-Del Moral, 2018). In perpetrator’s targeting of women, specifically women of colour, as an attempt to regain dominance, it is necessary to analyse their behaviours but also one’s victimisation experiences through an intersectional gender and racial lens. While this chapter is one insight into the intersectional nature of femicide, future research on femicide should consider analysing intersectional inequalities beyond just race and gender, acknowledging the intersectional nature of nationality, sexuality, (dis)ability, religion, aging, and more. Additionally, future works need to recognise that this violence takes place in a structural context, not separate from the power dynamics associated with socio-structural hierarchies. As this chapter has shown, white male perpetration of femicide can be one avenue whereby men attempt to “do gender,” hoping to regain status through targeted violence (Marganski, 2019; Rottweiler et al., 2021; West and Zimmerman, 1987). The use of femicide as a means to an end is a function of a larger, 85

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unequal structure that disadvantages women and people of colour. Finally, McPhedran and colleagues (2018) argue that research focuses on the perpetrators of IPH and needs to bring attention to the victims and women’s risk of IPH (for exceptions, see Campbell, 2007; Campbell et al., 2007; Catalano, 2006; 2013). By bringing focus back to the victims of this violence – similar to arguments from the #NoNotoriety movement – policy and programming can better attend to the needs of victims.

Note 1 Following the No Notoriety campaign proposed by Lankford and Madfis (2018), this chapter does not include the names of the perpetrators of these mass violence attacks. The campaign argues that the media and reporting on these events should focus on the offense rather than the perpetrator, as media coverage varies depending on number and demographics of victims, location, and age of perpetrator (Fox et al., 2021). With the increasing trend of public mass shootings since 2000, the likelihood of contagion or copycat killers has increased with media attention (Fox et al., 2021). The goal for many of these public mass shooting perpetrators is to become famous through their acts, even influencing their goal for number of victims (Lankford and Madfis, 2018). In the mentioned cases so far, the 2018 Toronto van attacker and 2018 Tallahassee shooter both looked up to and admired the 2014 Isla Vista shooter, seeking to incite an “incel rebellion” based on his actions (Regehr, 2020: 2). By refusing to use their names, this chapter seeks to limit their infamy and highlight the problematic behaviour used to correct their “failing” manhood (Allison & Klein, 2021: 6873).

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PART 3

Data and Methodological Considerations

9 DATA SOURCES AND CHALLENGES IN ADDRESSING FEMICIDE AND FEMINICIDE Angelika Zecha, Naeemah Abrahams, Karine Duhamel, Cristina Fabré, María Alejandra Otamendi, Alejandra Ríos-Cázares, Heidi Stöckl, Myrna Dawson, and Saide Mobayed Vega Introduction Femicide,1 the killing of a woman or girl because of her sex/gender, is a common focus of data collection on violence perpetrated by men against women and girls. While this situation varies across world regions, as well as groups of women and girls, femicide data are generally believed to be less impacted by reporting or recording biases. Compared to non-lethal violence, femicide data typically allow for better documentation of the characteristics of incidents and those involved. However, data on femicide remain difficult to access and collect. Information may be limited in scope, providing little beyond the sex and age of the victim, date and location of the killing, cause of death, if the accused is identified, and sometimes the relationship (Cullen et al., 2021; Dawson and Carrigan, 2021; Dawson, 2017; Fuentes and Cookson, 2020; Walby et al., 2017; Walklate et al., 2020). In many countries, this is the best-case scenario. Data collection is primarily the responsibility of state institutions and may be restricted by legal provisions or not easily accessible by researchers. This chapter brings together practitioners from various world regions working to improve official data collection on femicide. Challenges and achievements are identified in key themes emerging from a reflective, collaborative process. Each co-author, situated within the specific context in which they work, shared their perspectives on femicide data. In the following section, we provide background context on the relevance of collecting global femicide data, followed by a description of the reflective process, including the questions that guided our thinking process. Following an in-depth discussion of the seven themes, we conclude that it is crucial for researchers to continually re-examine data gaps to ensure ongoing improvements are made to femicide data.

The Importance of Femicide Data Former United Nations (UN) special rapporteurs on violence against women Rashida Manjoo and Dubravka Šimonović were instrumental in drawing global attention to femicide prevention as a priority, including the need to collect comparable data that could be disaggregated by key factors (e.g. relationship, age, and race/ethnicity). Along with many others, they called upon countries to establish femicide watches or observatories as a mechanism for systematic and detailed data collection to inform prevention and policy. Femicide research has typically incorporated one of two approaches: (1) a focus on all killings of women and girls, or female homicide, and (2) a focus on the DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-12

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most common subtype of femicide, which is intimate partner femicide (Dawson and Gartner, 1998; McFarlane et al., 2002; UNODC, 2019; Stöckl et al., 2013). Before these calls, researchers, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), particularly in Latin America, were already working to identify strategies to improve the availability, collection, and monitoring of femicide data. Activists and grassroots movements,2 such as #NiUnaMenos, propelled the creation of femicide registries and data initiatives. Priority actions were identified, and according to experts’ assessment, “institutionalising national databases” was found to be most relevant whereas the use of “media coverage” was deemed as most feasible (Vives-Cases et al., 2016: 34). Discussions are ongoing as to how femicide should be defined, how distinct it is from homicide, and how to operationalise these differences. Subsequent answers are crucial for (1) producing femicide statistics comparable within and across countries, (2) determining prevention initiatives and appropriate sanctions, (3) monitoring legal processes, and (4) increasing awareness and education. Greater efforts to collect more accurate data and to make these data available to those who can use them for prevention are crucial.

The Process of Reflection Stakeholders in various countries or world regions were invited to participate in a collaborative reflection about recent achievements and ongoing challenges in femicide data collection (see Table 9.1). The first author, Angelika Zecha, a graduate researcher at the Centre for the Study of Social and Legal Responses to Violence, University of Guelph, facilitated the collaborative reflection process across multiple phases, compiled stakeholder responses, and drafted the chapter. Myrna Dawson and Saide Mobayed participated as editors during the process. Each stakeholder responded separately to five guiding questions: 1 2 3 4 5

What is the context of data that you work with? What are the biggest challenges? Is available data representative of the situation? If not, why not? Who or what groups are missing/invisible and why? What characteristics do they share? What changes do you wish to see? What needs to be done better for data collection? What is the impact of working with femicide data (e.g. emotional labour)?

The responses were compiled and reviewed to draw out potential themes. A draft of the identified themes was distributed to all stakeholders who weighed in further on these themes, which prompted two additional questions: 1 2

What is the role played by qualitative data? What achievements have been witnessed in data collection on femicide?

Results Seven main themes emerged in response to these reflections, which are discussed here: 1 Research goals 2 Accessibility of accurate data 3 Lack of coordination and standardisation across data collection 4 Data completeness 5 The role of qualitative data in femicide prevention 6 Emotional toll 7 Achievements 92

Data Sources and Challenges in Addressing Femicide/Feminicide Table 9.1  Researchers, Professional Roles, and Experience (in Alphabetical Order) Researcher

Country/Region

Description

Dr Naeemah Abrahams, Director, Gender and Health Research Unit, South African Medical Research Council (NA)

South Africa

Dr Karine Duhamel, Director of Research, National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (KD)

Canada

Cristina Fabré, Gender-Based Violence Team Leader, European Institute for Gender Equality (CF)

Europe

Dr María Alejandra Otamendi, Coordinator of the Reports and Registries Unit, Women’s Office of the National Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina (MAO)

Argentina

Dr Alejandra Ríos-Cázares, Adjunct General Director of Development, Analysis and Indicators of Government Statistics, National Institute of Statistics and Geography of Mexico (ARC)

Mexico

Dr Abrahams has a public health background, working in the homicide and GBV research field for 30 years and femicide research for 20 years. Her research quantifies the scope of femicide in South Africa and led the development of the first national femicide prevention strategy in 2021. She has led three national femicide studies and has supervised two PhD students who have done qualitative studies examining perpetrators of femicide and child homicide. Dr Duhamel served as the director of research for the NI-MMIWG, researching and drafting the Final Report and managing the Forensic Document Review Project. She now works in research and data development to assist governments in understanding whether progress is being made to keep Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people safe. Cristina Fabré at the EIGE has carried out several ground-breaking studies and collected data and resources related to GBV. The EIGE provides research and statistical data, along with insights for policymakers at the national and EU level, to support institutions and experts engaged in preventing and combating GBV in the EU and beyond. Dr Otamendi is the coordinator at the Women’s Office of the National Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina, which produces the annual report of the National Registry of Femicides of the Argentine Justice (RNFJA). Dr Otamendi specialises in the study of GBV, armed violence, punitiveness, and social research methods. She has her doctorate in sociology from the University of Buenos Aires and EHESS of Paris. She holds a master’s degree in global governance and diplomacy from the University of Oxford. She is a researcher and teacher at the Gino Germani Research Institute (IIGG), University of Buenos Aires. She is the regional focal point of Gender Equality Network for Small Arms Control. Dr Ríos-Cázares works on gathering, systematisation, and analyses of administrative records to generate statistical data on VAW. The INEGI participates in the design and implementation of the National Survey on Household Relationship Dynamics (ENDIREH), the main source of information on VAW. The Institute coordinates the System of Statistics on Violence against Women (Sistema Integrado de Estadísticas sobre Violencia contra las Mujeres, SIESVIM). She is also a professor in the Public Administration Department at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas. (Continued)

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Angelika Zecha et al. Table 9.1 (Continued) Researcher

Country/Region

Description

Dr Heidi Stöckl, Professor of Public Health Evaluation, Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversität München, Germany (HS)

Europe

Dr Stöckl is a professor and the former director of the Gender Violence and Health Centre, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Dr Stöckl has more than 20 years of experience in researching the epidemiology of intimate partner violence, violencerelated mortality, and human trafficking. She has worked on a global prevalence study on IPH and a review on who murders male and female children, including adolescents. She investigated homicidesuicide and child homicides in Romania and conducted secondary data analysis on IPH and gender policies.

Research Goals The prevention of femicide and violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a commonly held objective of all initiatives. Data are collected and analysed with the goal of better informing national policies that help reduce femicide. Many data collection efforts, such as the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (NI-MMIWG) and the Argentine Registry, are driven by grassroots movements and advocates from research institutions. The stakeholders underscored that quality data produced better-informed policy prevention planning. Many initiatives also play a key role to educate the public. For example, in Argentina, [they] provide detailed information about the victims, the perpetrators, and the legal cases of femicides that are used by NGOs, activists, victims’ relatives, and different state agencies to push the agenda, design better prevention strategies, comply with the duty to investigate and punish femicides, and to guarantee just and effective reparation to related victims. (MAO) Various publications in Mexico present analyses of different sources of information and data. In Canada, the NI-MMIWG’s Final Report included a qualitative analysis of all testimonies and artistic expressions from family members, survivors, and other experts. Sharing disaggregated statistics with other researchers also plays an important role in the development of suitable solutions to genderbased violence (GBV). For example, the EIGE’s Gender Statistics Database provides “access to existing statistical data on GBV, aiming to support institutions and experts engaged in preventing and combating GBV” (CF). In addition to publishing reports and uploading open databases for researchers to use, other dissemination activities have been employed across the initiatives, such as the Women’s Office of the National Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina’s Specialized Course on Firearms Investigations from a Gender Perspective (MAO). Conducting research can lead to increased public awareness and propels other initiatives dedicated to ending femicide and VAWG.

Accessibility of Accurate Data Femicide data are often drawn from national crime statistics and/or other administrative data sources on homicide, such as justice and health systems, which come with several limitations. “The main 94

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limitation is that it reflects only what is recorded by an agency that interacts with a victim and/or a perpetrator” (CF). This issue is compounded by significant barriers to the collection of administrative data because they are non-existent or not accessible. “Data on femicide is not available from routine admin in the country. . . . We have seen no real interest from the Statistical Office to ensure quality data is collected on femicide in South Africa and poor technical capacity is a barrier in some settings” (NA). Additionally, data may be collected but not reported to governmental institutions. “Some police statistics might have collected these data as well. They might simply not be required to pass it on to the national statistical offices” (HS). Many initiatives’ attempts to collect data have been met with reluctance by governments and external bodies to share information: The NI-MMIWG took state police to court to pursue key police files. . . . The NIMMIWG was not able to access the entirety of existing databases due to an unwillingness by data holders to provide access to key information that could provide insight into the scope of the issue. (KD) When data are accessed, they can be difficult to disaggregate as “metadata is not always available, making it difficult to understand offences included, counting rules applicable, stages at which data is recorded, etc.” (CF). Most secondary analyses of official data require “contact with statistical offices directly as not all data is available online in the form and shape needed” (HS). A lack of digital records can also present a physical barrier to collection efforts, especially in developing countries: The South African system has hard copies of the files which are stored, but filing systems are poor or absent. We, therefore, struggle to find case dockets to extract information. Many developing countries are likely in the same position. (NA) Physical copies of files are difficult to access, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, “due to the lockdown’s aim to prevent the spread of COVID-19, in some provinces of Argentina, focal points have difficulties to get direct access to full files since not all of them are digitalised” (MAO). When strict deadlines are imposed by governments on research initiatives, information loss is a consequence. Some initiatives face constraints with timing, resulting in some victims of femicide being excluded. For example, “the NI-MMIWG did not receive its extension; as such, many who wanted to share their stories did not have an opportunity to do so” (KD). Additionally, when compiling annual reports, “some Argentine provinces may have difficulties to report all cases on time since not all court files are digitalised, so they need to review them on paper. Consequently, they send all the information close to the deadline” (MAO). Most administrative data are collected initially by the police. Many stakeholders identified that poor training results in incomplete or inaccurate data: The poor data systems at each of the different parts of the chain have their individual and systemic problems. South African Police will enter a female murder into the system, and this is usually when the case is reported and most often never updated regarding age, perpetrator, location of the crime, and progress of the case. We have further challenges of police staff not capacitated to work on computers. We have a long way to go. (NA) 95

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Additionally, actors may not be willing or able to record and update certain information in their systems (HS) or accuracy may be undermined by input errors (CF). Training actors, including researchers, on the importance of robust data collection, is important for data consistency. “The best action to take is to provide better training to public prosecutor offices and public security services (state, local police) so they initiate every single investigation of a women homicide with a gender perspective” (ARC). Ultimately, better training at the point of collection may help data collectors to improve the quality of their femicide data (KD). Court data are also important because they “include information at all stages of the crime and the legal process; previous complaints and protective measures; characteristics of victims, perpetrators and facts of each femicide; and follow-up of legal cases and sentences” (MAO). However, court data has some downsides, including “there might not be enough evidence to convict the perpetrator, homicide-suicides are not captured, that court systems vary across the world, and there is a likelihood of corruption or tampered evidence” (HS). Since feminicide is a judicial definition in Mexico and it is only after the “investigation of the public prosecutor and resolution of the judiciary that a killing of a woman is considered as such,” there is “a high probability that current data underestimates the problem” (ARC). Most initiatives rely on multiple data sources to determine if a death was femicide. Data triangulation can help to ensure data validity; for example, external validation is carried out with shadow reports from NGOs and the media, and internal validation through data consistency. By doing so, the Argentine Registry includes cases that are not necessarily defined as femicides at the initial legal imputation, but that comply with the indicators of the Protocol to identify femicides. (MAO) By choosing to collect information on all cases of women killed, potential femicide cases can be captured until the presence of a gender-related motive is known. Data triangulation can provide a more complete picture because some sources have different information than other sources. For example, I have led national surveys where we collected data from a sample of mortuaries, followed them up with the police investigation data, then, if found, use the data from the police investigations to determine the type of femicide. (NA) Data triangulation is one way to mitigate the inaccessibility of accurate data; however, incomparability and conflicting information remain a challenge.

Lack of Coordination and Standardisation Across Data Collection Data comparability is vital to understanding national and international trends in femicide but is difficult to achieve across countries and institutions because “internationally comparable data on most types of VAWG do not exist” (CF). Different definitions, methods, standards, and protocols can lead to incoherence in administrative data, impacting the scope of data collected. Crime may be defined differently across countries and femicide is not considered a separate offence in many world regions. For example, in Mexico, collecting data on VAWG faces challenges in the “disparity of definitions and strategies due to the federal character of the Mexican political regime with each state penal code having its definition of feminicide” (ARC). None of the European Union (EU) member states “recognise femicide as a separate legal offence from homicide, hence available data is collected for (gender-neutral) homicide only” (CF). 96

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National-level statistics across countries may also differ based on administrative processes related to data collection and categorisation, making it a challenge to examine true variation in incidence and prevalence. “The criminal code under each country’s legal system influences the data that are collected by the law enforcement sector” (CF). Thus, standardisation of data collection processes and better cross-jurisdictional communications and collaborations are also needed to improve understanding of femicide across jurisdictions (KD). Even within countries, institutions may produce administrative data using different protocols and definitions. This can lead to fragmented understandings of femicide. There are few linkages between data sources because there is often no coordination body: Cooperation between the police and justice sectors is limited and made more difficult by the fact that these institutions use different recording systems and classifications. . . . Stages at which data are recorded (data recorded by the police instantly, after sufficient evidence is provided, after the criminal proceeding) also differ. (CF) Similarly, in South Africa, “the post-mortem report will provide the cause of death, and this is valuable for an investigation. However, the mortuary and police data are not linked and the absence of this means no flow” (NA). Jurisdictions often use different units for data collection with police tending to collect offence data rather than victim data (CF). Even with a coordination mechanism for VAWG in Mexico, “there still are different ways public institutions at the state and local level intervene in reaction to this phenomenon. It has been a slow process to standardise crime definitions across penal codes” (ARC). Similarly, other countries face heterogeneity in how institutions record femicide. Enhancing methodological processes and creating common classifications that consider completeness, exhaustiveness, mutual exclusivity of categories, and statistical feasibility could improve comparability and serve as a model for all countries (CF). Some institutions should also begin to include sex-/gender-related motivations. For example, “in Mexico, one action could be to update the format in which health institutions record causes of death. This is a national wide format. It could be updated so reasons related to gender violence could be recorded” (ARC). In addition to local and national movements to document femicide, support from international bodies is a way to improve the coordination of data collection. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals exert pressure on member states to create femicide observatories and collect data. Legislation and initiatives such as the Istanbul Convention, the Beijing Platform for Action, and the Convention of Belém do Pará require various member states to uphold commitments to tackle GBV.

Data Completeness Femicide data are often incomplete for individual-level characteristics (e.g. age, sex/gender, relationship) because those who record and report publicly available data often miss basic facts. Additionally, “information on motives of homicides is rarely available and reporting standards on this type of information varies widely so they are not comparable” (HS). Administrative jurisdictions often “cannot disaggregate by age of the victim or sex of the perpetrator, and others cannot disaggregate by relationship” (CF). When data are disaggregated by relationship, “definitions of what is captured under ‘partner’ vary” (HS). The initiatives have a well-developed methodology and expansive variables but are limited in the data they can collect due to flawed or incomplete primary sources. These mentioned issues also lead to incomplete information on victim membership in various social groups. While women tend to be well-represented in femicide databases, 2SLGBTQQIA+ people,3 collateral victims, and other marginalised victims often remain missing from the data, 97

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leading to the invisibility of some femicide victims. Underreporting affects the validity of available data, and as a result, there is insufficient information to analyse killings from an intersectional perspective and to develop appropriate preventions. Visibility is also highly dependent on whether cases were reported to the police so research drawing from these data sources will reflect this. This means contextual information for some killings (e.g. murder-suicides) is often lacking and for some victims (e.g. victims of human trafficking). The shortcomings associated with incomplete data limit the ability to conduct intersectional analyses. The Argentine Registry and the NI-MMIWG processes have had some success at producing intersectional data informed by the lived experiences of family members and survivors. These initiatives started with the intent to be intersectional whereas administrative databases are created for different purposes. Capturing sex/gender motivations is also a challenge. “Identifying variables that can unveil gender motivations are extremely complex” (CF). When perpetrators are unidentified and/or victim-offender relationships are not reported, it is more difficult to uncover sex/gendered contexts, which are key to prevention. In regions where organised crime is more prevalent, it may be difficult to classify the death of a woman as femicide based on gender motivations if the killing was part of a robbery, gang retaliation, or other criminal disputes. Missing information also leads to an underrepresentation of intimate partner homicides (IPH; HS). Finally, the lack of feminist perspectives in the criminal justice process results in missing information on the prior history and forms of violence. There is a pressing need to integrate feminist perspectives to make GBV, including femicide, more visible in statistics. Underreported or invisible victims identified by stakeholders were as follows: • • • • • •

Victims connected to the femicide, specifically children killed in the context of intimate partner violence (CF, Europe) Marginalised groups (HS, Europe) Those who identify as 2SLGBTQQIA+ and women, girls, or 2SLGBTQQIA+ people with disabilities (KD, Canada) Unidentified women (Jane Does), sex workers, and homeless women (NA, South Africa) Trans women (MAO, Argentina) Women and girls that identify as Indigenous or Afro descendants (ARC, Mexico)

The Role of Qualitative Data in Femicide Prevention Qualitative research plays an integral role in providing contextual information on femicides and can enhance our understanding of the lives of femicide victims and perpetrators. Qualitative research, such as data collected from domestic homicide death reviews and interviews with victims’ families, can fill in some of the data gaps associated with administrative, primarily quantitative, data. Qualitative studies can also illustrate the “state of patriarchy” in a particular community or society, enhance understanding of motives behind the killings, capture gendered circumstances, and provide knowledge on risk factors (CF). “In addition to humanising the murdered women, it provides crucial insights into their stories and the pathways leading to homicides” (HS). Although it is not possible to understand the circumstances through the eyes of the victims, qualitative data allows a glimpse through the voices of those close to her (e.g. family or friends) (NA). Qualitative research is fundamental to the development of interventions and policies (ARC). Through women’s experiences, researchers can better understand why some cases of intimate partner violence led to femicide while the majority do not (HS). Furthermore, survey data does not adequately capture what discourages women to report domestic violence and/or other experiences of violence by men at school, at work, or in the public domain (ARC). Some qualitative studies 98

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have identified instances where women murdered by their intimate partners have sought help but did not receive it, highlighting priorities for prevention (HS). Qualitative data on judicial sentences can provide insights into whether and how a gendered perspective was applied (MAO). Qualitative data also ensures policies and programs contribute to safety in practical ways by evaluating whether they are grounded in lived experiences, recognising the “how” and “why” of violence (KD). By better understanding risk factors, the design of preventive measures can be improved and strengthened: Surveys on VAWG provide a general picture, like an impressionist painting. Interviews with victims, public prosecutors, personnel of the health sector and assistance services give us details, like a realism painting, about challenges to implementing diverse protocols and how lack of resources impacts policy goals. (ARC) Additionally, qualitative research can be a tool for raising awareness about femicide to support grassroots movements against GBV. Qualitative data plays a pedagogical function, allowing the public and policy-makers to connect to the stories and experiences of those who are targeted by violence (KD). As a result, “these experiences are easier to connect to and, through lived experiences, can directly inform policies for prevention” (KD). Finally, qualitative interviews also capture more fully the voices of perpetrators, uncovering information crucial for prevention (MAO). In-depth interviews with perpetrators can enhance knowledge about the relationship between hegemonic masculinities and femicide (MAO). Therefore, data collected through qualitative methods are foundational in femicide prevention, especially due to its contributions to demonstrating femicide contexts.

Emotional Toll All contributors shared that there is some level of emotional toll involved in their work on femicide. Working with institutional data may be challenging because numbers and statistics can lead to emotional distancing. For instance, working with official statistics can result in a disconnection from the femicide victims: [O]ne can easily forget the gravity of the topic dealt with but rather just focus on anonymous, “cold” numbers. To this extent, there is a risk of dehumanising femicide victims where we forget the reality behind the numbers. This can impact our work: while it does make it easier emotionally to deal with GBV, the risk is to feel less connected to the victims. (CF) As a result, there is a heavy emphasis on moving beyond numbers and connecting to the victims’ stories. With qualitative studies, researchers note the heavy emotional toll of femicide inflicted on themselves and other researchers: In some way, we are not only talking about an individual loss of life through murder, although this remains in the centre. We are also talking about the partner, children, parents, family members, friends, neighbours, and community members of this individual woman, who loved her, had different levels of relationships with her or might have just regularly greeted her. They are all in shock about how something like that could have happened and why they did not see it coming and intervened. These feelings of guilt can be immense. (HS) 99

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Working with data on particularly vulnerable femicide victims, such as children and the elderly, takes an even greater toll. As such, it is important to keep a certain distance from the work to minimise vicarious trauma and manage emotional labour: Reading some cases and even producing stats, sometimes makes me feel sick, sometimes I feel sad, frustrated and with anger. Some groups affect me the most: when the victims are children or teenagers . . . when the victims are elderly women. However, it also makes me feel proud that we are doing something significant for them: making them visible and helping to prevent future cases. (MAO) When I did my systematic review on who murders children, while pregnant with my second child, I struggled as there were more detailed reports on what happened, whilst with femicide, I could keep more distance as the stories were less detailed. (HS) Working with femicide data presents a particular tension between maintaining enough distance to emotionally handle the work while also getting close enough to connect with the victims to recognise their journeys. The work done by NGOs and other initiatives that place victims at the centre of the issue is incredibly helpful in dignifying those suffering directly or indirectly from femicide (CF). Although emotionally difficult to review, sometimes due to the brutal nature of the crimes, the experiences of victims are invaluable for understanding the dynamics of femicide: Working with these stories was the most challenging experience with data of my lifetime and career; the personal stories heard by research staff were extremely difficult to work with, but invaluable in terms of understanding the information that requires us to move beyond numbers and statistics and to understand the work ahead. (KD) The researchers acknowledged a shared frustration with the difficulties of implementing research findings. Despite the immense progress made with the documentation of femicides, there is little information available to show that the incidence of femicides is decreasing alongside improvements in measuring femicides. Despite tensions associated with documenting femicide and the heavy emotional toll, researchers remain dedicated to the shared purpose of reducing VAWG. One co-author describes her outlook in one word: Committed. There are days in which the prevailing feeling is anger or despair. However, I fully understand that we are facing a complex social problem that requires us to be creative in looking for solutions. Working on VAWG is an intellectual challenge and at the same time a strong social commitment. Being the latter is much more important than the former. (ARC)

Achievements Several achievements in femicide data collection related to the expansion of information recorded. For example, the Argentine Registry adds new variables every year and recent changes contextualise femicide and involve more victim, offender, and event characteristics to capture intersectionality (MAO). Although fewer European countries collect data on the gendered motivations 100

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of the killings, some use comprehensive parameters when collecting data (CF). In Canada, there are “new opportunities being formed for including qualitative data and considering new data sources, as well as disaggregating existing data and improving the methodology at point of collection” (KD). Promising improvements are due, in part, to advocacy work carried out by researchers and civil society activists and through increased responsiveness from governments and public officials to enhance administrative data. In Germany, calls from researchers for national data on IPH-led national crime statistics officials to collect data from its regional offices and make it available to researchers (HS). In Mexico, the work on femicide has increased awareness and encouraged public officials to develop administrative records to capture variables examining homicides of women (ARC). There are also recent discussions on adjustments to national death certificates in Mexico to identify more characteristics of women’s violent deaths to enhance data (ARC). In the EU, there is a growing awareness of the usefulness of statistics to support the planning and monitoring of policies (CF). In addition, there are improvements in data completeness, with some EU states establishing femicide watches, observatories, or domestic homicide reviews (CF). In South Africa, “We have seen for the first time the leadership from government to develop a femicide prevention strategy for South Africa and information systems on femicide are one of their five strategic goals” (NA). All achievements identified involve complicated actions that require long-term commitments to ending femicide (KD).

Conclusion This chapter provided select key stakeholders with the opportunity to reflect on their experiences when collecting femicide, identifying seven themes. The co-authors drew on their own extensive, practical experiences to offer insights into the challenges and achievements of working with femicide data. Despite differences in background, location, and resources, there was considerable overlap in research with a particular commitment to the prevention of femicide and VAWG. Although the stakeholders are highly dedicated with much expertise, they consistently face the obstacles of inaccessible, flawed, or non-existent data when doing their work. They all note that femicide data is further complicated by inconsistency in definitions and parameters which often results in incomparability due to cross-jurisdictional issues within and across countries. When data are accessible, valuable information (e.g. prior violence, gender-related motives) is often absent. Moreover, femicide victims who share characteristics are often invisible (i.e. 2SLGBTQQIA+ people, victims in the sex trade, and racialised victims) from some databases altogether. Therefore, significant obstacles remain despite ongoing calls from scholars to examine femicide using an intersectional lens (e.g. Crenshaw, 1991; Garcia-Del Moral, 2018; Cullen et al., 2021; Barberet and Baboolal, 2020). While most official data is quantitative and often aggregated, the richness of qualitative research was highlighted. It was argued that qualitative data may have more ability to provide nuanced pictures of the lives of femicide victims and the gendered circumstances of their deaths. Qualitative data is immersive and informative for program planners by allowing researchers to understand the events leading up to their deaths – all of which form possible points of intervention and prevention. All stakeholders identified the emotional toll of researching femicide and GBV, which underscores the need to enhance researcher well-being. The stakeholders recognised there is a certain level of responsibility and empathy required for working with data about victims who have lost their lives to violence. The loss of a woman or girl to femicide is immeasurable and felt by families, communities, frontline professionals, advocates, and researchers globally. This collective grief serves as an impetus for the continuation of existing work on femicide and spurs the creation of new femicide initiatives. 101

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Although stakeholders identified ongoing challenges, all expressed optimism about recent achievements in the field. Databases are continually updated, qualitative data is increasingly recognised for its utility, and data completeness and validity improvements have been witnessed. The advocacy work of researchers and activists must be credited for these changes. Going forward, it is crucial for researchers, stakeholders, and governments to openly reflect on data gaps and their efforts to ensure the goal of reducing femicide remains at the forefront.

Notes 1 Refer to Chapter 10, “Data Activism: Contesting Feminicide/Femicide,” for further information on the contributions of activism and grassroots movements to femicide data. 2 The term “femicide” is used in this chapter; however, we acknowledge the use of “feminicide” in many countries. 3 “2SLGBTQQIA+” is a term that includes individuals who identify as two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, and asexual.

References Barberet, R., & Baboolal, A. A. (2020). The global femicide problem: Issues and prospects. In Research Handbook on Gender, Sexuality, and the Law. Edward Elgar Publishing. Crenshaw, K. (1991). Race, gender, and sexual harassment. Southern California law Review, 65, 1467. Cullen, P., Dawson, M., Price, J., & Rowlands, J. (2021). Intersectionality and invisible victims: Reflections on data challenges and vicarious trauma in femicide, family and intimate partner homicide research. Journal of Family Violence, 36(5), 619–628. Dawson, M. (Ed.). (2017). Domestic Homicides and Death Reviews: An International Perspective. Springer. Dawson, M., & Carrigan, M. (2021). Identifying femicide locally and globally: Understanding the utility and accessibility of sex/gender-related motives and indicators. Current Sociology, 69(5): 682–704. Dawson, M., & Gartner, R. (1998). Differences in the characteristics of intimate femicides: The role of relationship state and relationship status. Homicide Studies, 2(4), 378–399. Fuentes, L., & Cookson, T. P. (2020). Counting gender (in) equality? A feminist geographical critique of the gender data revolution. Gender, Place & Culture, 27(6), 881–902. García-Del Moral, P. (2018). The murders of indigenous women in Canada as feminicides: Toward a decolonial intersectional reconceptualization of femicide. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 43(4), 929–954. McFarlane, J., Campbell, J. C., & Watson, K. (2002). Intimate partner stalking and femicide: Urgent implications for women’s safety. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 20(1-2), 51–68. Stöckl, H., Devries, K., Rotstein, A., Abrahams, N., Campbell, J., Watts, C., & Moreno, C. G. (2013). The global prevalence of intimate partner homicide: A systematic review. The Lancet, 382(9895), 859–865. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). (2019). Global study on homicide 2019. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Vives-Cases, C., Goicolea, I., Hernández, A., Sanz-Barbero, B., Gill, A. K., Baldry, A. C., . . . & Stoeckl, H. (2016). Expert opinions on improving femicide data collection across Europe: A concept mapping study. PLoS One, 11(2), e0148364. Walby, S., Towers, J., Balderston, S., Corradi, C., Francis, B., . . . & Strid, S. (2017). The concept and measurement of violence against women and men (p. 192). Policy Press. Walklate, S., Fitz-Gibbon, K., McCulloch, J., & Maher, J. (2020). Towards a global femicide index: Counting the costs. Routledge.

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10 FEMINICIDE DATA ACTIVISM Collectif Féminicides Par Compagnons ou Ex, Feminizidmap, Kathomi Gatwiri, Savia Hasanova, Anna Kapushenko, Lyubava Malysheva, Saide Mobayed Vega, Audrey Mugeni, Rosalind Page, Ivonne Ramírez, Helena Suárez Val, Dawn Wilcox, and Aimee Zambrano Ortiz1

I Introduction Feminicide2 is a communicative event. Each gender-related killing of women and girls (re)acts as a message that ripples across the social body (Segato, 2010). Feminicide results from and reinforces patriarchal and misogynistic systems of oppression that exacerbate as they intersect with racism, colonialism, neoliberalism, and transphobia. Counting and recording feminicides is a key practice to both render them visible and strengthen evidence-based policy-making on this issue. As digital tools, technologies, and methods have become more accessible, practices of counting and accounting for the killing of women and girls have multiplied. From Mexico to Russia, civil society actors are collecting and systematising feminicides to challenge and change institutional data which is often missing and messy (D’Ignazio and Klein, 2020; Gray et al., 2016; Gutiérrez, 2018). The common goal of these data activism practices is to better understand the what, when, where, how, and why regarding these killings as there is a shared recognition that what or who is not counted does not count. “Numbers weave patterns which people inhabit and which inhabit people,” writes Helen Verran (in Nelson, 2015). This chapter weaves our experiences as activists collecting feminicide data in France, Germany, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Russia, the United States, and Venezuela. Our works draw from a long genealogy of feminist research and activism on femicide/feminicide and gender-related violence (Lagarde y De Los Ríos, 2008; Radford and Russell, 1992; Segato, 2010). To contextualise our practices, we draw on data activism (Gray et al., 2016; Gutiérrez, 2018; Milan and Gutiérrez, 2015) and data feminism (D’Ignazio and Klein, 2020; D’Ignazio et al., 2022) as theoretical lenses. Methodologically, we inhabited each other’s experiences through an iterative conversation and co-writing session where we reflected on questions related to the context of our work, our data-making processes, the mental and emotional toll, and the challenges and opportunities of generating feminicide data.3 From these exchanges, we identified five analytical nodes (1) time; (2) context, space, and place; (3) methods, media, and ethics; (4) affect; and (5) ethos of change. Reading these as nodes – as points in a network – rather than themes allows us to get a better sense of the relations, in the makings of these data, between an interweaved constellation of human and non-human actors (Castells, 2015; Elias, 1978; Latour, 2005). In addition, the network allegory gives us a sense of how activism against feminicide connects, through affective engagement and a strong ethos for change. Yet it also separates, as it is lived in different places, contexts, and institutions. We begin the chapter by introducing

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-13

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who are the “we” gathered here. Then, we provide a brief overview of the theoretical frameworks we used to understand data practices against feminicide. In the main section, we present our analytical nodes. Quotes from each activist are listed alone and together. Lists “suggest some mutual alienation in the gap between individual items, [but] they can move us to speculate on what lies between” (McCormack, 2015: 95–96), so this arrangement invites you, the reader, to participate in the interpretation. In this sense, we encourage you to situate yourself in this in-betweenness and think of each node as a knot to disentangle and weave the assembled voices/threads with your own experience.

Who Are the “We” in This Chapter? Saide Mobayed and Helena Suárez Val are Latin American researchers investigating feminicide data practices, and Helena also produces activist feminicide data for Uruguay since 2015. For this chapter, Saide and Helena extended an invitation through our network of activists and journalists working with feminicide data to collaborate as co-authors. The activists who responded (Table 10.1) are a small number of the myriad organisations, collectives, and individuals around the world who are producing feminicide data, and this chapter reflects only some of the rich diversity of these practices. We are a diverse group, including Black women, women of colour, migrant women, and women in precarious work conditions, with different sexual orientations, from different countries. Our differences shape how we do and how we feel the work of collecting feminicide data. We acknowledge and recognise that there are further concerns and practices not reflected here – for example, the work of those specifically caring for missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and twospirit people, transphobic murders, or the murders of migrant women. Nevertheless, we hope our experiences vibrate and reverberate with others doing this work and who want to understand more about feminicide data practices, enough to find some sparks of connection. Table 10.1  Co-authors and Their Feminicide Data Projects Co-author’s name

Project and Quote Acronym

Feminizidmap

DE/Feminizidmap: Feminizidmap Collectif Féminicides Par FR/Collectif: Féminicides Compagnons ou Ex Par Compagnons ou Ex Savia Hasanova & Anna KG/Savia&Anna: Kapushenko, Kloop Femicide in Kyrgyzstan Kathomi Gatwiri & KN/Kathomi&Audrey: Audrey Mugeni Counting Dead Women – Kenya Ivonne Ramirez MX/Ivonne: Ellas Tienen Nombre, Ciudad Juárez Lyubava Malysheva RU/Lyubava: Femicid.net Dawn Wilcox US/Dawn: Women Count USA: Femicide Accountability Project Rosalind Page US/Rosalind: Black Femicide Helena Suárez Val4 UY/Helena: Feminicidio Uruguay Aimee Zambrano Ortiz, VE/Aimee: Monitor de Utopix Femicidios

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Country and Year it Started

Link

Germany (2018)

feminizidmap.org

France (2018)

facebook.com/feminicide

Kyrgyzstan (2020)

kloop.kg/blog/2021/01/28/ femicide-in-kyrgyzstan facebook.com/ CountingDeadWomenKenya

Kenya (2019)

Mexico (2015)

ellastienennombre.org

Russia (2019) USA (2016)

femicid.net womencountusa.org

USA (2018) Uruguay (2015)

facebook.com/ blackfemicideUS feminicidiouruguay.net

Venezuela (2019)

utopix.cc/tag/femicidios

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II  Data Activism Practices Against Feminicide From each feminicide, data spills over: date, location, method of killing, age, occupation, ties between implicated actors, and more. These data flow and span across networks, from police reports and media articles to social media posts by friends and families. Yet data about the characteristics and spread of feminicide are often “missing data” (D’Ignazio, 2024; D’Ignazio et al., 2022; D’Ignazio and Klein, 2020), inadequately recorded or fully neglected by states. To counter this omission, activists gather digital traces of feminicide (Suárez Val, 2021) into (data) structures where data about cases are put together, analysed, and cared for. Scholars have framed these practices as “data activism” (Gutiérrez, 2018; Milan and Gutiérrez, 2015), “counter-data action” (D’Ignazio, 2024; D’Ignazio and Klein, 2020; Meng and DiSalvo, 2018), “data justice” (Taylor, 2017), “statactivism” (Bruno et al., 2014), and “citizen data” (Gabrys et al., 2016), amongst others. What they share is a will to voice injustices and challenge the status quo using data as a method to mobilise and communicate their objectives, which often seek to expose or reveal what was possibly unseen or unnamed (D’Ignazio and Klein, 2020; Gray et al., 2016; Gutiérrez, 2018). Data practices against feminicide fit into what Miren Gutiérrez (2018: 2) defines as “proactive data activism,” which “consists in ways of collaborating, organising and taking action via software and data, seeking to create unconventional narratives and solutions to social problems.” As proactive data activists, we find creative, horizontal approaches to address social issues and we try to “correct asymmetries and empower individuals and groups to communicate, collaborate and participate in decision-making processes.” The latter resonates with Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein’ (2020: 8) definition of “data feminism,” which is “a way to think about data, both their uses and their limits, that is informed by direct experience, by a commitment to action, and by intersectional feminist thought.”

III  The Nodes As part of the Feminicidio Uruguay project, Helena has documented more than 80 civil society projects working with femicide/feminicide data in the Americas,5 and this list has been extended through the Data Against Feminicide6 initiative to more than 150 around the world (see D’Ignazio, this volume). These projects produce qualitative and quantitative data about a specific location, mainly from media reports supplemented with official and unofficial sources. They visualise feminicide data through maps, spreadsheets, graphs, and video or photo memorials. Most of us do this labour voluntarily, in our free time, entailing a strong political and affective engagement. Our data feminism starts from the visceral recognition that something is very wrong, that the unequal power distribution based on gender and other intersecting oppressions leads to violence against women (VAW) and feminicide. Bordamos Feminicidios,7 a group based in Mexico, embroiders cases of feminicide in participatory events in public spaces (Zamora, 2019). Interlacing multicoloured threads, they stitch together stories of feminicide, often using data sourced from activist datasets. Activists, participants, and digital publics who see the final works circulating online join an expanded yet intimate network of care around feminicide and its victims. Similarly, we trace and embroider the different threads spun by each data activist, finding the nodes in this caring network where our stories come together, interact, find distance, and separate. The interpretative work here is for the reader to develop. As mentioned in the introduction, you can think of each node as a knot to disentangle, getting in between the assembled voices/threads to let them vibrate and reverberate through your own experience.

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Time In this node, we locate and connect across time the emergence and development of our data practices against feminicide. But time is not only chronological. Time also involves the daily labour of producing and engaging with feminicide data. Today’s data activists follow in the footsteps of women who have recorded feminicide at least since the 1990s, using pen and paper, photocopies, and filing cabinets. For example, in 1993, Esther Chávez Cano started collecting paper clippings about cases, initiating the first known feminicide database in Mexico (Serviss, 2013). Meanwhile, in 2001, women running the Crespón Negro campaign in Uruguay gathered and shared feminicide data via fax (Labastie, 2007). Most of the projects listed on the Feminicidio Uruguay website, including those discussed here, started in the mid-to-late 2010s. This timing coincides with a resurgence of international women’s rights movements and increasing visibility of feminist issues online, with hashtags such as #MeToo, which emerged in and spread from English-speaking countries (Clark-Parsons, 2019), but also #NiUnaMenos and #VivasNosQueremos, born in Latin America (Villaplana Ruiz, 2019). Activism and data activism on feminicide, a concept empowered in Latin America, could be understood as knowledge-making from the borderlands – of identities, disciplines, geographies, and histories. For example, Helena’s database began in November 2014 as part of a series of spontaneous collective protests against feminicide in Uruguay and was consolidated as a systematic project through 2015. Around that time, Ivonne started gathering data for Ciudad Juárez, “to know exactly where I was standing.” That was the year #NiUnaMenos and #VivasNosQueremos actions protesting feminicide and all forms of gender-related violence spread online and offline across Latin America. That year, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women Dubravka Šimonovic also called for femicide watches to be created in every country (UN OHCHR, 2015). A year later, aiming to challenge and transform the trivialising media treatment of cases, four radical feminists in France started recording and mapping intimate partner or ex-partner feminicides in that country. While in the USA, Dawn, a registered nurse, set out to create “the first comprehensive database of all women and girls killed by men and boys from 1950 to the present, as well as to challenge victim-blaming media narratives.” Around 2018, Rosalind, also a nurse in the USA, decided to start counting femicides of Black women, “because I saw that Black women and girls within our communities were being overlooked.” Meanwhile, in Europe, a collective of feminist researchers and activists founded Feminizidmap in Germany. In Eurasia, in 2019, Lyubava started Femicid in Russia. Later, she approached Savia and Anna and encouraged their 2020 investigation for Kloop into gender-related killings of women in Kyrgyzstan. These Eurasian projects trace their lineages to Feminicidio.net,8 a record of feminicide in Spain started in 2010 by Argentinian activist Graciela Atencio. Also in 2019, following the murder of a young pregnant woman by a prominent politician, which sparked the hashtag #JusticeForSharon (Okech 2021), Audrey Mugeni and Kathomi Gatwiri started Counting Dead Women – Kenya. FR/Collectif: We devote a lot of time to this work; between 2 and 6 hours per day. We all agree that the mental load is very important and omnipresent because we are constantly connected during the day, and for some of us at night, too. DE/Feminizidmap: The idea to develop a database on femi(ni)cide in Germany came up around 2012–2013 in a conversation between the founder of Feminicidio.net, Graciela Atencio, and a project collaborator, Aleida Luján Pinelo . . . Today we are 10 members. We document all killings of women and femi(ni)cides occurring in Germany from 2019 on. One big challenge for some members is time management between paid work, personal life, and the project.

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KG/Savia&Anna: We have full-time jobs, so normally spend our weekends and day-offs working on the project. On average we were identifying 10 femicides per week, which we crosschecked, found as many details as possible and added to our database. KN/Kathomi&Audrey: The time dedicated to the project varies depending on the number of cases that are weekly reported and recorded. Researching and writing the stories of femicide victims takes approximately 3 hours a day. The mental load on this work is “full time.” US/Rosalind: I officially started an actual counting in 2019 because I saw that Black women and girls within our communities were being overlooked. MX/Ivonne: Some cases particularly burden me sometimes without knowing very well why. I get frustrated when I don’t find the names of the victims, or who they were. That’s when I spend even more time on a case and get anxiety and insomnia. RU/Lyubava: I mostly need funding. I asked for grants several times, but it is complicated for me because I don’t know enough English and lacke the experience to apply. It is always a choice between spending my time on paperwork or counting femicide. US/Dawn: I am creating the first comprehensive database of all women and girls killed by men and boys from 1950 to present, as well as challenging victim-blaming media narratives. . . . I spend an average of 25–35 hours a week to [do this] research . . . I cannot recall a day I did not think about this work. When I am not actively working on my databases, I email article links to myself to dive into later. It is extremely laborious and time-consuming work and will be a lifetime project. VE/Aimee: The Monitor de Feminicidios project started when reading about the ever-growing cases of feminicide in my country’s media. . . . Since 2016, the State has not published official disaggregated figures on the killing of women. . . . The main challenges are to ensure that the project is maintained over time and that there is a generation of successors, a feminist colleague who continues to do this work if I am not here.

Context, Space, and Place Like the haunting silhouettes of Sonia Madrigal’s La muerte sale por el oriente, an interdisciplinary art project that seeks to document, geolocate, and intervene in feminicide in Mexico,9 data operate as a mirror. How do we see ourselves, each other, and the women represented and recounted in these databases? The voices in this node ripple from datasets to data settings (Loukissas, 2019). Context becomes key to understanding the variations between space and place as it gets entangled with different ways of seeing and counting, from Ciudad Juárez to Nairobi and Berlin to Caracas. “Data are entangled within a knowledge system and inscribed in a place” (Loukissas, 2019: 15). One of the many added values of activist feminicide data is the situatedness of these practices and their connection to the place of counting. This contrasts with knowledge produced by international organisations (which are mostly based in the West) (ac)counts of feminicide, which moreover tend to only include killings of women by intimate partners (UNODC, 2018). While misogyny and patriarchy exist all around the world (and all of us meet in this node), experiences vary at the intersection of multiple oppressions as women do not face the same access to justice and accountability. Because inequalities and oppressions are manifested and sustained differently (Bradshaw et al., 2017), locating contextual particularities matters. MX/Ivonne: The project Ellas Tienen Nombre emerged in 2015 in Ciudad Juárez after a conversation with Silvia Banda, mother of Fabiola Janeth Valenzuela Banda, who disappeared in 2010. It started with my need to unveil my city to myself, the territory into which I was moving. I wanted to know exactly where I was standing.

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US/Rosalind: I was aware that a vast majority of my Black women patients were victims of domestic violence, had a history of rape, or knew someone who was a victim of the aforementioned as well as being close to a Black woman or girl that was murdered. FR/Collectif: Our social context is patriarchal, and Macron’s government has no intention of addressing the issue of VAW. . . . The [previous] feminist [political agenda] has been totally abandoned by this administration. . . . We are convinced that the impunity and sympathy for patriarchal society (including media discourse) are what gives men the right to terrorize and control the bodies and lives of women. DE/Feminizidmap: The difficulty of stoking interest in the project within Germany might be explained due to a misunderstanding of the phenomenon/concept itself, and perhaps an imaginary in which Germany is a peaceful society and “culturalised” others are to blame for the violence. KG/Savia&Anna: Kyrgyzstan is a patriarchal and conservative country. Several so-called “Kyrgyz traditions” completely contradict gender equality: bride kidnapping is still widespread and beating wives is often justified. The rising Islamisation of the country often plays into the hands of those against feminism. KN/Kathomi&Audrey: Kenya has a strong socio-cultural and political context that is still highly dominated by powerful patriarchal and religious ideologies. Political, religious and community leaders often use these to attach value to women’s lives. RU/Lyubava: Every year Russian society becomes more patriarchal, and authorities promote xenophobic, clerical, and macho values. Domestic violence has been decriminalised. Activists face dictatorship and repression. Military aggression against Ukraine continues. In our statistics, there is no data from the occupied territories. VE/Aimee: Even though Venezuela has a law that typifies 25 types of VAW, including feminicide, these have increased due to the justice system’s impunity. There are also external conditions that particularly affect us, as we have been living in a very complex economic, political and social situation since 2015. We have suffered Medidas Coercitivas Unilaterales promoted by a group of foreign countries, which have generated dire conditions in the population – especially for women – leading to an increase in poverty and violence. KG/Savia&Anna: The term “femicide” is completely new not only in our country but for the Central Asian region as a whole. It was difficult to research this topic because there is neither documented research on femicide nor experts in this field.

Methods, Media, and Ethics The increased availability and ease of use of data and data visualisation technologies have allowed “activists and citizens [to become] documentarists, archivists and monitors of abuses of power” (Tactical Technology Collective, 2013: 14). Activists across the world have taken advantage of available tools to produce, visualise, and circulate feminicide data. Though some use open source or bespoke technologies, most activists use privately owned platforms, such as Google Maps and Google Sheets, Mapbox, Airtable, and many others. Continuous learning is an essential part of the work and thus an added workload. Most activist records of feminicide use media reports as their main source, navigating media biases and stereotyped narratives to pull required data. Both the use of technologies at the service of capitalism and the entanglement of biased media narratives result in ethical challenges, as does the responsibility of caring for and circulating data about violent events. KG/Savia&Anna: The development of the methodology also took a bunch of time, as we had no expertise in the topic. 108

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MX/Ivonne: One challenge has been that I don’t have the digital skills I would like to develop and present the project as I envision it in my mind. . . . I have struggled with many theoreticalmethodological and ethic-related issues. . . . It’s not only a project but also a huge responsibility in terms of how I handle the information, how I represent these injustices, how I approach the victims’ information, and how I publish it. US/Rosalind: The way I collect my data is by going through newspapers from around the country, from followers who give me tips, and by going to websites that keep an accounting of gunshot victims, victims murdered overall daily, and by listening to police scanners in my city and other major metropolitan areas. KN/Kathomi&Audrey: In Kenya, we use the media and trusted sources. We have Google Alerts [activated] with certain words like “femicide” (usually does not bring anything up), “killing of women and girls,” “murder of women,” “violence against women and girls” (VAWG). DE/Feminizidmap: The collected information we get is political, biased, and partial, thus raising difficulties in our work such as classifying femi(ni)cide attempts; and reporting cases in which (racialised and culturalised) migrants are involved. Through questioning, discussion, and self- and group-reflection, we adjust our methods constantly, for example, by modifying our search terms and our methodology. MX/Ivonne: I started to do this project because feminicides continue to be an unsolved problem, because memory matters, and because it no longer seemed logical that with the internet and free digital tools, information about feminicide was to be found only in specialised and academic printed books. RU/Lyubava: The development of the research method took several months. I use 60 Google Alerts with keywords, which can return 500 news articles per day. I organise news manually on Google Spreadsheets. I also verify news on government websites. I cut out the victims’ photos manually and upload them to the website of the Moscow Women’s Museum (a virtual memorial to victims of femicide in Russia). US/Dawn: I primarily use news articles and often save them as PDF files because many digital media sources quickly disappear . . . This adds to the urgency I feel about my work. I utilise myriad other sources: state death row rosters, serial killer databases, court case appellate records, cold case websites, and even vintage true crime novels which are often the only robust record of what a man who killed women did to them.

Affect Affect is the capacity to affect and to be affected, and can be understood as “the intensity with which we experience emotions . . . and more importantly, the urgency to act upon those feelings” (Papacharissi, 2016: 311). When activism against feminicide surged in Uruguay, Helena described the feminist movement there as “indignant, sad and fierce” (Suárez Val, 2014). This node reflects how feminist emotions are powerful indicators that something is wrong and a motor for action (Jaggar, 1989; Lorde, 2007). Monitoring, recording, and circulating data about feminicide is affective and affecting work. It involves making feminicide not just a matter of concern, but a matter of care (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011), caring for the lives of those women who are no longer with us, in hope that others will never end up in the database. Data and data visualisation of feminicide act as “affect amplifiers” (Suárez Val, 2017), feminist archives (Borzacchiello, 2016) in/through which emotions and affects circulate hoping to “touch” others and provoke social change. US/Rosalind: The work is very daunting and at times can become overwhelming because these victims could be me or any woman in my family. But most importantly because the numbers are so staggering and yet they aren’t reported in the media. 109

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FR/Collectif: Sometimes it’s like a nightmare, but we also get a sense of satisfaction from helping to make this issue more visible, so that we can change the society we live in, especially for our daughters and granddaughters. At times it revives our traumas, but we support each other. KN/Kathomi&Audrey: Audrey and I alternate this work as a way of coping with the trauma that we get from these stories. We both take time “off” the counting process to recover from the trauma of counting dead women and the “reasons” they were being killed. We have invested in psychotherapy (at our own cost) to ensure we are professionally supported. RU/Lyubava: Studying data on femicide is emotionally devastating, but I don’t want to give up on the project. I am sure that if I had known how complicated this project was and how destructive it would be for mental health, I wouldn’t have started it. I am amazed that, until now, I haven’t found any funding for the project – people do not think that this is an important topic. MX/Ivonne: There is a constant heaviness, frustration, anger, and fear. . . . I try not to make [the victims] alien to me, not to become indifferent, but that is a work and a reflection that must be done constantly not to lose surprise and sensitivity. Finding their social media networks, or their photos, helps me to know them, to recognise their faces, their names, and the odd story or anecdote. It is a little piece of them and that makes me think of them in life. DE/Feminizidmap: The burdens faced by individual members are different and complex. Some of us are racialised people and experience precarious conditions. Many of us also do academic research or activism on this subject. Also, the media’s constant exposure to this phenomenon makes it harder to disconnect. . . . Some feel there are many future possibilities for action, like prevention, but the work itself can make you feel hopeless about the little immediate action you can take when registering killings, which you cannot undo. We have learned not to document before going to bed (to avoid nightmares) and to have a team channel for care issues to deal with the emotions resulting from this work. Networking, particularly with grassroots activism, has turned out to be encouraging and positive. Knowing that our work is useful and materialises in other contexts is stimulating. US/Dawn: I cannot recall a day I didn’t think about this work. . . . It feels lonely and isolating and heartbreaking, but necessary. . . . The invisibility of femicide and apathy about this most extreme but exceedingly common form of male VAW is just as painful as researching the brutal cases. VE/Aimee: What I feel is very strong, many mixed emotions, sadness, anger, impotence, pain. Sometimes I can’t sleep. There is always a case that affects you more, especially when I see their faces in the media and think about the lives they had ahead of them. Despite these emotions, . . . I feel this is my way of giving a voice to those murdered women. Sometimes it feels like a kind of therapy. Twenty years ago, I was a victim of violence. Although I feared for my life many times, I was able to get out of that cycle. My way of stopping this from happening is to raise awareness so women do not [endure] this violence.

Ethos of Change The potential of data to transform reality through a better understanding of “where we are standing” is a key motivation. Practices that contest and (re)produce data on feminicide aim to transform the place they document. This potential for change becomes an ethos of hope, a source of strength. This node reflects how change becomes not just the catalyst but also the mechanism through which we cope with the emotional toll of doing and feeling this work. Despite data alone not being a sole trigger for action as it just provides information about an issue (Alvarado Garcia et al., 2017), by framing feminicides from a feminist perspective, our datasets guide 110

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viewers’ attention to particular interpretations of lethal violence against women, suggesting potential avenues for action (Suárez Val, 2021). VE/Aimee: More than [just] counting feminicides, we want to generate a campaign that provokes public policy changes that sensitise society to this issue. We feel that we cannot allow their names to be forgotten. US/Rosalind: My hope for this project is to be at the forefront of legislative change RU/Lyubava: My main hope is that there will be more professional investigators or media who could dedicate themselves to studying this misogyny problem in Russia. Documenting femicide rates (around 5,000 per year) is too much of a task for one person only. Sooner or later, my moral and physical strength will come to an end. KN/Kathomi&Audrey: Our main successes have been the [increased] traffic on our Facebook page and the conversations and dialogues this fosters on how to stop VAW. FR/Collectif: We were highly critical of how articles in the regional press about feminicides cases were handled and the terminology used in them (“crime of passion,” “marital drama” etc.). We felt that the media was playing a role in trivialising these crimes and wanted to change the way they talked about these crimes. MX/Ivonne: My hope is orientated towards widening collaborations from other disciplines and other perspectives. US/Dawn: I need people to care about femicide, to see it as clearly and easily as they see other types of targeted and often hate-based murder, to be just as outraged and compelled to act. DE/Feminizidmap: We hope to conclude our second review of previous years to analyse the data and publish the results to further increase interest in the topic and lead to more projects and research. The future of the project is still to be seen.

Conclusion In this chapter, activists from France, Germany, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Russia, the United States, and Venezuela weaved together our experiences of recording and caring for feminicide data. We explored the contexts of our work, our data-making processes, the mental and emotional tolls, and the challenges and opportunities of generating feminicide data. By listing our voices into nodes, we invited you, the reader, to situate yourself in the “in-betweenness” and weave the assembled voices/threads with your own experience. Working on this text, we have found, as we hope you have, that while our experiences and practices of producing feminicide data share similarities, they are also distinct and situated. Women separated by continents doing the work of researching and documenting feminicide face similar challenges because gender-related VAW, mostly perpetrated by men, is a worldwide pandemic. Just like feminicide occurs at the intersections of gender with race/ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and other forms of oppression and resistance, the experience of producing feminicide data is not the same for all bodies. The workload and emotional toll of doing this mostly unremunerated work is a challenge for all activists, but particularly for Black, indigenous, trans, LGBTQ+, and migrant activists. Recording and caring for feminicide data is heavy work. Activist self-care is crucial to avoid burnout. Part of this care involves paying special attention to humanising the women we hold in our databases. We want them to count but as more than data. There is an added value to our insistence on producing individualised stories of feminicide, in contrast to the anonymous numbers usually provided by governments and international organisations. We have plans for the future, to produce more in-depth analyses of our data, address media biases and influence in feminicide, propose public policy, and work with others to find ways to mobilise 111

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our databases for knowledge production and action, amongst many others. The experiences of producing feminicide data we have shared, and others around the world, are valuable because they show how women organise to fight against the inequalities that affect us every day. We hope you join us.

Notes 1   Given that this is a collective work, contributors’ names are listed in alphabetical order. 2 We use the term “feminicide” following Marcela Lagarde’s (2008) approach to feminicidal violence, which highlights the role of the state in either neglecting, omitting, or even colluding with these crimes. However, you can find it throughout the text as “femicide” and “femi(ni)cide” as some of us use these instead. 3 The five questions and full, unedited responses from all the contributors can be found here: shorturl.at/acgj1. 4 Helena’s voice as a feminicide data activist is not included as quotes, but hers and Saide’s voices are present in the nodes. 5 See www.feminicidiouruguay.net/otros-sitios. 6 See www.dataagainstfeminicide.net. 7 See www.facebook.com/bordamos.feminicidios. 8 See www.feminicidio.net. 9 See www.soniamadrigal.com/lamuertesaleporeloriente.

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Feminicide Data Activism Lorde, A. 2007. The uses of anger: Women responding to racism, in: Sister outsider, the crossing press feminist series (pp. 124–133). Berkley: Crossing Press. Loukissas, Y.A. 2019. All data are local: Thinking critically in a data-driven society. Cambridge: MIT Press. McCormack, D.P. 2015. ‘Devices for doing atmospheric things’. In Non-representational Methodologies: Re-envisioning Research, edited by Vannini, P. Routledge, pp. 89–111. Meng, A., and DiSalvo, C. 2018. Grassroots resource mobilization through counter-data action. Big Data & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951718796862. Milan, S., and Gutiérrez, M. 2015. Citizens’ media meets big data: The emergence of data activism. Mediaciones 11, 120–133. https://doi.org/10.26620/uniminuto.mediaciones.11.14.2015.120-133 Nelson, Diane M. 2015. Who counts? The mathematics of death and life after genocide. Durham: Duke University Press. Okech, A. 2021. Feminist digital counterpublics: Challenging femicide in Kenya and South Africa. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 46(4), 1013–1033. https://doi.org/10.1086/713299 Puig de la Bellacasa, M. 2011. Matters of care in technoscience: Assembling neglected things. Social Studies of Science 41, 85–106. Radford, J., and Diana E. H. Russell. 1992. Femicide: The politics of woman killing. New York: Twayne. Segato, R.L. 2010. ‘Territory, sovereignty, and crimes of the second State’. In Terrorizing women: Feminicide in the Americas, edited by Fregoso, R.L., and Bejarano, C. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 70–92. Serviss, T.C. 2013. Femicide and rhetorics of coadyuvante in Ciudad Juárez: Valuing rhetorical traditions in the Americas. College English 75, 608–628. Suárez Val, H. 2014. Indignadas, tristes, feroces. No te olvides. Revista de la Asociación de Amigas y Amigos del Museo de la Memoria. Montevideo: Asociación de Amigas y Amigos del Museo de la Memoria. URL http:// ladelentes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/indignadas-tristes-feroces.html (accessed 11.18.19). Suárez Val, H. 2017. Affect amplifiers: Feminicide, feminist activists and the politics of counting and mapping genderrelated murders of women [Unpublished manuscript]. London: Goldsmiths, University of London. Suárez Val, H. 2021. Marcos de datos de feminicidio. Reconstrucción ontológica y análisis crítico de dos datasets de asesinatos de mujeres por razones de género. Informativo. Revista del Instituto de Información de la Facultad de Información y Comunicación 26, 313–346. https://doi.org/10.35643/Info.26.1.15 Tactical Technology Collective. 2013. Visualizing information for advocacy. Tactical Technology Collective. URL https://visualisingadvocacy.org (accessed 11.18.19). Taylor, L. 2017. What is data justice? The case for connecting digital rights and freedoms globally. Big Data & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951717736335. UNODC. 2018. Global study on homicide: Gender related killing of women and girls. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. UN OHCHR. 2015. UN rights expert calls all states to establish a ‘Femicide Watch’. Geneva: UN OHCHR. Villaplana Ruiz, V. 2019. ‘Transnational feminist activism to reframe femicide: The case of #NiUnaMenos and #VivasNosQueremos.’ In Re-writing Women as Victims: From Theory to Practice, edited by Gámez Fuentes, M.J., Núñez Puente, S., and Gómez Nicolau, E. London: Routledge, pp. 112–23. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781351043601. Zamora, A. 2019. Bordamos feminicidios. De la nota roja al bordado para restaurar la memoria. Luchadoras. URL https://luchadoras.mx/bordamos-feminicidios/ (accessed 11.18.19).

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11 FEMICIDE/FEMINICIDE OBSERVATORIES AND WATCHES Perspectives from Argentina, Colombia, Israel, Spain, Panama, and Poland Vathsala Illesinghe, Ahora Que Sí Nos Ven, Femi(ni)cide Watch Poland, Feminicidio.net, Observatorio de Feminicidios, Observatorio feminicidios Colombia – Red Feminista Antimilitarista, Shalva Weil, Myrna Dawson, and Saide Mobayed Vega Introduction In 2015, the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women (UN SRVAW) Dubravka Šimonovic called on governments to establish femicide1 watches or observatories to monitor the gender-related killings of women and girls to ensure it is recognised worldwide as a distinct form of killing (ACUNS, 2016). Following the UN call to action, there has been a steady growth in the number of watches or observatories hosted by civil society organisations, women’s groups, and academic institutions worldwide. In 2020, more than 20 observatories provided input on femicide preventive initiatives in their countries when the UN called for submissions (OHCHR, n.d.-a). However, long before that, grassroots organisations in Latin America, Europe, United Kingdom, and other world regions were collecting data and reporting on femicide. In this chapter, researchers from six femicide observatories in Argentina, Colombia, Israel, Spain, Panama, and Poland were invited to reflect on their experiences initiating and continuing this work. This reflection process aims to develop a shared understanding of the methods, opportunities, challenges, and advances made in the systematic collection and tracking of femicide data. In the following section, we first provide a brief overview of femicide definitions, trends, and patterns in the countries represented. This is followed by a brief description of the methodology used to critically reflect on key issues and questions. A detailed discussion of the key themes that emerged and the main conclusions achieved through this exercise is provided.

Definition, Trends, and Patterns of Femicide In 2017, the global female homicide rate was estimated at 2.3 per 100,000 and the female intimate partner homicide rate was about 1.0 per 100,000 (UNODC, 2019). Based on this UNODC’s report, although some world regions, such as Asia and Africa, bear a larger burden of the global femicides, it is clear that such killings remain a worldwide problem. Femicide rates across Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and North America show wide variations (Laurent, Platzer, and Idomir, 2013; Nowak, 2012; Weil, and Naudi, 2018). While these numbers can elucidate certain patterns, particularly in 114

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relation to intimate partner femicide, knowing the scope and extent of the gender-related killing of women and girls remains a challenge (Laurent et al., 2013; Nowak, 2012). Variations in how much information is documented in official records, how it is categorised within and across different jurisdictions, and whether or not femicide is recognised in countries’ penal codes are some of the challenges to comparing data across settings (Stanley et al., 2019). Because of these challenges, observatories rely on different sources of information and have adopted different ways of defining and quantifying femicide depending on their world region. Table 11.1 summarises the observatories’ definitions of femicide, together with their legislative frameworks, recent data, and links to their websites.

Table 11.1  Observatory’s Name and Location, Focus, Recent Statistics, and Contributors Name, Location, Year, Link to Website

Focus and Legal Definition (UNECLAC, 2015; UNODC, 2019)

Femicides Reported/ Counted

Contributors

Ahora Que Si Nos Ven (AQSNV) Argentina, 2015 https://ahoraquesinosven. com.ar

Feminicide and transfeminicide Law No. 26.791 (2012): “Aggravated Homicide – killing of a woman by a family member or a current or former intimate partner because of her sexual and gender identity or for pleasure, greed, racial or religious hatred in the context of gender-based violence.” Feminicide and attempted Femicide Law 1761/2015 Rosa Elvira Cely – Feminicide Law (2015) Article 104A: “Death of a woman, because . . . [she is] a woman or . . . her gender identity. Includes killing of a woman . . . when a cycle of violence preceded the killing or subjected to sexual violence and/or bodily mutilation prior to the killing.” Femicide No definition of femicide, only retzach nashim, “wife murder,” or “woman murder” is included in legal definitions.c

2021: 256 (182 attempted feminicides and at least 8 transfeminicides)a

Lara Andrés, Laura Oszust, Julieta Martinelli, Julieta Delpech, Analia Morra, María Sol Méndez, Gisela Morinigo, and the funder Raquel Vivanco

2018: 666 2019: 574 2020: 630 2021 (up to August): 433b

Estefanía Rivera Guzmán, Carol Rojas Garzón, Gloria Castaño Román, and Adriana Castaño Román

2020: 21c 2021: 16

Shalva Weil

Red Feminista Antimilitarista Colombia, 2013 www. redfeministaantimilitarista. org

Israel Observatory on Femicide (IOF) Israel, 2020 https:// en.israelfemicide.org

(Continued)

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Vathsala Illesinghe et al. Table 11.1 (Continued) Name, Location, Year, Link to Website

Focus and Legal Definition (UNECLAC, 2015; UNODC, 2019)

Femicides Reported/ Counted

Contributors

Feminicide Watch Poland Project (FWP) Poland, 2020 https://cpk.org.pl

Intimate partner femicide and female suicides in the context of violent/ abusive relationships. No definition of femicide in the Polish Penal Code.d Offence may fall under Articles 148 (homicide), 155 (manslaughter) and 156 (grievous bodily harm resulting in death). Intimate partner and non-intimate partner femicides Law No. 82 (2013): Femicide: “Killing of a woman by a current or former intimate partner/ family member when there is a relationship of subordination or dependency with the perpetrator on in relation to her children, a pregnancy, or in a situation of physical or psychological vulnerability, subjected to sexual violence and/ or bodily mutilation before the killing, whose body was disposed of . . . in a public space/as a result of group rites or revenge.” Intimate partner and non-intimate partner feminicides. No legal definition.

2018: 168 homicides and intimate partner femicidesd Estimated: 400–500 due to domestic violence.e

Alicja Serafin and Urszula Nowakowska

2020: 24 intimate partner femicides, 15 by othersf

Irma Planells and Dalia Pichel

2018: 51 2019: 55g

Graciela Atencio and Nerea Novo

Observatorio de Femicidios Panama, 2021 www. observatoriodefemicidios. com

Feminicidio.net Spain, 2010 https://feminicidio.net

AQSNV, 2021; b Red Feminista Antimilitarista, 2019, 2020, 2021; cIOF 2020, 2021; d EIGE, 2021; eFWP estimate based on Police records; f OHCHR, n.d.-b; g OHCHR, n.d.-c

a

As shown, the observatories work from a broad understanding of femicide as the sex- or gender-motivated killings of women and girls both within and outside intimate relationships. Some of them also include female suicides when they happen in the context of violent relationships. In Argentina, Colombia, and Panama, there are specific laws, or modifications to existing 116

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laws, reflecting some of the advances made in the Latin American region concerning the formal recognition of femicide compared to other countries (Global Americans, n.d.). Table 11.1 also demonstrates that Colombia and Panama have some of the highest rates of reported femicides among these countries.

Methodology The Process of Reflection Shared critical reflection is a versatile and effective methodology to explore the lived experiences of a group of researchers and practitioners working towards a common goal. The latter seeks to reveal the commonalities and divergences of experiences while situating those experiences within diverse settings’ broader scope and context. As Haraway (1988: 586) argues, knowledge is situated and embodied; it is a perspective shaped by the broader historical and geographical context. Critical reflection has been previously applied to femicide research in Australia, Canada, and the UK (Cullen, Dawson, Price, and Rowlands, 2021) to identify common barriers, challenges, and the structural and social systems that shape the processes and outcomes of data collection methods. The critical reflection approach used in this work is informed by Dewey’s theory of inquiry, which defines this process as “transactional, open-ended, and inherently social” (Schön, 1992, p 122). For many of those examining femicide, the research questions and data collection methods are open and evolving. Moreover, as Schön (1992) described, researchers “do not stand outside the problematic situation like a spectator; [s]he is in it and in transition with it” (p. 122). We drew from this work in guiding the process followed for this chapter. First, researchers working within femicide observatories in Argentina, Colombia, Israel, Spain, Panama, and Poland were invited by the co-editors of this handbook to collaborate and co-author this chapter (see Table 11.1). Then they were asked to reflect on the following questions: 1 2 3 4 5

When, why, and how did their work begin? What were the main objectives of setting up the observatory, including data collection process and parties involved? What were key challenges and achievements? How do they describe the workload (e.g. resources, emotional labour)? What has been the impact and what is the way forward to improve the scope and outcome of their work?

Data Analysis Initial responses were gathered from each contributor by the first author who coded and categorised them to map preliminary themes. These were developed iteratively and in line with our critical reflective approach, which allowed ideas to emerge and evolve through multiple readings. After identifying these initial topics, a first draft was circulated among all contributors for further reflection. The themes included (1) the observatories’ origins and trajectories – seizing “windows of opportunity” to build on previous work; (2) their aims and goals – working towards systemic changes and policy reforms; (3) their methods – understanding the context, causes, and consequences; (4) their challenges – heavy and sustained emotional burden; and (5) their way forward – solidarity and networks among allies. In the following section, we present our discussion which includes direct quotes from the co-authors to describe each theme. These attributions are labelled using either the observatory’s name or the main contributor’s name. 117

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Results of Reflections The Origins and Trajectories: Seizing “Windows of Opportunity” In all the countries, femicide observatories are pioneers on this matter, and they are led by women who have been researching and advocating to prevent violence against women and girls (VAWG) over the long term. They described using pivotal “windows of opportunity” to bring femicide, an issue previously at the margins of public attention, to the forefront. In Argentina, for example, Ahora Que Sí Nos Ven (AQSNV; Now That They See Us) began a national register of feminicides in 2015 following the Ni Una Menos (not one woman less, not one more death!) movement, a 200,000-person protest in front of the Argentine National Congress in Buenos Aires, following the violent murder of Chiara Páez, a 14-year-old high school student (The Guardian, 2015). At that time, there were no official records [to our knowledge] that could give an account of the magnitude of this problem; there was only that of La Casa del Encuentro, which was created in 2008. . . . So, taking advantage of the fact that the “Ni Una Menos” movement brought feminicides on the media agenda, these cases began to receive more coverage, [and] we decided to start analyzing the news published in the graphic and digital media throughout the country. (AQSNV) In Poland, the Women’s Rights Centre, working on VAWG since 1994, organised a national campaign (#StopFemicides) to raise awareness about femicide in 2020. Leveraging the heightened public awareness and support for the #StopFemicides campaign, the Femicide Watch Poland Project (FWP) was launched in 2021.2 Similarly, in Colombia, the Feminist Antimilitarist Network began monitoring feminicides in 2013 following media attention to a series of killings of women in the city centre (Red Feminista Antimilitarista, 2017). For several observatories, public and political attention to high-profile cases, or a cluster of cases in a short time or location, created opportunities to raise awareness about the issue, publish data, and gain media attention to generate funding and support. For example, in Panama, [t]he project was born in mid-2020 as an idea from two young female journalists in Panama. . . . We seized the opportunity of applying to a small project-focused grant. As female journalists mainly covering politics, we consider gender [based] violence in Panama to be understudied and underreported. After applying for and winning the grant, we decided to set forth with the data-based project. We saw a window of opportunity in telling a story through numbers and building off the data already reported by Panamanian authorities. (Observatorio de Femicidios) Although the Israel Observatory on Femicide (IOF) was established more recently, on 25 November 2020, the director of IOF, Shalva Weil, has chaired the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) project from 2013 to 2017 and helped set up observatories in Georgia and Macedonia (Weil, and Naudi, 2018; Weil, 2020). However, according to Weil, the irony was that, in Israel which had been at the forefront of activism to combat femicide, there was no observatory and no official process to determine, monitor, or count femicide on a systematic basis [until the IOF was set up in 2020]. Similarly, other observatories were also built on existing networks; some more expansive than others. For example, in Poland, the researchers were already members of the Women’s Rights 118

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Centre, an advocacy group, and in Panama, they were part of the Abriendo Dato – a journalists’ group funded by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). In Spain, Feminicidio.net was a social awareness network maintained for years by a small group of professionals and volunteers monitoring cases of femicide since 2010.

The Aims and Goals: Working Towards Systemic Changes and Policy Reforms The observatories represented in this chapter are invested in building an evidence base to support social policies, legal reform, and broader systemic change in the long term. Although changes in policies and practices are not yet a reality for most researchers and practitioners in this space, creating awareness, building alliances, and supporting others who do similar work are seen as essential first steps. A necessary part of the observatories’ work is advocacy to push for policies to prevent femicide and VAWG. Ahora Que Sí Nos Ven (AQSNV), similar to other observatories, has become a key actor among civil society organisations. In the short span of six years, both the public and the media recognise AQSNV’s role in bringing visibility to gender-based inequalities and violence, providing information, supporting advocacy campaigns, and leading education and general messaging from a gender perspective. In that regard, they argue the need for [d]enounc[ing] gender-based inequalities and violence through the knowledge and dissemination of figures and statistics to demonstrate the extent of this problem; . . . that the reports and analysis will have an impact on the design and implementation of public policies that guarantee [the] right to live a life free of violence. (AQSNV) Even before the FWP in Poland was set up, the Women’s Rights Centre had been actively engaging policy-makers and organising femicide tribunals for the Polish parliament: Women’s Rights Centre organised three femicide [focused] tribunals in Polish Parliament cooperating with the Parliamentary Group of Women, the Chancellery of the Prime Minister presenting to the Government Plenipotentiary for Equal Treatment, and in 2014, to the Supreme Court. (FWP) For most observatories, the immediate goal is the systemic collection of data, ensuring its completeness, rigour, and accessibility to others. In Poland, as a newly set-up observatory just beginning their work, data are important to assess the magnitude of the problem at a macro/national level and, at the same time, to support individual families’ access to justice. “Developing comprehensive proposals for legal and [other] institutional risk assessments, procedures, and policies both on a regional and national level” is an important role taken up by the FWP. In Panama, improving the information gathered and available to others in an open database has helped Observatorio de Femicidios to upgrade their reach and gain traction among support groups and the mainstream media. Experiences were similar in Spain: [We believe] statistical documentation of feminicide serves to save lives. Feminicidio.net is a social awareness tool created by organised civil society, maintained by the committed effort of a small staff of professionals and volunteers. Social awareness of feminicide is the key to putting public pressure on the government to eradicate gender-based violence and femicides. (Feminicidio.net) 119

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To become prominent actors in the VAWG policy domain and to gain civil society’s trust, observatories remain largely independent of the judiciary and non-aligned with government departments while, at the same time, providing information to them. The IOF, for example, is an independent body hosted at a university in Israel. Positioned as a national information centre, the IOF provides key statistics to support the advocacy work of feminist organisations and public officials, including members of the Knesset (Parliament).

The Methods: Understanding the Contexts, Causes, and Consequences The observatories’ outreach goes beyond gathering numbers. They generate as much information as possible to develop a deeper understanding of how and why violence occurs, the antecedents and consequences of VAWG, and the long-term trends. Unlike media reports and official statistics that portray killings of women and girls as isolated events or as violence due to specific, individual risk characteristics, observatories’ continuous data monitoring helps demonstrate that femicide is the most severe outcome of a continuum of ongoing discrimination, hatred, and misogyny against women and girls. Our classification [of cases] allows us to identify seasonal trends or upward or downward trends in the different types of feminicide or murder, as we have seen in recent years that family[-related] femicides increase while intimate feminicides are reduced (within the framework of the partner or ex-partner). We could not value all these data if we did not have a database like ours. . . . Our work makes it possible to detect, over a decade, that family[-related] feminicides are on the increase. Similarly, given that we have been observing these patterns for 11 years, we have become aware that, in June and July, feminicide and [homicides] of women increase more than at any other time of the year. (Feminicidio.net) Working from feminist, intersectional perspectives, researchers raise consciousness about femicide as the ultimate expression of VAWG. As such, their awareness-raising work challenges gender inequalities, gender-based discrimination, and related issues, such as racism, militarisation, sex work, homophobia, and transphobia. Observatories share knowledge and draw attention to risk factors (e.g. indigeneity, race/ethnicity, culture, age, LGBTQA2+, religion, disability, poverty, geography), as well as stereotypes and biases that shape social and state responses to femicide. “[We are aware of] the wrath, misogyny, and all the symbolic burden of reporting on feminicide. Women’s bodies are often treated as a battlefield on which male chauvinism pledges its war” (Feminicidio.net). At Red Feminista Antimilitarista, “neoliberal feminicidal violence” is a term used to understand the structural causes of VAWG; violence that is the result of processes of gentrification, tourism, development, and commercialization. [Feminicide happens in] criminal economies [perpetrated by] men with guns. [It] cannot be separated from the neoliberal economic model and the sexual division of labour (e.g., men in arms and women in services). Where [these killings] happen, who commits them, and the weapon used, [is in] the context of militarization, poverty, and exclusion. (Red Feminista Antimilitarista)

The Challenges: The Emotional Burden Is Heavy and Sustained Observatories rely on published information that is often incomplete; researchers must use multiple sources and sort through large volumes of quantitative and qualitative data. As national registries 120

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and official records (from various sources) are insufficient, even in the settings where they exist (see Chapter 10), data collection can be tedious and time-consuming. It requires data “mining”3 – digging deep – and additional investigative work to fill gaps in official records. Therefore, some observatories such as Observatorio de Femicidios and IOF triangulate data from official statistics with information gathered from media reports and other sources. IOF also relies on word-of-mouth accounts, court records, parliamentary reports, police data, and other sources of information. There is a large variation between all these data, and the IOF collates it all in order to provide an authentic representation of femicide in Israel. This requires constant reading, searching, and identification of relevant news and other violence reports to document all gender-based violence that culminates in femicides. (IOF) Observatories compile the information into numerous fields to create detailed profiles of victims and perpetrators, their relationships, precursors, motives, and evidence of prior intimate partner violence. For example, at Spain’s Feminicidio.net, almost 50 fields of information are compiled for each case. Similarly, at the Red Feminista Antimilitarista, more than 40 categories and 150 labels are created for each case monitoring more than 380 media outlets. In addition, they sometimes gather information from victims’ families and friends when they come forward to speak directly to researchers rather than the media. The FWP and IOF also research the legislative and policy contexts of VAWG. The workload and its emotional toll are heavy and sustained; searching for information and recording details of violence “is emotionally exhausting.” Observers at Feminicidio.net and Observatorio de Femicidios explained the emotional toll of this work as follows: I remember there was a case of a young girl [which affected] me [even] after [going through] many other cases. [I] collapsed, burst into tears, and ran to the bathroom to wash my face, [I had to] look in the mirror and convince myself that if any job was worth it, this was it. . . . Of course, it is very hard work, but for us, it is essential for public prevention (Feminicidio.net). I would argue it does take up more mental space than actual work time. We’re constantly trying to find new ways to communicate our findings and have a bunch of ideas that could take the project to another level. . . . Definitely working with femicide and gender violence statistics is mentally taxing. It does impact the way we relate to news and has changed our perspective on the coverage these events get in Panamanian media. (Observatorio de Femicidios) The human rights violations in Poland and Europe, at the time of data collection for this chapter, together with the threats to women’s rights globally, were added stressors to this work: We’re starting our project in really difficult times in Poland as our country is facing a serious human rights crisis both with regards to the situation on the EU and Polish-Belarusian border (migrants’ deaths, including women and children) as well as related to tremendous violations of Polish women’s reproductive rights (with bans to abortion and women dying because of refused abortions). (FWP) The systematic sorting and categorisation of the data are time-consuming. For some, the observatory work takes up a couple of hours a month, and for others, it is more regular and constant. 121

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Because most observatories are understaffed, researchers are multi-tasking (data collection and analysis, graphic design, website building, maintenance, and media work). A few members schedule time off from everyday work or do the work on their days off. In the early stages, most observatories take on a lot of manual work with little automation (AQSNV and IOF). With expansion and growth, AQSNV has begun working with more dynamic [data collecting] forms and participating in an international project supported by the MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] to create a prototype for [up]loading and data systematisation, which will make the work of the organisation more agile. Funding is the most urgent resource constraint creating a cycle of low resources, high workload, emotional burden, and burnout. For some, it means a lack of opportunity to disseminate the findings more widely. In addition to these taxing conditions, there is a sense of helplessness for those who feel there is no political will to address urgent issues or implement recommendations that could prevent femicide. We consistently think about . . . how can we involve regional and national authorities, by organizing workshops and VAW[G] courses for police officers, prosecutors, and/or judges. However, due to a lack of political will and interest, our actions are not always welcomed and well-received (FWP). Sometimes we feel helpless because our work has shown that family feminicides are on the increase. For example, the specific motivations and circumstances of feminicide among [older] women by their children are clear in our database, and [this knowledge] would be useful for public prevention policies. [However] our recommendation to implement awareness and prevention campaigns targeting these feminicides have not yet been addressed or implemented by the authorities. (Feminicidio.net)

The Way Forward: Building Solidarity and Networks Among Allies For observatories, the most significant source of strength is their networks and allies who do similar work. At the individual level, researchers draw inspiration from their colleagues and staff and find ways to support each other, relying on individual and collective self-care. Regional and international collaborations among femicide networks have opened new pathways for funding, channels to share resources and lessons and to collectively build an evidence base to advance social and legal responses to femicide. Comparative analyses and joint publications create opportunities for knowledge sharing with new and established researchers in this field. For example, there are several publications from the IOF and FWP dedicated to the femicide watches around the world. It is important to have a strong network of experts who could share best practices for the benefit of more recently created observatories; for the Feminicidio.net, this includes support to publish their work and share valuable lessons learnt. For over a decade, we have not found international funds to share our methodology, and the lessons learned . . . We need to prepare a report on femicides in Spain in the last decade, to publish in academic work, with an external review. . . . In our database, we have documented more than 1200 cases. We consider that it would be essential to bring this work to light and that it can be used to improve the documentation of cases and statistics of femicides in other countries. (Feminicidio.net) 122

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Like many observatories, the FWP and IOF consider networking and strengthening national and international alliances as critical to advancing laws and policies to prevent femicide and VAWG. For example, although the work of IOF, Red Feminista Antimilitarista, and others are locally impactful, a stronger evidence-base supported by comparable data is needed to improve their scope.

Conclusions Through shared critical reflection, the contributors to this chapter have described the origins and trajectories, aims and goals, methods, challenges, and the way forward for six femicide observatories in different parts of the world. It is evident that the observatories are built, almost always, from the ground up by dedicated women with the strong support of colleagues and allies who do similar work. Despite limited resources, they are committed to systematic data collection and wide dissemination to bring public and political attention to femicide across these diverse settings. Their work and practices are reflective, critical, and building on individual and collective strengths. Trained in diverse fields, such as law, journalism, and sociology, they are knowledge brokers for other researchers, professionals, policy-makers, the media, and the public. These researchers understand the importance of quantitative and qualitative data and work to share it for the greatest impact. They are diligent and persistent in the search for information despite data gaps and the emotional toll. As contributors noted, gathering data on femicide that are regionally and internationally comparable is complicated by several issues. On the one hand, the accuracy and reliability of quantitative data are dependent on consistent legal and conceptual definitions of gender-based killings. However, because different countries are at various stages of systemising data collection, as evident among the six observatories here, the level of accuracy needed for regional or global comparisons will not be achieved in the short term. On the other hand, the contextual differences in VAWG experiences and the organic efforts to capture those differences must not be subsumed in a global database. Developing standardised metrics to track femicide at multi-country levels requires careful consideration of the local typologies and classifications of femicide to ensure data collected in different settings over many years remain valid and relevant on a global scale. As other feminists who do similar work have argued, the femicide data must be nuanced because numbers can often “produce evidence that bears little resemblance to . . . women’s lived experiences of violence, inequality, and marginalization” (Walklate, Fitz-Gibbon, McCulloch, and Maher, 2020: 5). Observatories must continue their important work around motivations, methods, and risks of sex-related killings of women to raise awareness about nuances of firearms-related femicides (UNODC, 2019). In the face of increasing global gun-related violence, conflict, displacement, and trafficking in sex work, many of these observatories’ future work will be at the intersections of femicide, homicide, and VAWG. Gathering qualitative data, including interviews with victims’ families and friends to create narrative histories, and recent developments involving interviews with survivors of “attempted femicide” (Weil, 2017) will add nuance to observatories’ femicide data. For femicide researchers, mostly women who may have personal connections to the stories, sorting through data and graphic details of VAWG can trigger relived traumas. Furthermore, public engagement with this data including encounters with online audiences are done at the risk of pushback, abuse, and trolling – behaviours most often directed at females in this field (Cullen et al., 2021). Therefore, documenting the emotional burdens of this work on the researchers and the coping and mitigating strategies must be key considerations when planning future femicide research to inform practice (Cullen et al., 2021). Additionally, there is an impact of direct and vicarious traumas on staff due to different experiences and exposures beyond the observatories’ work. For example, observers in Poland found it difficult to do their work during the Polish-Belarusian refugee crisis in Europe (Albawaba, 2021). Similarly, other human rights violations against women in conflict zones in Europe and elsewhere 123

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(Barr, 2021), among other local and international crises, undoubtedly impact people who constantly read and write about death and VAWG. While most draw strength from their networks, observatories need substantial investments and resources to support the health and well-being of their staff in the long term. Despite high media attention to some individual killings of women, issues related to femicide do not remain in the public arena for longer and, therefore, rarely make it onto the policy agenda, especially when other issues are competing for attention. Furthermore, preventing femicide often involves taking on legal and social responses to violence in settings inherently resistant to policy change because they are connected to other issues such as gun control and criminalisation of sex work. Therefore, it is vital for the observatories to organise as strong allies and advocacy coalitions to attract more investments in this work and to support each other’s prevention efforts locally, regionally, and internationally. Collaborative work, including shared reflective practices, as done here, is an essential first step towards that goal.

Notes 1 “Femicide” or “feminicide” is used to characterise gender-related killings of women and girls in different parts of the world. We use the term “femicide” throughout the chapter and “femicide” or “feminicide” when we refer to country-specific projects based on what is used at each setting. 2 The 2020 #StopFemicides media messages received Effie Awards 2021, a prestigious price for the most effective campaign and marketing solution (see https://awards.effie.pl/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/ nagrodzeni_2021_effie-awards-2021.pdf). The three-minute film provoked a wide debate in polish society about domestic violence problem. It was the most popular message targeting violence against women prevention amongst all the non-governmental organisations in Poland (see www.youtube.com/ watch?V=zhbaskpnntw&t=17S). 3 “Mining” is used in its colloquial sense here and not meant to describe the process of analysing large quantitative datasets.

References ACUNS. (2016). Femicide. A Global issue that demands action (Volume V). Vienna: Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS). ISBN:978-3-200-03012-1 Ahora Que Si Nos Ven. (2021). 256 Femicides in 2021. https://ahoraquesinosven.com.ar/reports/ 256-femicidios-en-2021 Albawaba. (2021, November 14). Muslim refugees on the belarus-polish border wait to get out of the freezing cold. www. albawaba.com/node/muslim-refugees-belarus-polish-border-wait-get-out-freezing-cold-1454856 Barr, H. (2021, August 17). The fragility of women’s rights in Afghanistan. Now that the taliban are back, what does that mean for women’s rights? Human Rights Watch. www.hrw.org/news/2021/08/17/fragilitywomens-rights-afghanistan Cullen, P., Dawson, M., Price, J., & Rowlands, J. (2021). Intersectionality and invisible victims: Reflections on data challenges and vicarious trauma in femicide, family and intimate partner homicide research. Journal of Family Violence, 36(5), 619–628. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-020-00243-4 EIGE. (2021, November 22). Measuring femicide in Poland. European Institute for Gender Equality. https://eige. europa.eu/lt/publications/measuring-femicide-poland?lang=el Global Americans. (n.d.). Femicide and international women’s rights. An Epidemic of Violence in Latin America. https://theglobalamericans.org/reports/femicide-international-womens-rights/ Haraway, D. (1988) Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599, 586. IOF. (2020, December 30). Femicide in Israel 2020: A report of the israel observatory on femicide. Israel Observatory on Femicide. https://en.israelfemicide.org/_files/ugd/c56ba7_7fe0734e6a66462bb18ba65d0460a91f. pdf IOF. (2022, January 4). The 2021 report on violence against women in Israel. https://en.israelfemicide.org/_files/ ugd/c56ba7_39e6bd3d26fc4679817e2577a0ef1135.pdf Laurent, C., Platzer, M., & Idomir, M. (2013). Femicide: A global issue that demands action. Vienna: Academic Council on the United Nations (ACUNS) Vienna Liaison Office.

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Femicide/Feminicide Observatories and Watches Nowak, M. (2012). Femicide: A global problem. Small arms survey research notes. Geneva: Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. www.smallarmssurvey.org/resource/femicide-globalproblem-research-note-14 OHCHR. (n.d.-a). Call for inputs – Femicide watch. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. www.ohchr.org/en/call-inputs-femicide-watch OHCHR. (n.d.-b). Call for inputs – Femicide watch. Submission Spain2. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Women/SR/Femicide/2020/States/ submission-panama-2.pdf OHCHR. (n.d.-c). Call for inputs – Femicide watch. Submission Spain. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Women/SR/Femicide/2020/States/ submission-spain.pdf Red Feminista Antimilitarista. (2017, September 19). NiUnaMenos Report. Violencia neoliberal Feminicida en Medellín. www.redfeministaantimilitarista.org/novedades/item/ni-una-menos-informe-sobre-feminicidiosen-medell%C3%ADn-agosto-2017 Red Feminista Antimilitarista. (2019, February 28). 666 femicides in Colombia in 2018 [Infographic]. www. redfeministaantimilitarista.org/novedades/item/666-feminicidios-en-colombia-en-2018-infografico Red Feminista Antimilitarista. (2020, March 2). Monitoring and analysis. www.observatoriofeminicidioscolombia. org/index.php/seguimiento/noticias/412-571-feminicidios-en-colombia-en-el-ano-2019 Red Feminista Antimilitarista. (2021, February 22). 630 Feminicides in Colombia in 2020. www.observatoriofeminicidioscolombia.org/index.php/seguimiento/noticias/478-622-feminicidios-en-colombia-en-el-2021 Schön, D. A. (1992). The theory of inquiry: Dewey’s legacy to education. Curriculum Inquiry, 22(2), 119–139. https://doi.org/10.2307/1180029 Stanley, N., Chantler, K., & Robbins, R. (2019). Children and domestic homicide. The British Journal of Social Work, 49(1), 59–76. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcy024. The Guardian. (2015, June 8). How Argentina Rose up against the Murder of Women. www.theguardian.com/ lifeandstyle/2015/jun/08/argentina-murder-women-gender-violence-protest UNECLAC. (2015). Femicide or femicide as a specific type of crime in national legislations in Latin America: An on-going process. United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. https://oig. cepal.org/sites/default/files/noteforequality_17_0.pdf UNODC. (2019). Global study on homicide. Gender-related killing of women and girls. Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/gsh/Booklet_5.pdf Walklate, S., Fitz-Gibbon, K., McCulloch, J., & Maher, J. (2020). Towards a global femicide index: Counting the costs. London: Routledge. Weil, S. (2017). The advantages of qualitative research into femicide. Qualitative Sociology Review,13(3),118–125. Weil, S. (2021). Domestic terrorism in 2020: A report of the israel observatory on femicide, in Cambio. Rivista sulle trasformazioni sociali. OpenLab on Covid-19. https://doi.org/10.13128/cambio-10383. https://oaj. fupress.net/index.php/cambio/openlab/art35 Weil, S., & Naudi, M (2018). Towards a European observatory on femicide. In Weil, S., Corradi, C., & Naudi, M (eds.), Femicide across Europe: Theory, research and prevention. University of Bristol, and Policy Press, pp. 167–174. https://p+olicy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/femicide-across-europe

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PART 4

Femicide and Feminicide Across World Regions and Countries

12 FEMICIDE IN AFGHANISTAN Mohammad Ibrahim Dariush, Farzana Adell, and Angelika Zecha

Introduction Afghanistan consistently ranks as one of the worst places in the world to be a woman or girl by the Women and Peace Security Index (GIWPS, 2018). Afghanistan, a country divided into 34 provinces, is rife with violence against women and girls (Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, 2018). In 2021, after Taliban forces captured the capital, Kabul, reinstating the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the situation for women in Afghanistan has undoubtedly worsened. The killing of women through family violence, honour killings, and capital punishment for the purposes of enforcing Islamic sharia law are common examples of femicide in Afghanistan. The term “honour killing” refers to victims killed by male relatives under the guise of maintaining so-called honour within the family or clan. Due to the prevalence and frequency of honour killings in the region, most people use this term to describe a distinct form of honour-based abuse; however, the use of the term “femicide” has been proposed to counter the description of these acts as “honourable” (Pakhni, 2019; Shalhoub-Kervorkian and Daher-Nashif, 2013). Femicide is the most extreme form of violence against a woman or girl that impacts all social classes and religious ideologies in Afghanistan. This term was used for the first time by Diana Russell at the International Court of Crimes Against Women in Brussels in 1976. She defined the concept of femicide as the killing of women because they are women (Russell and Harmes, 2001: 13). Russell classifies all the deaths of women and girls resulting from male dominance and power under the title of femicide (Russell and Harnes, 2011). A discussion on femicide and violence against women and girls (VAWG) in Afghanistan is pressing. Women’s rights issues in Afghanistan are concealed due to traditional customs, the rule of patriarchy, and religious mentality. The phenomenon of femicide has never been raised as an important issue and to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first publication specifically focused on femicide in Afghanistan. Research has been published on violence against women, suicide, and self-immolation, as well as honour killings (Dariush, 2020; Fateh et al., 2016; Gibbs et al., 2019; Mosawi, 2019; Raj et al., 2008; Zarani and Ahmadi, 2021; Zada, 2021). A limited number of reports have been published by human rights institutions and civil society organisations, such as the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). In 2021, while writing this chapter, Afghanistan’s government collapsed and was taken over by the Taliban. The entire operating system of the country failed in a very short time. The fall of the Afghan government caused authors, scholars, human rights lawyers, women’s rights activists,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-16

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politicians, and reporters to leave the country or go into hiding due to the threats of the Taliban. The first two authors of this chapter were forced to flee and seek refuge in other countries. Treasured data and research were stolen. While being in exile and navigating the many challenges of seeking refugee status in other countries, the authors continued to prepare this chapter as much as possible. The authors hoped to analyse their data; however, the fall of the government and the resulting theft of computers and data impacted the research process significantly. A literature review was completed on the topic of femicide in Afghanistan with articles and reports found using key search terms related to femicide and violence against women in Afghanistan. Additionally, news media were monitored to capture femicide cases from unofficial data sources. First, the chapter discusses women’s rights in Afghanistan and the recent developments in life for women after the Taliban came into power. The prevalence of femicide and the issue of impunity for killing women and girls in Afghanistan are also examined. Drawing from various secondary data sources, honour killings, women’s field trials1, and other forms of fatal violence against women, such as instigated suicide2, will be examined to assess the prevalence, contributing factors, and causes of femicide. The following chapter aims to provide a glimpse of the expanding phenomenon of femicide in Afghanistan.

Women’s Rights in Afghanistan After 20013, with the presence of the international community, global human rights organisations, free media, gender awareness, and the women’s movement, discussions about women’s issues were revived in Afghanistan. The fight for gender equality became important for women’s rights activists, especially after various public cases of femicide were reported in Afghanistan (Gall, 2005; UNAMA and OHCHR, 2010; Boone, 2009; BBC, 2015; BBC, 2016). An unprecedented number of women entered schools, universities, and the labour market. Women’s human rights defenders began to freely challenge socio-cultural norms and traditions about the role and status of women in society (CEDAW, 2020). The expanding feminist awareness and reviving of the women’s movement in Afghanistan, together with the presence of international and human rights institutions, brought discussions on VAWG to the forefront. Reports on violence against women were published every year across Afghanistan, including studies focused on topics of physical violence, amputation, acid throwing, torture, beating, sexual assault, and psychological violence. Unfortunately, the achievements gained within the two decades of democracy in Afghanistan soon became a distant reality for the citizens, and especially the women and girls, of the country. After the fall of the previous government on 15 August 2021 and the domination of the Taliban, the state of affairs became more limited and frightening for everyone in Afghanistan, especially women. International and domestic institutions monitoring human rights and women’s rights left Afghanistan. The Independent Human Rights Commission and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs were declared abolished. Special protective laws, such as the law on the prohibition of violence against women and other human rights conventions, were cancelled. The Islamic Emirate announced special decrees regarding the activities and lifestyles of women. The Taliban are known for their strong opposition to the participation of women in public life and have had devastating impacts on the quality of life and life expectancy of women and girls (Alvi, 2012). With the takeover of the Taliban, women in Afghanistan have lost their identity in all dimensions of personal and social life. Women’s rights activists are arrested, tortured, and killed under various pretexts. Women judges and defence attorneys have been dismissed, the observance of hijab has been made mandatory for women, and women have been banned from travelling without a sharia mahram – a male escort who is related to her by blood or marriage. Schools are now closed for girls. Under previous Taliban rule, attacks on girls’ schools were also common, resulting in the killings of both teachers and students (Alvi, 2012). Women are prevented from continuing their education, work, 130

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employment, and individual freedoms (Basharat, 2017). Based on the decrees of the Ministry of Public Prosperity and Prohibition of Evil, pictures of women have been removed from the windows of beauty salons and stores. They have imposed severe restrictions on the movement of women in parks, gardens, and recreational areas. The months of living under the rule of the Taliban have been bleak – and deadly – for women and girls. During the one year of Taliban rule, more than 110 women were killed or died by suicide. In addition, there are many reports on social media about the targeted femicides of women’s rights activists and the forced marriages of Taliban commanders with women and girls over the age of 12 years (Shafaqana, 2022; Sobat 2022). Afghanistan is currently a gender apartheid state; the future of women is darker in this country (Shahabi, 2022).

The Prevalence of Femicide The Afghanistan government reported that the murder of women is the second most widespread crime in the country (Zada, 2021). Women being killed under the pretext of “honour” is one of the most common and most documented forms of femicide. However, the true prevalence of femicide and honour killings are unknown and only minimum estimates are available (Gibbs et al., 2019). The AIHRC collects information on the killings of women at their regional and provincial offices. In the first ten months of 2020, 168 killings of women or girls were documented (AIHRC, 2020). In 2019, 238 femicides were documented by the AIHRC (2020), with 96 incidents constituting an honour killing. In 2017, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) recorded 280 cases of femicides in Afghanistan, with only 18% of cases resulting in convictions (UNAMA and OHCHR, 2018). Most femicides occurred in the Northern Zone (48%), followed by the South (28%), the East (13%), the West (8%), and the Center (3%; AIHRC, 2020). More specifically, in previous years, the areas in Herat, the country’s third largest city, recorded the highest number of honour killings. More than 47% of Afghanistan’s documented honour killings occurred there in 2014 (AIHRC, 2015). Additionally, Gibbs et al. (2019) found that 1 in 16 women interviewed from Nangarhar and 1 in 100 from Kabul reported an honour killing in their family. Honour killings are also documented in the provinces of Balkh, Kandahar, Paktia, Jalalabad, Faryab, Helmand, Kunduz, and Uruzgan (AIHRC, 2015). It is likely that many cases go unreported as a significant number of incidents of VAWG are not documented by the state (Mosawi, 2019; Zada, 2021). Women were the main victims of the violent wars that have occurred between tribes throughout Afghanistan’s history. They were killed by the victorious group after the war, kept as slaves, or turned to suicide to escape extreme violence. In times of conflict, the systematic targeting of women and mass rapes are used to annihilate communities (Corradi, 2021). The victims may then be marginalised and killed to maintain honour as a result (Corradi, 2021). These unrecorded gender-based killings of women and girls may substantially elevate the number of femicide victims in Afghanistan (UNODC, 2018).

Femicide Cases and a Culture of Impunity Jan Kubiš, the special representative of the UN secretary-general in Afghanistan from 2015 to 2018, told the UN Security Council that “the majority of [femicides] are linked to domestic violence, tradition, culture of the country, women activists have been deliberately targeted” (Farmer, 2013). The femicide of Farkhunda Malikzada was a landmark case that illustrated the Afghanistan state’s failure to protect women (Zada, 2021). In 2015, the young woman was brutally beaten, tortured, and set on fire by a group of men in the centre of Kabul for the false allegation that she disrespected the Qur’an (Zada, 2021). Police sided with the perpetrators, the perpetrators were set free, and public 131

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demands to punish them were not heard, indicative of a culture of impunity concerning VAWG in Afghanistan (Zada, 2021). Many Afghan women politicians, human rights activists, journalists, and police officers have been killed or received death threats (Alvi, 2012). Nadia Anjuman, a famous contemporary poet who was considered one of the best in Dari/Persian-Farsi language in Afghanistan, was murdered by her husband in Herat at the age of 25 (Gall, 2005). In one of her books, Anjuman (2005) questioned patriarchal brutality and the forms of oppression of women in Afghanistan. Her husband and his family believed that Anjuman’s writing was an insult to their reputation, which formed the motive for her brutal femicide (Gall, 2005). The United Nations condemned the killing, and the perpetrator was incarcerated but was released one month later (Gall, 2005). In 2009, Sitara Achakzai, a provincial council member, was assassinated for encouraging women to fight for their rights in Kandahar (UNAMA and OHCHR, 2010). A Taliban spokesperson claimed responsibility and indicated she was targeted because of her position within the state institution (UNAMA and OHCHR, 2010). Similarly, in 2006, Safia Amajan was assassinated because she was head of the province’s women’s affairs department (Boone, 2009). A top policewoman in her region, Malalai Kakar, was killed in 2008 for her position in society (Boone, 2009). Many femicides, even for women in power, have never been brought to justice (Alvi, 2012).

Honour Killings as a Form of Femicide In the Afghan context, honour is gendered. It requires men and women to maintain honour in distinct ways (Mosawi, 2019). Protecting honour is a part of the concept of mardānagi – masculinity (Mosawi, 2019). Husbands, fathers, brothers, and other male family members are tasked with preserving family honour and dignity. Women are expected to conform to norms that emphasise “sexual chastity, modesty, virginity and Purdah – seclusion” (Mosawi, 2019). Forms of dishonour that violate these norms include talking to unknown men, being in a room with a man who is not a part of the family, perceived or actual adultery, fleeing the family, opposing forced marriage, premarital pregnancy, and challenging patriarchal norms (Gibbs et al., 2019). Perceived dishonour may also occur if a woman enters a relationship with a person from a different social class, religion, or strata (Gibbs et all., 2019). A departure from conforming to the socially accepted norms of the community can be fatal for women (Gibbs et al., 2019). An early example of an honour killing is the death of Rabia Balkhi, Afghanistan’s most famous female poet who was credited with being among the first practitioners of the New Persian language (Ebtikar, 2021). She was born into nobility during the ninth century (Nouwen and Weiler, 2022). She was killed by her brother for falling in love with a slave to the kingdom (Ebtikar, 2021). Most of the honour killings in Afghanistan happen because of accusations of premarital or extramarital sex (AIHRC, 2015). The AIHRC (2015) reported that 50% of honour killings are committed because of extramarital relations between a man and woman. In Afghanistan, according to Islamic culture, sex outside of marriage is considered adultery and is punishable by death. In these types of cases, men have many ways to escape, which rarely result in severe punishment. For women, the death sentence is likely to be issued. If they are not given the death sentence, it is likely they will become the target of honour killing in their family or tribe. About 15% of honour killings occurred after women ran away from their families (AIHRC, 2015). Women may decide to run away from home because of forced marriages or wanting to get married against the wishes of the family. The victims of this type of femicide are often killed by the husband’s family if they are married or by close relatives of the father’s family if they are unmarried. Being a victim of sexual assault can also result in honour killings, as women and girls who become victims of sexual assaults are considered to cause shame in the family (AIHRC, 2015). Their 132

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presence can cause continuation of shame in the community, so killing the woman is considered a restoration of respect within their culture (AIHRC, 2015).

Factors Contributing to the Prevalence of Honour Killings Honour killings have multiple contributing factors and contexts. Honour killings are highly associated with violence, patriarchy, and poverty (Gibbs et al., 2019). Feminist research suggests that traditionalism, tribalism, and male authoritarianism are important forces that perpetuate these killings (Sev’er and Yurdakul, 2001). Honour killings may occur in direct response to family shame, marriage without the consent of men in the family, the failure of clan laws, and disobeying the orders of family members (Jovanmard et al., 2019). Every year, a large number of women are victimised by honour killings based on contributing factors such as societal anti-feminist beliefs, belonging to extended families and ethnic groups with patriarchal structures, experiencing economic poverty, a lack of enforcement of the law, and the use of unofficial forms of justice against accused women.

Anti-Feminist Mentalities In the cultural context of this region, women are considered weak and subordinate with fewer inherent abilities compared to men (Evason, 2019). Historically, the view that women are the lesser sex can be clearly seen in the poems and works of people such as Saadi Shirazi, Ferdowsi, Naser Khuraw, and others. This negative attitude is still widespread in Afghanistan, especially in tribal areas. Women are treated as sexual objects that are owned by the men of the family. Any relationship with other men without the permission of the men in the family is considered treason and punishable by death. Thus, honour killings constitute a form of patriarchal social control over women’s bodies (Gibbs et al., 2019). Alvi (2012) hypothesises that men who engage in violence against women in Afghanistan do so to oppress women, sustain their own power, and exploit opportunities to amass wealth. Lawsuits and women’s empowerment in Afghanistan created resistance to feminism, which motivated sexist and anti-women forces to resort to more violence to protect their status. Reports of VAWG in recent years in Afghanistan show that women are subjected to violence because of their resistance and efforts to fight against gender-based violence.

Extended Families and Ethnic Groups With Patriarchal Structures Cultural and social structures in most parts of Afghanistan are tribal and religious. Clans and extended families have a single identity that all members are obligated to maintain. Households in Afghanistan are generally large and multigenerational, with three or four generations living together (Evason, 2019). In the tribal structures of Afghanistan, several generations of the same family or clan members live in the same space. In this type of Afghan family, the status of people is determined according to their age and gender, with older men being of higher status (Azarbaijani-Moghaddam, 2009). Gender roles are strict and highly patriarchal (Evason, 2019). Adult men are the main decisionmakers and young men are the maintainers and guardians of the family (Evason, 2019). In this structure, women are the property of men; there is no individuality or independence for women. Any social transgressions by women are considered an insult to the men of the family or the tribe. Men have the authority to decide and implement whatever punishments they deem necessary for women in their family. In most cases, they decide to kill women under the pretext of protecting their family’s honour and dignity. Women of the family may also be complicit in honour-based abuse. People who commit honour killings are often proud and are considered “heroes” of the family or clan (Edvardsson, 2008). 133

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Economic Poverty In 2012, the AIHRC reported that 58% of honour killing victims were from poor families. Maintenance of honour may be seen as a way for poorer households to achieve social status (Gibbs et al., 2019). Women’s bodies are considered resources for reproduction, labour, and access to other resources (Gibbs et al., 2019). However, the heavy expenses of marriage, women’s lack of inheritance rights, and women’s economic insecurity cause people to delay their marriages, which can lead to extramarital affairs. These affairs become the basis for the majority of honour killings (AIHRC, 2015).

Non-enforcement of the Law Perpetrators are only arrested in 31.8% of documented honour killings, as compared to a 60.8% arrest rate for murders reportedly unrelated to honour (UNAMA and OHCHR, 2018). Most cases of gender-based violence (GBV) are unreported in Afghanistan (Saleem and Zafar, 2015). Police are primarily men, and sexual harassment and assault by police officers are common, so there exists a barrier for women and girls to seek help (Alvi, 2012). Men also form the majority of judges and prosecutors, and many are hostile to women (Alvi, 2012). In Afghanistan, the 2009 Elimination of Violence Against Women Law criminalised violence against women, but not honour killing, which remained a common law offence (Gibbs et al., 2019). Additionally, the penal code Article 398 provides a reduced sentence for perpetrators who kill a woman for committing adultery (Gibbs et al., 2019). These factors lead to a culture and practice of impunity for perpetrators killing under the guise of maintaining so-called honour.

The Existence of Unofficial Forms of Justice Although some honour killings are not registered and reported, some are dealt with according to the law. Due to weak governance and non-implementation of the law by official government institutions, in most of the suburban areas, the chiefs of tribes and local Mullahs punish criminals according to their customs and traditions. Research demonstrates that those who adhere to traditional religious beliefs have attitudes that are more accepting of honour killings than other people (Riahi and Esmaili, 2017). The AIHRC (2015) reports more than a third of honour killings were the result of informal justice that were covered up by tribal and neighbourhood elders.

Women’s Field Court Trials Due to the weakness of the rule of law and the dominance of Islamic sharia in Afghanistan, field court is a common event that is conducted by local elders and religious clerics. Article 130 of the Afghan Constitution allows judges to substitute sharia for crimes that are not addressed in criminal law (Alvi, 2012). Eight field court trials have been documented in 2016, causing the death of 12 men and women (AIHRC, 2017). The trials occurred in Herat, Badghis, Faryab, and Takhar provinces (AIHRC, 2017). Field courts are common in small towns and rural areas of Afghanistan, where extremist armed forces exercise power. In field courts, Islamic sharia and local traditions are cited as punishments, which include all types of murder, whipping, amputation, blackmailing, and public torture. The victims of the field courts include both men and women, but there are many ways to escape for men. Due to reasons such as a lack of trust in the government, weak rule of law, and honour issues, the majority of victims are women. The field trials of women mostly take place for charges of having illicit sexual relations. Men involved in these crimes are rarely punished. Most trials for this crime involve a punishment of 134

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flogging, fines, or other types of non-fatal punishment. Nevertheless, the women who survive such punishments are never able to return to normal life and are isolated from their families and society. For crimes such as murder and adultery, women may be sentenced to execution by hanging. Women are also subjected to death by stoning and death by shooting in field courts.

Death by Stoning Due to the lack of access to a fair court, women are stoned to death on unproven charges. Capital punishments are widely practised by the Taliban regime (Bezhan, 2020). In October 2015, a video was published on social media that showed a girl named Rokhshana, around the age of 19 years old, buried up to her neck in the ground in a Taliban-controlled area in the Ghor province (BBC, 2015). She was accused of premarital sex with her fiancé. A gathering of men, made up of Taliban, local religious leaders, and armed warlords, stood around her and threw stones at her head until she was dead (BBC, 2015). Her fiancé was only given a lashing (BBC, 2015). Stories like Rokhshana’s are not uncommon.

Death by Shooting Another popular method of killing women in field courts is shooting them. In 2016, in the Jowzjan province, a woman was publicly shot in the head after being sentenced to death in a field court (BBC, 2016). A video depicts the crowd listening to the verdict before the woman, sitting on the ground in a burqa, was shot in the back of the head (BBC, 2016). The authors also recall a time when a woman was shot in the back of the head at the Ghazi Stadium in Kabul by a Taliban agent for having an illicit relationship. Many punishments were administered by the Taliban in this stadium (Dorsey, 2012). Some Afghans were convinced that grass did not grow in the stadium because its pitch had been “soaked in blood” (Dorsey, 2012). This type of state-sanctioned femicide is mostly perpetrated by illegal armed forces, Taliban forces, and other extremist armed groups.

Gender-Based Violence Against Women and Girls in Afghanistan According to UN Women (2016), 87% of Afghan women are victims of violence in their lifetime. In addition to femicide, GBV occurs in the form of physical and mental abuse, forced marriage, early marriage, forced prostitution, and trafficking (Saleem and Zafar, 2015). Most GBV cases involve physical violence that is perpetrated by male intimate partners or mothers-in-law (Saleem and Zafar, 2015). In Afghanistan, 80% of women are affected by domestic violence, around 60% of marriages are forced, and half of all girls are married before the age of 16 years (Saleem and Zafar, 2015). These girls are forced into marriage to settle financial and political debts (UN Women, 2016). The prevalence of domestic violence varies across the country, with 92% of women experiencing it in the Ghor and Herat provinces, as compared to 6% of women in Helmand and 7% in Badakhshan (Chauhan and Jungari, 2022). Data from the AIHRC (2012) show that family members are the main perpetrators of VAWG in Afghanistan. The home is the most insecure place for women in Afghanistan, with 94% of all cases of VAWG occurring within the home environment (True, 2020; AIHRC, 2017).

Instigated Suicide In Afghanistan, many women turn to suicide as an act of desperation to escape violence, primarily by self-immolation (Alvi, 2012). A severe consequence of VAWG is the phenomenon of instigated suicide, the unlawful death of a woman inflicted upon herself that is induced by another person 135

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(UNODC and UN Women, 2022). Suicide is outside the United Nation’s definition of a genderrelated killing, but it is relevant to monitoring lethal GBV when there is evidence of “psychological, physical or sexual violence prior to the suicide” (UNODC and UN Women, 2022; 20). A historical case of mass suicide in the Uruzgan province is called the Forty Girls Cheel Dokhran or the Mountain of Forty Girls, which occurred in the late 1880s. After the victory of one tribe over another, 40 Hazara women belonging to the defeated tribe committed suicide. They set themselves on fire or threw themselves off the mountain to save themselves from the rape and enslavement of the conquering tribe (Salehi, 2012). During the uprisings of the Hazarajat people, the opposing ruler, Abdul Rahman Khan, beheaded and enslaved countless women and girls in the markets of Afghanistan and India (Salehi, 2012). These events are not included in the official history of the government, but historians have documented them in their writings (Ibrahimi, 2017). Unfortunately, the phenomenon of women committing suicide to escape violence continues in the present day (Corradi, 2021). Research and reports published in Afghanistan show that more than 80% of suicides are committed by women and girls (Raj et al., 2008). Over 95% of these women were 14 to 19 years of age; many of these women and girls experienced sexual and physical abuse (Raj et al., 2008; UN Women, 2016). In 2012, approximately 53% of the 1,205 documented suicides in Afghanistan were committed by women (WHO, 2006). This number is likely much higher as only those brought to a hospital are registered (Alvi, 2012). The factors that make women resort to suicide are mental and psychological violence and torture, which are imposed on women by family members, the culture prevailing in society, and the structural and legal obstacles for women. Additionally, family violence, customs and traditions, the absolute rule of men, absence of husbands, excessive age difference between partners, forced marriages, and mistreating women in exchange for crimes committed by their relatives play a prominent role in their decision to commit suicide (AIHRC, 2015; Fateh et al., 2016). These restrictions are applied to such an extent that it robs them of their hope for life and they voluntarily resort to suicide as their last option. The domination of the Taliban throughout Afghanistan, the closing of safe houses that were the last refuge of women victims of family violence, and the cancellation of special laws to protect women victims of family violence have exacerbated these conditions experienced by women and girls. A lack of government support has resulted in little hope for saving and continuing the life of women and girls in Afghanistan.

Conclusion This chapter aimed to shine a light on femicide victims in Afghanistan. It described some of the recorded examples of femicides and honour killings; however, these numbers are just the tip of the iceberg (Mosawi, 2019; Zada, 2021). Femicide takes place with different methods and different motives in Afghanistan, but one commonality across all cases is that the women and girls were killed for being women and girls. Today, the women’s movement in Afghanistan is one of the few modern human rights movements that protests and fights against the religious and authoritarian rule of the Taliban. With the Taliban’s control over the government institutions in Afghanistan, women’s rights and their status are sacrificed and fuel the gender apartheid state. Applying strict laws on women and supporting religious and tribal traditions has turned the phenomenon of femicide into one of the most significant threats to women’s lives. All types of violence against women and girls are widespread in Afghanistan, but special attention must be paid to femicide and socio-cultural and political elements of the state that perpetuate it. The most distinct forms of femicide happen under the title of honour killings, where hundreds of women are destroyed every year and death sentences are meted out as a part of field trials. Violence against women and girls is ubiquitous in most areas of Afghanistan, and severe consequences of it, instigated suicides, are also common. 136

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Prior to the takeover of the Taliban, the rise of feminist awareness at the community level among women, the increasing influence of media and social media in people’s lives, and the supervision and support of international organisations in developing countries caused a great awakening, which changed the traditional order. However, Afghanistan’s patriarchal structures and strongly anti-feminist religious and tribal mentalities have made the space for human rights, human development, and peaceful life for women very limited. Specific measures have not been taken to prevent femicide. Women’s empowerment, international monitoring and support, and global organisations defending women’s rights are the only ways to stand against femicide.

Notes 1 Field courts are a type of court used by the Taliban to settle civil and criminal disputes. When the Taliban came into power, state systems of justice were gradually replaced, leading to field courts being the only type of justice accessible to millions of Afghans (Jackson and Weigand, 2020). 2 Instigated suicide is the unlawful death of a woman inflicted upon herself that is incited by another person and often the result of “psychological, physical, or sexual violence prior to the suicide” (UNODC & UN Women, 2022). 3  In 2001, the city of Kandahar fell, which signified the end of the organised Taliban control in Afghanistan.

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13 FEMICIDE IN AUSTRALIA Patricia Cullen, Jenna Price and Natasha Walker

Introduction Globally, there are different approaches to defining femicide, making it difficult to develop a cohesive understanding of femicide and create effective prevention initiatives (ACUNS, 2017; Weil, 2016). This chapter will consider how femicide is conceptualised in Australia, and the community-led solutions to address data gaps. Currently, femicide is not recognised in Australian policy and there is no national approach to data collection. The Counting Dead Women Australia (CDWA) femicide census was born in response to this failure and seeks to increase the visibility of femicide in Australia.

How Is Femicide Conceptualised in Australian Policy? The term “femicide” is not officially used in Australian policy despite its global use and the national prevalence of fatal violence against women. Generally, in government policy and death reviews, these deaths are reported in the context of domestic and family violence deaths (Commonwealth of Australia, 2009). In the Commonwealth government’s National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children (the National Plan), fatal violence against women is limited to “deaths related to domestic violence and sexual assault,” where domestic violence includes “acts of violence [occurring] between people who have or have had, an intimate relationship” (Commonwealth of Australia, 2009). The agenda items in the National Plan only refer to domestic violence related deaths (Commonwealth of Australia, 2009). In 2011, in response to the National Plan calling for a national domestic and family violence death toll, death review teams were established in Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and New South Wales (Commonwealth of Australia, 2016). In 2018, every state and territory in Australia had established a death review team. Members from these teams comprise the Australian Domestic and Family Violence Death Review Network (the Network). The Network and death review teams refer to deaths following an identifiable history of violence in intimate or familial relationships, as “intimate partner” or “domestic and family violence related” (DVDRN, 2018). Where domestic- and family-violence-related deaths includes filicide, parricide and siblicide; as well as suicides and fatal accidents caused by domestic violence (Bricknell et al., 2021; NSW DVDRT, 2017). This definition is not limited to fatal violence against women and also includes men as victims.

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How Is This Data Collected in Australia? In Australia, there is no national approach to femicide data collection (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2016). Data is collected in the National Homicide Monitoring Program (NHMP) by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC), in death reviews by the Network, and by femicide watches such as CDWA (Dawson, 2017; Price, 2019; Walklate et al., 2020). In 2017, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women emphasised the need to improve data collection in Australia on gender-related killings of women (ACUNS, 2017). Additionally, the Australian Human Rights Commission called for a coherent national death review to collect cross-jurisdictional data of domestic and family violence deaths, identify cross-jurisdictional data collection failures, and influence federal agencies to act (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2016). The Commission argued, a federal mechanism for collecting and collating national data is essential in order to ensure effective system responses across jurisdictions (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2016). In response, the Second and Third Actions Plans of the National Plan called for a national evidence base (Commonwealth of Australia, 2013, 2016); however, it is yet to be formalised. In 2020, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs Inquiry into Family, Domestic, and Sexual Violence similarly recommended a coordinated national data collection approach and national death toll, emphasising the importance of collecting data from service-system contacts of victims and perpetrators, including primary health, ambulance, emergency department, police, justice, and legal services (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, 2021). This is also yet to be formalised.

The National Homicide Monitoring Program The AIC collects and analyses national homicide data in the NHMP on the characteristics and circumstances that increase the risk of homicide (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2021). The data is drawn from police and coronial records. In the NHMP, there is no clear reference to femicide. Instead, homicide is reported by incident characteristics and victim/offender characteristics. Victim/ offender characteristics are grouped by sex, age, Indigenous status, country of birth, cause of death, and relationship with the primary offender.

The National Minimum Dataset The Network is developing a national minimum dataset to provide a more holistic understanding of the context of domestic- and family-violence-related deaths. In contrast to the administrative role of the NHMP, the goal of the Network is to identify, collect, analyse, and report national domestic- and family-violence-related death data in order to establish the factors contributing to it, and improve systemic responses (DVDRN, 2018). Sources of data vary between jurisdictions but include information from coroners’ courts, police reports, media reports, sentencing remarks, and agency records. In 2018, the Network only reported on deaths perpetrated by an intimate partner but aims to report on all domestic- and family-violence-related deaths, including those within a family relationship, bystanders, and suicide (DVDRN, 2018). Despite the Network’s progress, there are still limitations, in particular timely access to data. It was only in 2018 that the Network published data from 2010–2014 (DVDRN, 2018). This is significant because some of the data included in these reports is not readily available to the public and without contemporaneous access to this data, it is difficult to frame it as an urgent and important issue in Australia.

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Another limitation is the disjointed approach to collecting data. There is no consensus amongst the state and territory death review teams on the scope, the sources of data or the expertise of team members (Butler et al., 2017). Without a united approach to data collection, there is a risk that readily available characteristics such as age, country of birth, and sex will be prioritised over other equally important characteristics that can be harder to ascertain, such as gender identity, ethnicity, and sexual orientation (Cullen et al., 2021; Dawson et al., 2020; Ruberg et al., 2020).

What Do We Know About Femicide in Australia? According to the NHMP, in 2018–2019, 32% of homicide victims were women (Bricknell et al., 2021). Women were overrepresented as victims in both the broader category of domestic homicide (62%), which includes homicide by intimate partners or other family members and, even more so, homicide by intimate partners only (73%). In 2018, the Network reported that between 2010 and 2014 women accounted for 80% (n = 122) of deaths perpetrated by an intimate partner (DVDRN, 2018). Forty-eight per cent of these deaths occurred within three months of the relationship ending, and almost one-quarter of the perpetrators were named respondents in domestic violence orders (DVOs), which are intended to provide protection for the victim (DVDRN, 2018). Similarly, in New South Wales, between 2000 and 2019, 36% of women killed by an intimate partner had ended or indicated an intention to end the relationship within three months of their death (NSW DVDRT, 2020).

Risk Factors for Intimate Partner Femicide Intimate partner femicide is frequently preceded by a history of intimate partner violence (Bugeja et al., 2013; Campbell et al., 2007; Cullen et al., 2018; DVDRN, 2018; Garcia et al., 2007; Monckton Smith, 2019; NSW DVDRT, 2017, 2020; Sharp-Jeffs and Kelly, 2016; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2019). This risk significantly increases within three months of a relationship breakdown or if there is a new relationship (Beyer et al., 2013; Campbell et al., 2007; DVDRN, 2018; NSW DVDRT, 2017, 2020). Other factors that increase the risk of intimate partner femicide include pregnancy, substance use, unemployment, and a history of violence by the perpetrator, which includes stalking and controlling behaviour (Cullen et al., 2018; McPhedran et al., 2012). In Australia, between 2010 and 2014, 49% of male perpetrators of intimate partner femicide were using alcohol at the time of the incident (DVDRN, 2018). Additionally, an in-depth case review of women killed by their intimate partner in New South Wales between 2008 and 2016 found coercive and controlling behaviours in 99% of cases, and in all cases, the perpetrator was male (NSW DVDRT, 2020). There is much emphasis on the role of coercive control in fatal and non-fatal violence against women. Coercive control is a highly gendered and nuanced form of entrapment, in which the perpetrator microregulates and attacks the victim’s sense of self and their perception of reality and freedom (Stark, 2009; Stark et al., 2019). It can take multiple forms (e.g. financial control, stalking, emotional abuse), and frequently includes elements of physical and sexual violence (Hamberger et al., 2017; Myhill et al., 2019). It is a complex and cumulative form of abuse rather than discrete incidents (Myhill et al., 2019; Sharp-Jeffs et al., 2018). Despite clear relevance, history or patterns of coercive control is not collected in existing data systems in Australia. This data gap reflects the continuing focus on physical forms of violence and incident-based reporting but also relates to challenges in identification and understanding of how coercive control manifests over time (Wangmann, 2011).

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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women The intersection between violence against women and societal conditions of power and oppression is starkly evident in the disproportionate burden of fatal and non-fatal violence experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in Australia. In 2018–2019, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women experienced a homicide victimisation rate of 1.42 per 100,000, compared with 0.56 per 100,000 for non-Aboriginal women (Bricknell et al., 2021). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the world’s oldest surviving continuous culture for more than 60,000 years and the First Peoples of Australia. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, the violent legacy of colonisation is entwined with contemporary colonial violence, including overt violence (e.g. interpersonal racism) and structural violence (e.g. systemic and institutional racism), particularly from police, legal, and social services (Atkinson, 2007; Herring et al., 2013; Linklater, 2014; Longbottom et al., 2016; Nagy, 2015; Palmater, 2016; Sherwood et al., 2015). This profoundly impacts equitable access to holistic, culturally safe, and Aboriginal-led support, and services that meet the specific needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. The disproportionate burden of violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, as well as Indigenous women globally, underrepresents the true burden (National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, 2019). On the one hand, this reflects limitations in existing data systems. However, it is also an example of colonial oppression, in which violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women is not responded to in the same way as for white women (Longbottom, 2019). It is likewise for women of colour and also for women who may resist violence or have a physical or mental health condition (Department of Communities and Justice, 2020).

Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Women The rates of fatal violence are also likely to be underestimated for women in Australia from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. While victim and perpetrator country of birth is typically reported, beyond this there are limited indicators of cultural and/or linguistic diversity, such as language spoken at home, parent’s country of birth, or religious affiliation. This silence reflects a wider issue of culturally and linguistically diverse women’s invisibility in Australian domestic violence policy (Ghafournia et al., 2018). The effect of which is a substantial gap in our understanding of how cultural identities intersect with other contextual risk factors for femicide.

Implications of Data Gaps In Australia, the lack of access to timely and comprehensive femicide data has resulted in a limited understanding of femicide and the structural determinants that contribute to it. Consequently, it is difficult to know the true burden of femicide in Australia. This is compounded by the media reporting of femicide as individual and separate events, enabling a rationalisation of it as a one-off rather than an understanding that it is a systemic and societal issue (Bouzerdan et al., 2018; Greer, 2003; Monckton-Smith, 2010; Morgan et al., 2018). Given the burden of femicide, the reporting of femicide data should impart a sense of urgency that galvanises society and encourages productive discourse. Rich data has the power to increase community education and awareness and lead to social change. Additionally, an emphasis on the importance of collecting complete data honours victims and provides a clear statement of perpetrator accountability. A more complete understanding of femicide would also enable first responders to better recognise the needs and characteristics of perpetrators and women who are at risk of femicide (Cullen et al., 2018; Murphy et al., 2016; Sharps et al., 2001). Healthcare clinicians are often the first and

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preferred contact for women experiencing violence and are well-placed to recognise and respond to risk. In Victoria, Australia, over an eight-year period, three-quarters of victims and perpetrators of intimate partner homicide presented to health or justice services in the 12 months prior to the homicide, and the majority were within a month of the incident (Murphy et al., 2016). Despite this, interventions in the health sector are hampered by insufficient insight into the needs and presentations of both victims and perpetrators that precedes femicide. Incomplete data also leads to ambiguity in femicide research. For example, where characteristics are not clearly stated, such as migrant or refugee status, researchers may develop a subjective and inconsistent approach to making inferences from the data (Cullen et al., 2021). This approach compromises the reliability and validity of the research, leading to ill-informed prevention models that are not far-reaching or appropriate for those most impacted by multiple forms of violence, discrimination, and oppression. It is only through a robust analysis of quantitative and qualitative data that we will develop an informed understanding of femicide and develop effective prevention initiatives (Dawson, 2017).

Community Led Solutions to Address Femicide Data and Prevention Gaps: CDWA Femicide Census The lack of empirical data reporting specifically on the burden and context of femicide is indicative of a tacit acceptance of fatal violence against women in Australia. In the UK, the seeming indifference to collecting robust and timely femicide data was the impetus for Karen Ingala Smith to develop the Counting Dead Women (CDW) project in 2012, which later became the Femicide Census (Long et al., 2019). The Femicide Census honours women who have been killed by men and serves as a femicide-monitoring resource. Initially, the Femicide Census counted only domestic femicide but has since been expanded to count all “gender-related murder” or “women killed through male violence against women.” The purpose of the census is described by Smith (2014) on her website: If we don’t reveal the extent of men’s fatal violence against women and the various forms it can take, we will never be capable of a thorough enough analysis to reduce or end it. If the bigger picture is revealed, people can begin to see the connections. In 2014, based on the CDW campaign and the Femicide Census, the CDWA campaign was launched by members of Destroy the Joint, a volunteer activist group. The CDWA femicide census defines femicide as the violent deaths of all women, including deaths that are not domestic or family violence related, regardless of perpetrator gender or if they were known to the victim. The aim of Destroy the Joint activists was to collect the details of the deaths of women who had been killed in a way that individualised their death and made it visible, without sensationalising it. The CDWA census serves as a repository of femicide data in Australia, backdated to 2012. Data is collected by Destroy the Joint volunteer researchers who monitor police reports, local police Facebook pages, coroner’s reports, and media reports (Robertson, 2019). Additionally, researchers receive information from the general public, including family members of femicide victims through the CDWA Facebook page (Robertson, 2019). By actively monitoring publicly available femicide data and reporting it in real time, CDWA intends to focus the attention of the public and policymakers on preventing the premature death of women, as well as the unnecessary pain and suffering of victims’ families and communities. Of CDWA, Smith remarked, “[H]aving international partners in the project makes change more likely – a ‘united we stand’ kind of approach” (Price, 2019). The first CDWA campaign post, on 20 May 2014, appealed to the federal government to reinstate funding to community legal centres and marked the beginning of the recording of a national 144

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femicide death toll. Initially, the CDWA posts did not specifically name individual victims. The first post was catalysing and a call to action, not only to pressure to fund community legal centres but to ask for any information about the violent deaths of women. By 4 June 2014, CDWA researchers had collected information on 16 deaths, with the death of each woman posted on Facebook with, where possible, her name, age, location and a link to a relevant and up-to-date news story or police report. The activists wanted to include the names of women who had been killed, to make them more than a number, in a way that did not sensationalise their deaths. Additionally, the manner of the deaths were described in one or two sentences on the post. If someone had been arrested in relation to the charge and the police were able to confirm the relationship of that person to the deceased, the post also included those details. The administrators and the research team developed set guidelines before the decision to post. These guidelines are different to the model developed by Smith in that CDWA includes any woman who has died as a result of violence, even if a woman has been arrested as the alleged perpetrator. From 4 June 2014 onwards, individual deaths were listed as they happened, where possible, and more information was added to the original list as it emerged. For example, the CDWA lists from the years 2012 and 2013 were all completed in retrospect. There has been no year since the inception of the CDWA where the lists have remained static, as information becomes available it is added and more deaths are listed. From February 2015, a consistent approach to posting data was developed. First, the cover photo for the Facebook page is changed to include the updated femicide death toll and then the post with information on and links to each femicide case is updated. The post itself acts as a memorial for all femicides in Australia each year. These processes are constantly under review by the administrators of CDWA. While the concept of enumerating fatal violence against women was largely considered to be a positive idea by the volunteers involved – in much the same way that having a national road toll demonstrates the extent of the road deaths – there was some disagreement about the difficulties of building a campaign from the ground up that was entirely driven by volunteers accessing public information. Some feminists argue that feminist activism should be highly theorised and be about changing the structures, or as valentine et al. (2016) argue, whereas earlier feminist approaches called for broad social reforms to disrupt male power and build alternatives to state institutions via networks of women’s services, this current framing of [domestic and family violence] necessarily calls on the assistance of state institutions. As such, it represents a significant departure from the theorised, political accounts of gender and violence that have mobilised scholarship and advocacy for decades. Generally, newsrooms are reluctant to cover femicide and when reported, the story is about sensational or unusual cases focusing on daily events, and its publication motivated by a particular journalist’s initiative (Greer, 2003; Simons et al., 2018). However, since the beginning of the CDWA project, reporting on domestic violence in Australia has increased. A Factiva search using the term “domestic violence,” restricted to the Australia/Oceania region, revealed 9,104 stories published in 2014 and 13,941 stories in 2020. The phrase “family violence” appeared 4,855 in 2014 with a marked increase by 2020 when it appeared 8,208 times. Bouzerdan et al. (2018) explain, violence against women, especially where it occurs outside of intimate partner relationships, is rarely covered in the news as a hate crime or violation of human rights. Additionally, when it comes to reporting on fatal violence against women, journalism’s focus on daily events rather than the larger context of violence against women, leads to journalistic narratives only reporting on individual events of fatal violence against women (Bouzerdan et al., 2018; 145

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Greer, 2003). This leads to a perception that violence against women is siloed, and this results in ill-informed policy responses as there is little conceptualisation of the deep structural and cultural problems that contribute to it (Hudson et al., 2012). In the experience of reporters covering domestic violence, it has been difficult to engage news editors on the topic of family violence, except in unusual and sensational cases, making it difficult to present this issue in a way which engages the wider community. CDWA overcomes this siloed portrayal of femicide by providing a never-ending narrative. Any campaign to stop violence against women is often marginalised and critiqued as being about the personal or the domestic and aligned to the key beliefs of feminism (Bennett et al., 2012; Bennett et al., 2013; Bennett et al., 2015; Faludi, 2006; Scharff, 2016; Yeung et al., 2013). In an attempt to overcome this critique, CDWA centralises the campaign and allows people to share the posts as utterances, as a way to demonstrate solidarity, without having to personalise it to themselves as individuals. CDWA also reports a narrative of deaths, overcoming a key challenge for disseminating information on violence against women, which is frequently portrayed by media as singular (Genovese, 1997). This is not just reporting on one dead woman at a time; it is CDWA, a never-ending narrative. The key part of the CDWA image in each post is the rising number of deaths. It makes this image shareable and quotable, and the number is quoted widely because, as Porter (1996) puts it, “[q]uantification is a social technology.” He argues that public numbers are anything but neutral. They have weight and impact and are often contested. He uses, as an example, the struggle to count those in the United States who are homeless and explains that the number can only be “made objective by specifying in detail what efforts will be made to locate and tally people” (Porter, 1996). This was precisely the challenge presented by attempting to calculate the number of women who had been killed violently in order to present a public number. As Porter (1996) argues, statistics have a “creative power” and each category provides a “potential to become a new thing.” For CDWA, the “new thing” was a reliable, current tally of women who were the victim of fatal violence. This is a departure from the NHMP, which reports the total number of women who were victim to homicide at least a year after their death. Now these ever-mounting figures are in more or less real time and could be used to quantify an epidemic or, as Porter (1996) puts it, “[s]ickness, in short, could not be reliably quantified until it was mapped out and subdivided . . . it reflected, rather, the weakness of institutions promoting public knowledge.” The CDWA tally provides both a clear quantification of the scale of femicide in Australia and a degree of rigour. The numbers speak both for themselves and for the dead women – and they appear to be fair and accurate, which then provides media outlets with an opportunity to quote those numbers because of the alignment with contemporary news values. Bednarek et al. (2017) news values are Negativity (and conflict), Impact (consequence, significance, relevance), Superlativeness (size, scale, scope), Proximity (geographical, cultural nearness), Timeliness (recency, currency), Eliteness (prominence, elite status), Personalization, Consonance (expectedness, typicality), Unexpectedness (and unusuality), and Aesthetics (visuals only). CDWA aligns with nearly every news value on this list, and on some occasions, with every news value except aesthetics and either consonance or unexpectedness. The alignment with a number of these news values works to support the continued usage of CDWA in news media. These numbers – the rising number of women – have become shareable information and are widely used in media and in calls to action. At any time, the current number is used on the front page of a newspaper or the home page of a news site across all ownership entities such as Nine and News Corporation, in current affairs programs, in parliaments (both state and national), in cartoons, in calls to action, in 146

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vigils to commemorate particular dead women, and during International Women’s Day or Reclaim the Night marches. It is broad and deep because the CDWA researchers were able to quantify the problem in a way which recognised that what counts is what matters. Porter (1996) also explores the idea that a public number of any contested group may exclude minorities. This has occasionally been a criticism of the CDWA tally, which has been contested with claims of deliberate exclusion of women of colour, women with a disability, or trans women. Women on the list are not labelled by CDWA, although this may occur in a related police or news report that provides such information. Complaints about the information provided for the women on the list are directed towards the researchers of CDWA. However, the CDWA tally has strict rules in order to maintain objectivity and validity. Porter (1996) is explicit about the need for strict rules for numbers to be “made valid,” but even with those rules, numbers are contested. As Porter (1996) writes, “Official statistical categories occupy contested terrain. The numbers they contain are threatened by misunderstanding as well as self-interest.” The lists of each year are not static. There is constant attention to previous years, updating information, and the results of relevant court cases, but there can never be an accurate contemporaneous count until we are able to collect all the necessary detail. It will be at that moment we can investigate causal relationships and work towards ending femicide.

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14 FEMINICIDE IN BRAZIL Joana Perrone

Introduction In a report published in 2021, the Brazilian Public Security Forum stated that every seven hours a woman was the victim of feminicide in the country. In comparison with other countries in Latin America, Brazil leads in absolute numbers, but the rate of feminicide is highest in Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador (Economic Commission for Latin America, 2021). Despite having a variety of laws concerning gender-based violence (GBV) (see Table 14.1), feminicide only became part of the Brazilian judicial system in 2015, with then president Dilma Rousseff sanctioning the Feminicide Law (law 13.104/2015, also known as Lei do Feminicídio). This law classifies feminicide as an aggravated form of intentional homicide, carrying a longer prison sentence. Despite having put mechanisms in place to address GBV, feminicide remains a serious concern in the country. The Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública (Brazilian Public Security Yearbook, from now on referred to as Anuário) showcased that in 2021, there were 1,341 registered victims of feminicide (as stated by Brazilian law) in Brazil (2022:147). They accounted for 35% of all violent deaths of women in the country, with some variance between states (Brazilian Public Security Yearbook, 2022:147). In the most recent volume of the Atlas da Violência (Ipea, 2022), which analysed all cases of murdered women in Brazil, it is also noted that while the number of murdered women from 2009 to 2019 has diminished, lethal violence against women has increased in at least 14 of the 27 Brazilian states (Ipea, 2022:37)1. Beyond these numbers, there were 2,028 attempted feminicides registered in Brazil in 2021(Anuário, 2022:148) – the report highlights that while there was a decrease in lethal violence against women, there was an increase in calls to the domestic violence helpline, as well as complaints filed for physical abuse (2022:165). This chapter will provide an overview of feminicide in contemporary Brazil, as well as discuss the legal system surrounding this type of crime. The chapter will begin by providing an overview based on the most updated surveys on gender violence in contemporary Brazil. We will continue by examining the Feminicide Law and what it includes in its text – as well as what (and who) is excluded from it. We will then discuss how such exclusions and inclusions map out in the relation to the wider social context in the country. While aiming to give the reader a general understanding of feminicide in contemporary Brazil, the chapter focuses particularly on teasing out the ways in which the Brazilian Feminicide Law reveals underlying conceptions about who is a victim of feminicide and who is not.

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-18

Feminicide in Brazil Table 14.1  Laws Regarding Gender-Based Violence in Brazil Legislation

What It Regulates

Decree nº 89.460, de 20/03/1984,

Enacts the Convention for Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, 1979). Enacts the San Jose Pact (American Convention of Human Rights, 22/11/1969). Enacts the Inter-American Convention to Prevent, Punish, and Eradicate Violence Against Women (Belém do Pará, 09/06/1994). Mandates compulsive notification on cases of violence against women that are seen by public and private healthcare. Lei Maria da Penha legislates over domestic violence, including the establishment of female police precincts, re-socialisation of offenders and victim protection. Legislates over crimes against sexual dignity, particularly sexual violence. Legislates the functioning of the 180, the phone support line for the support of victims of GBV in Brazil. Establishes directives regarding the support of sexual violence victims by law enforcement and the public health system. Creates the Permanent Commission Anti-Violence Against Women in the National Congress. Changes article 121 of the Brazilian Penal Code to consider feminicide as an aggravating cause for the crime of homicide and article 1 of the Law on Heinous Crimes to include feminicide in that category. Adds clauses to the Law 11.340 (Lei Maria da Penha) to address the right of women in situations of domestic/familiar violence to have access to specialised, uninterrupted law enforcement preferably done by female agents. Alters the Decree-Law nº 2.848 of the Penal Code, to include the crimes of sexual harassment and the sharing of sexual violence scenes. It also makes alterations to the persecution of crimes against sexual freedom and sexual crimes against vulnerable people, making those aggravating circumstances. It also determines that practices such as collective rape or corrective rape are aggravating circumstances to sexual crimes.

Decree nº 678, de 06/11/1992 Decree nº 1.973, de 01/08/1996 Law nº 10.778, de 24/11/2003 Law nº 11.340/2006

Law nº 12.015, de 07/08/2009 Decree nº 7.393, de 15/12/2010 Decree nº 7.958, de 13/03/2013 Resolution nº 1, de 16/01/2014 Law nº 13.104, de 09/03/2015

Law nº 13.505, de 08/11/2017

Law nº 13.718, de 24/09/2018.

History and Context of the Feminicide Law Feminicide in Brazil is not defined as a separate crime as in other countries in Latin America, such as Guatemala, Paraguay, and Colombia2, but instead it is linked to a particular crime already present in the Brazilian Penal Code as outlined in the following paragraphs. The way to the Feminicide Law was paved by another important piece of Brazilian legislation on gender violence, the Maria da Penha Law (Law 11.340/2006)3. Containing 46 articles, it aimed to create “mechanisms to restrain and prevent domestic and familial violence against women.” This law particularly took into account the international mechanisms in place to protect and safeguard women’s rights, explicitly linking to the CEDAW (Convention on the Eradication of Discrimination Against Women) and the Inter-American Convention to Prevent, Punish, and Eradicate Violence Against Women (better known as the Belém do Pará Convention).

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The acknowledgement of these international initiatives is significant because, as discussed by MacCaulay (2021), “Brazil offers somewhat of a paradox when it comes to women’s rights policy” (p. 13). The author points out that the country, until recently, was enthusiastic about supporting international norms regarding gender equality but did not comply with their implementation and reporting – it defined feminicide in the law quite late, being the 17th country out of the 21 countries in the region to do so (MacCaulay, 2021:13). As seen in Table 14.1, there was considerable disparity between the promulgation of the international norms within the Brazilian judicial system and the first national laws concerning gender violence in the country. This duality between supporting norms in the international scenario whilst simultaneously seemingly reluctant to implement them is one of the crucial aspects of understanding feminicide in contemporary Brazil. As we will discuss in this chapter, this happens due to political constraints that characterise the relationship between Brazilian law, politics, and the public when it comes to gender-based violence. In a study conducted in 2013, the factors identified as mostly determinant in aiding the victim in seeking help and/or leaving the relationship were access to support from family/friends, knowledge about reporting mechanisms, financial independence, and religion (Beccheri-Cortez and de Souza, 2013). As discussed in other studies regarding gender violence (Ali et al., 2011; Stöckl et al., 2011), women with low levels of education are more often victimised; this is also the case for women that have a higher level of education than that of her partner. These factors are marked by class divisions in a country with high levels of inequality. While the Maria da Penha Law increased access to reporting mechanisms and the implementation of women’s focused police precincts (delegacias de atendimento a mulher, or DEAMs), one report shows that the country has only 400 DEAMs, which are located in less than 10% of the cities in Brazil (Mapa das Delegacias da Mulher, 2020). This vastly excludes women who do not reside within cities or metropolitan regions, as well as those with less access to transportation (including transportation costs). Furthermore, this intersects with race, as the disparity between white and non-white people along socio-economic lines is notable (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics [IBGE], 2021).

A Close Reading of the Brazilian Feminicide Law As discussed, the victims of feminicide in Brazil are covered by the Feminicide Law, which came into being in 2015, following discussions in the Brazilian National Congress regarding its format, language, and categories. The law defines feminicide as a qualifier of homicide when practised: VI – Against women for reasons linked to the condition of the female sex: Paragraph 2(A) – It is considered that reasons linked to the condition of the female sex when the crime involves: I – domestic and familial violence; II – contempt or discrimination against the condition of woman. As discussed by Oliveira et al. (2020:33), the original proposal for the Feminicide Law characterised feminicide as “extreme form of gender violence that results in the death of women” and suggested as delineations of the crime the following characteristics: (1) existence of any intimate or familial relationship with the victim, (2) practice of any type of sexual violence against the victim, and (3) mutilation or disfiguration of the woman, before or after death. Thus, there are substantial differences between the proposed law and the legislation that was approved by the Brazilian National Congress. In countries such as Argentina, in which feminicide is also considered a qualified form of homicide, the wording of the law is closer to the original proposal by Brazilian legislators. Argentina’s law (Ley 26.791, 2012) considers feminicide killing “done against a woman by a man due to gender violence.” In Brazil, the phrase “conditions of the female sex” was included, while the formulation 152

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“extreme form of gender violence resulting in the death of women” was excluded due to pressures of the evangelical caucus in the Brazilian Senate. This follows a growing concern of Brazilian conservative sectors regarding “gender ideology” (Ferreira and Aguiar, 2018; Cunha, 2017) as disrupting so-called normal categories of gender under a broader anti-LGBTQ+ agenda. This wording impacts Brazil’s trans and gender-nonconforming population, making it so that prosecutors, judges, and others involved in the legal apparatus of the state have a more constricted ground to operate within when the victim is trans and/or gender-nonconforming4. Another potential omission caused by the current formulation of the Femicide Law is that it does not include sexual violence or disfiguration/mutilation of the victim as automatic cases of feminicide. While it is usually possible to argue that those would signify “disdain or discrimination against the condition of woman,” the fact they are not an automatic criterion grants more independence to both the police and the judicial system in determining whether a murder is a feminicide. In her study of the courts in João Pessoa, Oliveira discussed that the understanding regarding what qualified as “disdain or discrimination against the condition of woman” was limited, which impacted the reach of the law (2020:34). Taking a broader look at the region, Guatemala’s Ley contra el Femicidio y otras Formas de Violencia Contra la Mujer (Decreto número 22–2008) considers feminicide beyond intimate or familial violence by establishing that mutilation, sexual violence, and misogyny also qualify a case as feminicide. Chilean law (Ley número 21.212), updated in 2020, not only considers sexual violence and violence due to discrimination against one’s gender identity or gender expression but also considers the existence of any inequality of power between aggressor and victim as a potential for feminicide to occur. The existence of such specific clauses in the law demonstrates a concern by legislative bodies in regulating the understanding of feminicide and leaving less room for interpretation in the application of the law. In the Brazilian case, the differences between the original formulation and the approved legislation display some of the difficulties of understanding feminicide in the Brazilian context, as the lack of specifics grants more malleability to the enforcement of the law across the territory. In a closer analysis of the Brazilian Feminicide Law, it is important to also analyse the increases in sentencing linked to particular circumstances surrounding the crime: Paragraph 7: The sentencing for feminicide is increased in 1/3 (one third) to half [of the legally prescribed sentence time] if the crime is committed: I – during pregnancy or in the 3 (three) months following birth; II – against a person younger than 14 (fourteen) years of age, over 60 (sixty) years of age) or with a disability; III – in the presence of a descendant or ascendant of the victim. (Law 13.104/2015) These clauses refer to protected characteristics in Brazilian law, but clause III also includes a family element to the law, strengthening the reading of feminicide as a form of violence that happens within the family unit. The presence of a parent or a child of the victim signals the interest of the legislation in accounting for the violence done to other members of the family within the context of lethal gender violence. This is not unique to Brazil, being also present in countries such as Chile and partially in Panamanian and Guatemalan law (descendants only). Furthermore, clause I include not only pregnancy, which is a protected characteristic in Brazil, but also the period immediately following the birth of the child. While this can be understood as a protection against women in a vulnerable period (e.g. including during a period of leave from work and potential impact on socio-economic conditions), the fact that it was kept in the final version of the law can give us some insights in what the legislators considered most relevant in terms of gender violence. As previously discussed, the clauses that emphasised aspects linked to more “public” forms 153

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of gender violence, such as sexual violence, mutilation, and torture, did not make it to the law that was sanctioned and put into practice. The explicit statement in Brazilian law considers that domestic and familial violence resulting in death is always considered a feminicide. Such a reading of feminicide follows longstanding understandings of feminicide. These studies of gender violence consider that family and/or intimacy are spaces in which women are more likely to be vulnerable to forms of abuse. Nonetheless, in the context of the exclusions displayed in the final version of the legislation, there are questions to be raised about the rationale behind the current legal text. As discussed, some of the changes to the law were made by the evangelical caucus5, and others were also proposed as part of the law being revised by Congress. As discussed by Santos and Canello (2015), the 2015 congressional make-up was impacted by the conservative swing of the 2014 elections, with significant numbers of votes for far-right candidates. This continued a trend observed in the 2010 elections, which made the environment in which the Feminicide Law was discussed and enacted less welcoming for broader and potentially less traditional understandings of feminicide (Santos and Canello, 2015). Throughout the next section, we will look at how the legal text examined here can shed light on the situation regarding feminicide in Brazil. As discussed briefly, the law emphasises certain forms of gender discrimination over others and leaves space for interpretation by judges, prosecutors, and other operatives of the law in the country. Nonetheless, the make-up of the legislative body is linked to societal concerns and anxieties – the disputes by different members of the Brazilian National Congress over the wording of the Feminicide Law speaks to wider questions about how the population understands questions of gender discrimination and violence. Very nice!

Social Understandings of Feminicide in Brazil As discussed by Huzioka (2018), the legal framing (and the enacting of such by public agents) works alongside social conventions and morality. Previously, we looked at how the Feminicide Law emphasises some understandings of feminicide over others and allows for a degree of interpretation regarding certain aspects of this form of gender violence by the police and the judiciary. Through this process, we understood how the construction of “feminicide” is done in the Brazilian law and what were the actors involved in the production of this legislation. In this section, we will take a broader view of the phenomenon, trying to understand what the construction of the “feminicide” category means to the construction of ideas of victimhood, violence, and agency. The country has made strides in promoting better protection against gender violence, as discussed with the implementation of the Maria da Penha Law and the Feminicide Law. Locating intimate and familial violence within the realm of the law is relevant for a country in which expressions regarding the separation between public/private, such as “em briga de marido e mulher não se mete a colher,”6 were widely used and considered common sense. But upon further examination, the measures in place to protect victims of gender violence seem to still be constrained to particular formations of family, relationships, and/or spaces. Butler’s discussion on what lives are considered “grievable” or “ungrievable” also links with how those lives adhere or not to the matrixes of intelligibility that construct gender (Butler, 2016). That is the question of how the “woman” is constructed allows for a specific understanding of her value, of life and death. Women who are materially marginalised through economic and social expectations have historically been more susceptible to being framed and constructed as “disposable” (Livingston, 2004; Menjívar and Drysdale Walsh, 2017). Nonetheless, feminicide in Brazil cuts across a variety of racial, social, and economic disparities, so an engagement with the discursive formation of the “victim” is necessary to understand how this disposability can affect even women who occupy spaces and positions of considerable social, economic, and racial privilege. 154

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The Brazilian feminicide law has a clear construction of victimhood – the forefront of the law deals with intimate and familial violence undertaken within the private sphere. Whilst seeming to be one that exemplifies a common-sense idea of what being a victim of feminicide entails, this interpretation raises interesting questions. The law considers a particular subject to fit within its constraints and, therefore, a subject whose rights are protected. Feminicide obviously relates to issues of both victimisation and vulnerability – women are vulnerable to feminicide and are considered this way by scholars, the media, and society. Victimisation is used very clearly in the legal sense, but is used to represent a specific type of interaction. A victim in the Brazilian law and the victims of feminicide in the daily practices of gender violence in the country are not the same. The women who fit the particular characteristics of “subject” of the Brazilian Feminicide Law can be only a small subsect of a wider category of “victims” in the country. A clear example of this are sex workers: studies done in Brazil showcase that sex work is an activity that puts women at higher risk of gender violence (Moreira and Monteiro, 2012; Machiavelli Carmo Souza and Menezes de Carvalho, 2018). Nonetheless, as it is the case worldwide, feminicides against sex workers are invisibilised (Meneghel et al. 2022:3) and, as seen in our examination of the Brazilian Feminicide Law, are not present as a clear case of gender violence. (This is a nice, globally relevant example.) The question of sex workers is particularly interesting in the analysis of feminicide because naming a victim a sex worker has been historically used by authorities to minimise gender violence. This has been seen in the seminal case of women in Ciudad Juárez, where girls and women murdered were portrayed as “public women” to delegitimise their status as victims (Wright, 2006:682). In contemporary Brazil, this continues, with sex workers declaring they suffer from daily discrimination, disdain, and accusations from society and legal authorities such as the police (Moreira and Monteiro, 2012:5) – the removal of the status of victim of sex workers come from perceptions about their participation in their own victimisation. Sex work discrimination also directly impacts some of the women most affected by feminicide in Brazil. According to the Associação Nacional de Travestis7 e Transsexuais, (National Association of Travestis and Transsexuals, or ANTRA, 2022), 90% of travestis and trans women are engaged in sex work as a means of survival. According to data from Transgender Europe, Brazil continues to rank the highest for violence against trans people in the world (Trans Murder Monitoring, 2021) – the country itself accounts for 33% of murders against trans people worldwide (Trans Murder Monitoring, 2021). Nonetheless, the legal understanding of the situation of trans women in relation to feminicide is not fully settled in Brazil, with cases undergoing analysis in several instances of the judicial system. Allied with considerable pushback against their gender identities by more conservative sectors of Brazilian society, this locates this group as particularly at risk – both of being killed and of not being recognised as victims. It was only in 2019, four years after the Feminicide Law was enacted, that a trans women was legally recognised as a victim of feminicide in the country (Uol Notícias, 2021). This put travestis and trans women in a particularly vulnerable position, being both discriminated against by virtue of their gender identity and their profession, and they are unable to get proper state recognition of the violence to which they are subjected. With the rise of “gender ideology” as a political talking point in the country, hostility against trans and gender-nonconforming people has become more open in public discourses, especially surrounding discussions about protecting children from “dangerous” ideas about gender (Baliero, 2018). By looking both at sex workers and at travestis and trans women, it is possible to see the beginnings of a “victim” category in the Brazilian socio-legal context. While there has been considerable work done in legitimising the suffering of victims of domestic and intimate partner violence, other instances of gender-based violence (GBV) have slipped through – and become unrecognisable by both Brazilian society and law. In the case of sex workers, undertaking a professional activity seen as risky, alongside the preconceived notions about women’s bodies in sex work, allow for the violence 155

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inflicted upon those women to be cast back against them. Similarly, not abiding by particular understandings of gender means that travestis and trans women are often excluded from policies aiming to reduce GBV in a country that is particularly hostile to their existence. As extensively discussed by Kate Manne in her work Down Girl (2017), the concept of victimhood relies on a background moral narrative. Manne discusses how we tend to think of victims as innocent, blameless, and (worse) as needing to be. Often there is a subsequent reluctance or failure to recognise someone as a victim. when they are, or are even suspected of being, guilty of some minor perfidy. (2017) The fact that both sex workers and travestis/trans women are “suspect” in Brazilian society due to the discrimination given to both these groups (and often intersecting in the bodies of trans sex workers) makes them less likely to be seen as victims. Beyond being put in a position of violence, their status as a victim is always doubted because of societal perceptions about their existence. While this is clear in the cases discussed, understandings of victimisation also shed a light on some of the disparities discussed when looking at the statistics around feminicide in contemporary Brazil. There are variations in feminicide rates across different demographic categories. An important one to consider is race: in 2019, 66% of all women murdered were black women (Ipea, 2021:38) – as highlighted in the same volume: [I]n 2009, the mortality rate of black women was 48,5% higher than non-black women, and eleven years later, the mortality rate of black women is 65,8% higher than non-black women. (Ipea, 2021:38) Racial violence is an issue even in crimes impacting men (Romio, 2013),8 but these figures showcase that the intersection between race and gender is particularly relevant in Brazil. In a 2014 survey conducted in 86 emergency services across 25 Brazilian capitals, 70% of all women involved in intimate partner violence incidents were black women (Garcia and da Silva, 2014). And even data collection is impacted: Romio notes that racial difference impacts how crimes against women are reported to the police – 50% of white women would not go to the police when the aggressor was someone known to them, while 54% of black women would not go to the police when the aggressor was someone they did not know (Romio, 2013:152). These data demonstrate that race is an important axis for understanding feminicide and, more broadly, GBV in contemporary Brazil. This is not surprising, as the idea of intersectionality was developed by Crenshaw (1991) exactly through an analysis of the experiences of violence of women of colour. But in Brazil, a country marked by socio-economic and racial inequality, understanding and pinpointing the racial disparities across cases of feminicide allows us to understand the dynamics of this form of GBV in the country. In the case of sex workers and trans women, there is often explicitly political and societal discourse against them, but the construction of victimhood can operate in a much opaquer way, relying on structures of systemic oppression such as racism. As seen, black women are substantially more affected by violence. This positions them in a much more vulnerable position. Racial discrimination against black women is rooted in understanding them as dehumanised and less prone to suffering and in the perception that their bodies as more public than those of white women. Carneiro (2019) notes that the historical understanding of the place of black women in society was “black women to work, white women to marry, mulattas to fuck.”9 This locates black women in general as commodities, be it through labour or sexual exploitation – their bodies are seen as less then and their victimisation does not render them the status of victims. 156

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While not clearly excluded from the Feminicide Law, black women are less likely to be believed as victims and also less likely to report the violence enacted against them due to distrust of police and/or legal systems as those systems and their agents are often perpetrators of institutional racism. These categories of women not seen as victims are not reduced to sex workers, trans women and racialised women. Behaviour is also considered: [A]s soon as the focus shifts from what was done to someone, to ways in which her (perhaps genuine) imprudence or even morally problematic behaviour contributed casually to the wrongs done to her, her role as a victim in the narrative is liable to be compromised. It may then be difficult to see her as a victim whatsoever. (Manne, 2017) The inability to see (certain) women as victims has also to do with perceiving their behaviour as being implicitly to blame for their victimisation. Brazilian feminists have worked hard to undo powerful myths on the alleged blame of domestic violence victims for what was done to them – the Feminicide Law reflects that bringing forth an understanding that accounts for those circumstances.10 However, women who might not fit within those parameters – who may be considered to be engaging in behaviour that is considered risky, whose gender identity does not align with certain designations of acceptable sex/gender matrices, or who are perceived, by socio-historical prejudices, to be less than – are unable to claim the protection granted by the state or, after their deaths, to have their killings recognised as feminicide.

Conclusion As discussed in this chapter, the Brazilian Feminicide Law was important in naming the phenomena in the country and creating a tool for recognising this form of GBV. However, the law itself suffered several modifications during its approval by the National Congress, which meant that some groups of women were not clearly protected by its enactment. Such modifications also reveal underlying issues around conceptions of gender, victimhood, and agency within Brazilian society, which, allied with the level of independence given in the interpretation of the law, means that recognising this form of GBV remains compromised. The questions this chapter hoped to raise were around the links between law and society and how the text of the Feminicide Law, far from being solely a legal source, reveals biases within the Brazilian society. Throughout the text, we explored how particularly marginalised groups in society were not reflected in the law, either explicitly or implicitly, increasing their vulnerability to this form of GBV.

Notes 1 It is important to consider that part of this increase is due to the violence being officially recorded with the implementation of more specialised legislation (particularly the Feminicide Law of 2015). 2 For a wider analysis of feminicide legislation in Latin America, see Carrigan, M., & Dawson, M. (2020). Problem representations of femicide/feminicide legislation in Latin America. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 9(2), 1–19. 3 Maria da Penha, whom the law is named after, is a Brazilian woman who was the victim of attempted femicide in 1983. Fifteen years later, with her husband still not convicted, Maria da Penha, assisted by lawyers, took her case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, claiming that there was state failure in her case and that her rights were being violated. In 2001, the IACHR issued a report declaring the Brazilian state to be negligent, having been omissive and tolerant of violence against women. 4 In 2021, the Supreme Justice Court (STJ in the Brazilian acronym) applied the Maria da Penha Law to a case involving a transgender child, fixing in the jurisprudence that trans women and girls should also fall under the auspices of this law. This follows a 2019 case in which the Criminal Justice Court of Distrito Federal in

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Joana Perrone Brazil determined that a case of feminicide was due to “disdain for the condition of transsexual” of the victim. While these two cases showcase a potential to challenge the more conservative readings of the Feminicide Law, the legislation itself grants a lot of leeway for interpretation according to the judge, prosecutor, and even police force in charge of the case. 5 The evangelical caucus is the name broadly given by a group of politicians that are aligned with the agenda of evangelical churches in Brazil. They are usually members of an evangelical church and lobby for traditional, conservative policies, including anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ policies. 6 Roughly translated as “in a fight between husband and wife, no one should interfere.” 7 Travesti is a gender identity particular to South America and refers to individuals that, while assigned male at birth, take on femme/feminine characteristics. They are usually involved in sex work and most often do not refer to themselves as women, using the term “travesti” (for more information, refer to Don Kullick’s seminal work, Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes, 1998). 8 In this is important to note that the current black feminist movement in Brazil considers that black women are included in the categories of mulatta and the Brazilian term “pardo,” through considering these erasures of Black heritage in the country instead promoting the importance self-understanding of themselves as black women. 9 This is not to say that all victims of domestic and intimate violence experience support across the country. There is still considerable work to be done in demystifying gender violence in Brazil; however, public policies currently put in place are considerably more likely to protect those cases.

References Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública (2022) Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública. https://forumseguranca.org.br/anuario-brasileiro-seguranca-publica/. Accessed 16th August 2022. Ali, T. S., Asad, N., Mogren, I., & Krantz, G. (2011). Intimate partner violence in urban Pakistan: Prevalence, frequency, and risk factors. International Journal of Women’s Health, 3(1), 105–115. https://doi.org/10.2147/ IJWH.S17016 Balieiro, F. (2018). “Don’t mess with my kids”: Building the moral panic of the child under threat. Cadernos PAGU, 53. Beccheri-Cortez, M., & de Souza, L. (2013). Mulheres de classe media, relacoes de genero e violencia conjugal: Um estudo exploratorio. Revista gerencia y políticas de salud, 34. Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics [IBGE] (2021). “Estatísticas de gênero: indicadores sociais das mulheres no Brasil” IBGE, Coordenação de População e Indicadores Sociais. https://biblioteca.ibge.gov.br/index.php/ biblioteca-catalogo?view=detalhes&id=2101784. Accessed 17th August 2022. Butler, J. (2016). Frames of war: When is life grievable? London: Verso. Carneiro, S. (2019) Escritos de uma vida. São Paulo: Pólen Livros. Cunha, M. do N. (2017). Construções imaginárias sobre a categoria “gênero” no context do conservadorismo politico religioso dos anos 2010. Perspectiva Teológica, 49(2). https://doi.org/10.20911/21768757v49 n2p253/2017 Decreto Numero 22/2008 of Guatemala. Available at: http://leydeguatemala.com/ley-contra-el-femicidioy-otras-formas-de-violenci/decreto-numero-22-2008/10874/ Economic Commission for Latin America (2021). Gender Equality Observatory for Latin American and the Caribbean. https://oig.cepal.org/en/indicators/femicide-or-feminicide. Accessed 15th August 2022. Feminicide Law (Law 13.314/2015), available at: www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2015-2018/2015/lei/ l13104.htm Garcia, L. P., & da Silva, G. D. M. (2018). Violência por parceiro íntimo: Perfil dos atendimentos em serviços de urgência e emergência nas capitais dos estados brasileiros, 2014. Cadernos de saúde pública, 34(4). https:// doi.org/10.1590/0102-311x00062317\ Huzioka, L. L. (2018). Diálogos de gênero sobre feminicídios: Um olhar sobre o tratamento moral e jurídico ao uso do poder de matar, reivindicações ativistas pela responsabilidade estatal e articulações estratégicas pela vida das mulheres. InSURgência: Revista de Direitos e Movimentos Sociais, 3(2), 273–318. https://doi. org/10.26512/insurgncia.v3i2.19726 Ipea (2021). Atlas da Violência. www.ipea.gov.br/atlasviolencia/ Livingston, J. (2004). Murder in Juarez: Gender, Sexual Violence, and the Global Assembly Line. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 25(1), 59–76. Ley 26.791 of Argentina (2012). https://oig.cepal.org/sites/default/files/2012_arg_ley26791.pdf Ley 21.212 of Chile (2020). www.bcn.cl/leychile/navegar?idNorma=1143040

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Feminicide in Brazil MacCaulay, F. (2021). Transforming State Responses to Femicide: women’s movements, law and criminal justice institutions in Brazil. London: Emerald Publishing. Machiavelli Carmo Souza, T., & Menezes de Carvalho, N. (2018). Violência contra mulheres na prostituição. VII Seminário Corpo, Gênero e Sexualidade, do III Seminário Internacional Corpo, Gênero e Sexualidade. https://7seminario.furg.br/images/arquivo/337.pdf Mapa das Delegacias da Mulher (2020). Retrieved from: https://azmina.com.br/projetos/delegacia-da-mulher/ Maria da Penha Law (Law 11.340/2006) www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2004-2006/2006/lei/l11340.htm Meneghel, S. N., Margarites, A. F., & Ceccon, R. F. (2022). Femicides of prostitutes in Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil/ Feminicídios de prostitutas no município de Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil/Femicidio de prostitutas en el municipio Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil. Interface (Botucatu, Brazil), 26, 1. https://doi.org/10.1590/interface.210591 Menjívar, C. & Drysdale Walsh, S. (2017). The architecture of feminicide: The state, inequalities, and everyday gender violence in Honduras. Latin American Research Review, 52(2), 221–240. https://doi.org/10.25222/ larr.73 Moreira, I. C. C. C., & Monteiro, C. F. de S. (2012). A violência no cotidiano da prostituição: Invisibilidades e ambiguidades. Revista latino-americana de enfermagem, 20(5), 954–960. https://doi.org/10.1590/ S0104-11692012000500018 National Association of Travestis and Transsexuals (Associação Nacional de Travestis e Transsexuais) (2022). Dossiê Assassinatos e Violências contra Travestis e Transsexuais Brasileiras em 2021. Associação Nacional de Travestis e Transsexuais, ANTRA. https://antrabrasil.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/dossieantra2022-web.pdf. Accessed 17th August 2022. Oliveira, H. J. de, Zamboni, M., Nascimento, E. T. do, & Leite, D. B. C. (2020). A (re)produção de uma sentença: Narrativas uníssonas sobre feminicídio em tribunais do júri. Revista Crítica De Ciencias Sociais, 122(122), 31–52. Romio, J. “A vitimização de mulheres por agressão física, segundo raça/cor no Brasil” in: Marcondes, M. M., Pinheiro, L., Queiroz, C., Querino, A. C., Valverde, D. O., & França, D. (Eds.). (2013). Dossiê mulheres negras: Retrato das condições de vida das mulheres negras no Brasil. Ipea. Santos, F. & Canello, J. (2015) Brazilian Congress, 2014 elections and governability challenges. Brazilian Political Science Review, 9(1), p. 115–134. Stöckl, H., Heise, L., & Watts, C. (2011). Factors associated with violence by a current partner in a nationally representative sample of German women. Sociology of Health & Illness, 33(5), 694–709. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2011.01319.x Trans Murder Monitoring (2021). https://transrespect.org/en/map/trans-murder-monitoring/. Accessed 17th August 2022. Uol Notícias (2021). Homem é condenado por feminicídio de mulher trans em São Paulo, in Uol Notícias. https:// www.uol.com.br/universa/noticias/redacao/2021/06/14/homem-e-condenado-por-feminicidio-demulher-trans-em-sao-paulo.htm. Accessed 14th August 2022. Wright, M. W. (2006). Public women, profit, and femicide in northern mexico. South Atlantic Quarterly, 105(4), 682–698. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-2006-003

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15 FEMICIDE IN CANADA Wendy Aujla, Myrna Dawson, Crystal J. Giesbrecht, Nneka MacGregor, and Shiva Nourpanah

Introduction Every second day, on average, a woman or girl is killed in Canada – one woman or girl every 48 hours (Dawson et al., 2019). These women and girls are killed mostly by men. The number of deaths goes largely unnoticed because these killings occur over an extended period in various parts of the country, by different perpetrators, who are often current or former male partners or family members. The deaths of many of these individual women and girls are often largely invisible because of who they are, where they were killed, and/or by whom. In contrast, when women and girls are killed together in one location, sometimes along with male victims, by a perpetrator with whom they shared more distant relationships – or no relationship at all – their deaths shock the community in which they occurred and reverberate around the country for years to come. This is what occurred on 6 December 1989, when a 25-year-old white male, armed with a semiautomatic rifle and a hatred for women, entered a university classroom, and perpetrated one of the deadliest mass shootings in Canadian history. Declaring his hatred for feminists, his subsequent 20-minute rampage, often referred to as the Montreal Massacre, left 14 women dead, another 14 women and men injured, and a country reeling. It was not to be Canada’s last mass killing, involving primarily female victims, however. In 2018, a white male drove a van down a busy Toronto sidewalk, leaving eight women and two men dead in his wake, and another 15 injured, including one woman who later died. The perpetrator was a self-identified incel1, a broad label referring to men holding a range of misogynistic and anti-woman beliefs. Two years later, in 2020, another white male, armed with multiple guns, went on a planned rampage2, sparked at least in part by misogyny and violence against women. After assaulting his female partner, who was able to escape, he went on to kill 13 women and 9 men across several rural communities in eastern Canada. The perpetrator’s propensity for violence, including violence against intimate partners and others, as well as his possession of illegal firearms, had come to the attention of police on multiple prior occasions before the mass killings (Donkin, 2020; Tutton and MacDonald, 2022). On each of these occasions, the country’s leaders, politicians, and members of the public expressed shock and dismay, describing these incidents as “senseless” violence. When groups of women and girls are killed by one perpetrator, especially if the killer was a stranger or someone with whom they had little prior relationship, some of the public responds with some condemnation. When individual women and girls are killed as they are every other day in Canada (Dawson et al., 2019), society 160

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appears to be less concerned, particularly when such violence is perpetrated by men against current or former female partners or against some groups of women and girls (e.g. Indigenous, Black, racialised, sexual minorities, people with disabilities, or other women and girls made more marginalised by mainstream society). Despite this “hierarchy of female victims” (Gilchrist, 2010), what many of these killings of women and girls share – whether killed in groups or as individuals – is that none of their deaths are officially recognised as femicide by any level of government in Canada. In 2019, three decades after the Montreal Massacre occurred, it was finally officially recognised as an anti-feminist attack by the city in which it occurred, but not as a mass femicide, even though these women were killed because they were women, because of their sex. Canada is not unique in this regard with few countries outside of Latin America recognising femicide (or feminicide) as a distinct type of homicide. To name such killings as such, however, recognises and captures how and why women and girls are killed – distinct from how men and boys are killed – which is crucial for public education and effective prevention, an issue that has gained some traction in recent years, and particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Naming such killings is the goal of the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability (CFOJA) which launched on 6 December 2017, Canada’s National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. The CFOJA builds on decades of research on femicide in Canada, which began with feminist, grassroots efforts in Ontario, one of the country’s most populous provinces (e.g. Gartner et al., 1999). In the following section, before describing the work of the CFOJA to date, including a snapshot of patterns in femicide in Canada, we briefly discuss the limitations of existing official data in Canada to document femicide.

Existing Official Data and Initiatives Documenting the Killing of Women and Girls Statistics Canada collects relatively comprehensive information on all homicides that occur; however, these data are limited in scope for determining whether the killing was a femicide. Data instruments, initially designed to capture the greater proportion of male-on-male homicides, reflect a bias for information related to these types of killings, most often involving acquaintances and strangers. Women and girls face the most danger from men they know – male partners and family members – but few variables capture core information on male-on-female killings to adequately inform prevention initiatives (e.g. prior violence by male partners, prior police/court contacts, presence of children/stepchildren, custody/access disputes). Focusing more specifically on the killing of women by male partners – referred to as intimate femicide or intimate partner femicide – is a growing number of domestic violence death review committees. Originating in the United States during the 1990s, these initiatives now exist in six countries (Dawson, 2021; Dawson, 2017; Sheehy, 2017), including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Portugal. Some domestic violence death review initiatives can access a variety of data sources to produce more complete pictures of femicide as it occurs between intimate partners. While several Canadian provinces currently have domestic violence death review committees, not all provinces or territories do, creating an inequity in data availability. Furthermore, where they do exist, the goal is primarily to examine intimate partner homicides or other killings in a domestic or family context, such as when children are murdered by a parent or caregiver. Some initiatives also include third-party victims. As well as analysing incidents of domestic homicide, review initiatives also examine events leading up to the homicide, with the goal of informing social and legal responses – an important element of prevention. Femicides that are not perpetrated by an intimate partner are not included in these reviews; therefore, many femicides remain invisible. There are no reviews of women killed by non-intimate 161

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perpetrators (e.g. strangers, friends, acquaintances) or in other contexts (e.g. gang involvement, sex trade workers, human trafficking, drug trade, organised crime) unless they are somehow linked to domestic violence. The focus of current death review mechanisms on domestic violence-related contexts means that other types of femicide are not reviewed. This is a concern for advancing awareness of femicide, specifically the killing of some groups of women and girls. For example, research has shown that Indigenous women and girls are often killed by male acquaintances and strangers and more likely to be killed by a stranger than non-Indigenous women (NWAC, 2010). These femicides would fall outside the mandate of most, if not all, domestic violence death review initiatives. Given these data gaps, the lives of women and girls remain at risk because we are not collecting or making available the right information (Dawson and Carrigan, 2021). Specific groups of women and girls marginalised by society and made more vulnerable to violence and femicide (Cullen et al., 2021) are often “invisible” in official data. The lack of quality race-based data in Canada, including any systematic efforts to document Indigenous, Black, and other racialised femicides, is just one example of such invisibility. This also underscores the lack of a crucial intersectional focus that highlights impacts of overlapping oppressions and discrimination experienced by some women and girls in Canada, as discussed next.

Risk of Femicide for Indigenous, Black, and Other Racialised Women and Girls It is well recognised that capturing the race and ethnicity of those involved in crime and violence is fraught with difficulties because information is often missing, recorded inaccurately, or used irresponsibly (Owusu-Bempah and Wortley, 2014). When approached carefully and responsibly, however, such information may be useful for informing policy and prevention initiatives, particularly those targeting femicide. In Canada, historical and ongoing impacts of colonisation, systemic racism, poverty, and other inequalities have contributed to Indigenous populations in general being overrepresented as victims of violent crime. However, while Indigeneity has been a long-standing focus of national crime and justice statistics, it is recognised that data quality remains poor (Owusu-Bempah and Wortley, 2014; Thompson, 2014). While official reports, such as Statistics Canada’s Homicide Survey, tell us the number of homicide victims who are Indigenous, other data pertinent to prevention are often missing. More detailed information about victims is often available in media reports; however, it is common for stories to not explicitly state that a victim is Indigenous (even when other information, such as her community, is reported, her picture is shared, and her family members are interviewed). Thus, researchers are not able to identify with certainty how many victims are Indigenous, Black, and/or racialised. This has led to the recent formation of the Black Femicide Canada Council (MacGregor and Adefarakan, 2022) to work with Black women, girls, and gender-diverse (B-WGGD) experts and allies in various sectors, to dismantle anti-Black gender-based violence (aBGBV) and to raise awareness of femicides of B-WGGD people in the Canadian context, with a view to creating public policies that better protect them. Efforts to document the violence experienced by Indigenous women and girls have increased in recent years, largely due to work by Indigenous women and/or feminist grassroots initiatives (Amnesty International, 2004; NWAC, 2010), but there is still much work to be done to accurately capture their absolute, and relative, risk of violence. In addition, the ongoing impunity for perpetrators also continues to be well documented (National Inquiry, 2019). There remains an absence of systematic data and research on state responses to femicide overall and to killings of Indigenous women and girls specifically (Dawson, 2016; National Inquiry, 2019). Consistent with findings from the National Inquiry, the CFOJA data demonstrate that little appears to be changing as Indigenous women and girls continue to be overrepresented as victims. However, the picture remains incomplete due to the lack of conclusive data. 162

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If data are lacking for Indigenous women and girls, they are virtually non-existent for other racialised groups, including Black and South Asian women and girls. This gap in knowledge may be due to early, informal restrictions placed on collecting data on race/ethnicity in Canada and/ or the difficulty in finding reliable data sources (Thompson, 2014). In recent years, challenges that immigrant/refugee women face when experiencing these types of violence specifically, including cultural or language barriers, have increasingly been documented (Alaggia et al., 2009; Rossiter et al., 2018). This may enhance their risk of femicide, particularly by male partners, if they are unable to obtain the help they need. Furthermore, with growing immigrant/refugee populations in Canada and globally, it is crucial to better understand the numerous barriers these women and girls face when disclosing victimisation to access services and supports and how social and state actors respond or consider intersectional identities when they do seek help. Research is emerging on how complicated help-seeking processes are for immigrant women, who may be revictimised by professionals (e.g. social workers and police officers) and systems that are supposed to protect them (Aujla, 2021; Nourpanah, 2021). Immigrant women who encounter negative experiences with informal and formal supports may not wish to rely on them for assistance when experiencing IPV. Key questions going forward are whether these data are being collected, who collects these data, and how accurate they are, as well as how these data can be used to inform femicide and violence prevention. If these data are not being consistently collected, we need to ask why. Until we have some answers, the actual risk of femicide for Indigenous, Black, South Asian, and other racialised women and girls remains invisible. As a result, their ongoing marginalisation and vulnerability is exacerbated as it is for other groups whose lives and deaths are not adequately captured (e.g. sexual minorities, women living with disabilities, women in poverty, elderly women). If we cannot determine how to collect accurate data about the deaths of all victims of femicide, even greater challenges are faced when gathering vital data for the larger group of women and girls who experience non-lethal forms of male violence. The CFOJA continues to draw attention to this issue as well as the invisibility of other groups of women and girls as part of its activities described next.

Goals of the CFOJA The goals of the CFOJA are multifaceted with the overall objective to bring a visible and national focus on social and state responses to femicide. This is achieved by (1) tracking cases of femicide as they occur in Canada and, retrospectively, while remembering each woman and girl (e.g. #RememberMe campaign); (2) examining social (e.g. media) and state (e.g. court) responses that exacerbate the marginalisation and vulnerability of some women and girls specifically; and (3) facilitating the exchange of information, reliable data, and current knowledge to advance legislative, policy, and program changes in the prevention of male violence against women and girls locally and globally. A key component of the third objective is to increase public and professional education and awareness about what it means to say that a woman or girl was killed because of their sex or gender by identifying sex-/gender-related motives and indicators (SGRMIs; Dawson and Carrigan, 2021). SGRMIs are characteristics that signify whether and how the killing of a woman or girl was rooted in the perpetrator’s misogynist attitudes and/or community- and societal-level acceptance of, or support for, violence against women and girls (Sarmiento et al., 2014). These attitudes can stem from the belief that women and girls are possessions of an individual man or patriarchal institutions, and/ or they are objects to be used by individual men or patriarchal institutions. The CFOJA begins by tracking all homicides of women and girls and works to delineate those that most closely align with the concept of femicide. Data extracted from media coverage of femicide has been found to be the most accessible and reliable at the present time (Vives-Cases et al., 2016), although it is recognised that who is killed by whom and where will determine whether, and 163

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what, coverage occurs. With these limitations in mind, data collected from media and court documents were adopted as a first step by the CFOJA. In the following section, we provide a snapshot of femicide in Canada, discuss preliminary findings related to presence of SGRMIs, and identify some emerging priorities and challenges (for more detail, see annual reports at www.femicideincanada.ca).

A Snapshot of Femicide in Canada During the six-year period (2016–2021), at least 956 women and girls were killed by violence for which 940 accused/offenders were identified. Nine per cent of these deaths remain currently unsolved. The number of women and girls killed is a minimum estimate because some women and girls remain missing, and if killed, their deaths are not yet classified as homicide. Furthermore, although some deaths may be homicides, they may never be officially categorised as such. Focusing on those deaths that most closely align with the definition of femicide – females killed by male accused – there were 702 incidents (87% of the total cases) resulting in the deaths of 774 women and girls. Drawing from these data, and based on available information, key patterns are described in the following paragraphs which parallel many findings documented by the voluminous body of research on femicide generated over decades, in all world regions, and in other chapters of this collection.

Age Women aged 25–34 years old continue to be significantly overrepresented as victims of femicide (21%) compared to their representation in the population (13%). Women aged 65 years and older are also emerging as an at-risk group (ACUNS, 2017; Bows, 2018).

Relationship As documented internationally (UNODC, 2021), female victims in Canada continue to be killed most often by male partners, followed by male family members. During the six-year period, 294 (38%) of the primary female victims were killed by a current or former male partner (i.e. intimate partner femicide). Another 20% were killed by male family members. Together, almost six in ten (58%) of all killings of women and girls involved male intimate partners or family members.

Race/Ethnicity As documented most recently by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (National Inquiry, 2019), the findings of the CFOJA also demonstrate that Indigenous women and girls continue to be significantly overrepresented as victims. Where information on race/ethnicity was available, over the six-year period, 37% of all women and girls killed by a male accused were Indigenous, despite representing only about 5% of the Canadian population. Beyond Indigenous status, the risk of Black and other racialised women and girls cannot yet be accurately documented due to data quality as discussed above.

Geography The highest rates of killings of women and girls were documented in the northern region of Canada (i.e. the three territories) and in regions with higher rural populations (i.e. the Prairie provinces). These regions also have higher proportions of Indigenous populations who are at greater risk of 164

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violent victimisation overall (Perreault, 2022), particularly Indigenous women and girls (Heidinger, 2022). This is due to historical and ongoing intergenerational trauma resulting from colonialism, as well as individual and systemic racism and discrimination (National Inquiry, 2019). Furthermore, women and girls in rural areas are faced with risk factors and barriers to safety including social and geographic isolation, distance from service providers, patriarchal social values, ownership of firearms, and unemployment (Jeffrey et al., 2019; Straatman et al., 2020; Wuerch, 2020). During this period (2016–2021), 31% of the killings of women and girls involving male accused occurred in rural regions, whereas only 18% of the total population live in rural regions (Statistics Canada, 2022).

Method of Killing Information is still missing for a high proportion of victims, but when method of killing is known (69%), shooting (31%) and stabbing (30%) were the most common methods used to kill women and girls. The presence of firearms in femicides increased for women and girls killed in non-urban areas. Based on the available information, over four in ten (41%) women and girls were killed with a firearm in non-urban areas and 20% died of stab wounds.

Understanding Sex-/Gender-Related Motives and Indicators A key goal of the CFOJA is to increase public and professional education and awareness about femicide and related sex-/gender-related motives and indicators. Because this research is in its infancy and investigations remain ongoing in many cases, it is too early to determine accurately the proportion of cases where SGRMIs are present and, therefore, can be classified as a femicide in this period (2016–2021). As such, the CFOJA uses case illustrations in its annual reports to help the public and professionals understand what SGRMIs are and how they might be present in the contexts surrounding femicide. What becomes starkly evident, however, is that SGRMIs often present in the killings of women and girls are rarely present in the killings of men, regardless of whether the perpetrator is male or female. It is these characteristics that make a homicide a femicide. Focusing on the most recent year for which this information was examined (2020), five SGRMIs were commonly documented, which closely align with characteristics identified by the recently released UN statistical framework for measuring femicide (UNODC, 2022). These include women and girls killed by intimate partners and family members, followed by contexts or circumstances indicative of sex-/gender-related motives. We provide illustrative case examples of each of the five most commonly identified in Canada to date. It is evident from the information presented in the following sections that many cases include more than one of the motives or indicators.

SGRMI #1: Previous Violence Perpetrated Against the Victim In 2016, the body of a mother of three was found in a suitcase, abandoned below a bridge in a river. Less than a week prior, she had filed for divorce. In 2005, the offender was charged with assault and threatening to cause bodily harm; charges that were later withdrawn when he admitted to causing fear and acting inappropriately. Another serious assault occurred less than two months before her murder. Throughout their marriage, the offender ridiculed his wife, abused her verbally, and rejected the food she cooked. She needed to seek her husband’s permission and defer to him in public, and when out alone with others, he would call repeatedly demanding to know her activities and whereabouts. He controlled her social media presence, making her unfriend people he did not approve of and only post photos that were flattering to him. When the victim filed for divorce and refused the offender’s attempts at reconciliation, he repeatedly beat and strangled her before cutting off her hair, 165

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placing her body in a suitcase, and dumping it in a river. The offender pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for 14 years.

SGRMI #2: The Victim Was Abducted or Illegally Deprived of Her Liberty The torso of an 18-year-old pregnant woman missing for almost two weeks was discovered floating in a harbour by fishermen. As the police investigation progressed, more body parts were found in a basement apartment, and the resident who lived there was charged with indecent interference to human remains. The autopsy on the torso did not reveal a cause of death; however, it indicated that the victim suffered from obvious signs of trauma. During the investigation, DNA of a second 19-year-old woman who went missing about a decade prior was also discovered at his residence. The accused, 45, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Friends of the accused shared his alleged fascination with bondage, discipline, dominance, and submission (often referred to as BDSM), and he referred to himself as a “sexual freak” on his Facebook account. The accused had broken up with his girlfriend one year prior to the killing. According to his friends, the relationship ended as a result of his controlling and abusive nature as he often “chok[ed] her out and forc[ed] himself on her tiny 100-or-so pound frame.” The accused frequently referred to his ex-girlfriend negatively in various Facebook posts and often stated that women cheat and are disloyal. The accused was convicted of first-degree murder in the killing of the more recent victim and of manslaughter in the earlier case. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years.

SGRMI #3: Disposal or Abandonment of a Woman or Girl A woman and her young daughter were murdered by her best friend’s former intimate partner. The offender blamed the victim for the termination of his two-year common law relationship because she encouraged her friend to leave him after witnessing him assault her. The offender drove to the victim’s house to confront her, and upon arrival, he bound her with duct tape, assaulted her, and strangled her. He abducted her daughter and took her home, where he decided to kill her to eliminate her as a key witness to her mother’s murder. She was suffocated, and her body was found three days later after being dumped in a secluded, wooded area. The offender had an extensive criminal record, including convictions for exercising control over a person to carry on prostitution. The judge commented that the offender experienced no remorse after the killings. He was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with no eligibility for parole for 50 years.

SGRMI #4: Actual or Pending Separation A woman was murdered by her ex-partner in their shared home. Their young son heard his mother scream loudly before she urged him to call the police. She then ran outside, where the offender stabbed her 17 times with a knife on their balcony. He then dragged her back inside and proceeded to stab her once more, where she collapsed in front of their son. Following her death, the young boy was abducted by his father, the offender. A manhunt ensued which lasted over 24 hours and spanned two provinces. At a rest stop, the offender attacked and killed an elderly man, stole his car, and then disposed of his body in a nearby wooded area. Shortly thereafter, they were found, the offender was arrested and later charged with and convicted of two counts of first-degree murder. At trial, it was revealed that they had enrolled in marriage counselling and their therapist testified to the state of their relationship. He claimed that the victim was fearful of the offender, who had physically assaulted her and exhibited controlling behaviours in the past. He reported that the victim felt overwhelmed by the offender’s “neediness” and explained to the court how the offender would 166

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become enraged if she did not respond to his texts or calls immediately. The last appointment was the day before the victim’s murder; she had informed their therapist of a violent episode three days prior where the offender forcibly confined and yelled at her for unknown reasons. The offender did not deny the incident, and the therapist began to believe the victim’s life was in danger. He had agreed with the victim that the offender should move out of the family home and urged her to call police if he tried to return. The offender, however, did not want the relationship to end and refused to move out of their shared home.

SGRMI #5: Excessive Violence (“Overkill”) A woman was beaten and stabbed to death following an argument with her male partner in their shared apartment. Several neighbours heard shouting and screams for help, but their concerns were dismissed by the offender and police were not called. The offender then placed a business suit over his bloodied clothes and went for dinner at a casino restaurant. He could not afford the food he ordered. Police were called, at which time he was arrested for an outstanding warrant related to a prior domestic assault charge involving the victim. Shortly after his arrest, police located the victim deceased in her apartment and charged the offender with first-degree murder. The forensic pathologist noted that there were obvious signs of trauma to the victim’s body. The injuries were inflicted with a 20-centimetre-long knife. There were 69 wounds on her body; 25 of which were on her hands, arms, and legs, indicative of defensive posturing during the attack. A series of stabbing injuries to the forehead, neck, nose, and cheek areas also show that the victim tried to prevent herself from sustaining injuries. The offender was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life without a chance of parole for 15 years. During sentencing, a history of “turbulence and volatility” in the couple’s relationship was disclosed. Other SGRMIs were also evident in the same or separate cases, but less often, including coercive controlling behaviours in intimate relationships (e.g. intimidation or causing daily fear), victim refusal to establish/re-establish relationship, oppression/domination over life decisions of the woman or girl, prior threats to hurt/kill the woman or girl, pregnant victim, sexual violence, forcible confinement, connection to human-trafficking groups, cultural practices, and holding and being motivated by misogynist beliefs. It is important to underscore that this does not necessarily mean they were less common; rather, available but limited information did not note these SGRMIs.

Conclusion Despite advances in knowledge on femicide, it remains a growing challenge to obtain necessary information to inform femicide prevention. In many countries, including Canada, available data are usually collected by government agencies and not easily accessible by non-governmental organisations directly concerned with prevention. Even when data are available or accessible, they remain limited in scope for the purposes of identifying femicide. Like the CFOJA, violence prevention researchers, advocates, and activists are becoming reliant on publicly accessible sources (e.g. media and court documents) in lieu of more “official” data that are hard to access or inadequate for prevention. This situation prompts a crucial question: if we cannot document femicide in a reliable and valid manner, what is the hope of documenting, consistently and accurately, other forms of violence against women and girls? More importantly, how can we make visible those femicide victims who remain largely and consistently invisible in current data? Like other grassroots and civil society initiatives globally, it is the goal of the CFOJA to highlight the challenges around accessing and collecting quality information on femicide and to underscore core gaps in data which continue to put the lives of women and girls at risk. Efforts by the CFOJA to bring a visible and national focus to femicide in Canada have also drawn attention to the frequency 167

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with which such killings occur, what groups of women and girls are most at risk and where, or whose lives and deaths are invisible. Change is slow, and femicide has yet to be officially recognised in Canada despite it being internationally recognised as a public safety and human rights issue concerning all members of society. Women and children are the immediate, direct victims of femicide; however, the trauma, suffering, loss, and financial impacts continue to devastate individuals, families, communities, and broader society. Femicide is also the lens through which we can understand the more frequent, everyday, and/or chronic acts of male violence against women and girls. These include domestic violence and daily expressions and acts of sex-/gender-motivated hatred and misogyny, which are often precursors of the mass killings described at the beginning of this chapter. Collecting and examining relevant data in a valid, consistent manner will ensure that no killing of any woman or girl remains invisible and will bring us closer to understanding the nature of male violence against women and girls. To do so will empower us to advocate for more effective policies aimed at improving the lives of all women and girls.

Notes 1 The term “incel” is “a portmanteau of the term involuntary celibates, who operate in online communities to discuss difficulties in seeking and succeeding in sexual relationship” (O’Malley et al., 2022: 4983). The incel subculture is associated with misogyny, the belief that women should be sexually available, and the normalisation of men’s violence against women. 2 At time of writing, the Mass Casualty Commission, an independent public inquiry created to examine the event and inform recommendations, was in progress (see https://masscasualtycommission.ca).

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ISBN 978-1-988412-34-4. http://cdhpi.ca/domestic-violence-and-homicide-rural-remote-and-northern-communities-understanding-risk-and-keeping MacGregor, N. and Adefarakan, T. (2022). Black Femicide Canada Council. Femicide, Intersectionality & the media. Centring Black and Indigenous women, girls & gender-diverse victims. Toronto, Canada. https://womenatthecentre. com/webinar/femicide-intersectionality National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. (2019). Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Ottawa: National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Native Women’s Association of Canada. (2010). What Their Stories Tell Us: Research. Findings from the Sisters in Spirit initiative. Ottawa: NWAC. Nourpanah, S. (May 2021). “They learn English Through Fear” Working with Women on Different Migration Status Experiencing Domestic Violence. 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Latin American Model Protocol for the investigation of gender-related killings of women (femicide/feminicide). Regional Office for Central America of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN Women. Sheehy, E. (2017). A feminist reflection on domestic violence death reviews. In M. Dawson (Ed.) Domestic Homicides and Death Reviews: An International Perspective (pp. 373–402). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Statistics Canada. (2022). Census in Brief: Population growth in Canada’s rural areas, 2016–2021. Ottawa: Statistics Canada. Straatman, A., Doherty, D., and Banman, V. (2020). Domestic homicides in rural communities: challenges in accessing resources. In P. Jaffe, K. Scott, and A. L. Straatman (Eds.), Preventing Domestic Homicides: Lessons Learned from Tragedies (pp. 39–61). London: Elsevier. Thompson, S. K. (2014). Case study: Black homicide victimization in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In S. Bucerius, and M. Tonry (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Ethnicity, Crime and Immigration (pp. 430–456). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tutton, M. and MacDonald, M. (2022). More evidence emerges of N.S. mass shooter’s long history of domestic abuse. The Canadian Press. www.cp24.com/news/more-evidence-emerges-of-n-s-mass-shooter-s-long-historyof-domestic-abuse-1.5897843?cache=. United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime/United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. (2022). Statistical Framework for Measuring the Gender-Related Killings of Women and Girls (Also Referred to as “femicide/femincide”). Vienna: UNODC. United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime. (2021). Killings of Women and Girls by Their Intiamte Partners or Other Family Membes: Global Estimates 2020. Vienna: UNODC. Vives-Cases, C., Goicolea, I., Hernandez, A., Sanz-Barbero, B., Gill., A. K., Costanza Baldry, A., Schrottle, M., and Stockl, H. (2016). Expert opinions in improving femicide data collection across Europe: A concept mapping study. PLoS ONE 11(2): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0148364 Wuerch, M. A. (2020). Intimate partner violence in rural and northern communities: A Canadian perspective (28372145). [Doctoral dissertation, University of Regina.] ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.

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16 FEMICIDE IN EUROPE Μarceline Naudi, Monika Schröttle, Elina Kofou, Maria José Magalhães, and Christiana Kouta

Introduction Although the killing of women has been rampant in Europe for many generations, the issue has only very recently started to be taken seriously and studied as a unique social phenomenon (Weil, 2018). Despite the magnitude of the problem and calls by the UN special rapporteur on violence against women, data on femicide, until recently, was not officially and systematically collected in the European Union (EU) and wider Europe, and there was a lack of transnational tools for the study of femicide. In 2013, a number of academics and practitioners started collaborating on a four-year project funded by the intergovernmental framework, the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action IS1206 on “Femicide across Europe” (2013–2017). Weil (2018) suggests that, despite previously funding initiatives on gender issues and violence against women, it was not until the COST Action “Femicide across Europe” was established that European agencies recognised the specific act of femicide. The European Observatory on Femicide (EOF) came out of this COST Action.

Contextual Framework of Femicide in Europe We have recently had a number of institutions and organisations in Europe (and beyond) who have started to address the issue of femicide, demonstrating a growth in awareness. Nearly all European countries today acknowledge that this is an important issue. We have seen efforts at national and European levels looking at definitions, prevention, awareness raising, and data collection, such as the aforementioned COST Action on “Femicide across Europe” and the European Observatory on Femicide (EOF). The expert body responsible for monitoring the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention), the GREVIO, now also asks states to provide data on femicides. The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), the European network Women Against Violence Europe (WAVE), the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and its causes and consequences, and Women’s Aid England, among others, have also contributed to work in this area (Weil and Naudi, 2018). The contributions have included work on research, policy, and practice, which, as Holt, Overlien and Devaney (2018) argue, are not easily distinguishable, as they, rightfully, intertwine, connect, and influence one another. Indeed, Devaney et al. (2021) point out that a common theme running 170

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-20

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through many of the contributions to The Routledge International Handbook of Domestic Violence and Abuse is the gap between awareness by the public, policy-makers, and organisations delivering services, regarding the nature and impact of domestic violence and abuse. Furthermore, whilst some good progress has been made in this field, researchers and practitioners tell us that the women survivors often raise the same issues, problems, and complaints (Smith and O΄Callaghan, 2021) and that we have almost the same number of women been killed in Europe as we did 20 years ago. Femicide remains a notably under-researched subject in Europe. Defining a social problem in a certain way leads to a specific possible solution, which is dependent on the way the problem is defined. As Russell (2011) emphasises, some words bring forth a political purpose, which is the case here when defining femicide. Although the word “femicide” was already known in the Anglo-Saxon world, Russell added critical political meaning to it and placed it within a broader feminist political framework (Grzyb, Naudi and Marcuello-Servós, 2018), including the critical issue of impunity. Lagarde specifically used the term feminicidio (feminicide) instead of femicidio (femicide) to emphasise the element of impunity (Saccomano, 2015). Globally, at times for practical reasons of criminal data collection, the definition was seen as possibly losing some of its political essence. For the EOF, it remains clear that the political connotations of femicide must be retained since they inform the theoretical framework for understanding and effectively tackling this issue. Notwithstanding the different definitions and forms of femicide, a gendered understanding is central to fully grasping the nature of the problem, and policy-makers, legislators, and wider society need to focus their attention here. As stated in Grzyb et al. (2018:28), we need to maintain Diana Russell’s political definition of femicide as a clearly gendered act: “simply put, a woman is killed because of her gender.” By doing so it is possible to acknowledge that “patriarchy, and the resultant gender inequality that pervasively continues to exist, are at the root of the problem” (Grzyb et al., 2018:28–29). In keeping with this understanding, especially in terms of prevention, one would need to take into consideration the different levels of cause/effect and prevention: primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary. In brief, primary prevention means preventing the crimes at an early stage, prior to the killings, with specific measures (e.g. altering risky behaviours, raising awareness, education); secondary prevention emphasises early detection (e.g. screening of potential victims of violence, identifying children possibly living in abusive households through schools); tertiary prevention is about reducing further harm in those already affected by the situation (e.g. direct services such as shelters, counselling, etc.); and quaternary prevention is the set of activities to assert the sustainability of the possible quality of life (e.g. aftercare and follow-up) (Starfield et al., 2008). The work of the EOF, as well as that of other European Institutions working on this topic, is grounded in a feminist understanding of the structural causes of femicide, from a socio-ecological framework and a gendered perspective, as well as an intersectional perspective including other dimensions of discrimination like disability, migration, or social backgrounds. By considering all levels of prevention, femicide is approached from various angles, recognising “the nested nature of the individual’s context, their interpersonal and relational context, the community context, as well as the larger social environment” (Heise and Kotsadam, 2015, as cited in Devaney et al., 2021; Krug et al., 2002, as cited in Devaney et al., 2021). The socio-ecological approach can identify how the influence of country-specific biological, socio-economic, and cultural factors may affect the risk of violence (Boira, Tomas-Aragones and Rivera, 2017). Once the problem is understood and defined, using a cultural and ecological approach, then the responses must be varied and directed at individuals, relationships, families, communities, and society. This is in line with the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention, which is based on the understanding that violence against women is a form of gender-based violence. The text of the 171

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Convention was adopted by all 46 Council of Europe member states in 2011 and entered into force in 2014, when the required number of member states had ratified it. Under the Convention, the state has an obligation to take measures to prevent violence against women, protect victims, and prosecute the perpetrators. All states that ratified the Convention need to adopt laws, policies, and measures to implement the Convention, and implementation is monitored by the independent group of experts known as GREVIO. A further requirement of the Istanbul Convention is a coordinated approach in the collation of data. This is especially important since currently data on violence against women and domestic violence is not easily available in most European countries. Data with in-depth information on femicide is even more difficult to acquire and therefore requires action to be taken by all countries to ensure data availability. The EOF represents a pioneering step in establishing, in Europe, a counting and reporting mechanism aimed at disseminating the much-needed data and knowledge on femicide, with the ultimate goal of saving women’s lives (Schröttle and Meshkova, 2018; Weil and Naudi, 2018).

History of the European Observatory on Femicide (EOF) EOF is the first European coalition of experts on femicide that aims to advance scientific knowledge, collect data, and suggest guidelines and interventions to policy-makers and practitioners to improve women’s lives and safety in Europe. The EOF is a successful outcome of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action IS1206 on “Femicide across Europe” (2013–2017). The researchers and experts that participated in the Action identified that the killing of women and girls did not have the necessary emphasis and acknowledgement for femicide to be effectively prevented and that there was lack of accessibility and availability of (comparable) data in all countries. Therefore, the need to create a unified EOF became apparent. In addition, the emergence of the EOF responded to the call by the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women to establish national and regional observatories on femicide (Šimonovic, 2016). For the first two years of its existence (2018–2019), the EOF was hosted and coordinated by the Department of Gender Studies, at the University of Malta (UM). In January 2020, the hosting and coordination of the Observatory was transferred to the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) and the Institute for Empirical Sociological Research (IFES) University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. The EOF is supported by an international advisory board of experts on femicide. Currently, the EOF consists of key contributors (focal points) in 23 member countries: Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. The EOF collaborates with and/or is affiliated to several European and national organisations, such as EIGE, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), WAVE, the European Women’s Lobby (EWL), and Women’s Aid England.

Thematic Groups of the EOF Prior to the establishment of the EOF, four thematic working groups were established within the aforementioned COST Action, which focused on (1) definitions, (2) data collection, (3) cultural issues, and (4) prevention. The thematic groups aimed to enable an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon of femicide. They also sought to reinforce collaboration among experts to (1) clarify definitions and meanings (Grzyb et al., 2018), as well as perceived needs across different countries and/or cultures (Kouta et al., 2018); (2) promote, develop, and implement an integrated and differentiated femicide data collection system in Europe at both the national and international levels 172

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(Schröttle and Meshkova, 2018; Vives-Cases et al., 2016); and (3) highlight preventative actions at individual, family, social, and community levels to reduce the likelihood of women/girls being killed because of their gender (Baldry and Magalhaes, 2018). Discussions among members of the COST Action “Femicide across Europe” revealed different meanings, interpretations, and understandings of femicide in Europe. Most European countries collected data on homicides disaggregated by sex, providing an overall picture of the magnitude of homicide against women. Some countries were found to collect data on the relationship between perpetrators and victims of homicide, while others collected data specifically on intimate partner homicide (Schröttle and Meshkova, 2018; Vives-Cases et al., 2016). The discussions revealed that common tools in collecting and comparing data across Europe were lacking. Discussions underlined the either partially available or completely missing knowledge on national and international strategies to prevent, decrease, and/or eliminate this phenomenon. The particular COST Action reported that in all European countries the prevalence of homicides against men had decreased over the last decades while the number of femicides remained stable (Weil, Corradi and Naudi, 2018). As the EOF developed, it was agreed to merge those four thematic groups into two, prioritising the collection of data and the prevention of femicide. The thematic group working with data focused on developing collection tools and on obtaining qualitative and quantitative data from all EU countries, starting with the members of the EOF. Informed by such data, the thematic group working with prevention focused on developing strategies and implementing national and collective activities across Europe. Thus, the EOF helps to provide a concrete plan, which is both strategic/political and technical across European countries. This has had an impact on improving data collection and monitoring of femicide. Furthermore, it has contributed to the creation of national databases on femicide that are valid for international comparison. Implementing and sustaining femicide data collection tools and/ or systems entails not only technical data collection but also a firm political commitment (VivesCases et al., 2016), which is of utter importance. By piloting and implementing this action, the EOF continues to contribute to increasing public awareness and sensitivity, enhancing the next step, which supports the development of prevention strategies, policies, and services.

Developing Measuring Tools Within the work of this COST Action, data and information was gathered and analysed (Weil et al., 2018). Until 2017, the main source for information on cases of femicide were the official police statistics. In half of the 28 EU member states, the official homicide data was disaggregated by gender and additional information was provided on the victim-perpetrator relationship (Corradi et al., 2018). The other half had either no gender-specific or no relationship-linked official data on homicides. Furthermore, the official national data across Europe was not comparable due to different legal definitions and/or different statistical frameworks of counting the cases (Schröttle and Meskova, 2018; Corradi et al., 2018). Within the COST Action, similarities and differences of patterns across the European countries were studied. It was highlighted that the most common victim-perpetrator relationship in relation to femicides was the intimate partner relationship, especially in the context of (planned) separations. Thus, the definition adopted in the studies followed by EOF was this: femicide is the intentional killing of women and girls because of their gender. Femicides are usually perpetrated by intimate partners (e.g. husbands, boyfriends) or family members (e.g. fathers, brothers, cousins), who are usually familiar males; on rare occasions the perpetrators are women, they are either same-sex partners or kin (Weil et al., 2018). The EOF counts all killings of women and then specifies for the victim-perpetrator relationships and types of killings. 173

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It appears that in most EU countries there was a decline of homicides against men (more often taking place outside the home) over the years, but no decrease of femicide cases (most often perpetrated by intimate partners and other family members within the home) (Schröttle and Meshkova, 2018). Interestingly, “countries with high rates of violence against women reported in the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) survey are not per se countries with high femicide rates” (specifically intimate partner femicides) (Schröttle and Meshkova, 2018:34–36). Furthermore, a high gender equality index (e.g. in countries like Sweden and Finland) had not resulted in lower femicide rates in these countries (Schröttle and Meshkova, 2018). There was also no clear relationship between poverty in the countries and the femicide rates, nor between early policy and state actions regarding VAW and the femicide rates in the countries. Another important result from different countries’ studies was that women of all educational levels were affected similarly. Few EU countries have available data on homicide that include victim’s gender and relationship with the perpetrator, some have data on gender only and 16 countries have no data at all (EIGE, 2017). Since then, the situation has improved as more and more countries collect gender-aggregated data and in-depth information on domestic and intimate partner violence. Therefore, as a priority action, the EOF has focused on developing two data collection tools – one for quantitative and one for qualitative data collection. This provides a common agreed selection of variables and comparable data for Europe. These tools were piloted in 2019 and 2020, with the support of the EOF’s focal points, in seven European countries, and have been further developed since then. The tools were also evaluated by the EOF core committee and the users of the data tools of further projects for their revision and improvement. Currently, the EOF is using these tools in its 23 EU member countries and plans to expand their use to all European countries. The finalised versions of the two data collection tools (qualitative and quantitative) are being used in the two-year (2020–2022) European project FEM-UnitED, where five European countries (Cyprus, Germany, Malta, Portugal, and Spain) are preparing research reports, awareness-raising campaigns, and multi-professional training for the media, police, social work, and other stakeholders (Schröttle et al., 2021). The FEM-UnitED project focuses on the prevention of femicide in the context of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and/or domestic violence (DV).

Quantitative Data Collection Tools The tools for quantitative data collection are based on an Excel file for inputting the data collected, together with detailed instructions for the national researchers (from participating countries). The variables included in the quantitative tool were considered highly relevant for the collection of femicide data in the partner countries and highly comparable across countries. In-depth information on all cases of women killed, aged 15 years1 and over, found through the media or police press releases or other available sources are collected and analysed by the researchers. Later (in the second and third stages), the data is verified through additional information from the police and justice system. Thus, the data base is a work in progress. The quantitative data collection tools of the EOF includes the following information found in Table 16.1 below: The quantitative data collection tools functioned quite well in the countries that have tested and used them, although some of the required in-depth information is not available or only available after the trial and further investigations. In the next steps, the project will try to get more information on the cases through the support systems, the trials and other sources with the support of the state and multi-professional systems. Since through the EOF data collection, the number of cases to be analysed is growing from year to year, a higher cases basis will be available for in-depth statistical analyses in the next years. Preliminary analyses, prepared in a pilot project of Mediterranean countries (Cyprus, Malta, Greece, Turkey, Germany, Portugal, and Slovenia), as well as analyses in the

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Femicide in Europe Table 16.1  Information Included in the Quantitative Data Collection Tool 1 2 3

Basic Data Characteristics of Victim(s) Additional Victims

4

Characteristics of Perpetrator(s)

5

Victim-Perpetrator Relationship Situational Factors

6

7

Background Information on Cases

Dates and time of killing, the city or region of killing Age group, marital status, occupation, employment, minority ethnic background, country of origin, possible disabilities Number and relationship of additional victims killed during the femicides Number of perpetrators, age group, gender, marital status, occupation, minority ethnic background, country of origin, mental health problems, prior perpetration of violent crimes Containing current/former intimate partner, marital status, other family member, other relationship specified Area of femicide, crime scene, method of killing, witnesses, pregnancy of the victim, context of sexual violence/rape, suicide of the perpetrator after the murder, prior domestic violence or abuse by same perpetrator (specified by forms/intensity of violence), context of elder/ill/suicidal victim, prior stalking, other situational factors (e.g. alcohol, revenge, jealousy, or factors which are important to mention) Incident after/during separation and weeks after separation, perpetrator threatened to kill victim prior to femicide (with threats specified), prior violence or threat known to the police, protection orders, previous convictions of perpetrators for assaults/criminal codes, case known to the support system, case known to others, outcome of the trial, type of femicide, further comments

current EU project FEM-UnitED, conducted in five countries (Cyprus, Germany, Malta, Portugal, and Spain) and in collaboration with the EOF, lead to similar results: •

• •

•

•

The most relevant victim-perpetrator context of femicides are intimate partner relationships; in more than 60% of the cases of women killed, the former or current partner was the perpetrator; the murder was often conducted in the context of (planned) separation – though this information is not available for several cases. The second relevant victim-perpetrator context in many countries was elderly women who have been killed by a male family member, most often by their sons or stepsons or grandsons. The rates of annual femicides per 100,000 inhabitants in the years 2019 and 2020 was between 0.17 and 0.78 (depending on the country and the year), with no general increase in the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020. In the majority of cases, neither the police nor the support system was involved prior to the femicides; in some cases, third persons (like neighbours, friends, and family members) knew about prior situations of domestic violence, threats, and stalking. These results still have to be treated cautiously as information on prior institutional knowledge and/or prior violence against the women is missing for the majority of cases. From the quantitative data, considering that most cases appear not to have been known to official sources, the most relevant anchor points for prevention seem to be (1) primary prevention, (2) media and public information, (3) the close environment of the women in danger, and (4) improved networking of all relevant institutions to enable the safeguarding of women in fear or danger.

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Qualitative Tools for the Analyses of Femicides Within the EOF and the project FEM-UnitED, further methods have been developed to gain qualitative information and data on the cases of femicides within the European countries. Cases from each participating country were analysed to better explore the environmental, social, legal, and policy backgrounds that contribute to femicide using a tree analysis that focused on four levels: individual, immediate, institutional, and societal. Tree analysis is also used in Latin American protocol for the investigation of gender-related killings of women (OHCHR and UN Women, 2015). The form of a tree is a metaphor to show how different dimensions – the branches of the tree – converge to a common group of findings, which in turn are the basis for specific recommendations – the roots of the tree. The branches draw on the ecological model of understanding a complex problem (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Heise, 1998; Michau et al., 2015) acknowledging the intersections between the (1) individual level (victim and perpetrator), (2) immediate environment (family, friends, colleagues, neighbours), (3) institutional and legal levels, and (4) societal level. These foster the roots which in turn will foster new individual, immediate, institutional, and societal branches, to help transform gender power relations where there will be no place for VAWG. Additional information was collected in regard to the prevention networks, social and cultural values around the family, gender equality, and gender-based violence. More in-depth information on single cases was analysed, regarding the following: • • • • • • •

Characterisation of the victim, the perpetrator, and their relationship Coercive control and the victim’s strategies to deal with the perpetrator Previous help-seeking and reports to the authorities Family, formal, and informal networks Social and economic status Official reports and risk assessment Social and cultural norms relevant to the specific cases

Preliminary results from the previously mentioned Mediterranean study, where case information from seven countries (Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, Turkey) was analysed using a hermeneutic interpretive approach2 (McCaffrey, Raffin-Bouchal, and Moules, 2012), articulating what is common among the femicide cases and unveiling the specificities of each case, brought forth the following results3:

Individual Level At the individual level, the data was collected in regard to the victim, the perpetrator, and their relationship. It was found that the main risk factors for women were separation/divorce and a previous history of domestic violence. In addition, the existence of coercive control within the intimate relationship and the importance of assessing the strategies of coercive control that the perpetrators were using towards the victims in all cases were clearly highlighted. “[T]he perpetrator was described as jealous and possessive, which was known by witnesses. This perpetrator used children to control the victim as he would threaten to take their child from her” (Greece). Emphasis must be placed on analysing the dynamics of the crime of DV rather than seeing it as an isolated crime. Emphasis must also be given to the importance of highlighting the victims’ strategies of survival, in the sense that victims were not merely passive recipients, but they were also resilient. These results correspond to the study of Jane Monckton Smith (2020), where femicides were described as “part of a journey where the motivation to abuse (need for control) is linked with the motivation to kill (loss of, or threat to, control).”

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Immediate Level The immediate level includes people (family and friends) and places (community, work, school) with whom/which the victim and the perpetrator have daily and close association. The main findings suggests that, in most of the cases, it was reported that family and friends acted more as witnesses and not as providers of support and help to the victim. The importance of their role regarding support to the victims during an abusive situation is emphasised. Furthermore, stereotypes and victim-blaming discourses, often found in the greater societal context, can hamper the perception of violence by family and friends. This is illustrated in this quote from Greece where although “the neighbours, best friend . . . often heard loud fighting, yelling and rumbling,” no one took any action.

Institutional Level At the institutional level, information was collected according to what institutional responses were available (including the police, support systems, youth protection officers, and the judiciary), to determine how institutions were involved in the specific case for reducing risks, ensuring the victims’ safety, and punishing the offender. Based on the findings, it was underlined that threats and previous violence were not taken seriously by such institutions. Regarding the police and judiciary system, measures need to be appropriate and timely to prevent/stop the violence. More attention should be given to disadvantaged conditions/situations (e.g. rural areas, migrant/refugee women). Fragmented prevention and risk management is shown in the following quotes: “the centralization of the available responses is problematic” (Slovenia); “no risk assessment performed in this case” (Malta).

Societal Level The societal level contains those cultural, social, and economic indicators reflected in the specific cases. Findings showed that, in all the investigated countries4, the patriarchal system is still predominant, despite some progress in gender equality. Women are positioned in socially and economically disadvantaged conditions compared to men, and gender stereotypes and male dominant discourse are still prevalent: “women are considered as maintainers of the family, they are supposed to obey husband’s rules” (Turkey). Furthermore, social and cultural values around the family are still traditional and unequal in all the countries studied. In most intimate partner femicides, the expected submission of the woman’s role to the obedience to her husband is still prevalent. In this context, women’s safety is at risk if they want to separate, divorce, or leave the relationship. Findings showed that social conditions and patriarchal values in society at large and in the family play an essential role in gender-based violence. Despite national laws and international signed conventions, gender-based violence prevention is still based mainly in legal rhetoric or treated by institutional services as an individual problem. Therefore, escaping from violence, separating from the partner, and initiating the process of divorce are highrisk situations for femicide. Media plays a crucial role in maintaining or challenging the patriarchal system. In most of the cases analysed, the media contributes to the reproduction of social values and norms of gender inequality, devaluing and diminishing the severity of the murders. Femicide remains deeply rooted in patriarchal values and social relations. Social conditions and values around the woman’s role in the family must be challenged if femicide is to be eradicated. Whilst all these findings are still preliminary, they are nonetheless indicative and identify possible points for effective intervention for the prevention of femicides.

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Conclusion When the COST Action “Femicide across Europe” started in 2014, femicide as an issue was hardly ever mentioned in Europe. Over the four years of this COST Action, the conferences, seminars, publications, and so on, as well as the media attention which started to be given to femicide in Europe, contributed to femicide starting to become acknowledged not only as a serious issue that necessitated more research, but also a term that was being recognised by policy-makers as well as society at large. Indeed, due to continuing and intensified actions of feminist researchers and NGOs, femicide is now a prevalent topic in media and societies across Europe and taken more and more seriously by the individual States, the EU and the Council of Europe. EIGE, for example, as an EU institution, has added violence against women and femicides to the Gender Equality Index (EIGE, 2017),5 as well as contracted a study looking at the legal frameworks and compensation in relation to femicide in five EU states. The expert body responsible for monitoring the Istanbul Convention, the GREVIO, also asks for data on gender-related killings of women. It has highlighted in its country evaluations where disparities exist between public official data and data collected by civil society on gender-related killings, strongly recommending the harmonisation of data collection and analysis regarding cases of violence against women which have resulted in the killing of the woman and, where appropriate, children (see GREVIO’s baseline evaluation reports on: Belgium, para. 50, and Italy, para. 70). It is also encouraging to note new studies on femicide, especially on the legal frameworks, as well as the setting up of the European Observatory on Femicide (EOF) and an increasing number of national observatories on femicide across Europe. The FEM-UnitED project is currently working on increasing stakeholder engagement in developing prevention strategies, including media campaigns6 and multi-professional training, to be disseminated across Europe. There is no doubt that much progress has been achieved on the issue of femicide over the last decade in Europe. Nonetheless, researchers and practitioners still find that the women survivors raise the same issues, problems, and complaints, and we still have a high number of women being killed. What the EOF is attempting to do is to create change. The mission is about raising awareness of how the most basic of human rights – the right to life – is constantly being violated, on our watch and under our noses, with impunity. . . . This must be changed. It is about time that we open our eyes to the devastation caused by femicide, not only to the women themselves, and their children and other relatives, but to society as a whole. (Weil and Naudi, 2018: 73) The hope is that more European states join and fund the EOF and work together in comparable data collection and development of effective strategies to impact policies and legislation, raise awareness, and change attitudes, behaviours, and stereotypes so as to decrease impunity and seek justice. The collaboration among the EOF’s member countries to date and the implementation of agreed common data collection tools and the preliminary comparable results have demonstrated the need of such tools and their usability for providing European (and beyond) evidence-based information and data aimed at supporting relevant policies, legislation, and awareness campaigns to effectively prevent violence against women. The ultimate aim is to prevent femicide. It is long overdue, but it is possible.

Notes 1 This age group is used in several national data collections systems, and it was agreed to use this in order to include killings of teenage girls. 2 Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation and has proved to be of value in the deep questioning of a practice discipline. Hermeneutics as a research approach focuses on hearing those living in important, complicated relationships and offers possibilities of reinvention (McCaffrey, 2012).

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Femicide in Europe 3 The following text and results stem from the Mediterranean Final Report on Femicides (EOF – Mediterranean Study 2021). 4 For further information, please refer to http://eof.cut.ac.cy/wp-content/uploads/sites/106/2021/04/EOFflyerMWF-final.pdf. 5 The measurement report was prepared by Blandine Mollard, Dr Jolanta Reingardė, Prof. Dr Monika Schröttle, and Julia Habermann on the basis of a study of the Institute of empirical research in Nuremberg. Report: https://eige.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/mh0217332enn.pdf. 6  For example, “Call it by its name” (https://youtu.be/FPYPMzwPsS8).

References Baldry Constanza, A., & Magalhaes, J. M. (2018). Prevention of femicide. In S. Weil, C. Corradi, & M. Naudi (Eds.), Femicide across Europe: Theory, research and prevention (pp. 71–92). Bristol: Policy Press. https:// doi.org/10.1332/9781447347163 Boira, S., Tomas-Aragones, L., & Rivera, N. (2017). Intimate Partner Violence and Femicide in Ecuador. Qualitative Sociology Review, 13(3), (pp. 30–47). https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.13.3.03 Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Corradi, C., Baldry Constanza, A., Buran, S., Kouta, C., Schröttle, M., and Stevkovic, L. (2018). Exploring the data on Femicide across Europe. In S. Weil, C. Corradi, & M. Naudi (Eds.), Femicide across Europe: Theory, research and prevention (pp. 93–166). Bristol: Policy Press. https://doi.org/10.1332/9781447347163 Devaney, J., Holt, S., Overlien, C., & Bradbury-Jones, C. (2021). Concluding thoughts. In J. Devaney, C. Bradbury-Jones, R.J. Macy, C. Øverlien, & S. Holt (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of domestic violence and abuse (pp. 785–789). London: Routledge. EIGE. (2017). Administrative data collection on rape, femicide and intimate partner violence in EU member states. Retrieved from https://eige.europa.eu/publications/administrative-data-collection-rape-femicide-andintimate-partner-violence-eu-member-states. EOF – Mediterranean Study. (2021). Femicide in Mediterranean Region. Authors/Partners: Monika Schröttle, Christiana Kouta, Elina Kofou, Camila Iglesias, Maria José Magalhães, Cátia Pontedeira, Marceline Naudi, Lara Dimitrijevic Ivana Paust, Lena Pölzer, Carolina Magalhães Dias, Emmanouela Manoli, Masha Guzzo, Athena Peglidou, Stella Kapsampeli, Anastasia Gkoni, Athanasia Kontochristou, Panagiota Paspali, Jasna Podreka, Sümeyra Buran and Sadik Topra. https://eof.cut.ac.cy/about-eof/information-leaflet/ Grzyb, M., Naudi, M., & Marcuello-Servós, C. (2018). Femicide definitions. In S. Weil, C. Corradi, & M. Naudi (Eds.), Femicide across Europe: Theory, research and prevention (pp. 17–31). Bristol: Policy Press. https:// doi.org/10.1332/9781447347163 Heise L. L. (1998). Violence against women: an integrated, ecological framework. Violence against women, 4(3), 262–290. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801298004003002 Heise, L. L., & Kotsadam, A. (2015). Cross-national and multilevel correlates of partner violence: An analysis of data from population-based surveys. The Lancet Global Health, 3(6), e332–e340. Holt, S., Overlien, C., & Devaney, J. (Eds.) (2018). Responding to Domestic Violence: Emerging Challenges for Policy, Practice and Research in Europe. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Kouta, C., Boira, S., Nudelman, A. & Gill, A.K. (2018). Understanding and preventing femicide using a cultural and ecological approach. In S. Weil, C. Corradi, & M. Naudi (Eds.), Femicide across Europe: theory, research and prevention (pp. 17–31). Bristol: Policy Press. https://doi.org/10.1332/9781447347163 Krug, E. G. et al. (Eds). (2002). World Report on Violence and Health. Geneva: World Health Organization. Retrieved from https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/42495/9241545615_eng.pdf McCaffrey, G., Raffin-Bouchal, S., & Moules, N. J. (2012). Hermeneutics as research approach: A reappraisal. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 11, 214–229. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940691201100303 Michau, L., Horn, J., Bank, A., Dutt, M., & Zimmerman, C. (2015). Prevention of violence against women and girls: lessons from practice. Lancet (London, England), 385(9978), 1672–1684. https://doi.org/10.1016/ S0140-6736(14)61797-9 Monckton Smith, J. (2020). Intimate partner femicide: Using Foucauldian analysis to track an eight stage progression to homicide. Violence against Women, 26(11), 1267–1285. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801219863876 Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women). (2015). Latin American Model Protocol for the investigation of gender-related killings of women (femicide/feminicide). https://eurogender.eige.europa.eu/system/files/events-files/latin_american_protocol_for_investigation_of_femicide.pdf Russell, D.E.H. (2011). The origin and importance of the term femicide. www.dianarussell.com/origin_of_femicide. html.

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Μarceline Naudi et al. Saccomano, C. (2015). The causes of femicide in Latin America. Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). www.jstor.org/stable/resrep14204 Schröttle, M., & Meshkova, K. (2018). Data collection: Challenges and opportunities. In S. Weil, C. Corradi, & M. Naudi (Eds.), Femicide across Europe: Theory, research and prevention (pp 33–52). Bristol: Policy Press. https://doi.org/10.1332/9781447347163 Schröttle, M., Arnis, M., Naudi, M., Dimitrijevic, L., Farrugia, M., Galea, E., Shakou, A., Kouta, C., Rousou, E., Kofou, E., Pavlou, S., Iglesias, C., Magalhães Dias, C., Pontedeira, C., Magalhães, M.J., Coimbra, S., Paust, I., Pölzer, L., Marcuello Servós, C., Boira Sarto, S., Almaguer, P., Eito, A., Olaciregui Rodríguez, P. (2021). Comparative report on femicide research and data in five countries (Cyprus, Germany, Malta, Portugal, Spain). FEM-UnitED Project. https://web.cut.ac.cy/eof/wp-content/uploads/sites/106/2022/03/ FINAL_FEM_United_Comparative_Report_28.02.2021_EDITED.pdf Šimonovic, D. (2016). Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences. GA Res 69/147, UNGA, 71st Session, A/71/398. www.ohchr.org/en/issues/women/srwomen/pages/srwomenindex.aspx. Smith, K., I & O’Callaghan, C. (2021). Victims of femicide are shamefully ignored in strategy on violence against women. The Guardian Newspaper. www.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/15/ victims-of-femicide-are-shamefully-ignored-in-strategy-on-violence-against-women Starfield, B., Hyde, J., Gérvas, J., & Heath, I. (2008). The concept of prevention: A good idea Gone Astray? Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 62(7), 580–583. https://doi.org/10.1136/jech.2007.071027 Vives-Cases, C., Goicolea, I., Hernández, A., Sanz-Barbero, B., Gill, A. K., Baldry, A. C., Schröttle, M., & Stöckl, H. (2016). Expert opinions on improving femicide data collection across Europe: A concept mapping study. PloS one, 11(2), e0148364. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0148364 Weil, S. (2018). Research and prevention of femicide across Europe. In S. Weil, C. Corradi, & M. Naudi (Eds.), Femicide across Europe: Theory, research and prevention (pp. 1–15). Bristol: Policy Press. https:// doi.org/10.1332/9781447347163 Weil, S., & Naudi, M. (2018). Towards a European observatory on femicide. In S. Weil, C. Corradi, & M. Naudi (Eds.), Femicide across Europe: Theory, research and prevention (pp. 167–179). Bristol: Policy Press. https:// doi.org/10.1332/9781447347163 Weil, S., Corradi, C., & Naudi, M. (Eds.) (2018). Femicide across Europe: Theory, research and prevention. Bristol: Policy Press. https://doi.org/10.1332/9781447347163

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17 FEMICIDE IN GEORGIA Tamar Dekanosidze

Introduction In recent years, Georgia has taken several important steps to address femicide – this form of violence became an issue of wider public attention in 2014. In that year, a concerning number of 35 women were killed, and in 26, cases the perpetrator was a husband, a former husband, or an intimate partner (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a). The issue of femicides that had been largely overlooked before sparked feminist and civil society activism, including the emergence of the Georgian Women’s Movement, a group with members all over Georgia advocating to address femicides at the government level and raising public awareness. Data collection on femicides started in 2016 to respond to the call of the UN special rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences (UN SRVAW) Dubravka Šimonović. The Public Defender’s Office of Georgia was designated as a femicide-monitoring body with the support of the UN Women. Similar to domestic violence death reviews in certain high-income countries (Dawson, 2021), one of the main goals of the body is to identify and record cases of femicide, assess the prevention and response of the criminal justice system, and make recommendations for systemic improvements. In 2018, amendments were made to the Criminal Code of Georgia (CCG), and crimes based on gender were designated as aggravating circumstances for premeditated murder, inducement to suicide, and intentional grave injury to health. Despite this, the legislation does not define what “killing based on gender” means, and the criminal justice practice is inconsistent when it comes to how to identify a discriminatory motive in the crime – this being one of the main determinants to categorise a killing as femicide. Therefore, identifying and analysing femicide cases properly and collecting data on the number of femicides committed each year proves to be a challenge for the government, even though disaggregated data is being collected based on the sex of the victim and the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a). This chapter examines how femicides are identified and recorded in Georgia predominantly through the mechanism of the Public Defender’s Office of Georgia, together with factors considered to classify a crime as such. To determine the death of a woman as femicide, the motive or context of the crime needs to be linked to gender inequality and discrimination against women. In addition, regarding femicide data collection, all data should be collected if the victim was a woman, and the killing was committed by a husband or an intimate partner. Georgia must modify social and cultural norms that establish the superiority of one sex over the other (CEDAW, Art. 5.a) and ensure substantive and transformative equality (Freeman, et.al. 2012).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-21

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Effective identification of femicide in the criminal justice system is an important prerequisite for fulfilling this obligation, combating gender discrimination, and promoting substantive change for women and girls in Georgia.

The Georgian Context Georgia is a country in the South Caucasus, which got its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Georgia is a declared democracy and a unitary, semi-presidential republic. Georgia has two Russian-backed breakaway regions – Abkhazia and South Ossetia – that are self-declared de facto states not recognised under international law and not in control of central Georgian authorities. As of January 2021, the population of Georgia was 3,728,600, out of which 1,932,400 (or 52%) were women and 1,796,200 (or 48%) were men (GeoStat, 2021). The population of Georgia is predominantly ethnic Georgian, while one-sixth of the population constitutes ethnic minorities – predominantly Armenian and Azerbaijani. The ethnic minorities mostly inhabit the southern part of Georgia in the Samtskhe-Javakheti, Kvemo Kartli, and Katheti regions in the eastern part of the country. Ethnic minorities face significant challenges with social and political integration in the country (OSGF, 2019).

Legal Framework on Femicide The legislation of Georgia does not recognise the term “femicide,” and there is no separate crime of femicide in the CCG. The law does not define what a gender-related killing stands for and the local court practice has not yet given a clear direction on this matter. However, a careful analysis of the existing provisions of the CCG could result in successful opportunities to classify this crime under the existing articles of the CCG. To have an accurate analysis of manifestations and forms of femicide, it will also be important to go beyond formal classifications and study the facts and motives of each criminal case involved. On 30 November 2018, three articles of the CCG were amended, and “gender basis” became an aggravating circumstance for premeditated murder (Art. 109.2.d1), inducement to suicide (Art. 115.2.a, which is exerting physical or emotional pressure on a person to commit suicide), and intentional grave injury to health (Art. 117.5.d1). Additionally, since 2012, the CCG has envisaged a provision (Art. 531.1) which provides for the aggravation of punishment if the crime was motivated by discrimination or intolerance of any grounds, including sex and gender, while gender identity is also spelt out separately and constitutes a distinct ground. After the 2018 amendments that include “gender basis” as an aggravating circumstance, reference to Art. 531.1 is no longer needed when it comes to charging crimes committed with gender discrimination. However, reference to Art. 53.1.1 is still useful to classify crimes that do not constitute murder, inducement to suicide or intentional grave injury to health but were motivated by gender discrimination. Despite the presented legal framework, determinations of whether the killing was based on gender or gender discrimination are seldom made (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a; Public Defender of Georgia, 2018b) and cases of femicide can be found under crimes classified through various legal provisions, such as premeditated murder (Art. 108 of CCG), aggravated murder (Art. 109), intentional murder in a state of sudden, strong emotional excitement (Art. 111), intentional grave bodily injury that resulted in death (Art. 117.8.), intentional less grave bodily injury that resulted in death (Art. 118.4.) and inducement to suicide (Art. 115). Indirect femicide, as well as other forms of femicide, such as sexual femicide, can be classified under the article of the CCG that provides for rape that resulted in the death of a victim (Art. 137.4.b) and other actions of sexual nature that resulted in death (Art. 138.3.c.). Femicide can also be identified within crimes of illegal abortion (Art. 133.3), sterilisation without consent (Art. 182

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1331.1), female genital mutilation (Art. 1332.3), human trafficking (Art. 143​1.4.b), and torture (Art. 1441.3.c.), if they resulted in the death of a woman. Femicide can also be identified within crimes classified in conjunction with others, such as the intentional murder of a woman (Art. 108) committed together with rape, or female genital mutilation or in conjunction with the crime of “disrespect of the deceased” (Art. 258). The latter could be manifested as killing a woman and then having sex with the deceased body. Femicide connected to harmful practices, such as forced marriage, can be classified under the CCG article that addresses this crime (Art. 1501), and bride kidnapping, for which there is no separate crime, is classified under illegal deprivation of liberty (Ar. 143). Domestic femicides can be identified under crimes classified with Art. 111 of the CCG. This article, for statistical purposes, is attached to every classification of the crime if it is committed against a family member either male or female. For the purposes of counting femicides, female family members are taken into account.

Femicide-Monitoring Body in Georgia and Femicide Data Sources In 2016, the Public Defender’s Office of Georgia – a national human rights institution in charge of overseeing the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Georgia (Organic Law of Georgia on the Public Defender’s Office, Article 3), became the femicidemonitoring body with the support of UN Women and call of UN SRVAW. The Public Defender’s Office, based on the “Latin American Model Protocol for the Investigation of Gender-Related Killings of Women (Femicide/Feminicide)” (United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, 2001), adopted a guiding definition that takes into account the local context and manifestations of the crime in Georgia: Femicide – a gender-based killing of a woman, therefore a killing with the motive or context of which is related to gender-based violence, discrimination or subordination of a woman, as well as the desire to exert rights over a woman, sense of superiority over a woman, possessive attitude towards a woman, controlling woman’s behaviour, or any other reason related to gender, as well as an inducement to suicide motivated by the above reasons. (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a: 5) The Public Defender’s Office developed a monitoring methodology in 2017, and since then, monitoring is being conducted each year. Data are collected about reported cases of killings of women, the number of investigations, prosecutions, termination of investigation and prosecution, and court judgements – the judgements of conviction and judgements of acquittal delivered, including as a result of plea bargains. The Public Defender’s Office also examines how investigation, prosecution, and adjudication of femicides are conducted, as well as any prevention measures taken. Recommendations are issued about classifying crimes of femicide and improving prevention and administration of justice. In its analysis, the Public Defender’s Office relies on the information provided by the Ministry of International Affairs of Georgia, the General Prosecutor’s Office, and the judiciary. The data constitutes the number of recorded femicides as identified in various articles of the Criminal Code of Georgia and the number of investigations, prosecutions, and court decisions. The Public Defender’s Office asks these bodies to provide data disaggregated by geographic location; the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator; sex, age, race, ethnicity, and other vulnerabilities and characteristics of the victim and the perpetrator; the geographical distribution of the crime; and so on. Full case materials obtained by the Prosecutor’s Office and the judiciary are analysed to identify obstacles in the administration of justice (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a). 183

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The challenge faced by the Public Defender’s Office is that it must rely on the data and materials provided by the Ministry of Interior, Prosecutor’s Office, and the judiciary. The information collected by them is not always consistent between the three data sources. Another challenge is that, when analysing the trends of femicide and its manifestations, the major sources of information are the texts of the judgements in femicide cases and case materials. These materials do not often contain information on the socio-demographic characteristics of femicides or the way in which different characteristics of victims and perpetrators, together with their specific conditions, contributed to the commission of the crime. Keeping these limitations in mind, the data and analyses in this chapter and the case examples heavily rely on the studies done by the Public Defender’s Office.

Femicide Trends Identified by Public Defender’s Office In Georgia, femicide has various manifestations, all connected to the broader context of violence and discrimination against women. While studying the context of femicide, factors such as the vulnerability of the victim and power imbalances between the victim and the perpetrator should be considered (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2001). A closer look at the context of the crime could disclose power asymmetries and the systemic nature of violence against women. In the period 2014–2020, a total of 214 cases of femicides and attempted femicides were recorded. The highest number of femicides and attempted femicides were committed in 2014 (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a; Public Defender of Georgia, 2021). In 2014, there were 35 femicides and 12 attempted femicides; in 2015, 18 femicides and 12 attempted femicides; in 2016, 32 femicides and 9 attempted femicides; in 2017, 28 femicides and 18 attempted femicides; in 2018, 22 femicides and 18 attempted femicides (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020b); and in 2019, there were three cases of femicides and seven cases of attempted femicide (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a). The most common type of femicide in Georgia is domestic femicide – when a woman is killed by her husband/intimate partner or former husband/intimate partner (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a). Throughout 2014–2018, there were 135 women killed and 69 attempted killings in total, out of which 62 cases (46%) constituted domestic femicides and 42 cases (61%) attempted domestic femicides. The second most prevalent form of femicide is the killing of a woman by a man as a result of getting rejected for marriage or intimate relations (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a). Other forms of femicide found in Georgia, as provided for in 2014–2018 data, include inducement to suicide (three cases and attempted inducement to suicide constituted five cases), honour-based killings, sexual femicide (committed with the purpose of satisfying sexual desires or killing a woman after or as a result of rape), and femicide by association – when a woman is killed to revenge against another woman with whom the perpetrator had intimate relations (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a). In all the cases studied by the Public Defender’s Office of Georgia, where case materials provided sufficient details, femicide was committed because of the sense of ownership over a woman or the “failure” to comply with assigned gender roles, to control the woman’s behaviour. For example, in one case, a man attempted to kill his wife because she failed to bake bread without burning it (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a). In another case, the woman did not obey the man who considered himself “the head of the family.” He attempted to burn his wife with petrol because she did not comply with the husband’s instruction not to bring home second-hand clothes to sell them (Public Defender’s Office, 2020). In 67% of the cases, femicide was committed at home, while in 33% of the cases, the place of the commission of the crime was public space, such as street, forest, meadow, and so on (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a). In 2014–2018, overall, almost one-fourth of femicides – 21 (24%) out of 86 victims – were committed against women belonging to ethnic minorities. Out of 83 perpetrators that committed femicide against ethnic minorities, 15 (18%) also belonged to ethnic minorities (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a). 184

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Motive and Context of Femicides Motives of Femicide Femicide in Georgia is the result of social and cultural norms that establish the superiority of a man and the subordinate role of a woman. Such norms influence a man’s perception that he has the right to make decisions about the behaviour of the woman, disregard her free will, and even punish her by taking her life if she disobeys. In certain cases, a man even considers the killing of a woman as an act of restoring his “honour and virtue,” making the killing a form of honour-based violence (Dekanosidze, 2016; Meskhi, 2017; Avaliani, 2019). The perpetrator’s actions are grounded in social and cultural norms providing that he has the moral right to punish a woman. If the woman “misbehaves” and disregards the accepted so-called “moral,” “cultural,” and “traditional” norms or “shames” the man or the community, then the killing is committed to restoring the violated “honour” (Mazanashvili, 2018). As a result, femicide reinforces the norms rooted in historical subordination and structural inequality (Dekanosidze, 2016; Skhiladze, 2016). Identifying the motives in femicide cases is one of the major challenges of the justice system in Georgia. In practice, there are rare cases in which gender-related motives are identified as femicides by prosecutors and judges (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a; Public Defender of Georgia, 2018). Lack of conceptual understanding of what constitutes gender bias or gender-based discrimination remains the key obstacle. Motives of gender discrimination do not only encompass the acts where the perpetrator expresses hatred or has animosity towards the victim or the group that the victim belongs to on the basis of their gender. The key to identifying the motive should also be the fact that the perpetrator selects the victim based on the biased and discriminatory attitudes he possesses concerning certain groups and, in this case, women (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 2014). For instance, if the perpetrator believes that a woman should obey a man as a superior, or when a man does not tolerate “betrayal” or some “inappropriate behaviour” and kills a woman for not following his instructions, such actions constitute femicide (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a). Indicators of a discriminatory motive can be found in the comments or gestures of the perpetrator or if the perpetrator describes the victim in a particular way before, during, or after the crime is committed (OSCE, 2014). In Georgia, this is found when the perpetrator treats the victim in a discriminatory manner, calls her humiliating or insulting names, makes commands, disallows the victim to go to work, controls the way she dresses, limits her interaction with people, limits her use of social media and cell phone, treats her with disrespect, demands compliance with gender roles, and so on (Kvachadze and Ghvinjilia, 2019; Bakradze, Kvirikashvili, and Merebashvili, 2016). To illustrate the gender basis of the killing, Todua in Lekveishvili et al (2019) gives the example where a husband regards a wife as his property, asks for obedience, imposes restrictions on her, and controls her behaviour. An indicator of gender-based discriminatory motive could also be depriving a woman of the opportunity to make decisions about matters concerning her life. It is common in Georgia that after divorce, the husband regards the former wife as his property and does not allow her to interact with other men. In addition, when sexual relations outside marriage are considered immoral and an excuse for the perpetrator to commit femicide to demonstrate his “superior” moral character (Shengelia, 2017). These issues are identified by either examining the facts of the cases or the perpetrator’s statements during the investigation or in courts and can also be revealed in situations after the crime was committed. In court judgements, a discriminatory motive is demonstrated in the killing of a woman or inducement to the suicide of a woman in the following circumstances: because she wants to separate from the former husband and has asked for a restraining order to protect herself (Tbilisi City Court, 185

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2019), if she uses social media (Tbilisi City Court, 2019), if she uses indecent language and expressions (Gori Regional Court, 2019), if she “makes a man jealous” and the man regards a woman as his property (Akhaltsikhe Regional Court, 2019), if she does not allow a man to unilaterally use the family’s financial resources (Tbilisi City Court, 2019), if she does not bring up the girl child based on “proper rules” (for example, if she paints the child’s nails) (Akhaltsikhe Regional Court, 2019), or if the woman was impregnated by another man (Tbilisi City Court, 2019), amongst others. The sense of pride over the crime committed might also be an indicator of a discriminatory genderrelated motive. This could happen when the perpetrator shares information on the killing with his friends or neighbours and/or goes to the police himself to confess the guilt (OSCE, 2014). In the decision of Telavi Regional Court, for example, the perpetrator considered himself as having a moral advantage, stating that “the behaviour of the wife made him do so,” and asked the neighbours to call the police, while he changed clothes to appear at the police station (Telavi Regional Court, 2015). Killing a woman with extreme cruelty might also be an indicator of a discriminatory motive (OSCE, 2014). One of the decisions of the Tbilisi City Court (2014) describes how a husband cut off the ears of his wife as an act of extreme cruelty. In another case, the perpetrator beheaded the victim and then asked his neighbours to “come and see, I cut off the head of my wife like a pig. I cut the throat of my wife, come and see, her head is separated” (Telavi Regional Court, 2015). There was also a case where the perpetrator threw petrol at the victim and set fire to her (Telavi Regional Court, 2017). Femicides and other gender-based crimes can be committed based on more than one motive (OSCE, 2014), where the key motive, as a rule, is related to gender or where there are some indicators that such a motive exists.

Motives of Jealousy and Revenge In Georgia, in the large proportion of femicide cases motives are not identified at all. Where motives are identified, jealousy or revenge is the most common (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a). In these cases, the killings of women are not regarded as being gender-related in the justice system, even if the factual circumstances, in most cases, give the basis for such determinations. Identifying motives of jealousy and revenge as the key motives in femicide cases reveals the lack of a gender perspective in the Georgian justice system since, in such cases, proper recognition is not given to gender inequality, stereotypes, and power imbalances that motivate such killings. Prosecutors and judges often view the motives of the killings of women as “personal” motives of murder, without any distinctive characteristics that are linked to gender discrimination and subordination of women. This perspective is reflected in work by Todua (2019), who argues that motives of jealousy and revenge are not linked to gender. Todua explains that there is no gender-related motive when, for example, a wife divorced a husband and refuses to get back with him despite numerous requests; therefore, the husband acts out of revenge and kills her. In this case, according to her, the killing is not gender-related because “the motive of the crime was not gendered, but revenge because of the refusal to reconcile” (Todua, 2019: 62). Todua also argues that, if a husband is jealous that his wife might have a lover and kills her because of this, the killing is still not gender-related because the motive of the crime is jealousy” (Todua, 2019: 62). However, this reasoning goes against Todua’s own assertion that the possessive attitude of a husband towards his wife and demand for obedience constitutes a gender basis of a killing (Todua, 2019: 61). Jealousy, indeed, is a demonstration of a gender-related motive since it is driven by a sense of ownership over a woman, controlling her behaviour and demanding compliance with gender roles (Gegelia, 2021). The same is true about the revenge motives, which in Georgia are often manifested against women, particularly those who refuse to marry, when a former wife refuses to get back to her 186

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previous husband, if a wife is suspected to have intimate relations with another man, or if she refuses to comply with the man’s demands. In these instances, femicide was used as a punishment against the women. In one of the cases, the Rustavi City Court (2014) provides that the perpetrator killed his former wife because he suspected she was leading an “immoral lifestyle” and he got “upset about it.” Where motives of gender discrimination are presented as if they were mere motives of jealousy or revenge, this might be interpreted as if the victim is to blame, that she “provoked” the perpetrator (Forel, 2017) and the criminal justice system might act with the perception that she should be bearing the responsibility for being killed (Gegelia, 2021). As an example, the Rustavi City Court (2014) presented a case where the perpetrator killed the victim as an act of “revenge” against her because of her “immoral lifestyle.” The judge imposed a minimum punishment for murder. In another case, the perpetrator kidnapped an underage girl with the purpose of forcing her to marry him. Later, she separated from him as the husband was abusive. According to Kutaisi City Court (2015), the reason for the perpetrator’s aggression was her “lies and incorrect lifestyle” and that she behaved “badly” as she tried to enter into relations with another person. Because of this, the perpetrator killed the victim, yet a motive of discrimination was not examined by the justice system. To establish that the killing of a woman was gender-related, prosecutors and the courts predominantly look for evidence of extreme forms of misogyny and disregard other, more subtle manifestations of discrimination, which are found in the vast majority of femicide cases. Because of this, only a few cases establish that the killing was gender-related, and court judgements lack deliberation about what constitutes such killings (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a). In one case, based on the legislative changes of 2018, a prosecutor classified, for the first time, the attempted murder of a woman as gender-based (under Art. 19–109.2.d1 of the Criminal Code). Despite this, neither the Tbilisi City Court (2019) nor the Tbilisi Court of Appeal (2020) agreed that the killing was gender-based and acquitted the defendant on this specific matter. The Tbilisi Court of Appeal (2020) stated that killing is gender-related if the person is murdered because she is a woman. In the current case, however, the motive of the crime was categorised as revenge because the victim asked for a restraining order to protect herself from the abuser, omitting the fact that the victim was a woman. The Tbilisi Court of Appeal (2020) noted that committing a crime based on gender implies committing a crime against a woman because she is a woman (Istanbul Convention, Article 3.d) yet the court did not correctly interpret the meaning of this concept. The court narrowed down the understanding of a gender-related killing to a killing based on a misogynist motive – one of the manifestations of a gender-based motive – and the judge failed to assess other facts of the case that could uncover discriminatory motive (e.g. prior history of abuse). The court noted that “private” motives, such as revenge and jealously, “completely exclude the basis of gender.” Nonetheless, jealousy and revenge are motives that should be associated with gender since, in such cases, women are perceived as property by men who view women as subordinate to them because they are women (Gegelia, 2021), and such motives in the commission of murder are almost exclusively displayed by men. In the cases of killings of women studied by the Public Defender’s Office, out of 50 cases of femicides in which a motive was identified by the justice system, 28 cases were committed with the motives of jealousy or revenge (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a).

Contexts in Which Femicide Is Committed in Georgia If a crime is committed in the context of domestic violence or in a domestic/intimate partner setting, a discriminatory motive is often manifested. However, the motive of the crime should be immaterial, particularly to identify femicides for statistical purposes. Recognising the killing of a woman committed in a family setting and domestic violence as a form of discrimination against women (Opuz v. Turkey, ECtHR, 2009; Volodina v. Russia, EctHR, 2019; Talpis v. Italy, EctHR, 187

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2017; Eremia and others v. the Republic of Moldova, 2013; M.G. v. Turkey, EctHR, 2016; J.D. and A v. the United Kingdom, EctHR, 2019; Fatma Yildirim v Austria, CEDAW, 2007; Sahide Goekce v Austria, CEDAW, 2007) should be sufficient for classifying domestic homicides as femicides, irrespective of the evidence of gender-related or discriminatory motivations. This approach is taken by the UN SRVAW Dubravka Simonovic (United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, 2020), who has called upon the states to collect data on femicides, which would involve killings committed by spouses and intimate partners. This might imply that if the killing of a woman is committed in a family or intimate relationship, the UN SRVAW finds it necessary to count them as femicides irrespective of specific indicators of gender-related motives. There, data should be disaggregated based on the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator. Femicide in Georgia is often not a single incident but the culmination of a history of abuse committed in circumstances related to the general context of gender-based violence and discrimination (Dekanosidze, 2016; Kurtanidze, Abramishvili and Pataraia, 2016). The evidence of a history of violence can, in some cases, be found in the police reports (Tbilisi City Court, 2015, 2016, 2019; Rustavi City Court, 2014; Kutaisi City Court, 2015; Akhaltsikhe Regional Court, 2019; Gori Regional Court, 2020). Nonetheless, in the majority of the cases, women did not report any incidents to either the police or other legal mechanisms before their killing (Public Defender of Georgia, 2020a). Underreporting is a significant issue and challenge when police reports are relied on for making determinations on which acts constituted femicide. Regardless of this, examining the history of abuse is always important for classifying the killing as gender-related.

Conclusion This chapter aimed to analyse different legislative mechanisms to identify cases of femicide based on the challenges faced by the justice system, as well as the key obstacles that remain in identifying gender-related killings. Implementing a gender perspective on the crime could shed a light on the killings of women that ought to be categorised as femicide. In Georgia, the femicide-monitoring body classifies not only intentional killings of women as femicide but also killings with negligence, inducement to suicide, and deaths of women in conjunction with other gender-based crimes, harmful practices, or other acts that disproportionately affect women. To determine whether the killing is gender-related, both motives and context of the crime are examined, as well as the identity of and relationship between the victim and the perpetrator. Identifying a gender-related motive should not be narrowed down to only explicitly misogynist, sexist, discriminatory attitudes or a history of abuse. It is also important to inquire further into other discriminatory intersections of the victim and motives of the perpetrator, particularly when it is less likely that he would commit the same crime against someone who does not identify as a woman. Motives of jealousy and revenge should also be considered to typify killings as femicides as argued. The same applies to circumstances when extreme cruelty was used against women because of their gender or when injuries were inflicted on their reproductive organs. Killings of women should automatically be classified as femicides when they are committed in contexts that disproportionately affect women. These include killings committed against a spouse/ former spouse or an intimate partner, killings that are linked to sexual violence, and various harmful practices that might lead to deaths of women – child and forced marriage, bride kidnapping, involving a woman into prostitution, forced abortion, forced sterilisation, FGM, and so on. The mentioned approaches, despite being developed and applied by the Public Defender’s Office of Georgia – the femicide-monitoring body – are still largely absent within law enforcement and the judiciary. Recognising the killings of women as gender-related has the potential to transform patriarchal perceptions that are at the core of the criminal justice system in Georgia. The latter often 188

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denies the gravity and seriousness of the killings of women and sometimes even gives a moral justification to the perpetrator. Recognising femicide as a gender-related crime and as a culmination of systemic and structural subordination and violence against women could be an important undertaking in Georgia to eradicate the root causes of violence against women and promote substantive and transformative change.

References Avaliani, T. (2019). Problems of qualification of femicide as a crime motivated by gender discrimination (Analysis of Law and Court Practice). Law & World, 11. Akhaltsikhe Regional Court. (2019). Bakradze, M., Kvirikashvili, M., & Merebashvili, N. (2016). Training manual for judges and prosecutors on ensuring women’s access to justice: Country chapter for Georgia. Tbilisi: Council of Europe. Dawson, M. (2021). Domestic homicide review processes as a method of learning. Chapter 43. In Devaney, C. Bradbury-Jones, R. J. Macy, C. Øverlien, and & S. Holt (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of domestic violence and abuse. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429331053 Dekanosidze, T. (2016). Femicide judgements 2014. Tbilisi: Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association. Eremia v. the Republic of Moldova, 3564/11 (EctHR 2013). Fatma Yildirim v Austria. (CEDAW 2007). Freeman M. A., Chinkin C., & Rudolf B. (2012). The UN Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women: A Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Forel, C. A. (2017). Domestic Homicides: The Continuing Search for Justice. American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law, 25 (1), 1–29. Gegelia, T. (2021). Killing provoked by spousal betrayal. In V. Zaalishvili (Ed.), Analysis of court judgements (pp. 36–46). Tbilisi: Caucasus University School of Law. Gori Regional Court. (2019). Gori Regional Court. (2020). J.D. and A v. the United Kingdom, 32949/17 34614/17 (EctHR, 2019). https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/ eng?i=001-196897 Kurtanidze, M., Abramishvili, N., & Pataraia, B. (2016). Femicide – a crime of discrimination and state obligation to fight it. Tbilisi: Union Sapari. Kutaisi City Court. (2015). Kvachadze, M., & Ghvinjilia E. (2019). Discrimination, hate crimes and hate speech: Analysis of international legal standards, national laws and court practice of Georgia. Tbilisi: Analytical Department of the Supreme Court of Georgia. Lekveishvili, M., Todua, N., & Mamulashvili, G. (2019). General part of Criminal Law (pp. 44–61). Tbilisi: Meridiani. Mazanashvili, T. (2018). Femicide as a gender-related killing of women. Pressing Issues of Criminal Law, 3. Tbilisi: Tbilisi State University Law Faculty. Meskhi, M. (2017). Femicide – the experience of legislative regulation and challenges. Pressing Issues of Criminal Law, 2. Tbilisi: Tbilisi State University Law Faculty. M.G. v. Turkey, 646/10 (EctHR 2016). https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-161521 National Statistics Office of Georgia. (2021). www.geostat.ge/ka/modules/categories/20/2021-tslis-angarishitveebis-mikhedvit Open Society Georgia Foundation. (2019). Research on political participation of ethnic minorities. Tbilisi: Open Society Georgia Foundation. Opuz v. Turkey, 33401/02 (EctHR 2009). https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-92945 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. (2014). Prosecuting Hate Crimes, A Practical Guide. Warsaw: OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). Public Defender of Georgia. (2018a). Femicide monitoring report 2016. Tbilisi: Public Defender of Georgia. Public Defender of Georgia. (2018b). Femicide monitoring report 2017. Tbilisi: Public Defender of Georgia. Public Defender of Georgia. (2020a). Femicide monitoring report 2014–2018. Tbilisi: Public Defender of Georgia. Public Defender of Georgia. (2020b). Femicide monitoring report 2018. Tbilisi: Public Defender of Georgia. Public Defender of Georgia. (2021). Femicide monitoring report 2019. Tbilisi: Public Defender of Georgia. Rustavi City Court. (2014). Sahide Goekce v Austria. (CEDAW 2007). It was adopted by CEDAW Committee on Thirty-ninth session, 23 July–10 August 2007.

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18 FEMICIDE IN INDIA Dowry Deaths, Female Foeticide, and Honour Killings in India Nishi Mitra vom Berg

Coined in 1970s, the term “femicide” originally referred to the gender-based killing of women by men, yet the term later came to be used to include any killing of women. Global trends point at southern parts of Africa, South America, Latin America, and the Caribbean as having the highest incidences of femicides (Alvazzi del Frate, 2011). Femicides occur in various contexts and forms. High rates of femicides are linked to regions with high numbers of homicides, presence of lethal violence, access to firearms, and intimate partner violence. Femicide also correlates with high level of tolerance for violence against women, insufficient resources, inefficient criminal justice system, and lack of political will (Alvazzi del Frate, 2011). Globally, the majority of victims of homicides are men who are killed by strangers, but women bear the disproportionate burden of femicides by intimate partners and family members. In terms of regional contexts, Asia has the largest number of women killed worldwide by family members or intimate partners followed by Africa (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2018).

Magnitude of the Problem India registered 129,193 murder cases in 2020, of which about 26.5% of cases had women as victims (NCRB, 2020). This percentage of female victims of homicides is larger than the global trend of 17% reported by Alvazzi del Frate (2011) on the basis of data from 111 countries and territories from 2005 to 2009. The most common motives for murders reported in India are disputes, personal vendetta, enmity, and love affairs. Subnational statistics also show communal and religious violence, casteism, gang rivalry, robbery, and looting as connected to murders. Other reported motives for murder are illicit relationships, dowry, and witchcraft (India NCRB, 2020). One may mention three government data sources to help understand the extent of femicide in India: the Census of India conducted every ten years, the National Crimes Records Bureau’s (NCRB) annual report titled “Crime in India,” and the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) conducted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The killing of women and girls by family members is a sad reality in India as in the rest of the globe. Yet we do not have a systematic or reliable data base on the incidence and specific forms of femicides, motives for killing women, profiles of victims and perpetrators, and outcomes of legal processes. Per India NCRB (2019), a total of 405,861 cases of crimes against women were registered during 2019 showing an increase of 7.3% over 2018. The majority of these cases were registered under the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-22

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category of cruelty by husband or his relatives (30.9%). The India NCRB (2020) showed a decline of 21.1% in crimes against women. Since the COVID-19 context of this time may have impacted mobility and reporting of domestic violence cases due to the long lockdown in India, it may be reasonably presumed that the data of 2020 is not representative. These figures demonstrate only the tip of the iceberg. Crimes against women are sparingly reported in India due to a widespread culture of silence and shame (Visaria, 2008). Also, there exists much regional variation both in the culture of reporting and in accessibility of police. I discuss in detail particular forms of femicide in India, such as dowry deaths, female foeticide, and honour crimes, that illustrate a continuum of patriarchal violence against girls and women, spread over a lifetime, in the family.

Dowry Deaths, Dowry Murders, or Partner Homicides Despite its illegality, dowry is often expected and transacted as part of marriage. Dowry death is the unnatural death of a woman following harassment or cruelty by her husband or his relatives in connection with a demand for money or property from her parents or natal family. Indian law responds to the unnatural death of a woman within seven years of marriage by a mandatory police investigation into the cause of such death. Per the India NCRB (2019) statistics the total number of dowry deaths reported was 7,115. Although dowry deaths are reported across India, they appear to be more common in north and central India. Very few cases are reported from the north-eastern states. Dowry-related violence is not a one-time episode. Rather it involves a long process of familial violence and cruelty. Dowry demands are made by the husband and his relatives threatening dire consequences unless the demand is fulfilled. Often such violence and cruelty remain hidden due to family pressures and women’s vulnerabilities (Kumari, 2015; Bloch and Rao, 2002). Cultural notions of self-effacement and self-denial silence women despite education and/or employment. Women rely on patriarchal benevolence rather than gender equality. Even in urban cosmopolitan contexts, women demonstrate deep ambivalence in reporting domestic violence (Visariya, 2008). It reflects deep-rooted cultural norms that perpetuate women’s secondary status and make them vulnerable to violence (Ahlawat, 2013). There is ambiguity in common understanding of dowry as gifts or daughter’s share in inheritance, given at the time of marriage. This makes it a site for familial conflicts. The complex cultural and religious legacy, economic and social implications, and emotional connotations make families of dowry givers and dowry receivers complicit in the practice and its problems. Research points to a direct relationship between the practice of dowry, disputed inheritance rights of women, the harassment and maltreatment of women in marital and natal homes, their poor mental and physical health, and femicide in India (Banerji, 2009; Koenig et al., 2006). Police record unnatural deaths of women within seven years either as dowry murders or dowryrelated culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The nomenclature “culpable homicide due to dowry demands not amounting to murder” is a category that is problematic. Law recognises the continuum of violence and cruelty perpetrated against women in their marital homes by the husband and his relatives. Yet it may end in women victims either committing suicide or dying under suspicious circumstances without leaving enough evidence for legal conviction of the perpetrators. Routine harassment and cruelty in the marital home are linked to lethal crimes, such as bride burning, suicide by drowning, poisoning, or self-immolation (Kumari, 2015). These deaths should be recognised as murder motivated by greed, considering the unequal and violent family structures and practices (Stein, 1988; Teays, 1991). Implementation of law and prosecution in dowry cases has been poor despite a plethora of laws against dowry due to the inefficient criminal justice system (Kapur, 2013). The primacy of family and marriage, lack of shelters and resources, and poor education of women are critical factors in women’s lack of power and autonomy and persistence of femicidal violence. Increasing 192

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consumerism is alleged to have fuelled dowry demands among some communities (Srinivasan and Lee, 2004). However, Indian scholars emphasise the need to debunk dowry-related violence as any special kind of domestic violence (Karlekar, 1998). They also emphasise that we need to conceptually separate violence from the practice of dowry. Due to women’s dispossession from their inheritance rights, women come to be considered burdensome in both natal and marital homes (Kishwar and Manushi, 2005; Narayan, 1997). Dowry violence attracted the attention of activists at one time due to its gruesome and shocking aspects, but it is not different from other kinds of intimate partner homicides across the globe (Narayan, 1997). We need to see the commonalities in patterns of lethal and non-lethal violence across the globe that lead to femicide rather than hold particular cultures as inherently violent. Unfortunately, dowry as an explanation for violence legally shadows other reasons for pervasive familial violence so that due to legal and judicial conservatism, familial violence, even when it is lethal, is ignored as common and routine (Kishwar and Manushi, 2005; Karlekar, 1998). This is important in terms of a global movement on femicide.

Female Foeticide, Infanticide, and Missing Girls Empirical research shows relation of dowry to female infanticide, sex-selective abortions, and neglect of the female child (Banerji, 2010; Sekher and Hatti, 2010). However, few cases are registered in India under crimes of foeticide and infanticide though it is estimated to be quite common due to son preference in all sections of the Indian society (Jha et al., 2011). As per the National Crimes Record Bureau (2019), there is a “combined” category of “miscarriage, infanticide, foeticide and abandonment” for which there were 1,950 cases reported. Most cases of foeticide are reported from north and central India where both the development indices and cultural historical legacy shows the poor status of women. The “combined” category shows the process of such femicide where a foetus may be eliminated on suspicion of it being female and passed off as a miscarriage or may be birthed only to be abandoned or killed through neglect. Foeticide and infanticide are difficult to probe by police especially in India where many births and deaths happen outside the hospital system. In addition, due to administrative loopholes and a large population, birth and death data is not fully regulated. Police investigation data reveals low formal charge pressing for foeticide and infanticide cases, with few convictions and many discharges or acquittals, and pending cases for lack of sufficient evidence (National Crimes Record Bureau, 2019; Tandon and Sharma, 2006). Census data in India is an important data source for determining foeticide and infanticide rates. Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India (2011) shows an overall sex ratio in India of 940 females to 1,000 males in Census 2011. The child sex ratio was 945 per 1,000 in 1901 and 927 in 2001, and it fell to 914 in 2011. The State of Haryana has the worst sex ratio with only 861 females to 1,000 males. In certain districts in India, sex ratio is lower than 800. The female child population in the age group 0–6 years was 78.83 million in 2001 but declined to 75.84 million in 2011. The child sex ratio in rural India is higher than in urban India. There are nearly 37.3 million more men than women in India. In other words, we have several million females “missing” in India (Banerji, 2010; Sen, 1990). Government interventions for rapid fertility decline, squeezed-in family size, and the advent of sex determination technologies are held responsible for this dangerous demographic scenario (Kaur, 2013). Sex-selective abortion has been linked to the sex composition of children already born in a family. Families are more likely to resort to sex-selective abortion if there are previous daughters in a family (Ahlawat, 2013). Some women abort pregnancies when they believe they will birth a female child as they are under pressure from in-laws to produce a male child (Patel, 2007). Income 193

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and education are found to increase the use of prenatal diagnostic techniques (Jha et al., 2011). Sex selection by educated and urban Indian parents through the use of modern technology shows that modernity colludes with cultural values of son preference.

Negligent Homicides of Girl Children/Female Infanticide Traditional methods of female infanticide such as drowning the baby in a bucket of milk, feeding her salt or husk, or milk of poisonous plants, covering her with a wet towel so she dies of suffocation, or burying her alive in an earthen pot have been documented from certain communities though these are no longer widely practised (Weil and vom Berg, 2016). Son preference is expressed in terms of neglect of female children and preferential treatment of boys in some communities. Health survey data from several north Indian states shows a substantial fall in the gender ratio in the 0–4 age group. These states are the least developed and most populous of states in the country (Saikia et al., 2021). Girls between one month to five years die of diarrhoea and pneumonia four to five times higher than boys of that age, suggesting the phenomenon of negligent homicides. Girls under five years of age are particularly vulnerable (Ahalwat, 2013; Jha et al., 2011). Sociologists point to the possible role of neglect of the girl child rather than foeticide as the main cause of the declining child sex ratio in India (Jeffery et al., 2012). There is little evidence to believe that deaths of female infants are intentional and may be the desperate outcome of poverty, malnutrition, lack of education and resources, and restricted or no access to medical facilities. The phenomenon of missing girls may also be linked to some indigenous practices of population control, superstition, or disposal of illegitimate or handicapped offspring. With an increase in education and outreach of maternal and child health programs of government, there is an encouraging decrease in child mortality and morbidity rates (Alderman et al., 2019). Low sex ratios and their sociological explanations have traditionally been located in patriarchal Hindu society, poverty, and religion and the problem of dowry (Weil and vom Berg, 2016; Grey, 2013). Daughters may be viewed as a burden in some sections of society because of dowry. However, studies show changes in these trends and increased familial investment in girls’ education, professional development, and general well-being (Heath and Jayachandran, 2017).

Implications of Skewed Sex Ratio Demographic experts fear skewed sex ratios will cause threats of increasing sexual violence and abuse of women and girl children in India. Others fear an increase in trafficking, child marriages, early marriages, maternal deaths due to abortions, and even recurrence of practices such as polyandry. These problems are expected to surge in the next 20 years. There are a few states like Jammu and Kashmir and Haryana that show a steep drop in female sex ratio in recent years that need special focus in terms of interventions. This drop may be due to diverse reasons, like son preference, infanticide, and foeticide, but also may be the outcome of migration, conflict, and displacement. We need reliable data on regional variations in sex ratio and micro studies to explain the variations because some of the sex ratios may be skewed due to extraneous factors like migration and conflict. Certain regions in India like Haryana, which are very badly affected due to a skewed sex ratio, are now reported to have a practice of bride buying from poor regions of the country (Kaur, 2013; Ahalwat, 2009, Aravamudam, 2007). Dreze and Khera (2000) looked at Crime in India reports and commented on homicide data over five decades. They found that murder rates in India do not have any significant relation to urbanisation or poverty, whereas education has only a moderating influence on criminal behaviour. The strongest correlate of the murder rate that they found was the female-to-male ratio in districts, with higher female-to-male ratio districts having lower murder rates. They concluded that there is a strong link between sex ratio and criminal violence in India, 194

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not just violence against women. This suggests the urgent need to intervene for correcting the skewed sex ratio in India.

Interventions Needed Although there is a preventive and punitive law from 1994 onwards called Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act (PCPNDT), it has been reportedly toothless (National policy needed to tackle declining sex ratio, 2011; Patel, 2007). The nexus between medical clinics, families, and local authorities defeats the provisions of the above law in preventing female foeticide. The phenomenon of foeticide, otherwise hidden, surfaces when there is a death of women undergoing illegal abortions and when such medical accidents are reported from unauthorised clinics (Tandon and Sharma, 2006). In 2012, a status report disclosed that only 55 convictions had been achieved out of 805 cases filed in 17 states over the entire period of implementation of the act (Public Health Foundation of India, 2010). Monitoring and implementation of the PCPNDT law is the main problem. Law and social campaigns have failed to curb the misuse of technology, and there is a need for better monitoring and implementation of the law in view of the continuing drop in juvenile sex ratios. There is a need to upgrade the birth and death registration systems. According to estimates, about 19% of births do not get recorded in India. This means about five million living persons are not registered. This is in violation of the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1969. An open online system of registration of birth and death records needs to be implemented across the country (Public Health Foundation of India, 2010). Education as a strategy for conscientisation of common masses, against female foeticide, is important. Moreover, the medical profession’s complicity needs to be attended to seriously. Health workers at the local level need to be trained to be vigilant so that they understand the difference between miscarriage, abortion, and sex selection.

Tradition, Culture, or Development Are not female foeticide, infanticide, and dowry rooted in the patriarchal hatred of the feminine in Indian culture? Killings of the female foetus and denial of safe childhood to female children are human rights violations. Moreover, girls socialised in a context of subordination, denial, and control are likely to remember as adults that they were never welcome or desired. Yet we must be careful to point out that a feminist postcolonial perspective on this matter is critical of the Western tendency to locate foeticide in the framework of indigenous culture or indigenous ways of population control. The cultural blaming is problematic. It does not recognise that the institutions and discourses of the postcolonial state have actively facilitated and condoned a version of femicide by use of science and technology while promoting population control and so-called sexual and reproductive rights. It also ignores the fact that the development goals prioritised by the international agencies, global community, and the government treat women and girls to be secondary, dismissing or ignoring their needs, except as mothers. The linkage of dowry to female infanticide is seen as a colonial explanation in India. Women got constructed as valueless consumers during the colonial times. This explanation was not representative of indigenous thinking wherein the female is eulogised as a goddess and is agentic, beneficent, and powerful (Narayan, 1997). There is a need to be aware of persistent orientalism in the development discourse emanating from the West, which sees Indian girls and women as passive victims of absolute and undifferentiated customs of patriarchal oppression (Bhatnagar et al., 2012). This kind of Western discourse, besides being racist and ethnocentric, cannot understand inherent cultural contradictions and diversity or respect emancipatory aspects of indigenous culture and religions. 195

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Femicide has never been uniformly or universally practised in India, and the birth of the girl child is considered auspicious in many families and communities. Female infanticide was unknown in southern India. Traditionally, female infanticide was never a practice among the poor; it was confined to a few land-holding propertied families and communities in certain regions of north-western India. Families traditionally practising infanticide had no dearth of money and in many cases owned land and wealth. So an economistic understanding is as inadequate as a cultural one to understand or explain the complex phenomenon of femicide.

Honour Killings United Nations statistics suggest that one in five cases of honour killing every year across the world come from India (cited in Kaushal, 2020). This category of femicide involves the killing of young women and girls by their kinsmen due to love affairs, sexual relationships, and inter-caste or interfaith marriages. Honour killings are not a category for enumeration; thus, the exact figures cannot be known since it is a silenced crime, often masked as suicides and accidents. Some important issues related to honour killings in India debated publicly are (1) the death threat young couples face for marrying by choice against caste and religious norms in certain communities, (2) sexual violence and murder of lower-caste women by upper-caste men, (3) state complicity in maintaining patriarchal social sanctions on honour and marriage, and (4) police and judicial malpractices in implementation and interpretation of law. Inter-caste and inter-faith conflicts have important links with honour crimes in India where prohibited marriages between lower-caste men and upper-caste women and inter-faith marriages sometimes lead to much bloodshed, murder of the couple, and even carnage involving whole villages (Parasar et al., 2016; Chowdhry, 2004, 2010). Women are required to uphold tradition and normative codes of conduct in their communities. When they fail to do so, especially by marrying against the endogamous rules that define caste status and differentiation, they are stigmatised, punished, and even killed. In rural and remote areas, it is challenging to unmask the domestic violence that honour crimes entail as entire villages turn against families and women who access justice through the police and other legal functionaries (Kirti et al., 2011). Community-based extrajudicial systems involving village elders intervene on grounds of caste. These informal caste courts engage in unlawful interference in justice through punishing the “erring” couple accused of violating community honour, sometimes even killing them. Not only do these shadow courts prevail in remote and inaccessible areas, but they also operate in relatively developed areas with motorable roads, modern educational institutions, health centres, and multinational business establishments with foreign investments (Bharadwaj, 2012). Often there exists a vast gulf between the spatial modernisation and the feudal mindsets of village elders who attempt to exercise community control over young people perceived as rebellious for defying community practices by choosing marriage partners. These informal courts are led in some places by retired army and government officers with political and economic clout, using local ignorance and creating mass hysteria in the name of tradition and culture (Bharadwaj, 2012). Caste and patriarchal codes of marriage are upheld under community pressure even by police and judges. Changes in social and political power structures have come in the wake of independence and democracy. Education, universal suffrage, transformations in landholding patterns with land reforms and migration, and so on have led to the emergence of a new class structure in modern India. Honour today derives not only from the caste status but also from class, political, and economic power. This has produced many contradictions and contestations in terms of questions of equality and hierarchy. Caste patriarchies are either emboldened or threatened by these contradictions in economic, social, and political power and by assertion of educated women and men. 196

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The continued resilience of the caste system means that brutal killing of women under honour crimes is not only a private response to the agency of women seeking to redefine their lives against community codes. Rather, it is also a communitarian response linked to brutal violence against men and families having competing understandings of caste status, political power, equality, and upward mobility (Chakravarti, 2006).

Local and Global Patterns in Honour Crimes The international campaign against honour killings is crucial yet requires us to challenge stereotyping of ethnic groups or stigmatising of particular cultures. The term “honour killing” is misleading, promotes harmful and violent stereotypes of particular immigrant communities, and marginalises Muslim and other minorities in Western countries (Termann, 2010). Honour is in fact invoked globally in domestic violence contexts to control and kill women in homes. Faquir (2001), writing on honour crimes amongst Jordanian women, notes that domestic violence, grievous bodily harm, and intrafamily femicide are interconnected. We need to recognise honour killings as an extreme form of domestic violence. When we do not adequately respond to a range of domestic violence against women as a crime, honour crimes are likely to increase due to abusers enjoying immunity from law. We need to explore how cross-cultural studies can provide a more nuanced understanding of honour and honour killings as lethal domestic violence. Women suffer extreme forms of domestic violence on account of gendered power relations, their dependency, and their devaluation in families across cultures. This phenomenon is defined as women’s relational vulnerability by Kabeer (2014). It makes for experience of violence for women endemic globally. Therefore, cross-cultural volumes like this one help us confront the question of how we may eliminate violent traditional and contemporary practices causing femicide while respecting diversity and multiculturalism. Governance of diverse communities based on their indigenous laws and the need to engage with universal human rights and development agendas globally lead to challenges in interpreting and naming crimes. Customary laws, family laws, criminal laws, and international laws compete with each other in terms of local and global responses to femicide (D’ Lima et al., 2020; Baxi et al., 2006). Violence against women is normalised when it is explained in reference to community perceptions of family, religion, race, or ethnicity.

Conclusions and Way Forward When focusing on femicide in India, we must recognise that it is to be tackled against the backdrop of an extremely patriarchal and violent society. We must have a femicide observatory in India as women’s equality and women’s rights remain contested and challenging concepts. There is need for a more nuanced understanding of culture, tradition, planned development, and modernity for understanding and addressing femicide. Strong and reliable data on femicide is a must to initiate comprehensive and sustained measures to control the problem. We specifically need reliable data on how lethal and non-lethal crimes against women may be interlinked. Regional particularities and variations in Indian states need to be studied as subnational data contribute to sensitive and responsive grassroots-based strategies. Moreover, statistics on femicides should be analysed along with qualitative studies of the geographical regions to understand specific issues. Contemporary India is simultaneously representing tradition and cultural patterns of the past and cultural discontinuities and progressive changes of modern times. Moreover, femicide research and advocacy needs a life cycle approach when related to domestic violence. Women’s lives are precarious from womb to tomb. In India, domestic violence is not perpetrated only by the partner or spouse but often involves both natal and affinal relations, and female 197

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relatives may themselves be perpetrators of lethal violence. This cautions us against any simplistic understanding of femicide as the killing of women by men. Also, the domestic space in intimate femicide is not only referring to the family but to the community, wherein women experience their power and powerlessness in various intersections. There are multiple and competing patriarchies of caste, religion, race, ethnicity, and so on that define their identities on women’s bodies and women’s concurrence to violent cultures. But there is also a visible and strong women’s movement and women’s leadership in India. This makes for violence and resistance as interlinked facets of ongoing struggles for women’s emancipation and empowerment. Law and conscientisation have a strong role to play in addressing and changing this scenario. The community has been critical in defining India’s social political culture. Community struggles on the issue of religious laws, uniform civil code, women’s representation in politics, and so on have demonstrated the power of the community to implement or obfuscate progressive changes. The feminist challenge is to sensitively lead women, especially those belonging to minority communities, by breaking away from violent collective traditions of the communities when necessary. Women’s aspirations for freedom from violence require resistance from an allencompassing claim of their communities or from the interfering role of the state. Moreover, ideologies and practices that make women complicit in their own extermination need to be confronted. Caste and religious sanctions against women’s mobility and empowerment also constitute such ideologies. However, women are not merely victims, and they negotiate with patriarchy and also are known to incite fatal violence on other women on grounds of religion and ethnicity. Since both men and women may be perpetrators of femicidal violence, we need to discuss how the term “femicide” grapples with women as perpetrators of violence. So the particular and the global both need to be reckoned while using the term femicide in its cross-cultural application. There are some misgivings about Western explanations of femicide being more individually located and its application to Eastern cultures often involving a kind of judgement of whole cultures. There is to be seen a repeating of a certain view of cultures of the East, which is problematic in terms of its being treated as singular, unchanging, and homogenous rather than having multiple and often contradictory and unpredictable meanings that are dynamic in the context of new permutations and combinations of tradition and modernity. There are changing intersections of power along various axes of inequalities, and some of these are known to be created within the assumed discursive space of modernity and globalisation. How can the term femicide help us to understand the truth of the victim and her suffering? Can professional discourses such as femicide make for a better understanding of justice from the point of view of the victim, or does the term actually make women silent about their experiences of violence because of its radical connotation? Last but not the least, we need to deliberate if the term “femicide” is extremist in its focus on violence, victimisation, passivity, and oppression of women, negating women’s agency, will for life, and sexual desire. Scholarly focus on violence against women is itself under criticism in India from certain feminist quarters presently where there is strident advocacy for recognising women’s choice, consciousness, and adulthood.

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19 FEMINICIDE IN MEXICO Saide Mobayed Vega, Sonia M. Frías, Fabiola de Lachica Huerta and Aleida Luján-Pinelo

Introduction Feminicide1 finds tight roots in the Mexican context. We could not assess how defining and categorising the gender-related killing of women and girls has traversed, rippled, and developed across the globe without acknowledging the efforts Mexican activism has given to its naming and recognition (Castañeda Salgado, 2016; Mendoza, 2019). Yet understanding feminicide in Mexico is highly complex, deeply convoluted, and profoundly contextual. Thus, it is crucial to consider a multidimensional and intersectional lens to account for the geographical variations of a country that has been appallingly impacted by drug-related violence (Emerson, 2019; Trejo and Ley, 2020). Feminicide stems from racism, misogyny, classism, and patriarchy and is further exacerbated by rampant inequality, persistent impunity, social normalisation, and pervasiveness of violence (García-Del Moral, 2016; Monárrez Fragoso, 2019; Segato, 2014; Threadcraft, 2017). This chapter offers a journey into feminicide in Mexico. We agree that this work does not suffice as the road has been long, sinuous, and still in the making. First, we provide a historical background using Ciudad Juárez and 1993 as the starting space and time compasses. We draw on the conceptual particularities of Marcela Lagarde’s “feminicidio” (feminicide) and Julia Monárrez Fragoso’s “systemic sexual feminicide,”2 which locate the state’s impunity at the forefront of these crimes against women. Second, we offer an overview of the country’s legal system and normative frameworks designed to attend to and sanction feminicide and feminicidal violence. The challenges inherent to the 32 states that comprise the Mexican federation are addressed given the wide variation of criteria used to criminalise feminicide according to each state’s criminal code. The third section offers a statistical overview employing administrative data provided by the Mexican government. The efforts to quantify the intentional killing of women by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) and the Executive Secretariat of the National System for Public Security (SESNSP) are presented alongside an inquiry into who is rendered most marginalised and invisible in these data. We remark on the importance of the relentless fight for justice and accountability to increase visibility against feminicide, including citizen-generated and civil society data3 (Atencio, 2013; D’Ignazio et al., 2022). Finally, we conclude by recalling what the global community concerned with this issue can learn from a country where “10 women die every day” (INEGI, 2022).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-23

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History and Conceptual Definitions of Feminicide in Mexico The temporal and spatial starting point for the narrative of feminicide in Mexico can be situated in 1993 in Ciudad Juárez when a series of murders of women started to draw public attention. These cases showed patterns that included kidnapping, torture, mutilation, rape, and the dumping of dead bodies in desolated places such as vacant lots and landfills. Most of the victims were young brownskinned women who were economically marginalised and often maquila workers and students (Gaspar de Alba and Guzmán, 2010; Monárrez Fragoso, 2009). The systematic nature of these killings and the lack of governmental response to hold a thorough investigation mobilised victims’ mothers and relatives – some of them organised in groups – and local feminist organisations – already constituted and others founded during this period – who managed to put pressure to local and national governments4 and called international attention. Violence against women in Chihuahua was not a new phenomenon. Sexual violence had been addressed by activists organised to fight for women maquila workers since the late ’70s and the early ’80s (Ravelo Blancas, 2004). However, the increasing numbers and specific patterns of these murders were alarming as women were abducted and tortured before their killing. Local activists and organisations started to collect information on these crimes to have available data, make the problem visible, and demand urgent governmental attention (Wright, 2011). Several civil society organisations, such as the Coordinadora de Organizaciones no Gubernamentales (led by Comité Feminista 8 de Marzo), Taller Laboral, Grupo Mujeres por Juárez, and Grupo Compañeros, started to gather information from newspapers identifying commonalities in these killings. Variables included the places where bodies were found, type of violence inflicted on women’s bodies and a general profile of the victims. In this scenario, the Mexican feminist and anthropologist Marcela Lagarde (FLACSO, 2015) elaborated a conceptual framework to help to understand why men kill women. For this purpose, Lagarde took as a framework Jill Radford and Diane Russell’s (1992) Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing and introduced the term “femicide” into the Mexican context in 1994 but suggested a different approach. Rather than using the literal translation femicidio (femicide), she developed the concept of feminicidio (feminicide). According to Lagarde (2015), femicidio in Spanish merely implies the feminine equivalent of homicide, potentially referring to any killing of women (i.e. if women are murdered because of a criminal exploding a bomb in an airport). For Lagarde, feminicidio better emphasised the social construction and sex-/gender-based power dynamics at play in these crimes, a connotation already present in Russell and Radford’s English term5. Given the context in which Lagarde theorised feminicide, she highlighted the need to frame it within the human rights language, particularly concerning access to justice and women’s right to live a life free from violence. Lagarde coined the concept of feminicide using international instruments such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, 1979) and the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence Against Women (Convention of Belém do Pará, 1994). In her definition (FLACSO, 2015), she stressed the tolerance of society towards these crimes, as well as the responsibility of the State to guarantee citizens’ lives and to enforce of justice. In Lagarde’s words, feminicide is an extreme form of gender-based violence and human rights violation, whether occurring in public or private life, through misogynist practices – abuses, physical, sexual, educational, professional, economic, patrimonial violence, violence perpetrated within the family, the community or the state institutions – which lead to impunity and put women in a condition of risk and lack of protection until their murder or attempt, or other kinds of death of women and children, such as suicides, accidents, sufferings or deaths caused by 202

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lack of personal security and interest from institutions, and absence of inclusion on development and democracy. (Cited on Spinelli, 2011: 8) Informed by Lagarde’s work, the feminist activist and academic Julia Monárrez Fragoso defined feminicide as “the assassination of a woman committed by a man, where one finds all the elements of the relationship of inequality between the sexes: the gender superiority of man over the gender subordination of woman, misogyny, control, and sexism” (2010: 69). She further considered that “not only is a woman’s biological body assassinated, but what the cultural construction of her body has signified is also assassinated, with the passivity and tolerance of a masculinized state” (2010: 69). Monárrez considers that feminicides exist because of economic, political, and societal power structures that tolerate them6. Monárrez (2009) was the first researcher to develop a systematic geo-referential database on feminicide and advocated for the classification of different types of feminicide – including her category of “systemic sexual feminicide” – to identify patterns and build appropriate strategies7 for prevention. This database directly or indirectly inspired many other related projects worldwide8. As the conceptual framework developed by Lagarde and Monárrez started to circulate among the political and legal arenas, it revealed that these violent events were not exclusive to Ciudad Juárez; on the contrary, they were built on power structures which are not geographically bounded. In this sense, the term “feminicide” appeared in the media to talk about the killing of women in other latitudes, such as Sonora, Estado de México, Ciudad de México, and Guerrero, some of them with higher feminicide rates than in Ciudad Juárez. The recognition of feminicide as a widespread phenomenon stressed the need to have a national strategy to prevent and investigate these crimes through a legal and normative framework, which will be developed in what follows.

Legal System and Normative Frameworks to Prevent, Sanction, and Attend Feminicide in Mexico This section provides an overview of how feminicide has been incorporated into the country’s legal system and normative frameworks9. Translating socio-political and anthropological concepts into legal categories is an ongoing, challenging, and contested process (García-Del Moral and Neumann, 2019; Medina-Vicent, 2015). Two things are worth noting; first, the influence of transnational normativity in the crafting and design of national legislation, and second, the characteristics of the Mexican federal system, which grants autonomy to its constituent states to regulate and define these crimes (Araiza Díaz et al., 2020; Leyva, 2017). The adoption of international treaties, such as CEDAW (1979) and the Belem do Pará Convention (1994), together with ground-breaking regional court rulings, such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) in the case González et al. vs Mexico (2009), have been pivotal in the recognition and legal mechanisms to tackle feminicide. In the aforementioned case (also known as the Cotton Field sentence), the IACtHR concluded that the Mexican State was responsible for the failure to prevent and investigate the gender-based killings of Claudia Ivette González, Esmeralda Herrera Monreal, and Laura Berenice Ramos Monárrez, whose bodies were found on 6 November 2001 in the cotton fields of Ciudad Juarez10. This case is relevant not only because it was one of the first applications of the Belém do Pará Convention by the court but also because it transformed how we acknowledge reparations for acts of gender-based violence. As Joe Meegan (2016) writes, “[T]he Court’s decision broke from traditional understandings of reparation to demand Mexico to address the underlying causes of femicide in Ciudad Juárez.” When defining the legal boundaries of feminicide, the Mexican State is obliged to take into consideration an international law perspective while simultaneously delegating a high degree of 203

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responsibility to the 32 states’ authorities to assess, sanction, and prosecute these crimes (Elizondo, 2021). The latter does not consider the different obstacles faced by the criminal justice system across the country in terms of resource allocation, impunity, and narco-related violence and presence, amongst other profound contextual particularities which impact how differently feminicide is accounted for (Elizondo, 2021). Based on much of the agreements contained in such treaties and conventions, and together with the active leverage of feminist collectives, academics, civil society organisations, and legislators (including Marcela Lagarde11), in 2007, the Mexican State published the unprecedented Ley General de Acceso de las Mujeres a una Vida Libre de Violencia General12 (LGAMVLV) (General Law on Women’s Access for a Life Free of Violence). The main purpose of the LGAMVLV is “to establish coordination of the federation, the states, and the municipalities to prevent, punish and eradicate violence against women, to establish principles and modalities to guarantee women’s access to a life free of violence” (Art. 1). It was not until 14 July 2012 that “feminicidal violence” and “feminicide” were added to the LGAMVLV and the Federal Criminal Code. Feminicidal violence is defined as “the most extreme form of gender violence against women, produced by the violation of their human rights in public and private spheres and formed by the set of misogynist actions that can lead to the impunity of society and the State and culminate in homicide and other forms of the violent death of women” (Art. 21). Feminicidal violence, a concept particular to Mexican legislation, goes beyond the ultimate act of killing women because of their gender, as it encompasses all the previous “set of misogynist actions” that results in such crime. Here, the concept of feminicide turns into feminicidal, an adjective that describes how violence is exerted upon women, allowing us to grasp not only the extent of feminicide attempts but also the continuum of violence to which women are subjected. According to the Federal Criminal Code, feminicide (Art. 325) is committed by anyone who deprives a woman of her life for gender-based reasons. Gender-based reasons are considered to exist when any of the following circumstances are present: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The victim shows any signs of sexual violence. The victim has been inflicted with infamous or degrading injuries or mutilations, prior or subsequent to the deprivation of life, or acts of necrophilia. There are antecedents or data of any type of violence in the family, work, or school environment, of the perpetrator against the victim. There has been a sentimental, affective, or trusting relationship between the perpetrator and the victim. There is information that establishes that there were threats related to the criminal act, harassment, or injuries by the perpetrator against the victim. The victim was in solitary confinement, regardless of the time prior to the deprivation of life. The victim’s body is exposed or exhibited in a public place.

Despite most states adhering to the federal norm, the classification of feminicide is not the same across legislations. None of the 32 states considers all seven circumstances described in the Federal Criminal Code in their categorisation of feminicide – yet many others are added to the state’s criminal codes (see Figure 19.1). This poses spatial and temporal frictions when we seek to compare national patterns. Temporarily, it was not until 2017 that the 32 states included feminicide as a crime. Ironically, Chihuahua, where Ciudad Juárez is located, was the last state to include it in its Criminal Code. This means that, before 2017, we could not compare regional variations of this phenomenon. Changes in state legislation have resulted in drastic data shifts. For example, “Yucatán went from classifying 10% of killings of women as femicides in 2016 to 75% in 2017” (Data Cívica and Intersecta, 2021: 4). 204

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Figure 19.1  Classification of feminicide by different sates’ jurisdictions (as of 2021).

Spatially, given the states’ autonomy to criminalise feminicide, what is a feminicide in Nuevo León might not be the same in Querétaro. The next section offers a thorough examination of such data variations. Figure 19.1 – systematised and designed by Intersecta and Data Cívica (2022)13 – shows these discrepancies. By 2021, a total of 18 different circumstances are considered to classify the intentional homicide of a woman as a feminicide – yet not all jurisdictions account for the same circumstances. For instance, only the states of Baja California Sur, Oaxaca, and Yucatán include hiding the victim’s body as constitutive of feminicide. Zacatecas is one of the most comprehensive states, considering 14 of the 18 circumstances, excluding whether the perpetrator committed necrophilia, jealousy or hatred acts were involved, the victim was defenceless, or the body was hidden. It is worth noting that some states’ criminal codes encompass specific circumstances, such as the existence of a kinship, teaching, intimate partner, employment, or friendship relationship between the victim and the aggressor, under the heading IV of the Federal Criminal Code (existence of a sentimental, affective, or trusting relationship between the perpetrator and the victim). We should stress that access to justice is not the same across class, race, and gender and that Mexico is among the countries with greater impunity in the world – ranking in 60th place out of 69 countries 205

Saide Mobayed Vega et al. Table 19.1  Number of Cases in Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Systems by Year and Status (2018–2020)

studied by Le Clercq and Rodríguez Sánchez (2020). According to México Evalúa (2018), the national average impunity index in the criminal justice system is 96.1%, which suggests that decisions are taken without any guidelines or supervision. Likewise, the recent National Survey on Victimisation and Perception of Public Safety (ENVIPE) shows that, in 2020, just 10.1% of all crimes were reported to law enforcement; among those, less than 70% had an investigation file initiated (INEGI, 2021). In sum, only 6.7% of the criminal charges were laid. Concerning homicide, “for every 100 cases of murder, only five result in a prison sentence for a perpetrator” (Animal Político, 2018). Table 19.1 shows the number of cases of feminicide reported by law enforcement agencies (state attorney’s offices) and criminal justice systems (criminal courts/tribunals) that stem from the law enforcement and criminal justice censuses. The information is incomplete because some states failed to report it. Based on the 2018 Law Enforcement Census, 962 cases of feminicide were registered and investigated as such. That same year, the initial investigation was finished in 342 cases, the complementary investigation14 ended in 218 cases, and 933 files were still pending – which is approximately the same number of new cases (from 2018 and previous years). We see a similar pattern in 2019. In 2020, the lag is smaller but relevant. Regarding the performance of the criminal justice system, in 2018, 624 cases were registered but only 56% of those were sentenced. The figures corresponding to 2019 reveal a similar trend of cases sentenced or finished. However, the number of new cases and those pending is much higher. Despite the limitations of available data, Table 19.1 provides empirical evidence of the inefficiency of both the law enforcement and criminal justice systems in the cases of feminicide. After more than 20 years from the Cotton Field sentence and 15 years since the enactment of the LGAMVLV, the Mexican State is failing to prevent, investigate and sanction feminicidal violence.

Feminicide Statistical Data in Mexico The real scope of feminicide in Mexico is unknown and we are aware that doing longitudinal analyses is challenging given how much categorising and quantifying feminicide has changed in the past 20 years. Broadly, until five years ago, data from international organisations, governmental offices, and academia did not differentiate between violent deaths of women (feminicides and female homicides) (Incháustegui, 2014; SEGOB et al., 2016). From a feminist perspective, this is both a theoretical and conceptual pitfall given the different origins of both phenomena. While female homicides are linked to public security factors, such as drug trafficking, robberies, and mass shootings, feminicides are rooted in patriarchal traditions and beliefs that promote women’s subordination 206

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and objectification. In this regard, we agree with Silvia Walby’s claim that “if all forms of interpersonal violence are included then there is a danger of losing the gender focus” (2005: 194). Recent studies differentiate and assess both, showing that female homicide has had significant variations and feminicide has remained stable (Data Cívica, 2019, 2021; Frías, 2021; Torreblanca and Merino, 2017; Valdivia et al., 2020). We have two main official sources of data to assess the magnitude of feminicide in Mexico: (1) administrative data on open files on alleged femicides from the state attorney’s offices, published monthly by the Executive Secretariat of the Public Security National System (SESNSP), and (2) mortality statistics produced by the Department of Health and processed by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), published yearly. These sources differ in what they count as feminicide and the frequency with which they publish their results, posing various problems related to underreporting. The Department of Health (and thus INEGI) uses the category of female homicide. Analyses by Data Cívica and Intersecta show how, in mortality records, “the variable that registers whether there was a relationship between the victim and the suspected perpetrator . . . was not specified for 98.4% of homicides of men and 96.3% of homicides of women that occurred between 2012 and 2019” (2021: 2). Also, state attorney’s offices quantify feminicide only when a file is opened as “alleged feminicide,” which means that the resulting sentence for such crime might differ (e.g. from alleged feminicide to intentional homicide or suicide). Using mortality statistics and a methodology developed by Sonia Frías (2021), we can estimate for the period 1999–2020 that 33.6% of all female homicides are feminicides. The prevalence, nevertheless, is higher in indigenous municipalities than in non-indigenous municipalities15 (34.1% vs. 39.3%), which might be explained by the backlash theory16. Currently, mortality records lack reliable information related to whether women identified themselves as indigenous and Afro-Mexican17 or their sexual identity or orientation. In 2012, mortality records started to include whether the victim spoke an indigenous language, nevertheless, in 56% of death certificates, this information was missing. In 2017, the percentage decreased to 40.6% for male homicides and 39% for female homicides (Frías, 2021). This further complicates conducting intersectional analyses in which the placement of women at the crossroads of privilege and oppression could explain their potential risk of victimisation. Such challenges are heightened when we try to gauge the extent of violence against transwomen and members of LGBTQ+ communities. Regarding homicide rates, as shown in Figure 19.2, from 1999–2007, male homicides experienced a decreasing trend. After that year, the rate drastically increased until 2010–2011, which can be explained due to the security strategy to combat organised crime (referred to by some as the “war on drugs”) launched in the frame of Felipe Calderón’s administration (2006–2012)18. The rates decreased during 2012–2015 and began to increase again to reach the highest point in 2018 (58.6% of male homicides per 100,000 inhabitants). The rates of female homicides are much smaller than those of males and mirror the trend. When one differentiates between feminicides and female homicides, we can appreciate that the rate of feminicides has remained more stable than that of female homicides. Despite this stability, it has increased by 33% since 1999 (1.7% yearly), compared to that of female homicides and male homicides (respectively, 7.4% and 7.6 yearly). Since then, the majority of these have occurred in public spaces. We can also see how murders committed with firearms drastically increased. During the period of study, most feminicides were committed with a firearm (25.8%), a knife or a machete (17.5%); 15.1% were suffocated or drowned, 3.6% used physical force, almost 1% were poisoned, and the remaining murders used other means to cause death. These data can be contrasted with male homicides and female homicides (respectively, 29.2% and 4.5% with a firearm; 5.9% and 1.2%, with a knife or machete; 2.8% and 1.5%, through suffocation or drowning; 2.8% and 1.5%, with physical force; and 0.06% and 0.03%, through poisoning). According to available data, feminicides, therefore, are perpetrated using means capable of inflicting more pain and suffering on victims. 207

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Figure 19.2  Feminicide and male and female homicide rates (1999–2020). Source: Calculations based on a methodology developed by Sonia Frías using mortality data (2021)

Official administrative data regarding feminicides does not correspond with that reported in annual censuses of law enforcement. As observed in Figure 19.3, according to the SESNSP, since 2018 the number of feminicides investigated in state’s attorney’s offices increased by 10% in 2021. The latter might be due to the progressive inclusion of feminicide as a crime in the state’s criminal codes, as mentioned in the previous section. A different source of data, the Law Enforcement Census renders higher figures. For example, in 2020, the number of cases reported by state attorney’s offices in the census is 39.6% higher than that reported by the SESNSP (respectively, 1,365 and 978). In both cases, it refers to allegedly attempted and consummated crimes registered as feminicides, however, an investigation is needed to assess whether these cases were actual feminicides. This number is likely to be the tip of the iceberg because not all feminicides are investigated as such. For example, in Mexico City, 63% of feminicides that took place in 2018 were first investigated as suicides (González, 2022). In addition, civil society has led the task of calling attention to feminicides and attempting to assess the scope of the problem. Recent interactive mapping databases, such as Yo Te Nombro, by María Salguero, have been designed for such purposes. Yo Te Nombro started in 2016 (with the last update in July 2021) and has made a significant impact to promote visibility on this matter. Based on media reports, Salguero identified 486 female murders in 2019 and 478 in 202019. Despite the relevance in drawing attention to the phenomenon, we see variations when we compare these results with administrative data: only between 35% and 46% of the cases are showcased on the map, underscoring the challenges of assessing the scope of feminicide in Mexico. 208

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Figure 19.3  Number of feminicides investigated in State Attorney’s Offices (2018–2021).

Conclusions Feminicide is a global problem rooted in sex/gender inequalities that manifests differently in each context. This chapter described the particularities of feminicide in Mexico from a multidimensional and intersectional perspective that accounted for the challenges of defining, categorising, criminalising, and quantifying the gender-related killing of women and girls in a country painfully corroded by violence and impunity. Various lessons can be learned from Mexico. First, the power of citizen activism in naming and framing feminicide, feminicidal violence, and systemic sexual feminicide. Before social campaigns orchestrated by women’s and feminist movements, feminicides were not named and the gender reasons behind these heinous crimes remained hidden. The constant leverage and activism of civil society, families, and grassroots organisations are what have yielded justice and accountability. In the past ten years, transnational social media movements such as #NiUnaMenos (Not One Woman Less) and #VivasNosQueremos (We Want Us Alive) have been instrumental in pushing the State to honour both international and national agreements to grant women a life free of violence. These have further revealed that feminicide is global and is rooted in socially constructed gender inequalities that intersect with other systems of oppression. Second, international normativity, such as the Belém do Pará Convention, has been key to pushing the Mexican State to attend and sanction feminicide. Third, women remain at risk both in their homes and on the streets. Fourth, the lack of political will and social transformation to eradicate feminicide persists. Notwithstanding the efforts described in this chapter, the State’s weak law 209

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implementation; a dearth of comprehensive investigations; corruption in the judiciary; poor funding allocation for education, awareness, and research programmes; and massive gaps found in feminicide statistical data that exclude the most marginalised communities allow for a patriarchal and misogynist culture to hate, devalue, and dispose of women. Fifth, the role of media has been key to rendering feminicide visible, yet it continues to revictimise women. The media coverage of the violent killing of women at the border city of Ciudad Juárez in the mid-1990s allowed not only for the recounting of the first feminicide cases but also echoed and named what was happening in other cities. The last three decades have witnessed an improvement in the coverage of feminicide cases by including a gender perspective that has raised and acknowledged serious ethical concerns in the representation of these killings. However, sensationalist journalism, such as nota roja tabloids20, still depicts gruesome content that focuses on battered bodies and represents feminicide as a spectacle. Finally, we are aware that despite years of relentlessly naming feminicide, ten women are murdered every day in this country (INEGI, 2022). It is difficult to conclude a chapter about feminicide in Mexico that does not leave us despairing and grieving. We are despairing and grieving. Yet our hope rests – as it has been in the last 30 years – in the work of Marcela Lagarde and Julia Monárrez Fragoso (and many more) and on the shoulders of social activism and sorority building: si nos tocan a una nos tocan a todas (if they touch one, they touch us all). Cantamos sin miedo, pedimos justicia Gritamos por cada desaparecida Que resuene fuerte “¡nos queremos vivas!” Que caiga con fuerza el feminicida Que caiga con fuerza el feminicida Y retiemblen sus centros la tierra Al sororo rugir del amor – Excerpt from Canción Sin Miedo, by Vivir Quintana

Notes 1 We recognise that some contexts use “femicide” or “femicidio” instead. However, for the purposes of this chapter and given the relevance of the place-based epistemological differentiation particular to the Mexican context, we will use “feminicide.” 2 For more on this framework, go to Chapter 29 in this handbook. 3 For more on data against feminicide practices, see Chapter 10 in this handbook. 4 As a result, the Unidad Especializada de Delitos Sexuales y contra la Familia (Sexual and Domestic Assault Special Unit) was created in 1996 and the Fiscalía Especial para la Investigación de Homicidios de Mujeres Desaparecidas y Atención a Víctimas (Disappeared Women Homicides Investigation and Victims Assistance Special Prosecutor’s Office) came two years later. However, these two offices were not able to prevent and investigate feminicides and they continually shifted names, officials, and mandates. 5 Lagarde does not claim to have coined the term “femicide,” as wrongly assumed by Russell (2011), but “feminicide.” 6 Paulina García-Del Moral (2018) analysed the concept of “feminicide” in both authors, pointing out their attempts to broaden intersectional lenses but showing their limitations to account for the effects of coloniality embedded in these crimes. She suggests working with a feminist decolonial intersectional framework, and for that purpose, feminicide does a better job than femicide. 7 Monárrez’s Feminicide Database contains cases from 1993 to 2004 and was based on the first list of cases provided by Esther Chávez Cano. Despite the primary source of information were newspaper articles, information from interviews was also included (Monárrez Fragoso, 2009: 19–20, 90–91). 8 As seen in Chapter 10 of this handbook. 9 Part 4 of this handbook is devoted to the legal responses to femicide/feminicide from an international and transnational perspective.

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Feminicide in Mexico 1 0 For more on this, see Chapter 38 of this handbook. 11 At that time (2003–2006), served as a plurinominal deputy for the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD). 12 This is a mainstream law rather than a unidirectional law. To better understand these differentiations, see Laporta, 2012. 13 Figure 19.1 (found on page 18 of the Datos para la Vida report) was amended for the purpose of this chapter given that the circumstance of “the perpetrator committed acts of necrophilia” is included in the Federal Criminal Code and was not pink coloured in the original figure. 14 The complementary investigation begins when the judge orders the processing of the crime. At the end of the initial hearing, the judge decides on the deadline for closing the investigation. The complementary investigation cannot be carried out longer than six months if the crime’s penalty exceeds two years in prison. 15 These are defined by the percentage of population that speaks an indigenous language, see Serrano Carreto, 2006. 16 Which “contents that as gender inequality decreases, men might feel vulnerable by women’s increased status in society (e.g. in political, educational, economic, and legal spheres) and gender-based violence against women (including female homicide and feminicides) might increase” (Frías, 2021: 6). 17 Descendants of African slaves in Mexico. 18 For more on the security strategies to combat drug violence in Mexico, see Rosen and Zepeda Martínez, 2015. 19 Data can be accessed at www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=174IjBzP-fl_6wpRHg5pkGSj2egE&l l=20.521845000000017%2C-100.813961&z=8. 20 Mexican genre of sensationalist journalism that chronicles violence and crime, often cheaply printed.

References Animal Político. (2018). Solving a murder in Mexico is the exception, not the rule: It would take 124 years to solve all the murder cases. www.animalpolitico.com/kill-murder-mexico/homicides-unpunished-mexico.php Araiza Díaz, A., Vargas Martínez, F. C., Medécigo Daniel, U., Araiza Díaz, A., Vargas Martínez, F. C., & Medécigo Daniel, U. (2020). La tipificación del feminicidio en México. Un diálogo entre argumentos sociológicos y jurídicos. Revista interdisciplinaria de estudios de género de El Colegio de México, 6. https://doi. org/10.24201/reg.v6i0.468 Atencio, G. (2013). Feminicidio. FIBGAR and CATARATA. Castañeda Salgado, M. P. (2016). Feminicide in Mexico: An approach through academic, activist and artistic work. Current Sociology, 64(7), 1054–1070. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392116637894 Data Cívica. (2019). Claves para entender y prevenir los asesinatos de mujeres en México. Data Cívica. Data Cívica. (2021). The importance of adequate data policies for femicides: Examples from Mexico.Brief submitted to the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences. www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/ Documents/Issues/Women/SR/Femicide/2021-submissions/CSOs/mexico-data-civica.pdf Data Cívica, & Intersecta. (2021). The importance of adequate data policies for femicides. Examples from Mexico. Brief submitted to the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences. https://www.ohchr.org/sites/ default/files/Documents/Issues/Women/SR/Femicide/2021-submissions/CSOs/mexico-data-civica.pdf Data Cívica, & Intersecta. (2022). Datos para la Vida. https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/media.datacivica. org/assets/pdf/InformeDatosParaLaVida2022.pdf D’Ignazio, C., Cruxen, I., Suárez Val, H., Martínez Cuba, Á., García Montes, M., Fumega, S., Suresh, H., & So, W. (2022). Feminicide and counterdata production: Activist efforts to monitor and challenge genderrelated violence. Patterns, 3(1001530). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2022.100530 Elizondo, S. (2021, July 14). Sobre la tipificación de feminicidio en las entidades federativas en México. Derecho en Acción. https://derechoenaccion.cide.edu/sobre-la-tipificacion-de-feminicidio-en-las-entidades-federativas-en-mexico/ Emerson, R. G. (2019). Necropolitics: Living death in Mexico. Springer Science+Business Media. FLACSO (Director). (2015, October 23). Feminicidio: Conversatorio con Marcela Lagarde. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=f3jsrOQYVKE&ab_channel=FLACSOEcuador Frías, S. M. (2021). Femicide and feminicide in Mexico. Patterns and trends in indigenous and non-indigenous regions. Feminist Crimininology. https://doi.org/10.1177/15570851211029377 García-Del Moral, P. (2016). Transforming feminicidio: Framing, institutionalization and social change. Current Sociology, 64(7), 1017–1035. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392115618731 García-Del Moral, P., & Neumann, P. (2019). The Making and Unmaking of Feminicidio/Femicidio Laws in Mexico and Nicaragua. Law & Society Review, 53(2), 452–486. https://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12380

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Saide Mobayed Vega et al. Gaspar de Alba, A., & Guzmán, G. (Eds.). (2010). Making a killing: Femicide, free trade, and la frontera (1st ed). University of Texas Press. González, J. (2022, May 26). En CDMX, 63% de feminicidios fueron catalogados como suicidios en 2018: Sayuri Herrera. Contralínea. https://contralinea.com.mx/interno/semana/en-cdmx-63-defeminicidios-fueron-catalogados-como-suicidios-en-2018-sayuri-herrera/ Incháustegui, T. (2014). Sociología y política del feminicidio. Algunas claves interpretativas a partir de caso mexicano. Revista Sociedade e Estado, 29(2), 373–400. INEGI. (2021). Encuesta Nacional de Victimización y Percepción sobre Seguridad Pública (ENVIPE). https://www. inegi.org.mx/contenidos/programas/envipe/2021/doc/envipe2021_presentacion_nacional.pdf INEGI. (2022). Defunciones por Homicidio de Enero a Junio de 2021 (Preliminar). Comunicado de Prensa, NÚM. 27/22. Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). (2009). González et al. (“Cotton Field”) vs. Mexico. Laporta, E. (2015). El feminicidio como categoría jurídica: De la regulación en América Latina a su inclusión en España. Catarata, 163–193. Le Clrecq Ortega, J. A., & Rodríguez Sánchez Lara, G. (2020). Global Impunity Index 2020. UDLAP. Leyva, E. V. (2017). El mosaico legal del feminicidio en México. Nexos. https://eljuegodelacorte.nexos.com. mx/el-mosaico-legal-del-feminicidio-en-mexico/ Medina-Vicent, M. (2015). Feminicidio. De la categoría político-jurídica a la justicia universal, de Graciela Atencio (Ed.). Nomadías, 20. https://nomadias.uchile.cl/index.php/NO/article/view/39327 Meegan, J. (2016, June 3). Gonzalez, Monreal and Monarrez (“Cotton Field”) vs. Mexico. Tackling Violence against Women. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/vaw/landmark-cases/a-z-of-cases/gonzalez-et-al-v-mexico/ Mendoza, E. F. O. (2019). Las Madres de Chihuahua: Maternal Activism, Public Disclosure, and the Politics of Visibility. New Political Science, 41(2), 211–233. México Evalúa, & Friedrich Naumann Stiftung México. (2018). Hallazgos 2018. Seguimiento y evaluación del sistema de justicia penal en México. https://www.mexicoevalua.org/hallazgos-2018-seguimientoevaluacion-del-sistema-justicia-penal-en-mexico/ Monárrez Fragoso, J. (2009). Trama de una injusticia: Feminicidio sexual sistémico en Ciudad Juárez. Colegio de la Frontera Norte. Monárrez Fragoso, J. (2010). The Victims of the Ciudad Juárez Feminicide. In Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas (pp. 59–69). Duke University Press. Monárrez Fragoso, J. E. (2019). Feminicidio sexual sistémico: Impunidad histórica constante en Ciudad Juárez, víctimas y perpetradores. Estado & comunes, revista de políticas y problemas públicos, 1(8). https://doi. org/10.37228/estado_comunes.v1.n8.2019.99 Organization of the American States (OAS). (1994). Inter-American convention on the prevention, punishment, and eradication of violence against women (the Convention of Belém do Pará). Radford, J., & Russell, D. E. (1992). Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing. Open University Press. Ravelo Blancas, P. (2004). Entre las protestas callejeras y las acciones internacionales. Diez años de activismo por la justicia social en Ciudad Juárez. El Cotidiano, 19(125), 13. Rosen, J. D., & Zepeda Martínez, R. (2015). The War on drugs in Mexico: A Lost War. Revista Reflexiones, 94(1), 153–168. www.scielo.sa.cr/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S1659-28592015000100153&lng=e n&nrm=iso&tlng=es Russell, D. (2011, December). The Origin & Importance of the Term Femicide. Segato, L. R. (2014). Las nuevas formas de la guerra y el cuerpo de las mujeres (1st edition). Pez en el árbol. SEGOB, INMUJERES, & ONUMUJERES. (2016). La Violencia Feminicida en México: Aproximaciones y Tendencias 1985–2016. SEGOB, INMUJERES Y ONUMUJERES. Serrano Carreto, E. (2006). Regiones Indígenas de México. Ciudad de México: CDI. Spinelli, B. (2011). Femicide and feminicide in Europe. Gender-motivated killings of women as a result of intimate partner violence. [Expert paper]. UN Expert group meeting on gender-motivated killings of women. Threadcraft, S. (2017). North American Necropolitics and Gender: On #BlackLivesMatter and Black Femicide. South Atlantic Quarterly, 116(3), 553–579. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-3961483 Torreblanca, C., & Merino, P. (2017). Un propuesta para contar feminicidios en México. Animal Político, (28 Noviembre). https://www.animalpolitico.com/analisis/organizaciones/el-foco/una-propuesta-para-contarfeminicidios-en-mexico Trejo, G., & Ley, S. (2020). Votes, Drugs, and Violence: The Political Logic of Criminal Wars in Mexico. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108894807 UN General Assembly. (1979). Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW).

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Feminicide in Mexico Valdivia, M., Castro, R., & Rodríguez Luna, I. (2020). Análisis espacial de la dinámica de la tasa de homicidios por sexo y feminicidios en México (2001–2017). In R. Castro & F. Ríquer (Eds.), Violencia contra mujeres. Sobre el difícil diálogo entre cifras y acciones de gobierno (pp. 47–100). CRIM-UNAM. Walby, S. (2005). Improving the statistics on violence against women. Statistical Journal of the United Nations, ECE 22, 193–216. Wright, M. W. (2011). Necropolitics, Narcopolitics, and Femicide: Gendered Violence on the Mexico-U.S. Border. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 36(3), 707–731. https://doi.org/10.1086/657496

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20 FEMICIDE IN PALESTINIAN SOCIETY Rafah Anabtawi, Iman Jabbour and Abeer Baker

Introduction The chapter uses the term “femicide” to refer to gender-related killing of women because they are women (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2014), whether the perpetrator was an intimate partner, a family member or a stranger. By doing so, it seeks to highlight the domination of men over women, emphasise the current power relations in society between men and women, and illustrate the interrelationship between cultural norms and the use of violence to dominate women (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2014). The social problem of femicide has recently increased among Palestinians in Israel, who constitute about 21% of Israeli citizens, 49.4% of whom are women, while 50.6% are men (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2019). In 2015–2020, a yearly average of 12 Palestinian women were killed by men. Most of the perpetrators were their partners, former partners, or other male relatives, although in a few cases the perpetrators were strangers.1 In June 2021, the state comptroller in Israel issued a report accusing the authorities of failing to prevent domestic violence and femicide (Englman, 2021). According to the report, Palestinian women in Israel comprise 40% of the total women who stay in shelters for battered women, double of their percentage of the Israeli population, and 39% of femicide cases happened in the non-Jewish population. Despite these data, there is a lack of available places for Arabic speakers in shelters, especially in southern Israel (Englman). Data also indicate a sharp rise in homicide cases in general in Palestinian society in Israel. From 2000 to 2017, the 1,180 Palestinian victims comprised 67% of the total murder victims in Israel over the same period; as of 2017, 85% of these cases had not been resolved (Abu Al-Halawa, 2017). The authorities’ failure to prevent murder cases and to prosecute the perpetrators highlights the need both to understand the social aspect of femicide and to hold the law enforcement authorities accountable to the public. The next section will concisely review relevant literature on femicide, especially in Palestinian society, and the subsequent sections will focus on the social and legal aspects of femicide, in addition to the media coverage of the phenomenon in local Arab media.

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Literature Review Femicide in Palestinian Society in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) “Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women” (1993) called on governments to “promote research, collect data and compile statistics, especially concerning domestic violence.” However, investigations usually focus on descriptive information about the victim and the crime, without acknowledging environmental factors which facilitate femicide. Such factors include the conservative and patriarchal nature of Palestinian society in which extended family, religious, and social institutions prefer to deal with violence between spouses or family members as a private family issue without outside intervention (Haj-Yahia, 2005). When femicide is viewed as a familial issue, Palestinian society sometimes justifies femicide as an “honour killing.” This term reflects a patriarchal hierarchy whereby the male relatives have the ultimate say regarding family matters and the intimate aspects of the lives of the females (de Jong, 2014). While social factors such as socio-economic status and rapid modernisation can affect the prevalence of femicide (Dayan, 2019), the phenomenon occurs to women across diverse social statuses in Palestinian society (WAFA, n.d.). This demographic diversity of victimisation is reflective of a sexist and misogynistic societal system, whereby femicide is not perceived as a threat to society’s fabric but as an outcome of society’s norms (Ruggi, 1998). Controlling women’s sexuality with violence is seen as “family business” to protect the reputation, virtue, and unity of the family, which takes on particular importance as the only long-lasting institution in Palestinian history (Ruggi). This patriarchal nature of Palestinian society intersects with the political situation (Daher-Nashif, 2022), wherein the Israeli political system seeks to preserve the social structure by cooperating with and thereby strengthening the conservative groups in Palestinian society (Shalhoub-Kervorkian and Daher-Nashif, 2013) and ignoring women’s complaints, as detailed in the next sections. Therefore, an intersectional lens between the political and the patriarchal power structure is a key analytical tool to understanding femicide in Palestinian society both in Israel and the OPT. While the current state of colonisation manifests differently across the political contexts of Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel, the overall Israeli system of oppression significantly affects the experiences of Palestinians (Shalhoub-Kervorkian and Daher-Nashif, 2013). Hence, Palestinian women face a multitude of oppressive systems that they must navigate on a daily basis: the patriarchal (Arab) system and living as an oppressed ethnic group under the Israeli occupation (Weinglass, 2015). This combination of the patriarchy and the occupation expands the gender gap between Palestinian men and women. The gap is especially strengthened by the aspect of the occupation that suppresses economic development and creates poverty (Gibbs et al., 2019)

Femicide and the Media Relatively little research has been devoted to the media coverage of femicide (Richards et al., 2013); however, existing studies have found that police and other officials are the primary sources in news articles (Sela-Shayovitz, 2018; Bullock and Cubert, 2002) and are most often quoted. Furthermore, research indicates that intimate femicide is typically framed as a private or individual problem rather than a societal problem (Brodie, 2019); thus, it is perceived as a personal tragedy that does not need a social-political response.

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We have not found research that focused on media coverage of femicide in the Palestinian society; however, a study published on the representation of women in Arab newspapers in Israel (Bsoul and Jamal, 2011) showed only about 8% of sampled articles adopted a feminist discourse. Moreover, less than half of sampled articles that reported on violence against women dealt with the issue from a feminist perspective with a focus on gender inequality. The same research concluded that the dominant discourse in Arab newspapers in Israel does not adopt the value of equality between men and women but rather reflects existing social patterns of inequality and discrimination. Editorial policy also does not substantially cover women’s issues, including controversial societal issues such as violence against women (Bsoul & Jamal).

Methodology This chapter examined the three aforementioned aspects – the perspective of victims’ families and friends, media coverage, and the role of law enforcement institutions – in order to deeply comprehend the factors that influence gender-based crimes in Palestinian society. The methodology and the process of data collection differed in each of the three aspects; each was considered separately and consisted respectively of interviews with victims’ families and friends, content analysis of news articles, and legal analysis of information that Kayan Feminist Organization (KFO) obtained from Israeli police in a freedom of information request, to better understand the role of the law enforcement institutions.

Perspectives of Victims’ Families and Friends To explore the perspective of the families of the victims and those close to them and to examine the social environment, including family and community life, the research used semi-structured interviews to allow for the collection of a myriad of voices and processing of complex personal narratives, including contested and oppositional views rather than fixed knowledge of the self and the world (Uribe-Jangbloed, 2014). A semi-structured interview is intended to gather information about people’s opinions, ideas, motivations, and experiences (Arksey and Knight, 1999). It is an open conversation that is based on key questions and enables interactions between people engaged in the conversation (Arksey & Knight). In feminist research, the method was designed to ensure an understanding of the gendered experiences within social institutions and aims at changing sociopolitical contexts (Ropers-Huilman and Winters, 2011). The interviews were conducted with 22 relatives and friends of 14 women who were murdered between 2015 and 2020, in addition to five social workers who worked on the victims’ cases both before and after the femicide. The research included a diversity of cases; these included victims of intimate partner and familial violence, and two cases in which the perpetrators were strangers. Victims were also from different Palestinian cities from the northern, central, and southern districts of Israel. In the interviews, we addressed several factors related to the cases, including the victim’s life, relationships with her family, her marital life, and the involvement of official institutions with the victim and her family before and after the killing. The interviews sought to deeply understand the close environment of the victims, and explore perceptions. At the same time, the purpose of the following methodology of media content analysis was to understand what the media informs the audience about femicide in their localities, thereby exploring the wider environment and social perceptions about femicide.

Media Analysis The media analysis was conducted by employing a qualitative content analysis of all the texts of 215 news stories about the 16 femicide cases that were documented by KFO during the years 216

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2019–2020. Data for the study was obtained from five mainstream Arab news websites in Israel. Four of them (Sonara, Al-Arab, Panet, and Bokra) are commercial media and one (Arab 48) has a clear national-democratic agenda2. The websites’ archives are accessible for the last two years; thus, it was easy to access and search the news stories according to the victims’ names. Some of the femicide victims whose press coverage we analysed were victims whose families were also interviewed. Descriptive statistics about the 215 news stories were collected by classifying the website source, the age of the victim, the title, the coverage type (news, features, or interviews), the context, the background of the victim, the main sources of information, who was blamed, and the terms used to describe the victims. The news analysis aimed at further understanding femicide’s portrayal in local media and whether media, as agents of socialisation, preserve the dominant patriarchal discourse and reflect women’s status in society or, alternatively, deal with femicide as a social problem that warrants public concern.

The Role of Law Enforcement Institutions Simultaneously, since law enforcement institutions play a central role, KFO made a freedom of information request for the records of the police and the Ministry of Justice on the number of women murdered during the last ten years, the method of murder, the suspect or accused person, indictments, case files, any related judgements and sentences, protection orders that were issued for women, and police protocols for handling femicide cases. This methodological triangulation aimed to more deeply understand the role of the police and the Ministry of Justice in combating femicide and the causes of the prevalence of this phenomenon.

Femicide from the Perspective of the Victims’ Families and Friends The results of the study conducted by KFO revealed accounts, narratives, and testimonies of victims’ families and friends in several aspects. We will start with the interviewees’ perceptions of the victims. The accounts described the victims as almost perfect or ideal, optimistic, ambitious, capable of supporting those around them, patient, and very caring towards their husbands. In such cases, the families sympathised with the victim and reiterated that she performed her responsibilities as a mother and a wife to the fullest, therefore implying she should not have been exposed to violence, let alone death. On the other hand, some accounts did address a different aspect of the victim’s personality regarding her decisions, her physique and appearance, or her pursuit of work or school. In some interviewees’ accounts, women appeared as strong-willed individuals wanting to fulfil their potential. In these instances, families had different views; some appeared to imply that her lifestyle partially justified the violence, while others denounced the murder. Some expressed their reservations, criticising these characteristics as inconsistent with traditions and what was acceptable to the family. Others perceived these characteristics as positive and reaffirmed women’s right to decide on personal matters, such as outfits, education, or choice whether to work. For instance, one interviewee said about one of the victims: “She stopped dressing modestly and people did not look at her with respect anymore, even though she was an educated person” (Anabtawi et al., 2021: 28). Another family member said, “She wanted to work and be economically independent” (Anabtawi et al., p. 25). Finally, another interviewee said, “She decided to get a divorce and live on her own, and this [triggered] a problem with the family” (Anabtawi et al., p. 25). The study concluded that the families’ perceptions, therefore, have an impact on the relationship between the families and the victims. The nature of these relationships fluctuated between solidarity and confrontation. Some family members were sympathetic to the victim and condemned the violence inflicted on her, while other relatives blamed her and judged her behaviour or decisions as if she had brought the violence on herself. Regardless of how much support the victim had, nothing 217

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stopped the crime from happening and family members could not prevent the crime, regardless of whether their priority was saving their relative from a violent man or excusing the violence to prevent a divorce. Some accounts stated that the perpetrator’s violent personality in certain instances served as a deterrent against the family providing adequate protection to the victim and nudged families into taking a non-confrontational stance for fear of exacerbating the situation or becoming the target of violence themselves. Among the interviewees, some women also blamed the society and traditions that are lenient towards men and tolerate violence against women.

Public Institutions’ Role: Systemic Negligence, Inaction, and High Bureaucracy Victims’ families confirmed that there is a pattern of systemic negligence by the Israeli police when it comes to addressing violence against Palestinian women. They observed that the police do not do their job of combating crimes against women, such as providing precautionary protection for women, holding perpetrators accountable, prosecuting offenders, and bringing them to justice. The police failed to act even in cases when complaints were filed way before the murder took place. They also spoke of a lack of seriousness when investigating crimes after they occurred, which allowed the criminals to remain free. One of the victims’ sisters stated, “The victim approached the police several times and filed complaints against the husband, but the police ignored her complaints” (Anabtawi et al., 2021: 39). Some testimonies indicated the existence of a pattern of systemic discrimination based on nationality within the police department, which stems from the idea that violence and crimes against women are part of Palestinian culture and traditions. According to some testimonies, the police tried to persuade women who filed complaints to withdraw them and urged them to resort to asking family elders for help. This reality led to a lack of confidence in the police and its procedures to address violence and provide protection. Other testimonies addressed the social welfare office’s role in addressing violence. Most accounts confirmed that, in most femicide cases, the victims were known to social welfare offices. Their support focused mainly on providing financial support and/or arrangements for the children. In some instances, battered women’s complaints were not taken seriously, and no protection was provided. After the murder was committed, interviewees reported that social services only provided psychological support to the children immediately after the crime and no long-term programs were provided. Some social workers who worked with families and victims confirmed that their offices often experienced professional blunders when attempting to support and protect women due to bureaucratic barriers. One social worker complained that she was placed under temporary protection due to personal harassment by the family of the defendant for her support for the victim. This affected her ability to fully carry out her duties.

Femicide and the Media This part of the research presents the analysis of 215 news pieces covering 16 femicide cases occurred in the Palestinian society in Israel during 2019–2020 on five local news websites. The type of news coverage was divided into three styles composed of news reports (87%), human-interest stories (9%), and interviews with experts and activists (4%). Through the content analyses of these reports, we observed several patterns as outlined in the following section.

Information Sources Examination of the sources used by the Arab media showed that most of the news reports (62%) relied entirely or mostly on official sources, especially the police and paramedics. Only 8% of the 218

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reports included interviews with experts, leaders, and activist statements, such as from feminists. The remaining 30% of the reports relied on the victim’s family members, relatives, acquaintances, friends, and neighbours. Because news relied only on police sources, they excluded important contextual information, such as the victims’ past experiences of domestic violence. Except in the coverage of two cases, the news reports did not mention that the victim had filed a police complaint and was abused. However, data provided by the police to KFO recently reveals that 50–60% of the victims of femicide in 2019–2020 had submitted a complaint to the police before they were killed. The second most common source of information (30% of the news reports) was interviews with families or the victim’s neighbours, friends, and acquaintances. These stories also presented these crimes in a way that made them appear not to be preventable but rather as one personal story of a woman who “unfortunately” was subjected to a heinous crime. A few reports also used the phrase “the hand of fate” to describe the killing. These human-interest stories shed light on the suffering of the friends, families, and children of the victim but presented the situation as if the crime was an individual family problem and not a community problem needing solutions by combining the efforts of the community and officials. Interviews with friends and family members in these media articles included emotional details about the victim’s own story rather than details on the crime and actions taken by the police. For example, a victim’s brother said “What should I say? She was affectionate, loved everyone. We celebrated her birthday last week and everything was fine. Unfortunately, we lost her, she was our ‘flower’ ” (Haj Yahya, 2019). Another article about another victim reported, “[H]er friends told us she had a dream but the dream was evaporated, we cannot believe she is already dead” (Al-Ubra, 2019). In a similar vein, others argued, “[W]e feel the sadness in the family’s home . . . they cannot believe the tragedy” (“Qablawi’s murder in Turkey . . . ,” 2019). Other witness quotes about another woman stated [T]he neighbours said she was an orphan on her mother’s side; her mother was murdered 15 years ago. She tried to forget her mother’s killing and get out of grief and depression . . . we should have participated in her wedding party shortly, instead, we are attending her funeral. (“Diana Al-Asam, the 18-year-old bride . . . ,” 2019)

Who Is the Victim? Most of the reports did not give the reader any background about the victims except details such as name, age, and number of children, and their attributes are usually concerning others – for example, “mother,” “daughter,” “sister,” “the elderly woman,” or “the young woman” – in a way that deprived the victim of her own identity and humanity. There was an exception in two cases of young women who were killed by strangers, where it seems that their age, educational background, and outward appearance attracted press attention, and received broader coverage which addressed their dreams, ambitions and characteristics.

How Are News Contextualised? Most of the reports portrayed femicide as individual cases, not crimes that reflect a social phenomenon. However, the coverage in 21% of the reports was contextualised politically, by emphasising the state’s responsibility and the systematic discrimination against the Palestinian minority in Israel. These reports clearly blamed the state for not showing any interest in combating the crime in Palestinian towns and referred to the police’s failure to play its role. These reports also referenced the 219

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number of crimes in Palestinian society generally and the number of solved cases and convictions. Such a narrative can help the reader link femicide to the context of increased crime and state discrimination. However, this context does not include a feminist analysis that recognises the role of patriarchal values and gender inequality in Palestinian society. Only 5% of the reports carried a clear feminist analysis which treated femicide as being a result of power relations, inequalities, and social structure. Those reports used phrases like “the patriarchal mentality,” “women pay the price of their choices and the state’s inaction,” “we reject the blatant neglect and disregard of our lives,” and “we condemn the silence of society,” therefore providing context that points to a feminist discourse. These reports were developed based on either interviews with feminist activists and Palestinian leaders or through the publication of their data and statements on femicide.

Femicide and the Legal Context Although statistics indicate an increase in murders of Palestinian women by their husbands or relatives in the last decade3, there is little to no information on the legal accountability and prosecution of perpetrators. The investigation of femicide should not be limited to the social and political causes but should also include the role played by the police in Israel in exacerbating the problem.

Loss of Legal Protection for Murdered Women Israeli law guarantees several proactive legal protections to ensure women’s safety from recurring abuse. The most prominent is the protection court orders (Prevention of Family Violence Law, 1991) in cases where a family member has been assaulted by another family member or when a family member is threatened by another person. Protection orders can prevent the aggressor from communicating with, harassing, or approaching the location of the protected person. These can be enforced even in the aggressor’s private home. Once the protection order is issued, the court must inform the concerned authorities – namely, the police – of the issuance of the order. Violations of protection orders are considered a criminal misdemeanour according to the Israeli Penal Code (1977) and carry a maximum penalty of four years’ imprisonment. The police admitted during judicial proceedings4 against their performance that they did not have information about the number of protection orders because their interventions only take place after a violation of the order. This confession proves, in practice, that police see their central role to be detecting the offender after an offense has happened rather than providing proactive protection for women’s safety. Violation can occur whenever the aggressor communicates with the woman, harasses her, or gets close to her place of residence. The police’s admission that they only act after a violation of the protection order highlights the ineffectiveness of the law, which obliges the courts to inform the police of the decision to issue a protection order (Prevention of Family Violence Law, 1991) The information that the police were legally obliged to disclose to KFO through its freedom of information request showed that more than one-third of the women killed from 2015 to 2018 had submitted a complaint to the police about violence before their murders. Increased complaints submitted to the police were documented, reaching 50% of cases in 2019 and 60% in 20205, but this did not save women from femicide. It did highlight the failure of the police in offering protection.

Absence of the Legal Role of the Families of the Victimised Women When a crime occurs, the police are obliged to open an investigation regardless of whether the victim or the family file a complaint. If the police find evidence that could result in a criminal murder 220

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conviction, an indictment is filed against the perpetrator. The parties in such cases are the state, represented by the general prosecution, and the defendant, represented by an attorney. Ostensibly, the state and the accused are the central players. However, the legal system gives the parties endless possibilities to change the course of the case, whether by amending the indictment or agreeing to a reduced sentence. Over the last two decades, and since the enactment of the Rights of Victims of Crime Law (2001), the victim of a crime also has a role in the proceedings. This same law, in the case the victim is dead, gives the victim’s family the right to obtain information about the case and express their position on issues related to the case such as on any plea deals, early releases, or pardons. Despite this, no information is available about legal cases against perpetrators of femicides. This may be due to the lack of public activism by most of the victims’ families and/or the failure of the police or the public prosecutor to independently disclose any information about these cases. The lack of transparency led KFO to use legal methods to demand the disclosure of information related to femicide cases in recent years. The police and the public prosecutor based their refusal to disclose information on two central justifications: (1) the victim’s right to privacy and (2) the human resources and time needed to search for the required information. The prosecution’s response to KFO’s petition proved that, in reality, the claim of combating violence against Palestinian women has not translated into any serious practical steps, not even collecting information related to murder cases, let alone drawing the necessary lessons to improve responses. This lack of transparency prevents civil society institutions from investigating the reasons behind the exacerbation of the phenomenon of femicide and from analysing the underlying causes of law enforcement’s failure to deter crime.

Discussion and Conclusion Within the three aspects analysed for this chapter – the perspective of the victims’ families, media coverage, and law enforcement institutions – this research reflects the complex reality experienced by Palestinian women in Israel in relation to the violence perpetrated against them. The analysis of the interviews with victims’ families indicated that most of the testimonies linked the victim’s attributes to her killing (i.e. violence and murder) rather than placing the sole blame on the perpetrator and the patriarchal society. For example, some victims were described with very positive characteristics, and accordingly, the murder was perceived as unjustified. Other victims were described as behaving in ways the family could not accept, which indicated, albeit implicitly, that the victim was partially to blame. Despite the pain caused to the family by the loss of their loved one, these results indicate the domination of patriarchal culture. Moreover, the families’ testimonies indicated that they did not take effective and serious steps to stop the violence, although sometimes this was the result of their own fear of the abuser. Other important themes that the families focused on were the political context, especially when it came to the fear of confronting the violent man, due to the lack of confidence that the family and the victim had in Israeli police. This fear is based on the reality that the offender is often left at large after committing the crime and the failure to investigate leads such that women and families lose even more confidence in law enforcement. Between 2015 and 2020, only 34 indictments were made in 73 cases of femicide in Palestinian society6. A survey conducted in 2021 indicated that only 13% of Arabs (i.e. Palestinians) surveyed trusted police institutions as opposed to 42% of the Jewish people surveyed (Hermann, et al., 2021)7. These results are consistent with the conclusions reached by KFO, based on the correspondence with the Israeli police that highlights that the police do not have information about the protection orders, which means that they are not able to protect women for whom protection orders have been issued. The police only respond after a murder has occurred. Information revealed by the police 221

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confirms the inability or unwillingness to protect women and shows that during the last three years around 50–60% of the victims filed a complaint with the police before they were killed, meaning that they were known to the police who were subsequently unable to prevent their killing8. The most important results of the analysis of media coverage showed that most of the media reports relied solely or mainly on the police and that it was not common for the media to take initiative to obtain information from other sources. This may indicate that the media do not handle the issue of femicide as a priority that deserves to be independently investigated, including covering the background of each story. The analysis also indicated that 14 of the 16 analysed media coverage of victims treated them only as victims of crimes rather than as human beings, as the media did not provide the reader with information about the victims and their background. The use of different labels when talking about the victim, such as “the killed woman,” “the betrayed,” “the victim,” and “the deceased,” indicated the lack of clear editorial policies regarding handling femicide crimes. The results of the research also indicated that the reports that placed the issue of femicide in the context of feminism and male domination were all based on interviews with activists from the feminist field, Palestinian leaders, and/or Palestinian members in the Israeli parliament, which shows this contextualisation is not part of the media’s agenda. This means that the continued efforts of feminist institutions to cooperate with the media can contribute to the dissemination of feminist discourse in the public sphere. The specificity of this research, then, lies in its attempt to investigate the roles of the most important circles that affect the phenomenon of femicide. It also contributes to the feminist literature in Palestinian society and clarifies the collective responsibility of society, the media, and law enforcement institutions to eliminate femicide. KFO’s approach to holding the police and the Ministry of Justice accountable aims at putting an end to their impunity. Increasing transparency in the actions of the police and the Public Prosecution Office will contribute to media coverage that provides more information about each murder. The continued work of feminists to share their perspectives with media professionals and raise awareness about femicide will also contribute to covering these crimes with gender sensitivity. Finally, these combined efforts may also raise awareness in society about the danger of violence against women and femicide as a societal phenomenon that requires changing the prevailing patriarchal values in society.

Notes 1   Police data that were provided to KFO. For further information, see this link: https://bit.ly/3OMqktI. 2  According to a conversation with the editor in chief of the Arab 48 website. 3 According to the database of KFO, the monthly average of femicides in the last decade was 11, while the monthly average in the previous decade before that was 8. 4  Administrative Petition 20-12-56304 (Jerusalem District Court) by KFO against the Israel police and the Ministry of Justice (under consideration). For further information, read the press release: https://bit. ly/3OMqktI. The response of the Israeli police is available here (Hebrew): https://bit.ly/3OZsc2J. 5 The information is derived from the Public Prosecution’s response to the petition of KFO against the police (Administrative Petition 20-12-56305), which was submitted to the court on 20 April 2021. 6 According to data that KFO received from the police. More information is available in the press release: https://bit.ly/3zkSVAL. 7 A research study conducted by the Institute for Zionist Strategies (Nahshon, 2018) showed that between 2003 and 2017, public trust in the institution of the police among Palestinian citizens declined, and in 2017, 61% of them were not satisfied with the police activity in their towns, as opposed to 54% of Jewish citizens who said the same. The research reviewed surveys about public trust in Israeli police among Palestinians over 15 years of age. A summary in English is available in this link: www.izs.org.il/2019/01/law-enforcement-inthe-arab-sector/. For the full report (Hebrew), see this link: https://bit.ly/3SbMubT. 8  For further information, see this link: https://bit.ly/3OMqktI.

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21 FEMICIDE IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION Ksenia Meshkova and Lyubava Malysheva

Introduction An article outlining the work of activists fighting domestic violence in the Russian Federation, published by Time magazine in March 2021, argues that “an estimated 14,000 women in the country die as a result of domestic violence each year – more than nine times the number of deaths in the U.S., though Russia’s population is less than half the size” (Roache, 2021). This number – 14,000 women dying from domestic violence in Russia yearly – seems to be moving from publication to publication in the past 25 years: it appears not only in journalistic articles, but in reports of the Russian Federation to CEDAW (CEDAW, 1999), studies done by Amnesty International (AI, 2005), and reports by Human Rights Watch (HRW, 1997). But where does this number come from? It seems that it first appears in Russia’s report to CEDAW in 1994. In the absence of official statistics on the matter, it seems that the authors of the CEDAW report took the number of homicides for the year 1993 and divided it by two, assuming that the resulting number represents the number of murdered women and, therefore, the victims of intimate partner femicides (Porotikova, 2016). Even though it is clear today that this methodology is flawed, this number still appears in various publications. In the absence of reliable official statistics, it is hard to get data that can be trusted. This chapter presents the work of the independent collective Femicid.net and their attempt to create a database of femicide cases based on news reports from the press. The collective uses the following working definition of femicide, which will apply to this chapter: “Femicide is the murder of women on the basis of hatred of women, committed by men or in patriarchal interests with the connivance of the state.” Even though the majority of femicides recorded in the database are intimate partner femicides, stranger femicides are also included into this definition. Following Marcela Lagarde y De Los Ríos (Lagarde y De Los Ríos, 2010) and her understanding of femicide, it is important for the collective to highlight the role of the Russian state’s failure to prevent and react adequately to the crime of femicide. The chapter will begin with the presentation of the background information on domestic violence and femicide in Russia. The legal situation, data from official statistics and prevalence studies, as well as work of help system for the victim-survivors of domestic violence will be discussed here. In the second part of the chapter, the data collected by the collective Femicid.net will be presented and discussed. We will start by explaining the origin and goals of the collective, then talk about the methodology of data collection, and present the results of the collective’s work so far. Finally, in the outlook, we will present further projects and plans for the collective.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-25

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Russian Context Legal Situation To this day, the Russian Federation does not have any specific legislation on violence against women, femicide, or domestic violence (Duban, 2020: 35). Multiple attempts to introduce such legislation have been made in the past decades, but so far all have failed. Acts of violence that are committed within the family are prosecuted under the Russian Criminal Code (RCC) and the Russian Code of Administrative Offences (RCAO). The relevant articles in the RCC cover offences against the person, including murder and manslaughter (Articles 105 to 109), bodily harm of various degrees (Articles 111, 112, and 115), “systematic psychological suffering” (Article 117), and threats (Article 119). The punishment for different forms of violence is based on the degree of physical harm victims suffer as a result. While grievous or medium bodily harm is subject to public prosecution, “minor bodily harm” is prosecuted privately, meaning that the victim must collect evidence, bring charges before a court, and deal with the pursuance of criminal proceedings. Other forms of assault that do not result in bodily harm are treated as “battery” under Article 116. This article was amended several times in 2016 and 2017, and as a result, battery was decriminalised, taken out of RCC and included in the Russian Code of Administrative Offences. According to the current legal situation, all instances of simple battery that occur no more than once a year are classified as administrative offences and punished with fines, 10 to 15 days in jail, or community service. Only instances of aggravated battery or repeated battery are considered criminal offences (HRW, 2018: 33). The act of decriminalisation that was introduced as an attempt to lighten the load of work on courts has fostered a sense of impunity for abusers, weakened protections for victims, and created “new procedural shortcomings” in the prosecution of domestic violence (HRW, 2018: 34). Moreover, the fact that battery within relationships is punished with fines means that such money comes from the family budget and punishes not only the perpetrator but also the victim. As there are no legal definitions in Russia of femicide or domestic violence or partner violence, they are not recognised as aggravating factors for other offences (Duban, 2020: 28). The complex dynamics of domestic violence cases are not addressed by the existing legal framework – in particular, the circumstances of this type of violence, such as the fact that the victim(s) and perpetrator often share a living space. Moreover, many types of violence (e.g. stalking) are not addressed by the existing legal framework (Duban, 2020: 29). Even though Russia has not signed the Istanbul Convention, it has ratified several instruments obliging it to strengthen women’s rights and support victims of gender-based violence. Given that Russia is a member of the Council of Europe1, it must follow the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Furthermore, the European Court of the Human Rights (ECtHR) sees violence against women and domestic violence as forms of discrimination against women (Duban, 2020: 14). Therefore, in cases where the state failed to protect women from violence, Russian women have the right to sue the state2. According to the judgement of the ECtHR, Russia’s legal framework does not meet the obligations set by the Convention (ECtHR, 2021), ruling that “the applicants’ cases demonstrated that the authorities had not considered domestic violence as warranting intervention” (ECtHR, 2021: 3) and “the authorities had eschewed instituting criminal proceedings and had ended their enquiries on the basis of hasty or ill-founded conclusions” (ECtHR, 2021: 3). Further, Russia faces obligations to improve the state response to violence against women set by CEDAW and the Beijing Declaration (Duban, 2020).

Domestic Violence and Femicide in Russia: Official Statistics and Data from Prevalence Studies and NGOs Unfortunately, administrative statistics on both domestic violence and femicide in Russia are scattered and unreliable (Duban, 2020). First, as previously admitted by researchers (e.g. Yumaguzin, 2011; Semenova et al., 2017) and government officials (Ivanova et al., 2013), Russian homicide 226

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statistics do not represent the whole picture of reality. In the overall causes of death statistics published by the Russian Statistical Agency (Rosstat), “external causes of death” are the third most popular category. This category includes homicides, suicides, traffic accidents of various kinds, and so-called events of undetermined intent (e.g. poisonings, accidents caused by firearms, accidental falls). Causes of death are determined by legal and medical experts, and in cases where deaths cannot be declared with certainty as homicide or suicide, other categories for events of undetermined intent are noted as causes of death. According to the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, “the actual number of deaths from homicide among those aged 20–29 exceeds the official statistics by 41.4% for men, and 31.8% among women; the rates in both groups double in the age range of 40–59” (Yumaguzin and Vinnik, 2017: 97). Homicide statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs are lower still than the statistics of Rosstat, because “(a) medical examiner is not able to report a homicide to the Ministry if no investigation has been conducted on the case” (Yumaguzin and Vinnik, 2017: 97). Moreover, these homicide statistics exclude involuntary manslaughter (Articles 108, 109, and 111, Part 4 of the Russian Criminal Code) (Yumaguzin and Vinnik, 2017: 97). Since there is currently no legislation and no legal definition of domestic violence, data on this crime is not gathered systematically. However, Rosstat publishes data on the numbers of violent actions in the family and the numbers of victims of violent actions in the family3. The Ministry of Internal Affairs is named as the source of this data. It is, however, unclear how exactly this data is gathered. The total number of victims of this crime in 2021 was 32,538, of which 22,615 (69.5%) were women. Of these, 13,966 violent actions were committed among spouses; the number of victims that were women was 11,728 (83.98%)4. According to the publication by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in May 2019, violence happens in 25% of all families in Russia, and a third of all murders are committed in families (Valyaev, 2019). The publication claims that the fact that beatings were removed from the Russian Criminal Code and became a part of the Russian Code of Administrative Offences brings a positive change. These crimes are now directly registered by local police officers, who can then work with perpetrators and prevent more serious crimes. Thus, more than 88,000 persons were registered as perpetrators of domestic violence on 1 January 2019 (Valyaev, 2019). The number of beatings in 2018, registered by police officers, was 224,000 (Valyaev, 2019). Data from prevalence studies suggest that the scope of domestic violence is much higher, however. According to the study conducted by the MSU Women’s Council in 2002, almost 80% of women have experienced some form of psychological violence; 54%, at least one type of economic violence; 23%, some form of sexual violence (including rape and forced sex); 50%, physical violence in their current relationships at least once (Gorshkova and Shurygina, 2003). Only a small percentage of the study’s participants reported searching for help after experiencing partnership violence: 5% reported to a medical professional, 19% submitted a complaint to the police, and 1% accessed a crisis centre (Gorshkova and Shurygina, 2003: 6). Another representative study assessing the prevalence of marital violence titled “Reproductive health of Russian population in 2011” was conducted by Rosstat with the support of the United Nations. The lifetime prevalence of violence among study participants who were married at least once was as follows: 20% disclosed experiences of physical violence, 38% verbal violence, and 4% sexual violence (Rosstat, 2012: 53). On par with the 2002 study, only a small percentage of women reported seeking help after having experienced marital violence: just 10% of help-seeking women went to the police, 6% to a medical facility, and 2% addressed legal professionals (Rosstat, 2012: 53). An attempt to ascertain the number of femicides in Russia was made by the Consortium of Women’s Non-Governmental Organizations in 2021. The team of the project, titled Algorithm Sveta, developed an algorithm to analyse court case files available online (Rusova and Graf, 2021). This involved taking all available case files for paragraphs 105 “Murder,” 107 “Murder in affective state,” and 111 “Deliberate infliction of gross bodily harm” of the Criminal Codex from the online archives of Moscow City Court and the state court database called Justice. Available case files were 227

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coded with keywords and cases mentioning domestic violence (e.g. violence from partners, expartners, or relatives) were marked (Rusova and Graf, 2021). According to the results of the project, during the period from 2011 to 2019, 65.8% (12,209 out of 18,547) of women killed were victims of domestic violence. The perpetrators were their partners (in 81% of the cases) or relatives (19%) (Rusova and Graf, 2021). These numbers remain stable throughout the years, increasing or decreasing by just 1%. Between 2011 and 2019, 9,868 women were killed by their partners. This is 53% of all analysed cases of murdered women and 12% of all published cases of all homicides (Rusova and Graf, 2021). It should be noted that not all the prosecuted cases are available online; therefore, the numbers do not fully illustrate the reality.

Help System According to the 2021 WAVE Report, Russia does not meet any of the standards for help systems for victim-survivors of violence set by the Council of Europe and the Istanbul Convention (IC). The report claims there are 12 women-only shelters and 98 shelters altogether, with 448 available beds (WAVE, 2021: 151). That means that 97% of the beds required by the standards of the IC are currently non-existent. There are around 150 women’s centres providing support for women in “difficult life situations,” including domestic violence. However, as these centres deal with a variety of issues (such as HIV, drug use, and poverty), and only some of them specialise in partner or domestic violence, their help is insufficient and often not particularly beneficial (HRW, 2018). A study conducted by Human Rights Watch (HRW) found that multiple problems exist with the shelter system (HRW, 2018). For example, the process of getting a place in a state shelter is complicated. For the state shelters, women need to provide a list of documents, including a permanent registration (propiska) at the town where the shelter is located. This is problematic for several reasons. First, this registration is normally only possible for those who own the flat they live in, making the shelters inaccessible for immigrants and women currently living in a different town. Since there are few shelters and they are only located in bigger towns, it means that shelters are even more inaccessible for women living in rural regions. Further, it becomes problematic for women wishing to escape their abusers and move to a different town. Second, HRW details cases where women were required to provide a decision of the court or a copy of police reports proving that they are really suffering from domestic violence or to present their case to a commission, which meant waiting several weeks before they could get a place (HRW, 2018). More than 50% of those who try getting a place in a state shelter end up getting rejected (HRW, 2018: 73). Moreover, state shelters often do not have an understanding of what domestic violence is and try to “reunite” the families, which can be lethal for women suffering from violence (HRW, 2018). Even though nongovernmental centres and shelters do not have such requirements, they are generally less known to the public and, therefore, less accessible for women searching for protection. In addition, nongovernmental centres are dependent on foreign grants and private donations, which makes their situation precarious (HRW, 2018).

Project Femicid.net and Its Femicide Data Collection Femicid.net (НЕТ ФЕМИЦИДУ, NO TO FEMICIDE) is one of the projects of the Women’s Museum in Moscow5. To our knowledge, the collective Femicid.net was the first project in Russia specifically dedicated to the issue of femicide. It came to the attention of its founding members that even though other countries had databases on femicide cases (such as the EURES6 database in Italy) and movements specifically dealing with the issue of femicide (such as #NiUnaMenos in Latin America), such groups and databases, whether academic or grassroots, did not exist in Russia. In the absence of complete and factual information on femicide and because of the refusal of Russian 228

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authorities to acknowledge it as a problem, such a project was urgently needed. Thus, in 2019, the project began to collect news reports about femicide and publish data in the public domain. To this day, despite various feminist groups regularly raising the issues of women murdered by their intimate partners and of the subsequent inadequate response of Russian authorities, the term “domestic violence” is still used, not “femicide.”

Methodology of the Project In order to collect news reports on femicide, researchers of the project have created 38 different alerts for femicide-related news. The list of alerts includes phrases such as “killing of a girl,” “killing of a female partner,” “death from home violence,” “senior female murder,” and “killed his female neighbour,” among others. The project includes data from 84 regions of Russia7. Every day, the members of the collective check the alerts and read, systematise, and enter around 200 articles into a Google spreadsheet. During the research process, new data is constantly added and updated, including those from previous years. The categories in the Google spreadsheet include the ages and occupations of the victim(s) and perpetrator(s), the victim-perpetrator relationship, the circumstances of the crime, and the course of the investigation and its outcome. The information is checked on the Prosecutor’s Office websites, courts and investigative committees, and news sites usually excluded from the automated results found by search engines. The resulting processed data allows project researchers to gather information about individual cases and to create reports on the overall situation regarding femicide in Russia. One important methodological limitation is that the news coverage does not span the entire range of femicide cases. Some cases do not make the press at all and are, therefore, missing from the database. Since many cases are reported with anonymity (without revealing the name of either victim or perpetrator), there is also a high probability that some cases may be entered twice. Moreover, some cases get more coverage than others, leading to variations in the information available for each case.

Discussion Overall Data In this section, we will present some data collected by the project Femicid.net. We start with the overall number of femicides per year and then move to the particularities of the data on femicide victims – namely, age range, and socio-economic status. Thereafter, we will talk about details of the femicide cases included in the databases, discussing the relationships between the victim(s) and perpetrator(s) and the methods and locations of femicides, as well as data on complex cases. Finally, we will discuss available data on the perpetrators of femicide, including age, socio-economic status, health conditions, and possible motives for the killings, including the sentences received for committing these femicides. All information presented here is drawn from the media coverage of femicide during the period 2019–2022. Many cases first become available to the public with a delay of one to two years, sometimes even longer. All data presented are as of 12 July 2022. Overall, the database contains information on 1,766 femicide cases for 2019, including 1,555 intimate femicide cases (murders committed by relatives, intimate partners, and acquaintances). In 2020, there were 1,705 femicide cases in the press, including 1,511 intimate femicides. For 2021, the numbers were 1,408 and 1,214, respectively. For the year 2022, 638 cases of femicide have so far been entered into the database. 229

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Victims of Femicide The database includes information on the age of murdered women and girls (see Table 21.1). Every year, girls between the ages of 0–6 and 7–18 are murdered by their relatives and partners: no age is safe for Russian females. Most women killed were between 36 and 50 years old (25.54% in 2019, 26.16% in 2020, and 26.78% in 2021). The distribution of age groups is consistent throughout the years. Table 21.2 presents information on the socio-economic status and occupation of murdered women and girls. Only a few reports contain names and/or pictures of the murdered women, and even fewer describe their occupations and/or life stories. Most femicide victims in Russia remain anonymous, suggesting that their lives appear to have very little value in the eyes of society.

Data on Femicide Cases In this section, we discuss data related to the cases of femicide cases, beginning with the relationships between the victims and perpetrators of femicides (see Table 21.3). In the largest proportion of cases – over 40% – the victim and the perpetrator had an intimate relationship at the time of the femicide. Table 21.1  Ages of Murdered Women and Girls 2019 0–6 7–18 19–24 25–35 36–50 51–70 71–100 Unknown Overall

26 31 65 238 451 349 176 430 1,766

2020 1.47% 1.76% 3.68% 13.48% 25.54% 19.76% 9.97% 24.35% 100.00%

12 49 46 239 446 361 189 363 1,705

2021 0.7% 2.87% 2.7% 14.02% 26.16% 21.17% 11.09% 21.29% 100.00%

11 51 56 168 377 285 135 325 1,408

0.78% 3.62% 3.98% 11.93% 26.78% 20.24% 9.59% 23.08% 100.00%

Table 21.2  Socio-Economic Status and Occupation of Murdered Women 2019 Unknown Aged 60+/Retired Other Salesperson School girl Unemployed Business woman Sex worker/prostitute Homeless Student Medical professional Waitress Human rights defender Taxi driver Overall

1,226 374 73 16 15 12 12 11 8 7 6 4 1 1 1,766

2020

69.42% 21.18% 4.13% 0.91% 0.85% 0.68% 0.68% 0.62% 0.45% 0.40% 0.34% 0.23% 0.06% 0.06% 100.00%

230

1,168 395 60 9 28 10 5 10 7 4 8 1

1,705

68.50% 23.17% 3.52% 0.53% 1.64% 0.59% 0.29% 0.59% 0.41% 0.23% 0.47% 0.06%

100.00%

2021 990 279 55 12 28 10 4 4 8 12 4 1 1 1,408

70.31% 19.82% 3.91% 0.85% 1.99% 0.71% 0.28% 0.28% 0.57% 0.85% 0.28% 0.07% 0.07% 100.00%

Femicide in the Russian Federation Table 21.3  Relationship Between Victim and Perpetrator 2019 Intimate partner Acquaintance Son Unknown Former intimate partner Criminal Close relative Grandson Distant relative Former relative Police officer Overall

722 425 179 144 84 81 66 30 22 12 1 1,766

2020

40.88% 24.07% 10.14% 8.15% 4.76% 4.59% 3.74% 1.70% 1.25% 0.68% 0.06% 100.00%

719 426 177 148 67 46 61 37 19 5

2021 42.17% 24.99% 10.38% 8.68% 3.93% 2.70% 3.58% 2.17% 1.11% 0.29%

100.00%

1,705

584 313 140 123 77 70 55 19 18 8 1 1,408

41.48% 22.23% 9.94% 8.74% 5.47% 4.97% 3.91% 1.35% 1.28% 0.57% 0.07% 100.00%

Table 21.4  Most Common Femicide Methods 2019 Beaten Stabbed Strangled Unknown Fire Shot Axed Dismembered Throw off a height Drowned Overall

632 611 183 83 80 52 39 35 24 10 1,766

2020 35.79% 34.6% 10.36% 4.7% 4.53% 2.94% 2.21% 1.98% 1.36% 0.57% 99.04%

625 594 150 89 83 48 39 24 18 13 1,705

2021 36.66% 34.84% 8.8% 5.22% 4.87% 2.82% 2.29% 1.41% 1.06% 0.76% 98.71%

467 475 135 83 75 61 38 32 20 3 1,408

33.17% 33.74% 9.59% 5.89% 5.33% 4.33% 2.7% 2.27% 1.42% 0.21% 98.65%

Together with former partners (4.76% of cases in 2019, 3.93% of cases in 2020, and 5.47% of cases in 2021), this group is the largest and consistent with international tendencies (UNODC, 2021). The second largest category of femicides involved acquaintances (24.07% of cases in 2019, 24.99% of cases in 2020, and 22.23% of cases in 2021), although it cannot be ruled out that they were intimate partners or relatives of the women they murdered. The same can be said about the category of unknown relationships between victims and perpetrators (8.15% of cases in 2019, 8.68% of cases in 2020, and 8.74% of cases in 2021). Frequently, cases from these two categories are moved into other categories as soon as relationship data appears in the press. Another large category is relatives of different kinds. For example, sons (around 10% of cases in 2019 to 2021), close (3.5 to 4% of cases) and distant (just above 1% of the cases) relatives, and former relatives8 (less than 1% of cases) were included in the larger category of intimate femicides. Table 21.4 presents the most common methods of femicide. The majority of women murdered as a result of femicide were beaten to death (35.79% in 2019, 36.66% in 2020, and 33.17% in 2021) or stabbed (34.6% in 2019, 34.84% in 2020, and 33.74% in 2021). The third most common method of killing was by strangulation, which happened in 10.36% of cases in 2019, 8.8% of cases in 2020, and 9.59% of cases in 2021. To summarise, the three most prevalent methods of killing do not involve the use of weapons, including those easily accessed at home (such as kitchen knives). Since it is not common in Russia to own firearms, only a small percentage of women were shot (2.94% in 2019, 2.82% in 2020, and 4.33% in 2021). 231

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The most popular locations for femicides were in the homes: at the top of the list was the category of “shared housing of victim and perpetrator” (34.71% of all cases in 2019, 45.45% in 2020, and 34.71% in 2021). The latter is consistent with the fact that the majority of perpetrators were the intimate partners of the victims. Shared housing was closely followed by the victim’s housing (20.72% of cases in 2019, 18.3% in 2020, and 20.72% in 2021) and the perpetrator’s housing (5.32% of cases in 2019, 5.04% in 2020, and 5.32% in 2021). A small percentage of women were also killed at third-party housing (for example, while visiting another home), which happened in 2.55% of all cases in 2019, 2.23% of cases in 2020, and 2.55% of cases in 2021. The second largest category was in the public space: 4.76% of femicides in 2019, 5.69% in 2020, and 4.76% in 2021 were committed on the streets. Two other places in this category were embankments (1–1.5% in years 2019 to 2021) and woodland areas (1.35–1.36% of cases in 2019 to 2021). Finally, a small proportion of the cases were committed in workplaces (victim’s, perpetrator’s, or shared) or in vehicles (perpetrator’s, victim’s, or shared). Some cases were more complex than others. For example, in some of them, there were multiple victims where other people were also either injured or killed. There were 201 such cases (11.38% of the total) in 2019, 198 in 2020 (11.61% of the total), and 192 in 2021 (13.64% of the total). Moreover, in some cases there were multiple perpetrators. The number of such cases was 54 in 2019 (3.06% of all cases), 37 in 2020 (2.17% of all cases), and 37 in 2021 (2.63% of all cases). According to the news reports, rape was a part of femicide in 54 (3.06% of all cases) in 2019, 36 (2.11%) cases in 2020, and 41 (2.91%) cases in 2021. The data analysed by the project contain few murders of lesbian/bisexual women and only one murder of women on the basis of racism9. However, for both homophobia and racism, it is possible that the motives of these crimes were not identified by the police, courts. and the media. As such, the data do not allow for conclusions concerning lesbophobic or racist motives for completed femicide in contemporary Russia.

Data on Perpetrators The majority of femicide perpetrators (33.69% in 2019, 33.14% in 2020, and 34.09% in 2021), whose ages were known to the project Femicid.net, were between 36 and 50 years old. The second largest age group of perpetrators was between the ages of 25 and 35 (24.35% in 2019, 22.76% in 2020, and 18.89% in 2021). Even young boys (aged 7 to 18) were perpetrators of femicide: 21 (1.19% of total) femicides were committed by boys in 2019, 23 (1.35%) of femicides in 2020, and 23 (1.63%) in 2021. The reports on femicides often included information on perpetrators’ mental health, including addictions, and possible motives for the killings. The most common type of information was perpetrators’ alcoholism, mentioned in 47.62% of cases in 2019, 47.57% of cases in 2020, and 45.45% of cases in 2021. Even though it is known that alcoholism and binge drinking is a problem among men in Russia (Leon et al., 2009), the connection between drinking and femicides should be made with caution to avoid absolving perpetrators of their actions. The most common motive of the killings, as identified by the press, was jealousy (9.12% of cases in 2019, 9.09% of cases in 2020, and 9.87% of cases in 2021). With respect to convictions for femicide, it is known that 44.39% of perpetrators in 2019, 41.29% in 2020, and 30.18% in 2021 were convicted. The majority of perpetrators (19.03% of all femicides in 2019, 17.44% in 2020, and 14.65% in 2021) were imprisoned for a time period between 97 and 144 months (or between 8 and 12 years), but a large percentage of perpetrators received lower sentences. The sentences for other types of crimes were often higher than for femicide. For example, a new law that prohibits “the discreditation of the Russian military,” and spreading “deliberately fake information” about the war in Ukraine (e.g. calling it a war) is punishable by imprisonment for up to 232

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15 years. The first known case of such punishment is that of Alexei Gorinov, a deputy at Moscow’s Krasnoselsky district council, who spoke out against the war at the work meeting and was sentenced to seven years in prison10. Hundreds of other Russian citizens who were critical about the war have received substantial fines and are awaiting prison sentences. With regard to this, prison sentences for femicide do not reflect the gravity of the crime and contribute to the idea that women are secondclass citizens.

Characteristics of Russian Femicides From the data discussed, we can draw a picture of common trends of femicide in Russia. In the majority of cases, women between 25 and 70 years are beaten or stabbed to death by their intimate partners (who are also between the same age range and are likely to have an alcohol addiction) in their shared home. As presented at the beginning of the chapter, victims of domestic violence have very few chances to escape from violence since few shelter places are available and there are no protection orders or laws guaranteeing women and girls’ safety from male violence. It is often commonplace that women live with their abusers for years simply because they have nowhere to go and no money to find alternative housing. Therefore, it can be reasonably assumed that many of the femicides discussed could have been avoided if the Russian state were to put more effort into prevention and placed more value on the lives of Russian women.

Outlook All the data from the femicide database is available on the website Femicid.net, together with further data and analyses, such as calculations of CNF (coefficient of femicide reported in the news) and CNFi (coefficient of intimate femicide reported in the news)11. Besides collecting and analysing data, the collective has several other projects ongoing. For example, based on the analysis of the first news on femicide, members of the collective have developed guidelines for journalists on ethical femicide reporting12. Another project is a photo memorial of femicide victims in Russia, based on the photos of those women whose murders were published in the press13. Members of the collective studied the influence of media on the femicides, analysing the ways such news articles are presented by the Investigative Committee and by the press, and were in contact with government officials, explaining the importance of ethical reporting of femicides. Since Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, members of the collective began to analyse the influence of this invasion on femicide in Russia. Another ongoing project is the analysis of other types of violence against women in Russia, including rape, attempted murder, and torture.

Notes 1 Following the Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022, Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe. Evaluations of the Russian help and legal systems made by the COE and ECtHR, whilst not legally binding, are useful in order to assess the quality of their provision for victims of violence. 2 E.g. Volodina v. Russia (Application no. 41261/17, judgement of 9 July 2019) or Tunikova and others v. Russia (applications 55974/16, 53118/17, 27484/18, and 28011/19, judgement of 14.12.2021). 3 Data from Table 7.26, “Number of victims of crimes, connected to violent actions, committed against a family member (in Russian Federation),” prepared by Vera Volkova in May 2022, Rosstat Folder “Family, Motherhood and Childhood,” https://rosstat.gov.ru/folder/13807, accessed on 29 June 2022. 4 Data from Table 7.26, “Number of victims of crimes, connected to violent actions, committed against a family member (in Russian Federation),” prepared by Vera Volkova in May 2022, Rosstat Folder “Family, Motherhood and Childhood,” https://rosstat.gov.ru/folder/13807, accessed on 29 June 2022. 5 Information about the museum can be found here: www.wmmsk.com/about-museum. 6 The database is accessible here: www.eures.it/tag/femminicidio.

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Ksenia Meshkova and Lyubava Malysheva 7 It was decided to exclude two territories from the analysis: Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol. They were annexed by Russia in 2014. This territory is still regarded as occupied territory of the Ukraine. 8 E.g. former sons-in-law. 9 Murder of Umida Egamurotova: “Massacre of a female cashier in Uzlovaya: he hated her, because she was not Russian,” https://migranty.org/novosti/rasprava-nad-zhenshhinoj-kassirom-v-uzlo, accessed on 26 July 2022. 10 Harding, L. (2022): Moscow councillor jailed for seven years after criticising Ukraine war, www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/08/moscow-councillor-jailed-seven-years-criticising-ukraine-war-alexeigorinov, accessed on 19 July 2022. 11 The database can be accessed here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qe-1QNELEwwtdrgWG9Zf_LCAGPDF8TMRg5S_VeeYYcY/edit#gid=600832592. 12 Bachrenkova, E., Malysheva, L. (2019): How to write about femicide: recommendations for the media, www. wmmsk.com/2019/07/kak-pisat-pro-femicid-rekomendacii-dlya-media, accessed on 21 July 2022. 13 Victims of Femicide in Russia: A Memorial, www.wmmsk.com/2019/09/memorial/, accessed on 21 July 2022.

References Amnesty International. (2005). Russian Federation: Nowhere to turn to – violence against women in the family. Retrieved from www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/eur460562005en.pdf Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. (1994). Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 18 of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. Fifth periodic reports of States parties. Russian Federation. CEDAW/C/USR/4. Retrieved from https://docstore.ohchr.org/SelfServices/FilesHandler.ashx?enc=6QkG1d%2fPPRiCAqhKb7yhsvglK m%2f71Q4iogAZSMgJYVvff%2b1TLZduXgAe5t8iyVnWYMCLA%2boD37z4QJtpi%2f2umPGTkxpzy YEKo0fx5qHUMkXPaVtto9e9q3gSHJJ0jaOg Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. (1999). Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 18 of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. Fifth periodic reports of States parties. Russian Federation. CEDAW/C/USR/5. Retrieved from www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/cedaw26/usr5.pdf Duban, E. (2020). Council of Europe. Research on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence Including in Situations of Social Disadvantage in the Russian Federation. Based on analysis of the Russian framework and compilation of good practices. Retrieved from https://rm.coe.int/ publication-research-on-vaw-and-dv-in-situations-of-social-disavantage/16809e4a04 European Court of Human Rights. (2021, December 14). Violations in authorities’ failure to respond to domestic violence cases; urgent legal changes required (Press Release issued by the Registrar of the Court). Retrieved from https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/app/conversion/pdf/?library=ECHR&id=003-72095999797837&filename=Judgment%20Tunikova%20and%20Others%20v.%20Russia%20-%20Violations%20 in%20author ities%E2%80%99%20failure%20to%20respond%20to%20domestic%20violence%20 cases%3B%20urgent%20legal%20changes%20required.pdf Gorshkova, I. & Shurygina I. (2003). Violence against wives in contemporary Russian families: Basic results. Retrieved from www.owl.ru/rights/no_violence/Bas_results.pdf Human Rights Watch. (1997). Russia. Too Little, too Late: State Response to Violence against Women. Retrieved from www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1997/russwmn/ Human Rights Watch. (2018). “I could kill you and no one would stop me”. Weak state response to domestic violence in Russia. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/russia1018_web. pdf Ivanova, A.E., T. P. Sabgaida, T.P., Semenova, V.G., Zaporozhchenko, V.G., Zemlyanova, E.V., and Nikitina, S.Yu. (2013). Factors distorting structure of death causes in working population in Russia. Sotsialnye Aspekty Zdorov’ya Naseleniya, 4(32). Retrieved from http://vestnik.mednet.ru/content/view/491/30/lang,ru/ Lagarde y De Los Ríos, M. (2010). Preface: Feminist Keys for Understanding Feminicide: Theoretical, Political, and Legal Construction. In R. Fregoso & C. Bejarano (Ed.), Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas (pp. xi-xxvi). New York, USA: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822392644-001 Leon, D.A., Shkolnikov, V.M. and McKee, M. (2009). Alcohol and Russian mortality: a continuing crisis. Addiction, 104, 1630–1636. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2009.02655.x Porotikova, N. (2016). “Why not beliving a woman is a first reaction?” Marina Pisklakova-Parker and Maria Mochova on how to eradicate domestic violence, Kommersant. Retrieved from www.kommersant.ru/ doc/3113468

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Femicide in the Russian Federation Roache, M. (2021, March 3). Russia’s Leaders Won’t Deal with a Domestic Violence Epidemic. These Women Stepped up Instead. TIME. Retrieved from https://time.com/5942127/russia-domestic-violence-women/ Rosstat. (2012). Reproductive Health of Russian Population in 2011. Report Summary. Retrieved from https:// rosstat.gov.ru/storage/mediabank/zdravo-2011.pdf Rusova, S. & Graf, S. (2021). Algorithm Sveta. Retrieved from https://readymag.com/u3045877410/ algoritmsveta/ Semenova V.G., Nikitina S.Yu., Gavrilova N.S., Zaporozhchenko V.G. (2017). The Problems of Registration of Death Because of External Causes. Zdravookhraneniye Rossiyskoy Federatsii/ Ministerstvo zdravookhraneniia RSFSR, 61, 202–212. Retrieved from www.medlit.ru/journalsview/healthcare/view/journal/en/2017/ issue-4/356-the-problems-of-registration-of-death-because-of-external-causes/ Valyev, Ju.K. (2019, May 14). Family relations are a matter of state importance. Magazine of Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russian Federation “Russian Police”, 2019/5. WAVE – Women Against Violence Europe. (2021). WAVE country report 2021. Women’s specialist support services in Europe and the impact of COVID-19 on their provision. Retrieved from https://wave-network. org/wp-content/uploads/WAVE_Country-Report.pdf Yumaguzin, V.V. (2011, November 7–20). External causes of death and life expectancy in Russia. Demoskop Weekly, No. 485–486. Retrieved from www.demoscope.ru/weekly/2011/0485/tema01.php Yumaguzin, V.V. & Vinnik, M.V. (2017). Assessing Data on Mortality from External Causes: Case Study of the Republic of Bashkortostan. Studies on Russian Economic Development, 2017, Vol. 28, No. 1, 97–109, https:// doi.org/10.1134/S1075700717010130 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (2021). UNODC Research. Data Matters 3. Killings of women and girls by their intimate partner or other family members. Retrieved from www.unodc.org/documents/ data-and-analysis/statistics/crime/UN_BriefFem_251121.pdf

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22 FEMICIDE IN SOUTH AFRICA Nechama Brodie, Shanaaz Mathews and Naeemah Abrahams

Introduction Between April 2019 and March 2020, 2,695 women aged 18 years or older were murdered in South Africa.1 A total of 21,341 murders were reported for the same period, or more than 58 unlawful and intentional killings2 each day in a country of 59 million people (SAPS, 2020; StatsSA, 2020). South Africa has a femicide (female homicide) rate five times the global average (Makou, 2017), and one of the highest homicide rates in the world – a status that dates back to at least the late 1970s (Kriegler and Shaw, 2016), although national data have only been collected across race groups since the end of apartheid and South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994. Early research into violence in South Africa in the 1980s focused strongly on political violence during apartheid and the transition to democracy (in the early 1990s), and a gendered lens was often absent – although programmes like the Women’s Health Project (Budlender, 1995) acknowledged that violence against women and children required attention. Research into and media coverage of violence against women also tended to concentrate on sexual assault, specifically rape (e.g. Vogelman and Eagle, 1991), and excluded black femicide victims, while reporting on a handful of (predominantly white) cases of domestic violence or battery (Brodie, 2020). After 1994, as crime rates continued to soar3, media and public attention shifted to the issue of criminal violence. This contributed to perceptions that South Africa’s current violence problem, including that of femicide, is somehow a novel or recent phenomenon which did not exist under white minority rule. While recent public campaigns and protests against gender-based violence have helped prompt long-overdue responses from government and policy-makers, nearly 30 years after South Africa signed the Beijing Declaration and ratified the terms of the Convention Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), there remains a substantial gap between how such violence is framed and understood and what is being done to reduce it. In this chapter, we review how early research on female homicide in South Africa developed into more specialised femicide studies, how femicide in South Africa needs to be understood as having distinct features when compared to that of other countries, particularly those in the Global North, and how the country’s unique violence profile suggests specific solutions and interventions to reduce endemic violence against women. The Beijing Conference marked South Africa’s first participation in any of the United Nation’s World Conferences on Women (the country had been readmitted to the United Nations in 1994). The Beijing Conference also debuted the term “femicide” in the South African press. The Star and

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Box 22.1  Defining Femicide in South Africa Murder: In South African law, the unlawful and intentional killing of a person (a type of homicide) Culpable homicide: The unlawful and negligent killing of a person. Femicide: Killing of women (not defined as a legal term in South Africa, but commonly used to describe female killings); also “female homicide” (which includes both murder and culpable homicide). Intimate femicide/intimate-partner femicide: Killing of women by intimate partners (i.e. a current or former husband/boyfriend, same-sex partner, or rejected lover) Non-intimate femicide: Killing of women by someone other than an intimate partner (stranger, family member, acquaintance, etc.) Suspected rape homicide: Homicide occurring with a sexual component identified during a police investigation or autopsy (adapted from Abrahams, Mathews, Jewkes, Martin, & Lombard, 2013, p. 3)

Sowetan newspapers were among the first to use the word, referring to the release of a report (Vetten, 1995) studying intimate femicides in South Africa’s most populous city, Johannesburg. These events took place against a larger backdrop of sweeping political change in the newly democratic nation, where important advances were being made with regards to women’s rights. A new constitution was being drafted (it was signed into law in December 1996) in which the equality of women was one of the foundational principles, which set the tone for other legislative changes. In 1993, a provision was removed that had exempted husbands from being charged with rape by their wives. In 1995, amendments were made to the Criminal Procedure Act that tightened bail guidelines and explicitly defined certain forms of violence against women and children as serious offences. The 1998 Domestic Violence Act broadened the scope of what was considered domestic violence and expanded the definition of abuse against women. In that same year, the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act acknowledged women in customary marriages and/ or polygamous unions. On paper, women’s lives and safety had improved significantly. Very little changed, though, when it came to the violence they experienced or the protections they were able to access.

Early Femicide Studies Lisa Vetten’s pilot (1995) and follow-up (1996) femicide studies looked at what she described as intimate femicide or the “killing of women by intimate male partners,” terms derived from South African-born sociologist Diana Russell’s work. Russell had introduced the phrase “femicide” in the late 1970s as “a substitute for the gender-neutral word ‘homicide,’ ” and later amended it to mean “the killing of females by males because they are female” (Russell, 2011: online). Forensic pathologist Lorna Martin’s 1999 thesis on rape-homicide and rape in Johannesburg and Cape Town also used the word “femicide” to describe the “murder of a woman by an intimate male partner.” In 2004, Martin and Vetten joined researchers from the South African Medical Research Council in the first national study of femicide (Mathews et al., 2004), which collected data on female homicides from 1999 of women aged 14 years and older at a sample of medico-legal laboratories (mortuaries). Each murder was followed up with interviews with respective investigating officers. The findings are discussed in the next section.

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One of the features of this study was its inclusion of female homicides irrespective of the perpetrator – that is, there was no requirement for the female to have been killed by a male (the conceptualisation also meant same-sex killings were included) or for proof the victim was killed because she was female. This was important because in a fifth of cases the perpetrator was not known to the police, which may be a feature in other high-crime/low-resource countries, making such determinations impractical. The study included female victims aged 14 years and older and did not include the murders of children or infanticides. The authors (Mathews, 2005) explained the age cut-off, saying they “aimed to determine the incidence of intimate partner homicide, as very little dating or few sexually intimate relationships occur before the age of 14.” Subsequent studies on child killings (Abrahams, Mathews, Lombard, Martin, Jewkes, 2017; Mathews, Abrahams, Martin, Lombard, Jewkes, 2019) indicate clear epidemiological differences in perpetrator and risk profiles of female infant and child killings compared to older adolescent and adult females. Following the publication of the study, the word “femicide” gradually became more widely used to describe the general killing of women, but (as with most regions) there was (and is) no formal definition of the term in South African law – a person accused of killing a woman can only be charged with either murder or culpable homicide. The lack of a formally adopted definition resulted in various groups and agencies, including official and non-governmental groups, applying the term differently. For example, while the South African Medical Research Council provides femicide data on females 14 years and older, the South African Police Services release data on murdered women aged 18 years and older as part of their annual crime statistics. The national statistical service Statistics SA (StatsSA) attempted to use Russell’s definition, but applied it incorrectly. In a problematic publication about crime against women, StatsSA (2018) claimed that the gang rape and murder of lesbian footballer Eudy Simelane in 2008 would not have counted as femicide. This interpretation led the agency to, quite erroneously, go on to claim that the “killing of females simply because they are females is a rare phenomenon in South Africa.” Variances in the definitions of femicide are also evident in the demands of many civic protests – for example, there are often calls for bail restrictions for perpetrators accused of “femicide,” but this would be impossible to operationalise as the term does not exist in South African law4. Even the South African government’s initial “Emergency Response Action Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide” (2020) did not initially define the act of femicide (it was included in later versions) – but still recommended such cases should be prioritised for investigation and resolution. In the wake of recent global social and economic challenges, it remains to be seen whether sufficient financial and human resources will be allocated to responses to femicide and gender-based violence. Recommendations are discussed in more detail at the end of this chapter.

Femicide Studies in South Africa Vetten’s (1996) intimate femicide study estimated a woman was killed by her partner approximately every six days in the city of Johannesburg but cautioned the figure was probably an underestimate. Vetten (1996, online) also recommended research into violence within relationships should be expanded beyond “only long-term or marital relationships” and take into consideration that “young women start dating fairly early,” often going out with men “quite a few years their senior.” When the national femicide study (Mathews et al., 2004) was published a few years later, the frequency of femicides was indeed revealed to be much higher – it was estimated that a woman was murdered in South Africa every three hours in 1999 (the title of the initial policy brief, called “Every Six Hours,” referred to women killed by intimate partners). The study reported 3,798 cases of female homicide had occurred in 1999,5 using data from state mortuaries and linking these to police investigations through the use of case numbers. For 18.6% of these cases, the perpetrator could not be established or was unknown. A later paper on this data (Abrahams, Martin, Mathews, Vetten, 238

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and Lombard, 2009, p. 553) explained that missing dockets might be “more common with cases of murder where there was more police sympathy with the perpetrator, as is common with [intimatepartner violence].” In cases where there was no suspect, the authors noted their perception that “the deaths of African women were often not thoroughly investigated, nor were known perpetrators pursued. This reflects both historically based inequalities in public service resources as well as the low status of African women in the national race and gender hierarchy” (Abrahams et al., 2009: 554). Of the cases where the victim-perpetrator relationship could be established, 50.3% of women had been killed by an intimate partner or were intimate femicides. Where the perpetrator was known and was anyone other than an intimate partner, it was counted as non-intimate femicide. The authors also indicated intimate femicide was likely undercounted and that a similar proportion (of intimate to non-intimate perpetrators) would be expected in the cases where the victim-perpetrator relationship was unknown (Makou, 2017). The authors calculated a national intimate femicide murder rate of 8.8/100,000, which, at the time, was among the highest rates ever reported in the world. Most women were killed by cohabiting boyfriends, then boyfriends, followed by husbands. Firearms played a prominent role in intimate femicides, with one in five (20.6%) perpetrators of intimate femicide using a legal firearm to kill their victim compared to just 3.5% of non-intimate femicides. Overall, guns were responsible for nearly a third of intimate femicides, most of the victims (67.4%) “killed with a single shot, most often to the head and face” (Abrahams, Jewkes and Mathews, 2010). A separate analysis (Mathews, Abrahams, Jewkes, Martin, Lombard, 2009) of Western Cape femicides found that 62% of victims had elevated blood alcohol concentration at the time of their death (it should be noted the Western Cape is known for higher levels of alcohol consumption [Parry, 2005], which is linked to historical patterns of alcohol abuse associated with colonial labour practices [Williams, 2016]). This report pointed towards complexities in how victim and perpetrator relationships were understood – that is, that the line between intimate partners and non-intimate perpetrators was sometimes blurred in places where male sexual entitlement and unequal gender-power relationships created a forced state of sexual fluidity (Mathews et al., 2009). Understanding the social contexts in which violence occurs in South Africa highlights that, while violence against women has many common features based in systemic oppression, inequality, and poverty, its triggers and expressions (and proposed or attempted solutions) also have specific qualities. South Africa’s segregated and brutal past is inextricable from its violent present, from colonial times where land theft, slavery, and indentured labour were used to take over territory and tear apart communities, to neocolonial and apartheid-era practices that enforced strict segregation, separated families, and entrenched violent patriarchy, all while actively dehumanising and emasculating black male bodies. Nearly 30 years into democracy many of these legacies persist. Research from 2015 found that more than 64% of black South Africans and 43% of coloured6 South Africans lived in poverty, compared to just 1% of white South Africans (Wilkinson, 2018). Qualitative interviews with men who had killed an intimate partner (Mathews et al., 2011 and 2015) highlight the role of adverse childhood experiences and intersect with the structural and social reality of these men’s lives – which, for many, involved poverty and gangs and which drew them into violent, antisocial, and criminal activities in search of respect. This exaggerated and violent version of idealised masculinity contributed to their ability to kill their partner and exposes how gendered contexts remain significant and where killing is construed as a means of “taking back control” within intimate relationships. Social and economic structures also inform how female homicides enter into and are resolved (or not) by the state’s policing and criminal justice systems. From the 1999 femicide study (Mathews et al., 2004), a conviction was obtained in just 21,5% of cases (Abrahams, Jewkes, Martin, and Mathews, 2011), and 9% of identified perpetrators were still awaiting trial three to four years after the murders had taken place. Convictions were less likely for intimate femicides where the victim was a domestic worker and where a firearm was used – and more likely when there was a history of intimate partner violence, if the victim was white, if the murder weapon was found, and if the 239

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perpetrator was a blue-collar or farm worker. The average sentence for female homicides was 12.4 years for non-intimate femicides and 10.7 years for intimate partner killings. Female homicides where the victim was white, where sexual violence was involved and where the perpetrator had a gun were more likely to receive longer jail sentences (Mathews et al., 2004). Mathews et al. (2008) showed 19.4% of intimate femicide perpetrators committed suicide within a week of the murder. These femicide-suicides were more common with perpetrators who were white professionals or white-collar workers and who owned legal firearms. The so-called extended suicides (family killings) remain a prominent feature of female homicide in South Africa and typically involve the use of firearms (Brodie, 2020). Evidence of sexual assault was present in 16.3% of cases in 1999, and 2% of victims were pregnant. A subsequent in-depth analysis by Abrahams et al. (2008) looked at rape-homicides and included all homicides with a sexual component and which was “not limited to the penetration of the genitalia by a penis.”7 The researchers also “did not differentiate between the intent to rape with death as an outcome and the intent to murder with rape as a component” (Abrahams, Martin, Jewkes, Mathews, Vetten, and Lombard, 2008: 135). This study found these killings were more likely than other femicides to happen in public spaces and perpetrators were more likely to be strangers. Victims of suspected rape-homicides also had specific injury profiles, involving larger numbers of injuries, with death most likely being due to strangulation or blunt trauma than gunshot wound (Abrahams et al., 2008). The second national study reported on female homicides in 2009 (Abrahams, Mathews, Jewkes, Martin, and Lombard., 2012; Abrahams, Mathews, Martin, Lombard, Jewkes, 2013) and showed the number of female homicides (weighted data) had dropped to 2,363 cases, with only 1.6% of cases not identified by police (i.e. where no police docket could be found). The decline in femicide numbers was in line with an overall decrease in murders – between 1999 and 2009 the murder rate in South Africa had dropped from 51/100,000 to around 34/100,000. This meant that ten years later, an average of six women were killed each day, compared to eight femicides a day in 1999. The female homicide rate for 2009 (12.9/100,000) was nearly half the rate reported for 1999 (24.7/100,000) – it should be noted however that the decline in overall homicide was larger than the decline in female homicide. In nearly a quarter of femicide cases, a perpetrator had not been identified by the police. Where the perpetrator was known the proportion of intimate to non-intimate femicides had also grown – making up over 57% of cases. This suggested intimate partner violence was less affected by the overall decline in murders. Another important change was the increased prevalence of suspected rapes in non-intimate femicides, which had jumped from 13% to nearly 29% of such killings. Comparing the 1999 and 2009 studies (Abrahams et al., 2013), the authors stated they did not believe the rise was due to artefact or any improvement in post-mortem techniques. On a positive note, there had been a significant decrease in gun-related femicides, which was likely due to tighter gun control regulations that had been introduced in the period between the two studies (Matzopoulos, Groenewald, Abrahams, and Bradshaw, 2016; Matzopoulos, et al., 2018). The 2009 femicide study found, however, that there had been no improvement in terms of recording previous partner violence in police dockets and that convictions for non-intimate femicides had dropped to less than a quarter of cases. The study found that in the decade since the first femicide study, there was no evidence of any impact of interventions to prevent gender-based violence, and that police investigations of cases had not improved. A third retrospective national femicide study will be conducted looking at cases from 2017 and is currently in field and data collection stages.

Child Homicides As part of the mortuary-based survey of female homicides in 2009, data was collected on deaths from the homicide of children younger than 18 years (Mathews et al., 2013). The murder rate for 240

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boys was nearly double that for girls under the age of 18, but the main reason for this was substantial excess mortality for male teenagers between 15 and 17 years, where the risk profile starts to resemble that of adult males. When murder rates for children 14 years and younger were calculated, both male and female children showed similar rates. A detailed review of data on homicide patterns in adolescents (Mathews et al., 2019) found adolescent females were mainly killed by intimate partners and family members, while adolescent males were mostly killed by acquaintances. Nearly 40% of adolescent female homicides involved rape compared to less than 2% of adolescent male murders. This data is significant in that it clearly establishes the emergence of a gendered pattern of violence within adolescents, which was not present in younger children.

Eldercides The 1999 national femicide study (Mathews et al., 2004) found female pensioners were more likely to be victims of non-intimate femicides. Swart, Buthelezi, and Seedat’s (2019) later study of homicide in Johannesburg also found that “eldercides” involved relatively higher proportions of female victims when compared with those of youth and middle-aged murders. This is an area that requires further study and may be specific to femicide in South Africa (Swart et al. 2019, Brodie, 2020).

Risk Profiles of Intimate and Non-intimate Femicide in South Africa The majority of female homicides in South Africa are committed by the current or former intimate partner of the victim (intimate femicides). In line with this, the risk of female homicide increases and decreases with victim age – rising from the mid-teens (Mathews et al., 2013; Mathews, et al. 2019) and peaking between the ages of 25 and 35. The median age of intimate femicide victims is between 29 and 31 years of age (Mathews et al. 2004 and Abrahams, et al. 2012, 2013), where the most common cause of death is blunt force and sharp force trauma, followed by gunshot wounds. While the proportion of firearm-related deaths declined significantly within intimate partner killings between 1999 and 2009, owing to increased gun regulations in South Africa, weaker enforcement of restrictions and an influx of illegal firearms from 2011 onwards have partly reversed this trend. Firearms play a significant role in intimate partner and family violence in South Africa, and three-quarters of the weapons used in such killings are licensed – that is, legal firearms (Abrahams et al., 2010). Of particular concern is the high number of intimate partner killings perpetrated by members of the South African Police Services, including former police officers, and those employed in South Africa’s substantial private security sector. Studies such as those conducted by the police service’s Independent Complaints Directorate (now the Independent Police Investigative Directorate) in 2009, and research into media coverage of femicides in 2012 and 2013 (Brodie 2019, 2020) confirm a high prevalence of fatal intimate partner violence among police officers, usually involving a service weapon. Firearms also play a significant role in femicide-suicides (i.e. when the perpetrator commits suicide within a week of the murder) and in extended family killings (i.e. when children or secondary adult victims, often a mother or other female relative or friend of the primary victim, are killed together with a primary victim who is a current or former intimate partner of the perpetrator). Historically, family killings in the South African context were used to describe incidents where the usually male perpetrator (most commonly a white Afrikaans-speaking male) would kill his female partner and/or their children before killing themselves, in what was described as a form of extended suicide. Since the mid-1980s, particularly as firearm access has increased for black men, such killings have become more commonplace within black families. Non-intimate femicide victims are most likely to be killed by a close male family member and are typically up to a decade older than intimate femicide victims. The Medical Research Council studies found median ages of 37 (1999) and 41 (2009) for non-intimate femicide victims. The most 241

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common mechanism of death in these cases was sharp force trauma, with gunshot wounds making up a similar proportion in 1999 but a significantly lower figure in 2009, followed by blunt force trauma. Suspected sexual assault is a common feature in non-intimate femicides, and the proportion of such cases appears to be increasing over time. This should be viewed in a broader context of widespread endemic sexual violence in South Africa (Moffett, 2006; Gqola, 2015), where sexual violence has become systemically weaponised against women and used as a performative and even competitive means of establishing violent masculine power and dominance. One example of this is can be seen in the systematic targeting of black lesbian women for what is horrifically known as “corrective rape,” which uses rape to punish the victim for her sexuality and “transform” lesbians into heterosexual women through violent penetration (Brodie, 2020). Trans women are also at high risk for violence within their communities, as are gay men (Mkhize et al. 2010). Calls to classify homophobic attacks, particularly the so-called corrective rape as hate crimes, which would incur harsher sentencing, have been repeatedly raised but never addressed by the state. Two other common forms of non-intimate femicide involve primarily elderly female victims and receive proportionally some of the least and some of the most media coverage related to femicide – one is the murder of elderly black women accused of being witches; the second is the killing of elderly white women who are farm owners and who are often killed together with their husbands in what are known as farm attacks or farm killings, a term used almost exclusively to describe the murder of white victims on farms and smallholdings (Brodie, 2020).

Protests and Paper Promises: Public and State Responses to Femicide On paper, South Africa is considered to have one of the most progressive constitutions in the world (Mavedzenge, 2021) and has a series of laws aimed specifically at protecting the rights of women and ensuring women have the right to be safe. In reality, no woman in South Africa is truly safe from violence. In September 2019, following the (unrelated) killings of several young women the previous month, including the two university students Uyinene Mrwetyana and Jesse Hess, horse rider Meghan Cremer, and former boxing champion Leighandre Jegels, thousands of protesters took to social media and to the streets under the hashtag #AmINext. In response, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced an ‘Emergency Action Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide’ (South African Government, 2020a) and allocated R1.6 billion (approximately USD 116 million) for its implementation, which was planned to be fast-tracked over six months. This was followed by the publication of a National Strategic Plan (NSP) on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (South African Government, 2020b), which was championed at the highest levels in government. The provisions of the NSP were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic that spread across South Africa from March 2020. While murder numbers dropped around the country during lockdown (a result that was also directly influenced by complete bans on the sale of alcohol at various times [Moultrie et al., 2021]), these figures have since returned to pre-pandemic levels, with a slight increase in contact crimes and sexual offences. This must also be seen against a backdrop of three decades of urgent recommendations and promises, none of which have been implemented to date. South Africa has arguably one of the most extensive and detailed bodies of research and literature relating to female homicide (in a high-homicide country) but has made little progress when it comes to reducing women’s risks or preventing men from becoming perpetrators of violence. Public knowledge about femicide in South Africa is also skewed by selective and limited media reporting (Brodie, 2019, 2020), which perpetuates flawed stereotypes of who is at risk of becoming a victim and who should be most feared as a perpetrator.

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To successfully address the femicide “crisis” in South Africa, it needs to be acknowledged as a persistent state of gendered violence rather than a recent development – and simultaneous measures need to be taken to consider life course approaches, together with improved criminal justice responses and better understanding and communication of risk factors. In addition to more robust efforts on violence prevention, it is important for South Africa, as well as other countries in the Global South that experience similarly high rates of gendered violence, to develop responses and risk assessments based on local evidence and data and not simply using risk factors or frameworks gleaned from the Global North. There also needs to be greatly improved assistance for women at any point of entry into the social, health, criminal, or justice system from filing complaints at police stations to accessing and enforcing protection orders, access to places of care and safety for women leaving abusive relationships, and improved police investigations and state prosecutions for cases involving gender-based violence. Accompanying the latter, more research is needed and more public dialogue is required about how to better understand and assess women’s risks of violence at different stages so that individuals and the state and non-governmental organisations can intersect with and disrupt stages of violence as they happen and not after the fact. This would include ongoing work on understanding pathways of violence and violent masculinity that have been endemic in South Africa for centuries. If South Africa successfully focuses attention on research and prevention of femicide, the lessons and findings could be valuable for other countries that could benefit from a broadened and strengthened framework through which to approach the issue of fatal violence against women.

Notes 1 Murder figures for 2020–2021 are not used because of the impact of national lockdowns on crime numbers. See Moultrie et al., 2021. 2 South African law defines murder as the unlawful and intentional killing of a human being and culpable homicide as the negligent killing of another person (i.e. murder requires intention). AFRICANLII: https:// africanlii.org/book/chapter-01-introduction#_ftn3. 3 Data from Kriegler and Shaw (2016) indicates steep increases in murders date back to at least 1980 (there are also questions about the accuracy of crime data during this time owing to the apartheid state’s undercounting of crime in black areas and designated “homeland” states), but the highest ever official murder rates for the country were recorded between 1991 and 1999 when the rate rose and stayed above 60/100,000 for most of the decade. 4 There is a broader legal discussion about the potential problems of instituting “femicide” as a distinct legal term, separate from murder, which might have unintended but negative impacts in terms of the successful prosecution of such a crime (for example, given the already broad and problematic status of “femicide” in popular terms, how might a prosecutor be tasked with proving a femicide?). This chapter is primarily concerned with epidemiological and statistical definitions of femicide but acknowledges the complexity of integrating these with legal terms. 5 In 1999 South Africa’s murder rate was around 51/100,000 people, declining from a peak of 67/100,000 in the mid-1990s. The decline in the national murder rate continued until 2011, when it started to increase again. 6 Definitions of race in South Africa still follow conventions that were developed under apartheid and may not have the same meaning as the same terms used in other countries or regions. “Black” or “African” is used to refer to black Africans, as well as some mixed-race individuals. “Coloured” is used to refer to a phenotypically diverse but culturally specific community of mixed-race origins and is not used to refer to people who are simply mixed-race (in South Africa coloured people may also choose to identify as black). As elsewhere, the notion of race is problematic and should be understood as a social construct rather than a biological one. It is, however, an important factor for individual risk profiles for violence. 7 This is consistent with the introduction of the Criminal Law Sexual Offences Amendment Act 32 of 2007, which, among other things, expanded the definition of rape to include any act of sexual penetration without consent (Centre for Applied Legal Studies, 2008).

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23 FEMICIDE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA Emmanuel Rohn and Eric Y. Tenkorang

Introduction Violence against women is considered a serious human rights violation (Devries et al., 2013) transcending ethnic, gender, racial, and socio-economic boundaries. It is estimated that about 30% of women who have ever been in an intimate relationship experience some form of violence over their life course (García-Moreno et al., 2013). Violence against women encompasses a wide spectrum of offences, from verbal abuse to emotional, physical, sexual, and economic abuse. Femicide, or the killing of women or girls, is at the extreme end of the spectrum and has been likened to “war on women” (Brysk, 2018). Femicide has received unprecedented international attention in the last decade, generating new debates over how to define and measure it (Dawson and Carrigan, 2021). The term was first introduced by Diana Russell in 1976 at the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women in Brussels (Russell and Harmes, 2001). It is defined as the sexist murder of women by men, but this definition has expanded to include the murder of females by males for being female (Russell and Harmes, 2001). Although considerable effort has been made in tackling all forms of violence against women in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the phenomenon persists. For instance, the 2021 United Nations on Drugs & Crime (UNODC) report “Global Study on Homicide” indicated that 18,100 women in Africa were murdered in 2020. Despite these grim statistics, research on femicide has received scarce attention in many world regions, specifically SSA, with most studies conducted in Western societies (Banks, Crandall, Sklar, and Bauer, 2008; Dawson, 2005; Koziol-McLain et al., 2006; Krulewitch, 2009). The paucity of scholarly work on femicide in SSA is unfortunate, given the pervasiveness of this crime in the sub-region. This review fills important knowledge gaps in the femicide literature. It provides an overview of the femicide literature in a region of the world where such violent acts have become common (McCloskey, Boonzaier, Steinbrenner, and Hunter, 2016). Also, focusing on the African context offers a comparative perspective that is currently lacking, but necessary for homicide and femicide scholars interested in formulating cross-cultural theories of lethal violence against women. It should also raise awareness among policy-makers and stakeholders, helping them to develop strategies aimed at mitigating femicide in SSA. Feminist scholarship posits that violence against women including femicide is a manifestation of patriarchal beliefs and attitudes held by men, that result in control and subordination of women (Johnson, 2006; Loseke, Gelles, and Cavanaugh, 2005). This is the case for most SSA countries

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-27

Femicide in Sub-Saharan Africa

where patriarchal traditions and norms that emphasise male dominance and female submissiveness are common (Tenkorang, Owusu, Yeboah, and Bannerman, 2013). In many SSA countries, challenging these patriarchal norms is perceived as an effort to subvert the man’s authority and is likely to be met with lethal violence (Adinkrah, 2008a). The killing of women by men thus becomes a means to assert power and take back control (Mathews, Jewkes, and Abrahams, 2015). Studies show that intimate partner femicide (IPF) is the most common and widespread form of femicide in SSA (Abrahams, Mathews, Martin, Lombard, and Jewkes, 2013; Campbell, Glass, Sharps, Laughon, and Bloom, 2007). IPF refers to the killing of women by their current or former husbands/partners (Stöckl et al., 2013). Additionally, witchcraft femicide is another type of femicide in SSA, perpetrated against elderly women. For instance, in Ghana, the killing of elderly women accused of witchcraft is a common occurrence (Adinkrah 2004; Roxburgh 2016). These women frequently face humiliation, exclusion, assault, torture, exile, and murder. Family members may seize the property of a suspected witch, and access to food, water, clothing, and shelter may be restricted. As there are no institutional mechanisms to handle attacks on witchcraft accusations, the transition from accusation to attack is frequently swift and violent (Roxburgh, 2016). We provide a systematic review of the literature to contribute to a broader perspective and understanding of femicide in SSA.

Methods The authors performed a comprehensive search in interdisciplinary research bibliographic databases, including Scopus, Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Grey Literature. Our search was limited to scholarly articles. Keywords included in the search were “femicide” OR “intimate partner femicide” OR “spousal killing” OR “wife killing” OR “witchcraft femicide” OR “women killing” AND “sub-Saharan Africa.” In addition, the authors performed a hand search on Google in all SSA countries to identify related published studies. To maintain the quality of the review, duplications were checked thoroughly. Abstracts of the articles were double-checked for the analysis and relevant academic literature was included in the review process. A careful evaluation of each research paper was carried out at a later stage.

Eligibility Criteria The main eligibility criteria for the study during the search were peer-reviewed scholarly articles on femicide in SSA.

Study Selection and Data Extraction The authors independently scanned the titles and abstracts of the retrieved articles and newspapers before examining in more detail the articles based on the study’s inclusion criteria. Overall, the two reviewers (Emmanuel Rohn and Eric Y. Tenkorang) screened the titles and abstracts of 161 scholarly articles for relevance. Studies were excluded if they were conducted outside SSA and/or if femicide was not the focus of the study. After screening, a total of 21 scholarly articles were deemed eligible for inclusion (see Figure 23.1). Using a standardised form, the two authors independently extracted the following from the articles: (1) study ID, (2) study title, (3) study participants, (4) study setting, (5) location of killing, (6) perpetrator’s age and sex, (7) victim’s age and sex, (8) relationship of perpetrator to the victim, (9) offender commits suicide (yes/no), (10) method of killing, (11) motive for killing, and (12) key findings. Figure 23.1 illustrates the process and shows the results of each step.

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Figure 23.1  Prisma flow chart.

Results Summary of Included Studies The study included 21 scholarly articles on femicide in SSA. The studies were conducted specifically in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, and Zambia. The majority of the scholarly articles (N = 9) were conducted in South Africa (Abrahams et al., 2009; Abrahams, Jewkes, and Mathews, 2010; Abrahams, Mathews, Jewkes, Martin, and Lombard, 2012; Dekel and Andipatin, 2016; Mathews et al., 2008, 2015; Meel, 2018; Sithomola, 2020; Spies, 2020), six from Ghana (Adinkrah, 2004, 2008a, 2008b, 2014a, 2014b, 2021), two from Mozambique (Granja, Zacarias, and Bergström, 2002; Macucha and Taunde, 2020), and one each from Botswana, Zambia, Nigeria, and Namibia (Aborisade, Adedayo, and Shontan, 2019; Alao, 2006; Duff, Nampweya, and Tree, 2020; Rude, 1999). As shown in Table 23.1, several methods were commonly used to perpetrate IPF: hacking with a machete (Aborisade et al. 2019; Adinkrah 2014a, 2014b, 2021), shooting with a firearm (Abrahams et al. 2009; Adinkrah 2004, 2008a, 2008b, 2014a, 2014b; Rude 1999; Spies 2020), beating with a personal weapon (Adinkrah 2004, 2014a; Granja et al. 2002; Rude 1999), hitting with a blunt object 248

Table 23.1  Summary of Findings in Published Scholarly Articles Study Participants

Study Setting/ Study Type Location

Perpetrator Victim Sex/Age Sex/ Age

Relationship of Perpetrator to Victim

Adinkrah (2021)

When a wife says Examnination Ghana “no”: Wife’s of 25 cases sexual refusal as a of homicides factor in husband- and attempted wife homicides in homicides Ghana

Qualitative

Male 23 Female Husband to 55 28 to years 60 years

Adinkrah (2014a)

Homicide-Suicide in Ghana: Perpetrators, Victims, and Incidence Characteristics

Analysis of Ghana homicidesuicide reports in a Ghanaian daily newspaper, 1990–2009

Qualitative

Male 20 Female Husband/ to 70 50 to boyfriend years 65 years

Adinkrah (2014b)

Intimate partner femicide – suicides in Ghana: Victims, offenders, and incident characteristics

Analysis of data Ghana from major newspapers, including 35 reported cases of female homicide victims

Qualitative

Male 20 Female Husband/ to 70 18 to boyfriend years 60 years

Offender Commits Suicide?

Yes (Selfinflicted gunshots, ingestion of poison, hanging, stabbing) Selfimmolation Yes (Poisoning, shooting, hanging, self-inflicted gun wounds)

Method of Killing

Motive for Killing

Hacking Stabbing Shooting Strangling Beating Hitting Poisoning Shooting Hacking Poisoning Stabbing Burning

Sexual refusal The findings found and disputes that wife sexual over sex refusal is a small but significant factor in wife killings in Ghana.

Shooting Hacking Strangling Burning

Suspicion of The findings indicate infidelity that suspicions Sexual jealousy of infidelity and Estrangement sexual jealousy play Threat of a significant role separation in the discussions, Relationship conflicts, and termination altercations before Quarrels the femicidesuicides.

Suspicion of infidelity Threat of divorce Quarrels

Key Findings

Overall, offenders and victims were generally of low socio-economic status.

(Continued)

Femicide in Sub-Saharan Africa

Study title

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Study ID

Table 23.1 (Continued) Study title

Study Participants

Study Setting/ Study Type Location

Perpetrator Victim Sex/Age Sex/ Age

Adinkrah (2008a)

Husbands who kill their wives: An analysis of uxoricides in contemporary Ghana

Analysis of data from 60 husbandwife killings reported in national daily newspapers

Ghana

Qualitative

Adinkrah (2008b)

Spousal homicides Analysis of 72 Ghana in contemporary spousal killings Ghana reported in a Ghanaian daily newspaper, 1990–2005

Qualitative

Relationship of Perpetrator to Victim

Offender Commits Suicide?

Method of Killing

Motive for Killing

Key Findings

Male 21 Female Husband/ to 70 22 to boyfriend years 60 years

Hacking Shooting Beating Hitting Strangling Stabbing Poisoning Acid attack

Male 30 Female Husband to 60 28 to years 50 years

Hacking Shooting Beating Hitting Poisoning Strangling Stabbing

Jealousy Overall, the results Suspicion of demonstrate infidelity that the trend Threat of of uxoricide in divorce Ghana corroborates Perceived substantially with challenge to studies conducted husband’s in Western authority industrialised societies. Suspicions of Overall, husbands infidelity were five times Disputes over more likely to kill money and their wives. childcare Threat of divorce Defying spouse’s orders Dispute over sex

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Study ID

Study ID

Study title

Study Participants

Study Setting/ Study Type Location

Adinkrah (2004)

Witchcraft Analysis of 13 Ghana Accusations and incidents of Female Homicide homicide Victimization in committed Contemporary against women Ghana accused of witchcraft from 1995 to 2001

Qualitative

Relationship of Perpetrator to Victim

Male 23 Female Husband to 65 32 to Son years 90 Close kin years Stranger (mob action) Witch doctor

Female

Offender Commits Suicide?

Method of Killing

Motive for Killing

Key Findings

Beating Permanent The findings show Slashing removal of that awareness of Stoning perpetrators’ social and cultural Shooting source of context, as well as Poisoning suffering/ women’s role in Bludgeoning misfortunes society, is critical Avenging the for developing deaths of an understanding relatives, of witchcraftfriends, or related femicide in neighbours Ghanaian society. The study shows that participants use discourses about femininity, romantic love, and other topics to explain their continued involvement in violent relationships.

(Continued)

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251

Dekel and Abused women’s Analysis of South Africa Qualitative Andipatin understandings of Open-ended (2016) intimate partner interviews of violence and the seven South link to intimate African femicide women, aged 23 to 50 years, with a history of different manifestations of intimate partner violence

Perpetrator Victim Sex/Age Sex/ Age

Table 23.1 (Continued) Study ID

Study title

Study Participants

Study Setting/ Study Type Location

Relationship of Perpetrator to Victim

Offender Commits Suicide?

Method of Killing

Motive for Killing

Key Findings

252

Female 14 years and older

The study revealed that guns played a significant role in violence against women, particularly in the killing of intimate partners.

Female 11 and 40 years

The study revealed that homicide was responsible for 1865 (30.61%) of the deaths.

Emmanuel Rohn and Eric Y. Tenkorang

South Africa Qualitative Guns and gender- Review of based violence in national South Africa homicide studies, intimate partner studies, studies with male participants, and studies from the justice sector Meel (2018) Incidence of female Analysis of all South Africa Quantitative homicide in the medico-legal Transkei subautopsies region of South performed Africa (1993– from 1993 2015) to 2015 at Mthatha Forensic Pathology Laboratory Abrahams et al. (2010)

Perpetrator Victim Sex/Age Sex/ Age

Study title

Study Participants

Study Setting/ Study Type Location

Perpetrator Victim Sex/Age Sex/ Age

Abrahams et al. (2012)

Intimate femicide in South Africa: Comparing two studies 10 years apart

Analysis using a retrospective design of a proportionate random sample of 38 medico-legal laboratories to identify all homicides in 2009

South Africa Quantitative

Female 13 years and above

Mathews et al. (2008)

Intimate femicide – Examination South Africa Quantitative suicide in South of 25 legal Africa: A crosslaboratories sectional study to identify all homicides committed against women in 1999

Female 13 years and above

Relationship of Perpetrator to Victim

Offender Commits Suicide?

Method of Killing

Motive for Killing

Key Findings

The study findings indicated that while homicide is decreasing in South Africa, genderbased homicides are disproportionately resistant to change, and rape homicides have proportionately increased. Overall, within a week following the murder, 19.4% of 1349 intimate femicide perpetrators committed suicide. Suicide was more common if the perpetrator was white rather than an of African background.

(Continued)

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Study ID

Table 23.1 (Continued) Study title

Study Participants

Study Setting/ Study Type Location

Abrahams et al. (2009)

Mortality of women Analysis using a from intimate retrospective partner violence national in South Africa: study in a A national proportionate epidemiological random study sample of 25 mortuaries

South Africa Qualitative

Mathews et al. (2015)

“So now I’m Analysis of South Africa Qualitative the man”: in-depth Intimate partner interviews with femicide and its 20 incarcerated interconnections men who with expressions killed their of masculinities in partners; study South Africa explores their views on and relationships with women

Perpetrator Victim Sex/Age Sex/ Age

Relationship of Perpetrator to Victim

Female 14 years and above

Male 21 Female Husband to 61 years

Offender Commits Suicide?

Method of Killing

Motive for Killing

Shooting Blunt force Strangulation Burning Drowning

Jealousy Betrayal Suspicion of infidelity

Key Findings

The findings indicated that fatality rate from IPV was 8.8 per 100,000 women. IPV-related deaths were higher among those aged 14 to 44 and women of colour. The findings revealed that men sought exaggerated versions of dominant masculine values, emphasising extreme control and power over women, and killing as the ultimate means of regaining control.

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Study ID

Study ID

Study title

Study Participants

Study Setting/ Study Type Location

Sithomola (2020)

Alao (2006) Lack of mutual respect in relationship: The endangered partner

Examinationof trends, antecedents, and precipitating factors of intimate partner femicide

Botswana

Qualitative

Relationship of Perpetrator to Victim

Offender Commits Suicide?

Method of Killing

Female 18 years and above

Male

Female Husband/ 22 boyfriend years and above

Shooting Strangulation

Motive for Killing

Key Findings

The findings determined that there are legislative flaws that require immediate action from legislators to protect women’s right to life. The findings show that media coverage of intimate femicide clearly demonstrates how women’s murders by intimate partners are framed as isolated events rather than a systematic problem occurring within a male-dominated social setting. The findings show respect for women in any relationship with men is lopsided in favour of men and has led toabuse of women, including intimate femicide.

(Continued)

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The imperilled right Exploration of South Africa Qualitative to life, femicide the deprivation crisis in South of right to life Africa: critical of those who considerations for have fallen legislators victim to the national crisis of femicide Analysis of news South Africa Qualitative Spies (2020) The portrayal of victims of articles from intimate femicide News 24, an in the South online premier African media news resource that delivers round-theclock coverage of local South African and international news

Perpetrator Victim Sex/Age Sex/ Age

Table 23.1 (Continued) Study ID

Study title

Study Participants

Study Setting/ Study Type Location

Rude (1999) Reasonable men and provocative women: An analysis of gendered domestic homicide in Zambia

Quantitative Male All ages

Aborisade et al. (2019)

Qualitative

Relationship of Perpetrator to Victim

Female Husband/ ex-husband/ boyfriend

Male 30 Female Husband years and above

Offender Commits Suicide?

Method of Killing

Motive for Killing

Beating Burning Stabbing Shooting

The findings revealed Suspected that domestic adultery violence and Threat or challenge to homicide myths a husband or and misinformation male relative are reflected Refusal to in both media obey orders coverage and or perform judicial statements domestic regarding the cases. tasks

Stabbing Jealousy Strangulation Envy Hacking Acid attack

Key Findings

The findings show that men who kill their spouses do not differ greatly from those who use nonlethal violence.

Emmanuel Rohn and Eric Y. Tenkorang

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Zambia Analysis of 150 cases of killings and alleged killings of women and girls by intimate partners and male family members in Zambia from 1973 to 1996 Spousal homicide in Study Nigeria Nigeria: Socioexamines the psychological psychological profiles of men factors and who kill their sociological wives background of men charged with and/or convicted of killing their wives

Perpetrator Victim Sex/Age Sex/ Age

Study ID

Study title

Study Participants

Study Setting/ Study Type Location

Duff et al. (2020)

Men’s accounts of passion killings in the Namibian context

Exploration Namibia of men’s explanations of IPH by interviewing ten individuals convicted and sentenced for the murder of their female intimate partners

Qualitative

Perpetrator Victim Sex/Age Sex/ Age

Relationship of Perpetrator to Victim

Male 25 Female Husband to 45 years

Method of Killing

Motive for Killing

Key Findings

Stabbing

Jealousy

Overall, the results demonstrate intimate partner homicide is influenced by the interconnected influence of cultural beliefs and attitudes, external factors, and a lack of emotional control and problem-solving skills. The findings show that the magnitude of the problem of violence-related maternal deaths compared with the magnitude of pregnancy-induced hypertension is the fourth cause of maternal death. Overall, the results show that intimate partner homicide was found to be positively associated with the victim being female.

Granja et al. Violent deaths: (2002) The hidden face of maternal mortality

Female 16 to 32 years

Stabbing Beating

Macucha and Taunde (2020)

Female

Strangulation Poisoning Blunt force Burning

Femicide in Sub-Saharan Africa

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Retrospective Mozambique Qualitative Male study in Maputo of 27 cases of pregnancyrelated deaths from injuries, including suicide, homicide, and accidents Domestic violence Analysis using Mozambique Quantitative Male homicide in autopsy report Maputo Province, data from 2016 Mozambique to 2017 at the Forensic Medicine Services at Maputo Central Hospital

Offender Commits Suicide?

Emmanuel Rohn and Eric Y. Tenkorang

such as a club or iron rod (Adinkrah, 2008b), strangling with a cord or with one’s hands (Aborisade et al., 2019; Abrahams et al., 2009; Macucha and Taunde, 2020; Spies, 2020), and stabbing with a knife (Aborisade et al., 2019; Duff et al., 2020; Granja et al., 2002; Rude, 1999). Other methods included poisoning the victim’s food (Adinkrah 2004, 2014a; Macucha and Taunde 2020), pouring acid on the victim (Aborisade et al., 2019), and burning the victim (Abrahams et al., 2009; Macucha and Taunde, 2020; Rude, 1999). The primary motivation was a husband’s/boyfriend’s suspicion of his wife’s/girlfriend’s infidelity (Adinkrah, 2008a, 2014b; Mathews et al., 2015; Rude, 1999). In these instances, the killing was frequently preceded by an incident in which the husband confronted his wife about claims or suspicions of infidelity. Other common motivations included the victim denying the perpetrator sex (Adinkrah, 2021), challenging his authority/orders (Rude, 1999). Table 23.1 summarises the articles.

Discussion This review draws attention to the paucity of research on femicide in SSA. This is mostly attributable to a lack of data management systems and difficulty accessing data in developing countries (Avgerou, 2008). Adinkrah (2008b) argues that in many developing nations, severe restrictions are often placed upon the release of official crime data, or such data is not consistently recorded or is generally unreliable. At the same time, some cases go undetected or unsolved, and perpetrators are never identified or found. The number of unsolved cases may also be attributable to the poor quality of information gathered and the ineffectiveness of criminal investigations. We add that if a study of the availability of reliable femicide data is undertaken, the situation in many SSA countries is likely to be found to be quite alarming. It is not only a question of lack of data; in many situations, the position is more a case of poor-quality data than of no data. Further, there are situations where data are available but minimal or no use is made of the same owing to limited administrative capacity and trained personnel. On the other hand, research findings in some Western countries indicate that data gaps are largely attributable to the fact that statistical and criminal justice agencies’ data gathering rationale and objectives were not developed with the purposes of research or prevention in mind (Dawson and Carrigan, 2021). Also, access to most official data sources is restricted and limited to those who work within such institutions or have some form of affiliation. Privacy and confidentiality concerns serve as the primary justification for these data restrictions (Cullen, Dawson, Price, and Rowlands, 2021). We concur that these limitations may have some considerable overlap with some of the data challenges identified in SSA. The reason is partly due to the difficulty in accessing official data on femicide in Africa (Adinkrah, 2008b). Additionally, conversation on femicide in the criminal justice system is silent. Moreover, the absence of disaggregated data on the forms and nature of femicide has undermined efforts to understand the magnitude of the phenomenon within the sub-region (Chirambwi, 2022). The review confirms the patterns of femicide previously found for SSA (UNODC, 2021). Women’s major risk of homicide is from a male intimate partner, and IPV rates in SSA are among the highest in the world (Devries et al., 2013). Some scholars argue that media coverage of femicide has increased over the years and has the potential to significantly shape social perceptions of various forms of violence (Gillespie, Richards, Givens, and Smith, 2013; Richards, Gillespie, and Smith, 2011; Spies, 2020; Sweeney, 2012). However, the media in Africa has not done enough to portray femicide as part of a broader structural problem and reflective of entrenched gender inequities (Spies, 2020). As noted by Exner and Thurston (2009), the media frequently associates intimate partner homicide with love. By portraying these crimes as love-related, the media removes the perpetrator’s culpability and may alter the public’s role in preventing them. The use of the label “passion killing” by the media provides a particularly 258

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negative construction of femicide to the public. It is important to reframe them as crimes of violence and control. The media can help to increase awareness of critical issues, impact everyday perceptions, stimulate conversation, and act as a catalyst for change. The media can serve as one of the most open platforms for examining crimes against women in society. Admittedly, media coverage of femicide has aided in raising public awareness, but misrepresentation, including the selective presentation of certain facts to the public, has led to a disproportionate focus on some instances of IPF and not others (Fairbairn and Dawson, 2013). The media’s reporting style may omit potentially significant information about the crime while still having the capacity to influence public opinion. Selective reporting may lead us to disregard important risk variables, such as gender or a history of violence. For example, male dominance, power, and control play a more significant role than what the media depicts. Additionally, the media often portrays violence against women, including femicide, as isolated incidents, not as a systemic problem rooted in society (Bagai and Faimau, 2021; Owusu-Addo et al., 2018). The study’s detailed assessment of the motivations, precipitating events, and conditions surrounding femicide episodes indicates the effect of patriarchal ideology and behaviours in SSA. The results suggest the majority of perpetrators killed because they could not bear what they saw to be their wife’s or intimate partner’s acts of insubordination. Some women, for example, were killed for challenging their husbands’ orders; others were murdered for denying them sex. A majority of cases could be traced to the husband’s sexual jealousy or suspicion of infidelity. Also, the killing of elderly women on suspicion and accusation of being witches raises serious concerns. Attacks on elderly women accused of being witches is a major problem in SSA (Eboiyehi, 2017). Hari (2009) notes, Across Africa, a war is being waged on women – but we are refusing to hear the screams. Over the past fortnight, I have travelled into the secretive shadow world that mutilates millions of African women at the beginning of their lives, and at the end. As girls, they face having their genitalia sliced out with razors, to destroy their “filthy” sexuality and keep them “pure.” As old women, they face being hacked to death as “witches,” blamed for every virus and sickness blowing across the savannah. We, therefore, conclude that lethal violence is a method of social control to keep women in line and to guarantee they adhere to patriarchal standards of male supremacy, similar to what has been documented globally. In Africa, however, many social and structural factors combine to exacerbate the plight of female victims of partner abuse, leading, in turn, to their increased vulnerability to IPF. Women’s vulnerability is heightened by their relative lack of economic resources; they must rely on male partners. They are equally exposed to community norms of male dominance and acceptance of violence, along with cultural ideas that marginalise women (Ogum Alangea et al., 2018). These structures of dominance and exploitation, which increase women’s susceptibility to violence, are legitimised by patriarchy (Tenkorang et al., 2013).

Recommendations and Implications for Practice, Policy, and Research This review has implications for the development of IPV and femicide interventions in SSA. We recognise that data on femicide in SSA are scant and have four key suggestions to ameliorate this situation. First, it is important to adequately resource the police, courts, hospitals, and mortuaries to collect mortality data and disaggregate these data by homicide type. Advocacy can help improve cooperation and coordination among relevant institutions dealing with crime. Second, we need to adequately train staff within the police and medical institutions to improve the documentation of IPF cases. Third, researchers must be adequately trained and resourced to effectively collaborate with institutions such as police, courts, hospitals, and mortuaries in understanding and preventing 259

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femicide. Fourth, a range of evaluation techniques for detecting risks of IPV and IPF is also required. These tools would need to be tested in various scenarios to establish their ability to accurately assess the likelihood of a woman being killed by her partner. Police training should include instructions on gun confiscation and gun law enforcement in cases of domestic abuse. Policies and training for police officers, in combination with child protection services, could make it easier to identify and support children impacted by IPF, and legislation could ensure that perpetrators are prosecuted appropriately. It has been argued that “data is a defence against femicide” (Dawson, 2021). We hope our review will shed light on the need to enhance data collection and management of IPF and other forms of violence against women. Ultimately, eliminating IPV is the most effective approach to preventing IPF. Research on offenders and potential perpetrators is needed, for example, in terms of risk and protective factors. Investigations of incidents of IPF are also essential, not only to better understand the needs of survivors and the characteristics of perpetrators but also to facilitate early detection and prevention of IPF. Finally, research approaches that improve understanding of the societal context of femicide, particularly IPF, should be developed and strengthened. Two limitations of this investigation should be noted. First, the results are limited in their generalisability because of the small number of studies analysed. Second, parts of the data were taken from media records. As is the case with the majority of research using media reports, it is likely that some of the information may be disproportionately concentrated on high-profile killings or IPF cases in urban areas. These limitations have been supported by other studies (Adinkrah, 2021; D’Ignazio et al., 2022). Despite these limitations, the study sheds new light on IPF in SSA and contributes to the IPF literature.

Conclusion We conducted a systematic review of femicide while stressing the dearth of research on this topic in SSA. One reason for the information gap is the quality of femicide data and the lack of coordination between the security and health systems in Africa (e.g. police, courts, hospitals, mortuaries). The criminal justice system cannot overlook the fact that IPF accounts for a sizable percentage of female killings in Africa. A proactive response to violence against women is an important strategy to prevent IPF and all femicide-related incidents. Along with an effective reaction to documented acts of violence, measures to lower the likelihood of IPF are required, including but not limited to laws restricting firearm access and other methods targeting perpetrators. Existing data systems in underdeveloped countries make it difficult to determine the exact extent of femicide and there are no viable alternatives to collect information. Preventing IPV and femicide should be a critical policy objective in every country in the SSA and other world regions.

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Emmanuel Rohn and Eric Y. Tenkorang García-Moreno, C., Pallitto, C., Devries, K., Stöckl, H., Watts, C., & Abrahams, N. (2013). Global and regional estimates of violence against women: Prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence. World Health Organization. Gillespie, L. K., Richards, T. N., Givens, E. M., & Smith, M. D. (2013). Framing deadly domestic violence: Why the media’s spin matters in newspaper coverage of femicide. Violence Against Women, 19(2), 222–245. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801213476457 Granja, A. C., Zacarias, E., & Bergström, S. (2002). Violent deaths: the hidden face of maternal mortality. BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 109(1), 5–8. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1471-0528.2002.01082.x Hari, J. (2009). Witch hunt: Africa’s hidden war on women. Retrieved from The Independent website: www. independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/witch-hunt-africa-s-hidden-war-on-women-1642907.html Johnson, M. P. 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24 FEMICIDE IN TURKEY Ceyda Ulukaya and Büşra Yalçınöz Uçan

Introduction Femicide, the gender-related killings of women and girls, is a global problem (UNODC, 2018). This term, as defined by Russell (2012), “the killing of one or more females by one or more males because they are female” (p. 2), offers a contextualised understanding of these crimes perpetrated against women and girls (Dawson and Carrigan, 2021; Marcuello-Servós, Corradi, Weil, and Boiara, 2016). In the last few decades, international and national efforts have been calling attention to the lack of systematic data on femicide (ACUNS, 2018). In response, femicide watch initiatives have been established in many countries worldwide to collect, analyse, and disseminate femicide data locally and internationally. These efforts have become essential to make the prevalence of the problem evident; identify the characteristics, determinants, and predictors underlying these crimes; and establish evidence-based effective prevention strategies (Weil, 2018). Additionally, examining how states respond to femicide and gender-based violence has been acknowledged as an integral part of the data collection efforts, mainly to underscore state accountability in preventing these misogynistic crimes (ACUNS, 2018). In Turkey, femicide has gained more visibility in the last 10 to 15 years, both in public and academic settings (Atuk, 2020). This recognition has been achieved through long-term feminist efforts and the recent works of anti-femicide initiatives collecting and publicising femicide data (Elden and Ekal, 2015; Muftuler-Bac and Muftuler, 2021). In this chapter, we begin with a brief overview of the country-specific context of femicides. Then, we will present the major findings of a data journalism project on femicide in Turkey (https://kadincinayetleri.org/) led by the first author of this chapter. The project has built upon a media-based collection of femicide data in the country between 2010 and 2019, with a primary objective to examine and reveal the characteristics and circumstances of women’s killings. Based on the project’s findings, we will illustrate and discuss the underlying patterns of femicides and the nationwide factors shaping these patterns.

Examining Femicide in Turkey: Looking at the Numbers Despite the ongoing activism against gender-based violence in Turkey since the 1980s, the gendered and political dimensions of women’s killings had not been publicly acknowledged until the 2000s. The killings of women and girls had been commonly represented from a cultural viewpoint – specifically related to the “honour” culture in the country (Arin, 2001; Ilkkaracan, 1998; Kocacioglu, 2004).

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Although the role of honour-based cultural beliefs and practices should be addressed in the killings of women in Turkey (Kardam, 2007; Tas-Cifci, 2020), this focus has generally resulted in overlooking the existing gender inequalities and the state’s responsibilities in preventing such crimes (Kocacioglu, 2004). The discourses around the culture of honour, for instance, have become part of a state ideology excusing men for their crimes on the grounds of “unjust provocation” or “extenuating circumstances” (Muftuler-Bac and Muftuler, 2021). Thus, framing femicide as “honour” killings, particularly in legal discourses, has contributed to the concealment of the primary role of patriarchal ideologies and structures in inciting these killings or exonerating perpetrators (Kocacioglu, 2004; Tas-Cifci, 2020). In 2009, state authorities published official data on the number of murdered women in the country for the first time, which showed a 1.4% increase in femicide rates from 2002 to 2009 (femicides by year: 66, 83, 128, 317, 663, 1,011, 806, and 953) (Cetin, 2015). Despite the absence of reporting on how this data was collected and what variables were used, the release of these numbers has demonstrated the magnitude of the problem and become a benchmark for an increasing public focus and media attention on women’s killings in the country (Atuk, 2020; Elden and Ekal, 2015). This process has also been facilitated by the formation of femicide watch initiatives. For instance, Bianet, an independent digital journalism network, has started monitoring and publishing data on women’s killings since 2011 (“Bianet is monitoring,” 2011). Also, in 2011, We Will Stop Femicide Platform (http://kadincinayetlerinidurduracagiz.net) and, in 2012, Anit Sayac (http://anitsayac.com/) – an online database – were founded as femicide watch initiatives. Since 2009, the official number of femicide cases have been made available by the government ministries on a yearly basis – except between the years 2013 and 2015 (Satil, 2021). This has been done, however, without providing any details regarding how, and based on what criteria, the data were gathered. Also, no information regarding the data characteristics has been revealed. Furthermore, the discrepancies between the numbers revealed by the state bodies and those provided by the femicide initiatives should be noted (see Table 24.1) (Muftuler-Bac and Muftuler, 2021). According to the numbers provided by the government ministries, there were 291 femicides between 2010 and 2012, and 2,014 between 2016 and 2020. WWSFP, Bianet, and Anit Sayac reported 3,418, 2,836, and 3,171 femicide cases, respectively, between 2010 and 2020. The differences in data collection and analysis criteria employed by these resources may explain, in part, the discrepancies in numbers. Regarding the patterns and characteristics, intimate partner femicide has been addressed as the most common form of women’s killings in Turkey (Atuk, 2020). According to WWSFP’s and Table 24.1  Femicide Numbers in Turkey

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Bianet

WWSFP

Anit Sayac

State Ministries

217 257 165 214 281 284 261 290 255 328 284

180 121 210 237 294 303 279 409 440 474 471

203 130 145 231 290 293 289 351 406 422 411

177 163 128 – – – 304 353 279 336 266

Note: The annual femicide numbers for each initiative presented in this table were obtained from the annual femicide reports of each organisation – accessed through their websites. The numbers reported by the state ministries were obtained via an investigative report by Satil (2021).

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Bianet’s annual reports for 2020, women were mostly killed by their current or former male partners (72% – WWSFP; 65% – Bianet) (Kepenek, 2021; WWSFP, 2020). Women’s attempts to leave and/ or refuse marriage proposals were revealed as major motives underlying femicides (32% – WWSFP; 25% – Bianet). The scholarly research – although limited in scope – have also indicated similar patterns in women’s killings (e.g. Toprak and Ersoy, 2017; Tutunculer, Ozer, Karagoz, and Beyaztas, 2015; Yilmaz, Kumral, Canturk, Erkol, and Okumus, 2015). One study, for instance, based on the analysis of criminal court documents of 161 femicide cases, demonstrated that approximately half of the femicide victims had been killed by their intimate partners, and 90% of them were murdered within the first fourth months after their separation (Toprak and Ersoy, 2017). The existing studies also illustrated that the age range with the highest number of women killed was from 18 to 45 (e.g. Tutunculer et al. 2015; Yilmaz et al. 2015). Toprak and Ersoy’s study (2017) further showed that the number of murdered women over 51 years old increased in the non-intimate femicide category (32%). Additionally, although the available data regarding the socio-economic variables for victims and perpetrators is limited, one study indicated working status as a crucial indicator: more than half of the victims and perpetrators were reported as either unemployed or working in low-income jobs (Tastan and Kucuker-Yildiz, 2019).

The Lack of State Accountability Feminicidio/feminicide, the term for women’s killings originated in the Latin American context, refers to a conceptual framework to redefine femicides as state-facilitated crimes (Marcuello-Servos et al., 2016). This conceptualisation fits with the nature of women’s killings in Turkey’s political/structural context, as it has been marked by gender-discriminatory practices and institutional unresponsiveness to violence against women (Atuk, 2020; Kabasakal, 2018). Paradoxically, up until the last few years, Turkey had demonstrated a political commitment to transform its legislation to prevent gender-based violence (Toktas and Diner, 2015; Ucan et al., 2016). In 2004, for instance, as a significant step towards femicide prevention, the new Penal Code re-categorised honour-related killings of women as firstdegree murders and eliminated provocation as a defence for these crimes (Muftuler-Bac and Muftuler, 2021). Furthermore, in 2012, after Turkey ratified the Istanbul Convention – the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence – the country adopted a new law on violence against women (Kabasakal, 2018). This new regulation provided extensive measures to ensure women’s safety from any forms of violence (i.e. prison terms up to six months in the case of breaching restraining orders, the authorisation of the police to issue immediate protective orders, or provision of shelter services) (Kabasakal, 2018; Ucan et al., 2016). Despite these positive changes, implementation has largely remained incomplete and uneven (Ekal, 2017; Ucan et al., 2016). Since the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, for instance, there have been no official efforts for a nationwide data collection on femicide and violence against women, although it has been required by the Convention (Muftuler-Bac and Muftuler, 2021). As another example, a survey study in 2014 demonstrated that nearly two-thirds of the police officers did not consider intervening in domestic violence situations as the primary duty of their job (Kara, Ekici, & Inankul, 2014). Additionally, although it has been defined as a state obligation to open women’s shelters in every province with a population over 50,000 – meaning that there should be at least 1,400 women’s shelters in the country – the number was reported at 137 in 2017 (Ekal, 2017). All these examples address the failure of state authorities in allocating resources to prevent violence and effectively respond to women’s needs. Adding to these long-term problems in the implementation and enforcement of laws, a presidential decree was issued in 2021, withdrawing Turkey’s ratification of the Istanbul Convention. Hence, considering that it had been used as a legal framework in preventing and combatting every form of gender-based violence, this decision signifies an anti-feminist backlash against women’s rights, and it will put women at a greater risk for femicide. 266

Femicide in Turkey

The Femicide Map Project The femicide map project started as a data journalism study, aimed to provide systematic and detailed information on femicides in Turkey. Initially, an effort was made to access official femicide data by submitting formal requests to various state departments and ministries. Yet these requests remained unanswered, which is why the study turned to the media coverage of femicides in the country. The current project only included the killings of women and girls by male perpetrators, and the deaths reported as suspicious were excluded from the study. The first objective was to identify the number of women and girls killed each year from 2010 to 2019. Each femicide case, based on the available information covered in news articles, was examined to determine the age of the victims, the perpetrator-victim relationship status, the motives of murders as reportedly disclosed by the perpetrators during the police interrogations or the court trials, and the pre-incident indicators of femicides as reported in the news articles. The available information regarding the victims’ minority statuses was also coded during the data collection. The results presented in what follows are based on the calculation of frequency distributions.

Descriptive Examination of Femicides Total Number of Femicides The findings demonstrated that at least 2,534 women were killed by men from 2010 to 2019, indicating that at least one woman had been murdered every 1.5 days. While this reflects a minor discrepancy when compared to the data documented by Bianet for the same period (2,522 femicides between 2010 and 2019), we see a more considerable difference with the numbers provided by WWSFP and Anit Sayac (2,944 and 2,760, respectively) (see Table 24.1). This difference may be related partly to the inclusion of suspicious death cases in the femicide data provided by WWSFP and Anit Sayac. Figure 24.1 shows the average femicide rates per million female population per year, along with the absolute numbers. The distribution of femicides by years demonstrated a substantial decrease in 2012 (4.8 per million female population) and an increase in 2019 (7.5 per million female population).

Figure 24.1  Femicides rates, by years.

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Victim-Perpetrator Relationship Status It was revealed that the risk of femicide substantially varies depending on the relationship status between victims and perpetrators (see Figure 24.2). Nearly two-thirds of femicide victims were reportedly killed by male partners. Among these femicides, 67% involved women’s spouses with whom they were married at the time of the killings and 11% with former spouses. One-fifth of intimate femicides were found to be committed by current or former dating partners (see Figure 24.3). Family members were found to be responsible for the killing of 22% of women. These familial femicides involved victims’ close family members in 53% of the cases, including fathers, sons, and brothers. The remaining 47% included other relatives such as sons-in-law, uncles, or stepfathers. Over two-thirds of the indirect killings of women where the perpetrator killed other people who were at the site of the murder were shown to occur in the context of familial femicides. This finding indicates that familial femicides were more likely to involve collateral victims in comparison to femicides committed by intimate partners, acquaintances, or strangers. Lastly, in 9% of the total cases, femicides were committed by acquaintances (e.g. neighbours, friends, or colleagues), and 4% of the victims were identified as murdered by strangers.

Figure 24.2  Femicides percentages, by the victim-perpetrator relationship status.

Figure 24.3  Femicide percentages, by the intimate partner relationship characteristics.

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Age of Victims In considering victim’s age as an indicator of femicide, it is evident that women between the ages of 26–40 represent the largest proportion of femicides (39%), followed by women aged 41–55 (20%) and 19–25 (19%) (see Figure 24.4). It should be noted that these percentages are parallel to the representation of these age groups in the general women population in Turkey (Turkish Statistical Institute, 2021). When examining the victim-perpetrator relationship status based on victims’ age (see Figure 24.5), in line with the general distribution of femicides by the victim-perpetrator relationships status, it was found that women across all age categories from 19 to 70 years old were mostly killed by their intimate partners. The percentage of familial femicide was determined to be the largest for girls between 0–12 and 13–18 years old and women over 71 years old (78%, 46%, and 45%, respectively).

Figure 24.4  Femicide percentages, by victims’ age.

Femicide percentages, by the victim-perpetrator relationship status and age

12% (n=8)

3% (n=5) 16% (n=24)

10% (n=7)

4% (n=18)

2% (n=20)

2% (n=10)

8% (n=38)

8% (n=76)

11% (n=55)

17% (n=80)

12% (n=121)

6% (n=11) 9% (n=17)

6% (n=6) 16% (n=11)

9% (n=10)

6% (n=4) 23% (n=117)

23% (n=25) 34% (n=62)

46% (n=70)

78% (n=52)

45% (n=31)

71% (n=334)

78% (n=762) 64% (n=324)

62% (n=68) 50% (n=91)

35% (n=54)

0-12

13-18

33% (n=23)

19-25

Intimate Partner Femicide

26-40

41-55

Familial Femicide

56-70

Acquaintance Femicide

71+

Figure 24.5  Femicide percentages, by the victim-perpetrator relationship status and age.

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Unknown

Stranger Femicide

Ceyda Ulukaya and Büşra Yalçınöz Uçan

Femicide Motives as Disclosed by Perpetrators The findings related to femicide motives were identified as based on the perpetrators’ statements reported in the media news. Accordingly, the motives for the killings could not be determined in 40% of the cases. Thus, it should be noted that only the cases where the motives could be identified were included in the calculations of the percentages (see Figure 24.6 and Figure 24.7). The available data demonstrated that the most common three motives for femicide were women’s attempt for separation/divorce (24%), suspicion of infidelity (13%), and economic conflicts (10%) (i.e. women’s refusal to give money to their partners or disputes over sharing of joint assets). When

Figure 24.6  Femicide motives.

Femicide motives, by the victim-perpetrator relationship status 120% 100%

2%

13%

13% 37%

80% 45%

60% 100%

100%

51%

58%

40%

11% 43%

65%

69%

28% 72%

26%

63%

51% 31%

23%

Familial Femicide

Acquaintance Femicide

Figure 24.7  Femicide motives, by the victim-perpetrator relationship status.

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46%

24% 31%

0%

Intimate partner femicide

1% 25%

100%

97%

20%

35%

1% 24%

11%

2%

Stranger Femicide

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we analysed these categories based on the victim-perpetrator relationship status, it was shown that in all cases where the identified motive was divorce/separation or suspicion of infidelity, the perpetrators were intimate partners. Jealousy was also illustrated as a motive almost always disclosed by intimate partners. Additionally, regarding the category of “daily life conflicts,” which was created to draw attention to the cases where women’s simple decisions or behaviours have become grounds for murder (i.e. “coming home late” or “not cooking”), the data revealed that 51% of femicides committed with these types of excuses were perpetrated by intimate partners. Familial femicides were illustrated to be committed mainly for honour-related reasons (24%). “Being rejected by the victim” was revealed as another common motive particularly relevant to the cases that involved victims’ acquaintances. That means, in 58% of cases that this motive was identified, the victims were killed by their acquaintances. In 31% of femicide cases, this motive was used by intimate partners, and in 11% by family members. Sexual violence was also revealed as a primary motive in 42% of cases that victims were killed by strangers. Sexual identity (transgender status, in particular) as a motive category was found to be present in only cases involving stranger perpetrators.

Pre-incident Processes The data regarding pre-incident processes were collected and coded independently of the category of femicide motives. That means, the coding of pre-incident processes was based on the available information on the media news – independent of the information regarding the perpetrators’ disclosures of motives – to determine whether victims were (1) exposed to violence prior to their death, (2) in the process of divorce, and/or (3) involved in formal help-seeking processes (e.g. police contact, applying for a restraining order). For 7% of the victims, all three indicators were documented, and 83% of these victims were killed by their intimate partners. Furthermore, a history of exposure to violence was found in one-fifth of the total femicide victims, and most of these were revealed as involving intimate partners (78%). It was also demonstrated that 21% of the women were murdered during their divorce proceedings, primarily by intimate partners (81%). Lastly, in 13% of all femicides, women were reportedly involved in the process of formal help-seeking, primarily to ensure their safety from their partners (77%) (see Figure 24.8).

The pre-incident processes, by victim-perpetrator relationship status

Stranger Femicide

2% (n=10) 7% (n=25) 7% (n=38)

Acquaintance Femicide

17% (n=93) 15% (n=52) 14% (n=72)

Familial Femicide

81% (n=431) 77% (n=264) 78% (n=405)

Intimate partner Femicide

0%

10%

20%

Separation/Divorce

30%

40%

Formal help-seeking

50%

60%

70%

Previous violence

Figure 24.8  The pre-incident processes, by the victim-perpetrator relationship status.

271

80%

90%

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Minority Status of Victims Regarding the minority status of murdered women, it was revealed that 4% of all femicides involved the killing of immigrant/refugee women. Intimate partners (57%) and then family members (20%) were found to be mostly responsible for these killings. Twelve femicide cases were involved women with disabilities, most killed by their intimate partners (n = 5) and family members (n = 5). Besides, it was demonstrated that 21 transwomen were killed by men, primarily by strangers (n = 16), and mainly because of their sexual minority status (n = 10). Realising that victims were trans during the sexual intercourse was identified as a commonly addressed motive by the perpetrators.

Discussion When considered with the current oppressive and discriminatory conditions in Turkey, data collection on femicide or gender-based violence is a political act, a form of feminist activism in the country. The state bodies create hard-to-overcome barriers to women’s achievement of safety by showing an increasing unwillingness and resistance to acknowledge the problem of male violence (Atuk, 2020; Elden and Ekal, 2015; Grieve, 2021). In this context, the femicide map project – by providing essential data to identify the factors that increase the risk of femicide for women and girls in Turkey – significantly contributes to the efforts and actions that aim to prevent such violence and improve women’s safety. This study showed that the annual femicide rates demonstrated a significant rise in 2019, representing a nearly 25% increase from the previous year. This trend, as acknowledged by other sources that collect femicide data in Turkey (Satil, 2021) may be partly associated with the government-supported public campaign against the Istanbul Convention, as it has gained strength over the last few years (Grieve, 2021). In contrast to this upsurge, in 2012, when Turkey ratified the treaty, a notable decrease in femicides was marked (21% compared to the previous year). During the same year, a national domestic violence helpline was also launched by the government. These affirmative actions would be associated with this yearly decrease. These interpretations, however, should be approached with caution as they do not indicate any evidence for causation. Further studies are needed to understand better the impacts of the legislative changes brought by the Istanbul Convention on femicide rates and evaluate the effects of withdrawal from the Convention.

Femicide by Intimate Partners Women’s killing by their intimate partners has been consistently documented as the most prevalent form of femicide worldwide (Dawson and Carrigan, 2021; UNODC, 2018). The current data also pointed out the same trend. A characteristic revealed in the dataset regarding intimate partner femicides is that, compared to dating partners or former spouses, most women in this category were killed by their current partners at the time of the murders. This information is crucial because intimate partner femicide is often considered a homogenous category in many femicide studies without looking into the nature of intimate relationships (Dawson and Carrigan, 2021; Dawson and Gartner, 1998). Therefore, the current findings indicated the essentiality of looking into certain sub-characteristics of intimate relationships in data analysis. Furthermore, estrangement has been reported as a common motive for femicides in marriage relationships (Campbell, Glass, Sharps, Laughon, and Bloom, 2007; Toprak and Ersoy, 2017). Similarly, our analysis showed that over one-third of intimate partner femicides committed by current husbands occurred during legal separation processes, and in 50% of these killings, women were found to experience intimate partner violence before their killing. Another related finding is that 17% of femicides committed by current legal spouses were identified as occurring while women 272

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were seeking protective orders. Although this represents a relatively small percentage, this data should be interpreted by considering the very low rates of formal help-seeking in the country (AkadliErgocmen, Yuksel-Kaptanoglu, and Jansen, 2013). In this respect, this finding supports previous research in Turkey that demonstrated the problems in the implementation of laws and legislations and the institutional unwillingness in intervening domestic violence situations (Ekal, 2017; Kabasakal, 2018; Kara et al., 2014; Toktas and Diner, 2015). Given the high rates of intimate partner violence in Turkey, these trends have become more alarming. Four in ten partnered women in Turkey were documented to experience at least one instance of physical and/or sexual violence (Akadli-Ergocmen et al., 2013). Correspondingly, the current data indicated that at least one-fourth of femicide victims had been exposed to the violence of their partners, which points out a need for a focus on intimate partner violence in femicide prevention efforts. It should also be noted that the characteristics of intimate partner violence also vary significantly from case to case in terms of its intensity, duration, frequency, and types (AkadliErgocmen et al., 2013). Hence, there is a particular need for further research to examine these varying characteristics of intimate partner violence concerning the various risks that these factors, among others, impose on femicide.

Gender-Based Motives The identification of gendered motives has been stated as crucially important for understanding women’s killings through a feminist perspective (Dawson and Carrigan, 2021; Taylor and Jasinski, 2011). Correspondingly, in the current study, we found gender-oppressive attitudes and practices as valid and highly relevant indicators of femicide in Turkey. For all femicide categories, these motives primarily reflect gendered control dynamics in the relationships and the idea of male power held by perpetrators as crucial factors in women’s killings. In evaluating femicides in non-Western cultural contexts, a common perspective is to conceptualise the motives/indicators of women’s killings based on cultural frameworks. Although culturespecific elements have been addressed as essential indicators for femicides in certain contexts (Sever and Yurdakul, 2001), using culture-based definitions to categorise different femicide forms (e.g. dowry-related femicides or honour killings) creates a risk of overlooking the underlying genderbased motives in femicides and attributing the problem of male dominance to specific cultures (TasCifci, 2020). Therefore, while the term “honour killing” has been frequently used in the related studies in Turkey (Kardam, 2007; Sever and Yurdakul, 2001), in the current study, rather than categorising these killings as a particular type of femicide, we classified honour-related rationales as a gender-based motive category. Compared to other identified motives, our results showed that honour-related motives were relevant in a small percentage of femicide cases. This is a noteworthy finding considering the overrepresentation of so-called honour killings in both the public discourses and related academic studies in Turkey.

Conclusions: Addressing the Data Gaps and Intersectionality Collecting accurate and reliable data on femicide is a challenge in most countries worldwide (Dawson and Carrigan, 2021; Marcuello-Servós et al., 2016). In Turkey, femicide data on a national level have been collected and made accessible primarily with the efforts of femicide initiatives (Atuk, 2020). The Femicide Map Project, as a part of these efforts, provided essential information regarding the prevalent trends and dynamics of women’s killings in Turkey. Yet as with other initiatives, this project’s data were also based on media coverage of femicides. Although media is the best possible alternative for accessing such data in our country context, related to the limits of media-based data collection, there are also data gaps in the present study. 273

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As one of these gaps, the femicide motives could not be identified in four out of ten cases in the current study. Dawson and Carrigan (2021) underscore the critical importance of identifying sexand gender-related predictors of women’s killings, as this information is considered crucial in differentiating femicide from homicide and providing an essential understanding of the gendered context of these crimes. The current data showed that most femicides in which the motives remained unknown were committed by intimate partners (71% of total femicides with unknown motives). This finding indicates that the common gender-related predictors of intimate partner femicides, such as separation/divorce, jealousy, or previous violence, are possibly much more prevalent than shown in the current data. Therefore, making this kind of information available and accessible is highly essential in demonstrating specific risk factors for femicide, especially in the context of intimate relationships. Furthermore, the present dataset includes limited information regarding intersecting identities of women. Our analysis mostly remained at a level where we specifically focused on gender-related factors as the primary determinant of femicide. In certain cases, however, not having a meticulous focus on marginalised populations and intersecting identities of women have been argued as producing a limited understanding of specific risk factors associated with women’s killings in the contexts of historical and structural vulnerabilities (Cullen et al., 2021). Hence, we consider it essential to discuss these identified limitations from an intersectionality perspective. Firstly, we view age as an intersecting identity category to better understand femicide trends among victims of different ages. What we consistently see in previous studies is a particular focus on femicides of young adult and adult women. Although this is expected as the majority of femicide victims were identified between the ages of 18 and 50 (e.g. Toprak and Ersoy, 2017; Tutunculer et al., 2015), this emphasis renders older women and their unique vulnerabilities less visible in femicide research (Sutton and Dawson, 2017). Considering additional vulnerabilities that ageing women would experience, such as deterioration of physical and mental health, economic problems, or social isolation, further research should take place to grasp the characteristics of femicide of older women in Turkey. The current study also included data regarding the killings of minoritised women, particularly transgender, immigrant/refugee, and disabled women. However, it is very likely that the killings of women from various disadvantaged groups remain less represented in media reports. Supporting this possibility, the media coverages included in the present dataset have been noted as not consisting of reliable information regarding ethnic or racial identities of victims or perpetrators, their socioeconomic characteristics, or living locations – particularly concerning urban/rural distinction. This missing information poses some critical questions regarding the accuracy and completeness of the data on femicide of disadvantaged women or girls, which addresses the “invisibility” of femicide victims from vulnerable populations (Cullen et al., 2021). A related critical issue that must be spotlighted is the suspicious death of women and girls in Turkey (Karakas, 2021). According to the numbers provided by WWSFP, 503 women were reported to lose their lives under suspicious circumstances between 2019 and 2021. These deaths were mainly claimed as suicides or accidents (e.g. suicidal hanging, falling from a high place [such as from a high window or balcony], firearm suicides). For example, Ayten Kaya, a 35-year-old woman, was found hanged to death in her home in a south-eastern city in Turkey (Karakas, 2021). Despite the visible bruises and swellings on her body and previous exposure to domestic violence by her husband, the state prosecutors reportedly denied opening a further investigation. Correspondingly, women’s rights advocates in the country have called attention to the possibility that many femicide cases – especially in eastern and south-eastern Turkey – may have been wrongly identified or overlooked as suicides (Al-Ali, 2019; Muftuler-Bac and Muftuler, 2021). These regions have been addressed as areas where the risk of being exposed to certain gender-discriminatory practices (e.g. forced/underage marriages or exclusion of girls from education) or any other forms of male violence is particularly high 274

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(Ilkkaracan, 1998; Kilinc, Neathery-Castro, and Akyüz, 2017; Sever and Yurdakul, 2001). A few studies have also demonstrated the elevated rates of female suicides in these districts and pointed out the link between female suicides and gender-based discriminatory practices (van Bergen, Eylem-Van Bergeijk, and Montesinos, 2021; Bagli and Sever, 2003). These indicate a need for a more systematic and location-based examination of suspicious female deaths, particularly female suicides. State violence, systemic discrimination, and armed conflict have also been noted as ongoing realities in south-eastern Turkey, where the Kurdish population is most concentrated (Al-Ali, 2019). Thus, along with the widescale gender-oppressive norms and practices, due to the vulnerabilities created by the structural realities of the region, Kurdish women have been reported as particularly vulnerable to gender-based violence and femicide (Al-Ali, 2019; Kocacioglu, 2004). A crucial aspect of the problem has been addressed as the state ideology that intentionally impoverishes the region (Ilkkaracan, 1998; Kocacioglu, 2004). For Kurdish women living in the area, this means the unavailability of formal mechanisms and structures for seeking help (Kepenek, 2020). These contextual realities address the essentiality of incorporating an intersectionality perspective into femicide data collection. Future studies on femicide in Turkey should put a significant effort to gather femicide data focusing on disadvantaged and marginalised communities in the country.

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25 FEMICIDE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM Karen Ingala Smith

Femicide in Legislation and National Policy/Strategy Femicide is not officially recognised in the UK. The most recent government national strategy to address men’s violence against women and girls – the Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy (H.M. Governent, 2021) – has a title that falls short of naming men or males as overwhelmingly the perpetrators of that violence. The strategy addresses rape and sexual violence, sexual harassment, “honour”-based violence, forced marriage, domestic abuse, online abuse, children’s access to pornography, female genital mutilation, and more. Whilst the strategy recognises violence against women and girls as both a cause and consequence of gender (not sex) inequality, it fails to address fatal violence as a manifestation of sex inequality. It does not use the term “femicide.” There is no recognition that femicide is more than simply homicides of females by males, that the relational and cultural contexts, histories between victim and perpetrator, and even methods of killing differ. In an introduction to the document, published by the home secretary, seven recent victims of what are termed high-profile cases (of femicide) are named, but the killing of women and girls is confined to passing references to domestic homicide, which would not even include five of the seven women named as they were killed by strangers. The circumstances of the deaths of these women are effectively ignored. In failing to address the killings of all women and girls, the major strategic policy initiative on addressing men’s violence against women and girls denied itself the potential to identify common themes that an analysis of femicide makes possible and thus missed the opportunity to implement preventative interventions based on that learning. A new and much-heralded piece of legislation, the 2021 Domestic Abuse Act, does not mention femicide, but it does not contain the words “woman” or “man” either. It does address criminal justice responses to murder and manslaughter within the state’s powers for dealing with domestic abuse, (Home Office, 2021). The Act itself does not address sex differences in perpetration and victimisation of domestic violence and abuse although it has been said that this will be addressed in guidance. The absence of femicide in both the most recent national strategy to address men’s violence against women and the strategies that preceded it in 2016 and 2010 is reflected in official data. There is no official data on femicide in the UK, nor until 2022 was there data breaking down fatal violence according to the sex of both victim and perpetrator; although the Office of National Statistics publishes annual data on homicide where the sex of victims is disaggregated by some broad relationship categories, corresponding data on the sex of the suspect is not disclosed.

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History of the Use of the Term “Femicide” in the UK Despite the failure to name and address femicide in current national legislation, the first known or surviving use of the term “femicide” in the UK is over 200 years old and appeared in J. Corry’s A Satirical View of London, 1801 (Russell, 2001). The term appears again in 1848 in Wharton’s Law Lexicon, suggesting that some awareness of sex-specific murder was recognised by law (ibid.). Frances Power-Cobbe does not use the term femicide in her 1878 work, Wife Torture (reproduced in Hamilton, 2004, pp. 124–149). Nevertheless, the piece is a clear antecedent of and should be considered in the context of contemporary femicide activism both in terms of content and intent. The piece was produced as part of campaigns for revisions to the Matrimonial Causes Act (introduced in 1857) to give protection to women who were subjected to men’s violence in marriage, which would allow them to obtain a protection order and custody of their children. Power-Cobbe lists 28 examples of intimate partner femicide throughout the piece, which she terms “specimens of the tortures.” Hamilton (2004) observes that Power-Cobbe uses violated women’s bodies to guarantee political acts and interventions which I would hope is a motivation that all activists, academics, and practitioners addressing femicide continue to share. Jill Radford and Diana Russell’s Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing, (Radford and Russell, 1992) brought the term “femicide” to academic and feminists’ attention, though sadly not to widespread use in Britain. This seminal collection of essays is global in scope, addresses the intersections of femicide and race and also offers a historical perspective, looking at early examples of femicide, including lesbicide in ancient Rome and witch-hunts in 16th- and 17th-century England. Another critical contribution to understanding femicide in the UK, without actually naming it as such, is the work of Rebecca and Russell Dobash, When Men Murder Women, (Dobash and Dobash, 2015), which builds upon their previous body of work. The foundation, The Murder Study, involved collection of data from the England and Wales Homicide Index for murders committed between 1980 and 2000; examination of case files of 786 men and 80 women serving prison sentences for murders in England, Wales, and Scotland between 1991 and 1995; and in-depth interviews with 180 of these men and 20 women. An important feature of the research is that they avoided the mistake of limiting their research to a study of current and former partners and instead also looked at murders of older women and sexually motivated murders regardless of the relationship between victim and perpetrator (Dobash et al., 2004).

The Femicide Census The Femicide Census was launched in the UK in 2015, bringing a hitherto absent focus to the issue and providing data that the government had overlooked. The project is a unique partnership of feminist activism, international corporations, and NGOs, bringing the resources of international corporates to a feminist counting and analysis of men’s fatal violence against women in the UK. The Femicide Census built upon Counting Dead Women, which I began in 2012 and have continued to run, recording all women killed by men in the UK. It is the most comprehensive single source of UK information about women who have been killed and the men who have killed them. The Femicide Census includes the killings of all UK women and girls aged 14 and over for which a man or men have been held solely or primarily responsible. The database provides the ability to exclude or include cases according to selected variables – for example, to select or deselect a cohort which includes only femicides committed by a current or former partner or family member or in the context of prostitution. This creates the possibility of matching cohorts selected in other femicide registries, so issues arising from inconsistent definitions between countries can be eliminated to allow meaningful comparisons.

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In 2020, the Femicide Census was relaunched as an independent entity led by me and Clarrie O’Callaghan and released a ten-year report, “If I’m not in Friday, I might be dead,”1 on 1,425 femicides in the UK between 2009 and 2018, (Femicide Census, 2020).2 Some of the findings of the report will follow.

Findings of the Femicide Census – Men’s Fatal Violence Against Women in the UK, 2009–2018 Temporal Variations in Femicide Rates On average, one woman is killed by a man in the UK every three days. There was no discernable upward or downward rate in femicide between 2009 and 2018, with the annual number of women killed in cases that a man was held responsible (convicted, identified as responsible in an inquest in cases where he killed himself, or found to have killed but not held criminally culpable) varying between 126 women in 2015 and 168 in 2015. This is an average of 142 a year. Femicide rates were higher over weekends, Fridays to Mondays, with many femicides reported on Mondays likely to have occurred on the preceding weekend. The connection between increased rates of femicide and leisure time also appears to be reflected in the months in which femicides occurred, with April and December recording the highest numbers of femicide (mirroring holiday periods, particularly national holidays, in the Christian calendar).

Relationship Between Victims and Perpetrator Table 25.1 details the relationships between victims and perpetrators. Most femicides in the UK are committed by men who have killed a woman with whom they are in or have had an intimate relationship. Between 2009 and 2018, 888 women, 62% of women who were killed by men, were killed by a current or former partner. The next most common relationship between women and the men who killed them was no previous relationship, with just over 8% or 119 women killed by male strangers. For example, 22 of these women were killed in terrorist attacks, including one MP, Jo Cox, who was targeted by a white supremacist in 2016, and another 21 victims killed in three separate terrorist attacks in the cities of London and Manchester in 2017. One incident, on 22 May 2017, killed 22 people, 17 of whom were female and 16 included in this data; one was aged under 14 years and therefore did not meet the criterion. Without the impact of these cases in 2017, more women would have been killed by their sons than by strangers, an issue we return to in the next sentences. These attacks illustrate the links between misogyny and terrorism. Daesh3 claimed responsibility for the Manchester and London attacks, and they are rightly framed in the context of religious extremism; however, the oppression of women by men is often at the heart of fundamentalist ideology. For example, in Manchester, the attacker chose the Ariana Grande concert, with a fan base in which girls – preteen and teenage – dominated. Smith (2019) has researched the backgrounds of the six men who were the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks in London and Manchester in 2017 and found that all six men had histories of misogyny and abusing women. Male relatives who were not current of former partners killed 199 women, 14% of those killed. Just under 8% of all women killed by men (109 women) or 55% of those killed by a relative were women who were killed by their son. After women killed by a partner or ex-partner, they were the largest group of women killed by men who were known to them. Considering that the population of mothers is smaller than that of adult women, this means that a woman in the UK who is a mother is more likely to be killed by her son than a stranger. All other possible family relationships between killer and victim each represented less than 1% of all women killed by men. Men who were known to their victim killed 186 women (13% of all 280

Femicide in the United Kingdom Table 25.1  Relationship Between Victim and Perpetrator Broad Relationship

Detail of Relationship

Number

Number (Broad Relationship)

Current or former partner

Spouse (i.e. legally married) Intimate partner Former intimate partner Former spouse Casual on-off Mother Daughter Sister Grandmother Mother-in-law/ex Sister-in-law Aunt Niece Stepmother Mother of perp’s partner/ex Step-grandmother Stepdaughter Partner/ex of perp’s relative Stepsister Relative of perp’s partner/ex Partner of perp’s father Friend/social acquaintance Acquaintance Neighbour Business associate/colleague Housemate First date/contact Landlady Relative of perp’s acquaintance Fellow care home resident Friend of perp’s partner/ex Tenant/lodger Foster carer Partner of perp’s ex Partner/ex of perp’s acquaintance Stranger/no known relationship

372 304 167 32 13 109 12 12 11 12 7 4 4 4 6 3 2 1 1 10 1 65 31 28 11 14 9 8 6 4 3 2 1 1 3 119

888

18

18

25 Total

25 1,435

Other relative

Other known

Stranger/no known relationship Prostitution

Woman in prostitution with no other known relationship with the perp

Unknown Some femicides involved more than one perpetrator; therefore, the number of relationships is greater than the number of femicides.

199

186

119

killed). This category also included nine women who were killed on their first date or first contact, which was also sexual contact with a man. Perpetrators included men who could be described as predators seeking a woman to hurt or kill. These women were not included in women killed by current or former partners because they could not be described as being in a relationship with or having been in a relationship with the man who killed them. Arguably, though, in cases where 281

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an internet “relationship” existed – sometimes over several months before the first face-to-face meeting – there may have been some (shared or not) belief that a relationship existed. In addition, whilst there are some differences between an arranged first date and a chance meeting, the stages of grooming (targeting the victim, building trust, meeting a need, isolating the victim, breaching boundaries, sexualising the relationship, developing or instigating control) feature in both, merely in an expedited version in chance meetings.

Ages of Victims and Perpetrators Victims were aged between 14 years old (the minimum age for inclusion in the census) and 100 years old. The youngest perpetrators were 13 years old (three males) and the oldest was 96 years old. Forty-eight young women/girls (3.5% of all women killed) were killed by men before they were aged 18. Two-hundred and three women (14%) were aged over 66 years, the current age of retirement in the UK. The age distribution differs for victims and perpetrators. Between the ages of 18 and 55 years, there are more perpetrators than victims. Victims outnumber perpetrators below 18 years of age and above 56 years of age. This reflects two different sets of circumstances: those in which males kill females who are younger than them (for example, partners with ages gaps, some relatives, predatory men seeking young women and girls) and circumstances in which males kill females who are older than them (most often mothers or other relatives).

Ethnicity and Country of Birth of Victims and Perpetrators In response to FOIs, the Femicide Census received data from police with regards to the ethnicity of victims and perpetrators in only 21% of cases. Where data was returned, there was a lack of consistency in terms used and many were ambiguous, anachronistic, and in some cases, offensive. This prevented comparative analyses of femicide rates between different ethnic groups and also suggests that the police are not committed to the value of sharing data about ethnicity or are not collecting it themselves. The Femicide Census data did however indicate that women born outside the UK were disproportionately victims of femicide. The lack of accurate data on race and ethnicity prevents the Femicide Census and other bodies interested in femicide from challenging myths and stereotypes around race and men’s violence against women, which are often fed by biased media reporting. It also inhibits the possibility of using data about femicide to make the case for the provision of additional support and other resources for groups of women who might have been identified as being at disproportionate risk of death. It is indicative of and consistent with a state approach that is unwilling to address the additional barriers faced by some ethnic groups, in particular by migrant women. Further details on responses received regarding ethnicity and country of birth can be found in the Femicide Census report. The lack of a satisfactory response is illustrative of Dawson and Carrigan’s (2021) observation that that gaps in data reflect what is seen – or not seen – as a priority when addressing femicide. The poor provision or availability data presents a problem for researchers seeking to consider the intersection of race with femicide. It is critical that analysis should be capable both of acknowledging differences and consistencies in heteropatriarchy; otherwise, it runs the risk of obscuring contexts which exacerbate the dynamics of men’s violence against women and pushing others to the forefront, which are more easily captured. For example, research from the USA has shown differential rates of intimate partner femicide by race (Fox and Zawitz, 2007; Azziz et al., 2011) and different rates of intimate partner perpetrated homicides amongst female homicide victims according to race with women; for example, Hispanic ethnic groups were significantly more likely to be killed by current or former intimate partners than women who were white or black and non-Hispanic 282

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(Petrosky et al. 2017). Siddiqui (2014) has called for an approach which “[r]ecognises similarity and difference between BME and white majority women, avoiding both the constructs of the collective victimhood, which denies the specificity of BME women’s experiences, and the ‘diversity’ argument which does not recognise the commonalities” – a position which, in order to be meaningfully adopted, requires the collection of adequate data. There is a gap in research looking at class differences in femicide rates in the UK, but international research has found evidence of links between poverty, unemployment, and elevated femicide rates. (Joseph, 2017). In addition, although domestic abuse crosses boundaries of socio-economic class as it does any other demographic, there is evidence that women from lower income households are more at risk of abuse. Skafida et al. (2021) found that mothers in the lowest income quintile were far more likely to experience any form of abuse compared to mothers in the highest income quartile.

Methods of Killing The Femicide Census found that the ways men in the UK chose to end women’s lives varied little over the ten-year period from 2009 to 2018. The majority of men (73%) chose a single method of killing, with 18% using two methods and 4% using three methods. Less than 0.5% of men used four or more methods of committing femicide. Data was unavailable in 43 cases, for 13 of these, the woman’s body had not been found. The Femicide Census made calculations based on both uses of multiple methods of violence and the method which caused death. A sharp instrument, usually a knife, was consistently the most frequently used method of violence, used in 47% of cases and caused the death of 37% of women’s deaths. The difference is accounted for by cases in which a sharp instrument was used but was not the cause of a woman’s death. Strangulation was used in 20% of cases, and asphyxiation in 6% of cases, with either (not specified) or both being used in a further 1% of cases. Strangulation was the cause of death for 13% of women, and asphyxiation in 4% of cases. Moreover, 9.5% of women killed by men were kicked, hit, or stamped to death by a man using nothing other than his body and physical force, whilst kicking, hitting, and stamping was used in 15% of femicides. Women’s bodies were violated after their deaths in up to 26% of cases. It was not always clear whether the violation was gratuitous defilement or an attempt to conceal the body and, therefore, the crime or, in some cases, both. In 14% of cases, the motivation appeared to be concealment or disposal. Women’s bodies were set on fire in 3% of cases, dismembered in 2%, and mutilated in 1%, and other forms of violation were evident in 4% of cases, including burning with chemicals, flesheating, and sharing images of the woman’s body. Twenty-two men (1.5%) were charged with rape in addition to murder or manslaughter. This is likely to be an underrepresentation of the number of rapes committed in femicides, as in many cases only the most serious crime is prosecuted. Overkilling, involving the use of excessive or gratuitous violence beyond that which was necessary to cause death, was identified in 52% of cases between 2009 and 2018. Generally, cases were identified as involving overkill where more than one method was used or a single method, such as stabbing, was inflicted five or more times. There were considerable fluctuations in identified prevalence through the years, with 42% of cases identified as involving overkill in 2013 and 61% in 2015. In 23% of cases, due to paucity of information, it was not possible to identify whether overkill was present or not, therefore, the real figures are likely to be higher.

Location of Femicides Seventy per cent of women killed by men were killed in their own home or the home they shared with the perpetrator, 39% (554) in the victim and perpetrator’s shared home, and 31% (443) in the victims’ own home. A further 2% were killed in the street or garden outside their home, and 283

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an additional 2% were reported as having been killed in a house, but further information was not disclosed. This reflects the number of women killed by partners or ex-partners and family members with whom they shared a home but also includes others, such as older women who were targeted because of the vulnerability exploited by their killer. Some women were killed in their homes by strangers, others by men who had employment roles that gave them access to women’s homes (e.g. maintenance men or taxi drivers). An additional 8% of women killed by men were killed in the perpetrator’s home, many of these were women killed by their ex-partners, but they also included women who were the victims of predatory men. One hundred and eighteen (8%) women were killed outdoors in public spaces, with the exception of 2017, when as has already been discussed, 21 women were killed in three separate terrorist attacks. Excluding those women, the proportion of women killed in public spaces across the ten-year period remained relatively consistent at around 7%; however, in 2017 alone, with the inclusion of the murders of these women, 15% of women killed by men that year were killed in public spaces. Twenty-one women (approximately 1% of women killed by men) were killed in their workplace, 12 women were killed in sheltered or supported housing, and 13 women were killed in the perpetrator’s car. These findings serve to remind us that, in a patriarchal society, men’s domination, control, and entitlement are evident in both private and public spheres. Of course, men’s abuse of women extends beyond fatal violence. Harassment, coercive control, violence, and stalking are behaviours that men subject upon women with whom they have close relationships, as well as those they do not know. Men’s abuse of women diminishes the liberty of individual women and women as a sex class.

Intimate Partner Femicide and Separation Separation has long since been recognised as a risk factor in homicidally controlling and violent men (Brownridge, 2006). The Femicide Census has been able to provide evidence to support this in UK femicides. The Femicide Census found that 888 of the 1,425 women killed by men (or 62%) were killed by current or former partners. Of this group, 378 (or 43%) were known to have separated or to be in the process of separating from their killers. This is likely to be an undercount given that, for many women, leaving an abusive controlling man is a process, not a singular event, and this information may not be known or noted in media reports. In addition, the surviving male is typically the individual who has the power to shape the narrative in the criminal justice process and men frequently refuse to accept that a relationship is over or report that it was over. Of those cases where separation was a factor, 38% of women were killed within a month of separating, and 89% were killed within one year of separation. The findings of the Femicide Census have begun to have an impact on wider research addressing men’s violence against women. Forensic criminologist, Jane Monckton Smith (2020, 2021), identified an eight-stage chronology of events leading to intimate partner homicide based on recognising coercive control as the most effective predictor of lethal violence. Though the stages are sequential, they can happen rapidly or more slowly, with regression and progression possible. Stage 4 is a trigger event, and this is frequently separation, or the threat of it, followed by escalation as perpetrators try to reinstate the control they are losing. At some point, this leads to a change in thinking (stage 6), when the perpetrator may acknowledge that the relationship is over and move on or, in the case of lethal abuse, may recognise that attempts to revive the relationship (and his control) have been unsuccessful, and so he may move on to stage 7, planning to kill. The Femicide Census (2020) found that 5% of women killed by a former intimate partner after separation were killed three or more years after the separation. This demonstrates that for some women, the danger of their former male 284

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partner’s murderous impulse that drives the progression from the trigger to the decision to impose control and plan to exact revenge can last a very long time.

Perpetrators of Femicide and Histories of Violence Against Women The Femicide Census identified histories of perpetrating violence and abuse against women in 46% of the cases analysed in the ten-year report. Moreover, a history of prior abuse of the victim was identified in 59% of the femicides committed by men who killed a current or former partner or relative. The census recognises that this is likely to be an undercount as evidence of abuse of/violence against women was only recorded where it was specifically mentioned in media reports, including records of court proceedings or other official documents, such as domestic homicide reviews. It is widely known that many women do not report the abuse they are subjected to or indeed tell anyone else about it. Only 9% of killers were known to have previous convictions for violence against women. The Femicide Census ten-year report noted that 29 (or 2%) of the 1,419 men who killed women had killed before and that, of these, 20 had previously killed a woman. This number does not include the men who killed more than one woman in a single incident. These 29 men killed 35 women between 2009 and 2018. In addition, one man died of cancer after having been cleared of three separate killings of women and before standing trial for 44 sexual violence charges spanning over 45 years, and one man also killed a woman abroad (therefore, her death is not included in the report) after fleeing after killing his mother, who was included in the report. Given that UK homicide data consistently shows that men are more likely to kill and be killed by other men, the prevalence of men who had killed women is disproportionately high and is consistent with Dobash and Dobash’s (2004) assertion that men who kill women tend to specialise in violence against women. Since the publication of the Femicide Census ten-year report, further two men who killed three women in 2020 have been identified as having killed before.

Femicide and the Sex Industry The Femicide Census identified 32 women who were known to be involved in prostitution who were killed between 2009 and 2018. In 18 cases, the killer was known to be a sex buyer. In six cases, the perpetrator was a current/former partner. Women who were not born in the UK were hugely overrepresented in women who were involved in prostitution, representing 12% of the UK population but 41% of women involved in prostitution who were killed. Only one amongst those was killed by a current/former partner, which paints a picture of who is more vulnerable to this form of exploitation in the UK – namely, migrant women, those with the fewest alternative options and least state protection. It is highly likely that the number of femicide victims identified as being involved in prostitution is an undercount as a woman’s involvement in prostitution is not always known. In addition, a marked tendency towards fewer media coverage for the killings of women who had not been born in the UK, together with the overrepresentation of migrant women in prostitution, means links to femicides and prostitution are less likely to be addressed. Furthermore, the prevalence of problematic substance use amongst women in prostitution increases the likelihood that femicide could be disguised as an accidental drug-related death. The sex industry has both an indirect and direct impact on femicide (Caputi,1987; Russell, 2001; Zara et al. 2021). Indirectly, the sexual objectification of women is a manifestation of, and reinforces, sex inequality. The sex industry places men as consumers and purveyors and women as products, the consumed. The UK government’s strategy to deal with men’s violence against women and girls recognises prostitution as a form of violence against women and girls, though, falls short of 285

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extending the same to pornography, addressing the latter only in terms of revenge pornography and the impact on young people (in other words, not the women harmed in the production of pornography). Unsurprisingly the strategy fails to address either prostitution or pornography in the context of reflecting and reinforcing sex inequality. The direct impact of the sex industry upon femicide can be seen in the killings of women who are involved in prostitution and/or pornography (Zara et al., 2021); the use, creation, and influence of pornography in the killings of women (Ressler et al., 1988); and the sexualised killing of women in snuff movies (Caputi, 1987; Russell, 2001). There is little recent research into the extent of the use of pornography in the UK, but a survey of 1,052 UK adults by Opinium Research for the newspaper The Observer in 2014 found that 76% of men accessed pornography on the internet (Mann, 2014). The Femicide Census recorded a perpetrator as a pornography user only where media reporting or official documents, such as domestic homicide reviews or judges’ comments (where available), referred to his consumption, and this was very rarely the case. It is likely that this reflects the lack of recognition of the impact of pornography on men’s behaviours and attitudes towards women. This lack of visibility prevents proper identification of the harms of pornography and stymies commitment to interventions that would reduce the consumption and, therefore, the production of pornography. Nevertheless, mostly in the context of sexually motivated femicides, references were made to the perpetrators’ use of violent pornography.

Perpetrator Outcomes One hundred and fifty-three men (11%) killed themselves before a charge. Eighty-four per cent of suspected perpetrators of femicide were charged with murder, 4% were charged with manslaughter. The remaining 1% include men who were charged with causing death by dangerous driving (in the context of a history of intimate partner violence) or culpable homicide or were deemed unfit to stand trial/detained under the Mental Health Act. Two men were shot dead by the police. The charges resulted in 62% of men who were charged in relation to femicide being found guilty of murder and a further 17% being found guilty of manslaughter. In the UK, with a dead woman’s body, the weight of the criminal justice system is brought to bear. In contrast, a living victim of rape or physical assault with first-hand evidence of the attack has little chance of securing an investigation let alone a conviction: only in death does a woman gain a criminal justice advantage (Topping and Barr, 2021; O’Callaghan and Ingala, 2021).

Conclusion The findings of the Femicide Census support an integrated approach to addressing femicide, traversing the different relationships between victims and perpetrators. Patriarchal norms and values, including the social constructs of gender, the ownership and control of women, the disposability of women, the role of motherhood, and the expectation of sexual access to women, are factors in femicide. Exclusively focusing on intimate partner or family femicides prevents the identification of wider societal influences, and focusing on intimate partner or family homicides prevents the identification of factors specific to the sex of victims and perpetrators. Either approach inhibits the possibility of reducing femicide.

Notes 1 These are the words of Judith Nibbs, who was beheaded by her husband of 30 years, Dempsey Nibbs, in 2014. 2 The report also addressed the deaths of an additional 117 women, where no perpetrator was identified but the police had reason to suspect a male, or where alleged perpetrators either had been cleared or had charges against them dropped with no subsequent additional person charged. As a male perpetrator had not been

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Femicide in the United Kingdom definitively established or deemed responsible, these cases were excluded from analysis. The total number of femicides was therefore 1,542. 3 The jihadist group which controls large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, also known as Islamic State, or ISIS. The term “Daesh” (or “Da’ish”) is used as a way of challenging the legitimacy of the group. “Daesh” is an Arabic acronym formed from the initial letters of the group’s previous name in Arabic: “al-Dawla alIslamiya fil Iraq wa al-Sham.” The group’s supporters object to its use; it has pejorative connotations, and it sounds similar to an Arabic verb meaning “to trample or crush something.”

References Azziz-Baumgartner E, McKeown L, Melvin P, Dang Q, Reed J. (2011) Rates of femicide in women of different races, ethnicities, and places of birth: Massachusetts, 1993–2007. Journal of Interpersonal Violence 26(5), 1077–1090. Brownridge, D.A., (2006) Violence against women post-separation. Aggression and Violent Behavior 11(5), 514–530. Caputi, J, (1987) The Age of Sex Crime. Ohio. Bowling Green University Press. Dawson, M., Carrigan, M. (2021) Identifying femicide locally and globally: Understanding the utility and accessibility of sex/gender-related motives and indicators. Current Sociology 69(5), 682–704. Dobash, R.E., Dobash, R.P., Cavanagh, K., and Lewis, R. (2004) Not an Ordinary killer, – just and ordinary guy: When Men murder and intimate woman partner. Violence Against Women 10(6), 557–6054. Dobash, R.E, Dobash, R.P. (2015) When Men Murder Women. New York: Oxford University Press Femicide Census. (2020) UK Femicides 2009–2018: If I’m not in Friday, I might be dead. Femicide Census. www.femicidecensus.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Femicide-Census-10-year-report.pdf Fox, J. and Zawitz, M. (2007) Homicide Trends in the United States. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Available at: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/htius.pdf Hamilton, S. (2004), Criminals, Idiots, Women and Minors. Plymouth. Broadview Press. H.M. Government (2021) Tackling Violence against Women and Girls Strategy https://assets.publishing.service. gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1005630/Tackling_Violence_Against_ Women_and_Girls_Strategy-July_2021-FINAL.pdf Home Office. (2021) Domestic Abuse Act. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/803322/DA_Bill__final_2019_.pdf Joseph, J. (2017). Victims of femicide in Latin America: Legal and criminal justice responses. Temida. 20.3–21. Mann, J. (2014, 28 September) British Sex survey 2014. The Observer. Guardian/Lifestyle Monckton Smith J. (2020) Intimate Partner Femicide: Using Foucauldian Analysis to Track an Eight Stage Progression to Homicide. Violence against Women 26(11), 1267–1285. Monckton Smith, J. (2021) In Control. London. Bloomsbury Circus. O’Callaghan, C. and Ingala Smith, K. (2021) Cases like Sarah Everard’s are not ‘incredibly rare’ and the police must admit it. The Observer. 14 March. Available at: www.theguardian.com/society/2021/mar/14/ cases-like-everards-not-incredibly-rare-police-must-admit-it Petrosky E., Blair J.M., Betz C.J., Fowler K.A., Jack S.P., Lyons B.H. (2017) Racial and Ethnic Differences in Homicides of Adult Women and the Role of Intimate Partner Violence – United States, 2003–2014. Morbidly and Mortal Weekly Report 66, 741–746. Radford, J. and Russell, D.E.H. (1992) Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing. New York: Twayne Publishers. Ressler, R. et al. (1988) Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives. Massachusetts. Lexington. Russell, D.E.H (2001) Femicide in Global Perspective. New York. Teachers College Press. Siddiqui, H. (2014) Violence against minority women: tackling domestic violence, forced marriage and ‘honour’ based violence. PhD thesis. University of Warwick. Skafida, V., Morrison, F. and Devaney, J. (2021) Prevalence and Social Inequality in Experiences of Domestic Abuse Among Mothers of Young Children: A Study Using National Survey Data from Scotland. Journal of Interpersonal Violence 37, 11–12. Smith, J. (2019) Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men into Terrorists. London. Quercus. Topping, L. and Barr, C. (2021) Fewer than one in 60 rape cases lead to charge in England and Wales. The Guardian. 23 May, p. 18. Zara, G., Theobard, D., Veggi, S., Freilone, F., Bionic, E., Mattutino, G. (2021) Violence against prostitutes and non-prostitutes. Journal of Interpersonal Violence 37, 15–16.

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26 FEMICIDE IN THE UNITED STATES Jill Theresa Messing, Millan A. AbiNader, Jesenia M. Pizarro, April M. Zeoli, Em Loerzel, Tricia Bent-Goodley, and Jacquelyn Campbell

Introduction In the United States (US), people who are identified as women comprise approximately 20% of all homicide victims, averaging 3,500 homicides yearly (Puzzanchera et al., 2020). According to the World Bank (2021), the rate of intentional homicides of females in the US was slightly higher than the world average for the three most recent years of data (2017–2019). Killings of women by men are predicated on sexism; murders of women of colour are grounded in the intersection of racism and sexism. There is often evidence of misogynistic intent in individual homicide records of men who murder women, but in other cases, evidence suggests that an available loaded weapon is more causative than misogyny (Campbell, 1992). Aggregate data, which has been developed and collected within a patriarchal structure and thus prioritises variables of import to homicides with male victims and perpetrators, does not provide sufficient information on gender-related motives (Dawson and Carrigan, 2021). Therefore, while we recognise that murders of women occur in the context of misogyny and racism, we are reluctant to use the term “femicide” to ascribe primarily misogynistic motives. Throughout this chapter, we use the term femicide to refer to the killing of women, primarily by men, without regard for the specific intent of the individual perpetrator. Although we do not ascribe specific misogynistic or racist motives to any individual, we use the term “femicide” with the intent of foregrounding the context of sexism and racism within which the homicide occurred. Within this chapter, we focus particularly on homicides of Black and Indigenous women, given historical and contemporary racism (emanating from the legacies of slavery and colonisation) in the US, that places Black and Indigenous women at high risk of homicide. Of women killed by men in the US in 2019, 91% were killed by men they know and 62% of those men were intimate partners of their victim (Violence Policy Center, 2021). As intimate partners are the largest group of killers of women in the US, and given the distinct gendered patterns that can be identified within this context, we attend specifically to intimate partner femicide (IPF) and antecedent intimate partner violence (IPV). High rates of firearm ownership in the US additionally contribute to high rates of firearm homicide; we address both the prevalence of firearm homicide and potential prevention measures. We close with policy and practise suggestions for the prevention of femicide, particularly IPF, in the US.

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Femicide in the US Females between the ages of 25 and 49 years old make up the majority of femicide victims, followed by women 50 and older, young women between 18 and 24, and children between 0 and 5 (Puzzanchera et al., 2020). National data on the gender identity of US homicide victims is limited because the primary source of legal system information, the Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), collects only binary sex (Fox and Fridel, 2016). The other main source of homicide data in the US, collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), added a transgender variable in 2013, yet there are high levels of missing data (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2016). Available data indicate that transgender individuals are at higher risk of homicide than their cisgender peers (Dinno, 2017; Waters, Pham, Convery, and Yacka-Bible, 2018). Whether the homicide victim is identified as a man or a woman, the perpetrator is most likely to be identified as a man (Puzzanchera et al., 2020). National data on the race and ethnicity of femicide victims in the US is limited because the SHR collects information on race, but not ethnicity. Race is a social construct, developed to create and reinforce social hierarchy (Kendi, 2019); race is also one way that homicide victims are described in the US. Because ethnicity, which refers to a shared linguistic or cultural identity, is not gathered in the SHR, Latinx and Indigenous females are often misclassified as white (Echo-Hawk, Dominguez and Echo-Hawk, 2019; Pizarro and Zeoli, 2013). Whereas 13.4% of the US population is Black (U.S. Census, 2019), Black females account for approximately 30% of femicide victims (Puzzanchera et al., 2020). Unlike the SHR, the CDC collects information from vital records and captures homicide fatalities disaggregated by Hispanic/non-Hispanic (CDC, 2020). These data indicate that homicide rates of women by race/ethnicity are highest for Black females, followed by Indigenous and Latinx females (Petrosky et al., 2017). When examining femicide across types, the social structural covariates are similar to those of male victim homicides. Rates of femicide and male victim homicide increase and decrease following similar patterns (Pizarro et al., 2010). Geographic locations – such as those with higher rates of overall poverty and economic disadvantage – that have high rates of male homicides also have high rates of femicides (Mancik et al., 2020; Pizarro et al., 2010). Gender equality has an inverse relationship with femicide overall in the US, with more economic equality between the genders associated with less femicide (Campbell, Rothman, Shareef, and Siegel, 2019; Vieraitis et al., 2015). Many of the differentiations in situational characteristics of femicides (compared to homicides of men) are consistent with the large portion of femicides occurring in the domestic context. Femicides often take place in the victim’s residence and are less likely to involve acquaintances and strangers (Pizarro et al., 2010). Relative to males, female victims are less likely to have a criminal history or any involvement in lifestyles considered “deviant” (e.g. gang membership, drug dealing) prior to the homicide (Pizarro et al., 2011).

Homicide of Black Women Black women were killed by men at over twice the rate of white women in 2019 (Violence Policy Center, 2021) and are seven times more likely than white females to be killed while pregnant or postpartum (Chang et al., 2005). Black women are also more likely to be killed at a younger age (35 versus the national average of 41 years; Violence Policy Center, 2021) and are more likely to be killed in the heat of an argument and by a firearm than white women (Everytown for Gun Safety, 2019). These daunting statistics occur within a critical historical and contemporary US context wrought with systemic racism, discrimination, and oppression (Franklin and Higginbotham, 2010; Kendi, 2019).

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There are a number of internal and external factors driving the disproportionate number of Black women killed due to IPV (Bent-Goodley, 2001). The historical trauma associated with the enslavement of African people in America still pervades Black relationships today (Bent-Goodley, 2014). Feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness in relationships is a persistent presence that remains a vestige of slavery (Franklin and Higginbotham, 2010; Kendi, 2019). Not only were African people restricted from reading and writing, but they also were not able to keep their families together, marry, or stop the repeated raping of Black women by white slave owners (Franklin and Higginbotham, 2010). Following the enslavement of African people, Jim Crow laws were enacted to further restrict, oppress, and abuse Black communities. Lynching was a tool exercised to gain control and instil fear within the community and from generation to generation (Franklin and Higginbotham, 2010). Today, Black survivors use internal (e.g. self-reliance) and interpersonal (e.g. threats to leave) helpseeking practices to avoid mistreatment of the survivor and the perpetrator by formal systems (BentGoodley, 2012; St Vil et al., 2017; Waller, et al., 2021). In addition to police violence and murder of Black men and women (Tate et al., 2020), Black families are disproportionately likely to experience the withdrawal of Black children from the home when IPV is identified (Bent-Goodley, 2004). Many Black women choose to forgo their own needs and safety to protect Black men from racist and abusive systems; in particular, the trust divide between law enforcement and the Black community impacts the willingness of Black people to use the legal system (Bent-Goodley and Smith, 2017). This process, termed racial loyalty, creates barriers to help-seeking for IPV even when the woman knows she could be in danger (Bent-Goodley, 2001; Richie, 1996). Racial loyalty is further exacerbated by negative stereotypes of Black women largely emanating from slavery (Hill-Collins, 2015). These negative stereotypes include the mammy, who is expected to care for others regardless of her own needs (Hill-Collins 2015). This expectation is reinforced by a socialisation process of Black women that emphasises the role of the Black woman to keep the family together and protect Black men at all costs (Richie, 1996). Additional negative stereotypes of the Jezebel suggest that Black women are sexually promiscuous so deserving – even wanting – to experience violence in and outside of relationships (Hill-Collins, 2015). These negative stereotypes are further amplified by support systems that evidence racist, discriminatory, and oppressive practices (Bent-Goodley, 2014). For example, Black women have been refused shelter assistance for being perceived as the negative stereotype of the angry Black woman (Bent-Goodley, 2005). Despite the danger, Black women have been treated differently from other survivors and have often had their needs neglected within the very systems that should protect them.

Homicide of Indigenous Women Indigenous peoples in the Americas are the victims of historical and contemporary murder, oppression, and rape due to colonisation (Deer 2015). For American Indian women and girls under the age of 19, homicide is the fourth leading cause of death; homicide is the sixth leading cause of death for Indigenous women who are between the ages of 20 and 44 (CDC 2019). Although US femicide data commonly misclassify the racial identities of Indigenous people (Echo-Hawk, Dominguez and Echo-Hawk, 2019; Heron, 2019), it is clear that Indigenous females are killed at disproportionately high rates. The Urban Indian Health Institute documented their process of attempting to identify femicides of Indigenous women through public records requests from law enforcement in 71 cities and one state in the US; among the 56% of agencies that responded to the request, 42% of the cases of murdered Indigenous women identified by researchers were not identified in the records (Lucchesi et al. 2018). Further, approximately 5,712 Indigenous girls and women have been reported missing, with only 116 of those cases being logged into the Department of Justice Federal database of missing persons (Lucchesi et al. 2018). Due to underreporting, racial misclassification, institutional racism, and other factors, the number of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls 290

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(MMIWG) is most likely grossly underrepresented, creating a problem that is widely known about in Indigenous communities, but has not resulted in sufficient action by government actors. While we continue to use the term “femicide,” insufficient state action resulting in culpability, in this case, grounded in contemporary racism and the legacy of colonialism, has elsewhere been termed feminicide (Dawson and Carrigan, 2021). Over half (55.4%) of all femicide victims identified as Indigenous are murdered by an intimate partner (Petrosky et al., 2017). IPV and sexual violence against Native American women is commonly perpetrated by someone outside of their own race (Rosay 2016), suggesting that IPF of Indigenous people is also commonly perpetrated by non-Indigenous people. Over 570 federally recognised Tribes in the US hold self-sovereignty, a nationhood identity, and the authority to selfgovern Tribal citizens and on their lands (BIA 2021). However, when perpetrators are not Tribal citizens or when crimes are committed outside of Tribal jurisdictions, Tribal nations have little authority (Deer 2015). Increasing Tribal autonomy and jurisdiction over the prosecution of nonIndian perpetrators of violence towards Indian victims will not only assert Tribal sovereignty but also empower Tribal communities. Racist and colonialist US government policy has resulted in dehumanisation, sexualisation, and objectification of Indigenous women, and in turn, there are barriers to reporting, data collection, and the provision of victim services.

Intimate Partner Femicide Women are the victims in 78.4% of all intimate partner homicides (IPH) and men commit approximately 95.5% of all IPFs (Fridel and Fox, 2019). While the percent of IPHs of men decreased by 53% between 1980 and 2008, the percent of IPF increased by 5% during this same period (Cooper and Smith, 2011). IPFs are preceded by male-perpetrated IPV in two-thirds to three-quarters of cases, and when men are killed by a female partner, there has been prior IPV against the female partner in approximately 75% of cases (Campbell et al., 2003; Harden et al., 2019). Trend studies suggest that the rise of IPV shelters in the US largely accounted for a decrease of IPHs of men rather than affecting IPF rates (Dugan, Nagin, and Rosenfeld, 2003; Mancik, Stansfield, and Kinard, 2020; Reckdenwald and Parker, 2012). Similar to femicide generally, using CDC data, IPF victims are classified primarily as white (55.1%), followed by Black (30.6%), Hispanic (9.1%), Asian/Pacific Islander (2.7%), and American Indian/Alaska Native (2.5%; Petrosky et al., 2017). There is a dearth of studies examining femicide among LGBTQ+, foreign-born, and rural populations. Studies consistently find that IPV rates among lesbians and bisexual women are higher than among heterosexual women (Edwards and Neal, 2015), although little is known about homicide risk in this group. Trans women also experience higher rates of IPV than cisgender women, suggesting they could be at increased risk of IPF (Langenderfer-Magruder, Whitfield, Walls, Kattari, and Ramos, 2016). When killed, foreign-born women are significantly more likely to be killed by an intimate partner than US-born women (Sabri, Campbell, and Messing, 2018), though little is known about unique risk factors among this group. While research suggests that rurality is associated with increased IPF rates and unique risk factors, most research on IPF risk and prevention focuses on urban spaces (AbiNader, 2020; Gallup-Black, 2005; Mancik et al., 2020). About one in five multiple-victim homicides involves an intimate partner; 41.8% of these involve men who kill their partner and children (Abolarin et al., 2019). Among children aged 2–14 who are killed, 20.2% of homicides are related to IPV; in 54.3% of those cases, the perpetrator also killed or attempted to kill his intimate partner (Adhia et al., 2019). Children who are not killed often witnesses the IPF or find their mother after the IPF (Lewandowski et al., 2004). Based on national statistics, the perpetrator dies by suicide in 18.3% of femicides (Petrosky et al., 2017); these numbers are higher when examining IPF. In one study of homicide-suicide in the US state of North Carolina, 31% of male IPH perpetrators (and 46.4% of men who killed their intimate partner with a firearm) 291

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killed themselves after the homicide (Smucker, Kerber, and Cook, 2018). In 59.3% of cases where children are killed in the context of IPV, the perpetrator died by suicide (Adhia et al., 2019). Mass shootings in the US are also related to IPF with 59.1% of mass shootings in the US (2014–2019) involving an intimate partner or family member (Geller et al., 2021).

Firearm Homicide Compared to other nations, the US has an extremely high level of firearm ownership and correspondingly high rates of firearm homicide (Naghavi et al., 2018). Between 2010 and 2019, 55% of femicides and 57% of IPFs were committed with firearms (Kaplan, 2021; WISQARS, 2021). Increased gun ownership and access have been linked to increased IPH rates (Kivisto et al., 2019; Stansfield and Semenza, 2019). For men who perpetrate IPV, access to a gun increases the risk of homicide (Campbell et al., 2003). The US federal government and the governments of many states have passed laws to prevent known IPV perpetrators from purchasing/possessing guns. IPV-related gun regulations that lack implementation policies, however, do not appear to affect IPH rates (Dìez et al., 2017; Zeoli et al., 2018). After a relatively steady decline in the number of IPFs since 1990, IPF has been steadily increasing since 2013; this increase is entirely composed of IPFs committed with guns (Fox and Fridel, 2020).

Intimate Partner Femicide Prevention High rates of IPV prior to IPF suggest opportunities for prevention. Legal system interventions (e.g. arrest, incarceration) are the most common responses to IPV in US, yet it is estimated that only 56% of IPV events are reported to police (Reaves, 2017). The Black community, in particular, is unlikely to request the support of law enforcement (Bent-Goodley and Smith, 2017). Women report wanting the violence to stop but not necessarily wanting their partner to go to jail (Bent-Goodley, 2014; Waller, et al., 2021). Black women have justified concerns that their partner, if Black, is more likely to be incarcerated than a white man and that he might be harmed or killed by the police (Shernock and Russell, 2012; Tate et al., 2020). Further, legal system interventions have shown varying effects on IPF. Researchers estimate that in 25–45% of cases, police had made an IPV arrest prior to the homicide (Campbell et al., 2003; Koppa and Messing, 2019). Mandatory arrest laws, aimed at compelling police to make an arrest when there is probable cause that a crime was committed, were in effect in some form in about half the 50 US states in 2010 (Zeoli et al., 2011). Recent research suggests that mandatory arrest laws do not affect IPF rates (Mancik et al., 2020). Conviction of a misdemeanour IPV crime is one of the main ways that IPV perpetrators are legally prohibited from gun access, yet these state-level gun restrictions are not associated with reductions in IPH (Diez et al., 2017; Vigdor and Mercy, 2006; Zeoli et al., 2018; Zeoli and Webster, 2010). However, the corresponding federal law has been associated with reductions in rates of IPHs committed with firearms (Raissian, 2016; Zeoli et al., 2018). Additionally, state laws specifying that individuals convicted of violent misdemeanour crimes (not necessarily IPV crimes) are prohibited from possessing firearms are associated with a 23% reduction in IPH (Zeoli et al., 2018). Orders of protection, also called restraining orders, are civil court orders that generally restrict perpetrator access to the victim, although the provisions can be much broader and may include prohibitions from gun access. IPV survivors have many reasons for choosing not to use orders of protection as a safety strategy and others may have their petitions denied (Messing et al., 2020a; Zeoli and Paruk, 2020). Studies have estimated that between 2 and 23% of IPF cases had an order of protection in place prior to the homicide depending on locality (Koppa and Messing, 2019; McFarlane, Campbell, and Watson, 2001; Vittes and Sorenson, 2008). State-level protective-order firearm-restriction laws are associated with lowered IPH rates at the state and city levels (Vigdor and Mercy, 2006; Zeoli et al., 2018; Zeoli and Webster, 2010). However, the association of these laws with IPH rates 292

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may be dependent on who is covered under the restriction. Under federal law and the laws of some states, the restriction applies only to orders granted after a hearing (leaving out emergency or temporary orders), and it only covers current/former spouses or cohabitants or those who have a child together (leaving out dating partners). However, given that women are at high risk of being killed when separating from their abusive partners (Campbell et al., 2007; Wilson and Daly, 1993) and that dating partners make up roughly half of IPH offenders, these groups may be critical to include. Indeed, states that include temporary orders and, separately, states that include dating partners both experience a 13% reduction in total IPH, while states that do not cover temporary orders or do not cover dating partners experience no significant reduction (Zeoli et al., 2018). When it is ordered that an IPV perpetrator relinquish their firearms, laws and protocols are often not present to ensure that individuals restricted from gun possession no longer have access. Without the legal system ensuring relinquishment, IPV perpetrators may keep their guns. State laws that authorise or require judges to order that these individuals relinquish guns that they already possess are associated with a 10–12% decrease in IPH, whereas states without relinquishment laws experienced no associated decrease in IPH (Diez et al., 2017; Zeoli et al., 2018). The development of risk-informed interventions may also assist in IPF prevention. Only one US risk assessment has been developed specifically to predict IPF (Campbell, Webster, and Glass, 2009), others predict either recidivism or re-assault (Graham et al., 2021). The Danger Assessment (DA) was developed from an 11-site case-control study examining IPF and includes 19 risk factors for IPF, such as increased frequency or severity of IPV, recent separation, perpetrator unemployment, forced sex, strangulation, drug and alcohol use, and controlling behaviours. Multiple legal system interventions use versions of the DA in collaborative risk-informed interventions for IPV. The Lethality Assessment Program (LAP) includes the use of risk assessment by law enforcement to identify highrisk IPV offenders and place survivors in contact with social service providers (Messing et al., 2017). A quasi-experimental research study in one US state found that the intervention increased survivors’ help-seeking and reduced violence in the seven months following the intervention (Messing et al., 2015). Domestic violence high-risk teams (DVHRT) similarly use a version of the DA to identify high-risk offenders, bring together multiple systems to respond to the most dangerous cases, and increase victim safety by providing education and services to survivors while focusing on legal system intervention for perpetrators (Messing et al., 2020b). There is a need for community-driven risk assessment and intervention to prevent IPF. While used widely in the US, the DA is limited because it was developed based on data from the late 1990s before the advent of mobile technology, with a sample composed of predominately urban, heterosexual women who were identified as white, Black, or Latina. Up-to-date data collection on emerging risk factors among more diverse communities is underway (Messing et al., 2021). Efforts to identify and intervene in high-risk IPV must include the perspectives of communities of colour, centring their voices in prevention efforts. Identification of those at high risk must be combined with interventions that are community-informed and can address systemic barriers and discrimination. Racism within US systems, particularly in the legal system, has contributed in complex ways to the disproportionate occurrence of femicide for Black, Indigenous, and women of colour. Creating awareness of the heightened risk faced by particular racial/ethnic groups, along with the development of standardised reporting systems and more accessible victim services, may assist in addressing the epidemic of violence. Survivors of colour consider racism and discriminatory practices when determining whether to seek help. Interventions that target racist practices, programs, and policies within law enforcement, IPV interventions, and child welfare systems are needed. One such intervention to prevent IPV is In Circle, a culturally based intervention designed, in part, to reduce exposure to violence through culturally sensitive programming that is both trauma-informed and community-based (Bent-Goodley, 2017). To reduce IPF in the US, more interventions are needed that are rooted in the community and driven by the advncement of antiracist policies and practices that create sustainable change. 293

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A, Antonio, C. A., Aremu, O., Arora, A., Asadi-Lari, M., Assadi, R., Atey, T. M., Avila-Burgos, L., Awasthi, A., . . . Murray, C. J. (2018). Global mortality from firearms, 1990–2016. Jama, 320(8), 792–814. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.10060 Petrosky, E., Blair, J. M., Betz, C. J., Fowler, K. A., Jack, S. P., & Lyons, B. H. (2017). Racial and ethnic differences in homicides of adult women and the role of intimate partner violence – United States, 2003–2014. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 66(28), 741–746. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6628a1 Pizarro, J. M., DeJong, C., & McGarrell, E. F. (2010). An examination of the covariates of female homicide victimization and offending. Feminist Criminology, 5(1), 51–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/1557085109354044 Pizarro, J. M., & Zeoli, A. M. (2013). An assessment of the quality of homicide data in the Supplementary Homicide Reports: a research note. Justice Quarterly, 30(4), 711–731. https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2 011.624113 Pizarro, J. M., Zgoba, K. M., & Jennings, W. G. (2011). Assessing the interaction between offender and victim criminal lifestyles & homicide type. Journal of Criminal Justice, 39(5), 367–377. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jcrimjus.2011.05.002 Puzzanchera, C., Chamberlin, G., and Kang, W. (2020). Easy Access to the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports: 1980–2019. Retrieved May 12, 2021, from www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezashr/ Raissian, K.M. (2016). Hold your fire: Did the 1996 Federal Gun Control Act expansion reduce domestic homicides? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 35(1), 67–93. https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.21857 Reaves, B. A. (2017). Police response to domestic violence, 2006–2015. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Statistics. www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/prdv0615.pdf Reckdenwald, A., & Parker, K. F. (2012). Understanding the change in male and female intimate partner homicide over time: A policy-and theory-relevant investigation. Feminist Criminology, 7(3), 167–195. https://doi. org/10.1177/1557085111428445 Richie, B.E. (1996). Compelled to crime: The gender entrapment of battered black women. New York: NYU Press. Rosay, A. B. (2016). Violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women and men: 2010 findings from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. Sabri, B., Campbell, J. C., & Messing, J. T. (2018). Intimate partner homicides in the United States, 2003–2013: A comparison of immigrants and nonimmigrant victims. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 36(9–10), 4735–4757. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260518792249 Shernock, S., & Russell, B. (2012). Gender and racial/ethnic differences in criminal justice decision making in intimate partner violence cases. Partner Abuse, 3(4), 501–530. Smucker, S., Kerber, R. E., & Cook, P. J. (2018). Suicide and additional homicides associated with intimate partner homicide: North Carolina 2004–2013. Journal of Urban Health, 95(3), 337–343. https://doi. org/10.1007/s11524-018-0252-8 Stansfield, R., & Semenza, D. (2019). Licensed firearm dealer availability and intimate partner homicide: A multilevel analysis in sixteen states. Preventive Medicine, 126, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2019.05.027

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PART 5

Understanding Femicide and Feminicide Subtypes and Contexts

27 INTIMATE FEMICIDE/INTIMATE PARTNER FEMICIDE Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Sandra Walklate, Jude McCulloch and JaneMaree Maher

Introduction Diana Russell first used the term “femicide” when testifying at the 1976 International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women (Radford and Russell, 1992: xiv). Femicide is the gender motivated killing of women and the most extreme form of violence against women. The killing of women by their male intimate partners, current or former, is referred to by Walklate et al. (2020) as intimate femicide. It is the most common form of femicide worldwide (UNODC, 2018), and the focus of this chapter. In adopting the term “intimate femicide” here, we acknowledge that there has been some debate over the terms femicide, feminicide, and homicide (Pierobom de Avila, 2018), but following on from our earlier work (Walklate et. al., 2020), we wish to note the value of emphasising both the intimacy present in these fatal relationships and the gendered nature of the act of homicide. This chapter provides an overview of the prevalence, nature, and risk of intimate femicide worldwide. It is structured into four parts. In Part 1 the prevalence of intimate femicide globally is examined, with reference to international statistics alongside regional and country level data. This section also examines the ways in which data on intimate femicide are collected and the degree to which women’s deaths from intimate male violence are “counted” at the local, national, and global levels. In Part 2 we examine the body of scholarship which has sought to develop better understandings of the nature of intimate femicide, victim and perpetrator characteristics, and the circumstances of its occurrence. Building on this analysis, Part 3 focuses upon risk factors and risk assessment in relation to intimate femicide. The chapter concludes by examining the changing face of intimate femicide globally in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for systematic data collection to better understand women’s risk of fatal violence from their male partners and ex-partners at this unprecedented moment in world history.

Quantifying and Counting Intimate Femicide The World Health Organisation (WHO, 2013) estimates that 38% of women murdered globally are killed by an intimate partner. While clearly establishing that intimate femicide is a global problem, the WHO (2013) also notes variances in the prevalence of the killing of women by a male intimate partner across the world with, for example, intimate femicide accounting for 55% of femicides in the South-East Asia Region. More recently, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in their 2018 Global Study on Homicide Report found that 87,000 women were victims of femicide

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in 2017, of which 30,000 women were killed by a current or former intimate partner (UNODC, 2018). This figure was an increase in prevalence from an estimated 48,000 killings of women by an intimate partner or family member in 2012 (UNODC, 2018: p. 10). When prevalence rates in the available data are examined at the country level it is apparent that there are particular countries worldwide where women face heightened risks of men’s fatal violence (Walklate et al., 2020: pp. 33–36). In El Salvador, for example, the country with the highest femicide rate in Latin America, this translates to the killing of a woman every 18 hours (Donovan, 2019). Across Europe, the UNODC (2018) provides country level data which shows a higher-than-average risk of intimate femicide for women living in Albania, Croatia, Hungary, and Lithuania as compared to other European countries. In Australia, where family violence has been declared a national crisis (Fitz-Gibbon, 2021; Stott Despoja, 2019), at least one woman is killed every week by men’s violence (Cussen and Bryant, 2015). Women in Asia are the least likely globally to be killed by a male intimate partner (UNODC, 2018), as indicated in this data. While these headline prevalence rates exist, there is a dearth of dependable and comprehensive femicide data in most countries, and there is no reliable global tally of such deaths. One study of international prevalence rates found that only 66 countries, mostly high-income, out of a total of approximately 95 countries globally had useful data on intimate femicide (Stockl et al., 2013). Tragically, and despite issues with incomplete data, available evidence suggests the number of intimate femicides have not decreased but rather have increased in recent decades, such as in in the United Kingdom (Brennan, 2016), and in Australia (Cussen and Bryant, 2015), reinforcing both the importance of counting and highlighting its limitations in achieving sustained change. While variance in the presence and quality of country-specific crime data is a well-documented phenomenon globally, it is important to note that efforts to improve responses to and the prevention of intimate femicide worldwide are ultimately hampered by the lack of consistent and coordinated prevalence data (see also Fitz-Gibbon and Walklate, 2020). The need for improved femicide data collection has been recognised by the UN special rapporteur on violence against women, who, in 2016, called for the establishment of country-specific femicide watches (Simonovic, 2016). Alongside this call, action has emerged in a body of scholarship which has sought to improve understandings of why quantification is important and what is achieved through counting (see, inter alia, Walklate et al., 2020; Merry, 2016; Walby et al., 2017). On this point, Walklate et al. and others have emphasised the importance of viewing counting as but one part of a meaningful response in taking account of women’s deaths. They are realistic as to the value of data in this space: Data alone won’t save women’s lives but counting the killing of women by men is a way of valuing women’s lives, accounting for gendered killings and a tool for further action. Data is not sufficient to change and save women’s lives, but it is necessary. (Walklate et al., 2020) As Engle Merry (2016: p. 222) has commented, “We rely on numbers alone at our peril.” Be it the power of the UN special rapporteur’s call for action on femicide watches, or perhaps what Engle Merry (2016) has identified as the “seductions of quantification,” the last decade has seen growing documentation of the risks faced by women victims of men’s violence. The establishment of several campaigns at the local and national levels have sought to count the killing of women by men, mostly within intimate partner relationships, though some include those killings which occur outside of an intimate partner relationship. These initiatives include campaigns by feminist civil society groups, such as Counting Dead Women in Australia (Destroy the Joint, 2018; Cullen et al., 2018), the Femicide Census in England (Brennan, 2016; Long et al., 2020), the Women Count USA (Schreyer and Health, 2019), and the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability (2019). When combined with more institutionalised exercises, such as family violence death reviews (see, for 302

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example, Dawson, 2017), this activity represents significant if nascent steps towards more systematic counting of intimate femicide. To date, however, there are still only a small number of countries with specific registries of intimate femicides (Vives-Cases et al., 2016). Within these registries, campaigns, and counts, there are particular gaps and patterns of invisibility. The failure to embed systematic, comprehensive counting of intimate femicides has particular consequences for women from marginalised, diverse, or remote communities. In the slow violences of gender violence that end in “honour” killings (ShalhoubKervorkian and Daher-Nashif, 2013), in the staging of femicide as something else (Bitton and Dayan, 2019), in the impunity of woman killing in Ciudad Juarez (Livingston, 2004; Leal, 2008), in the disappeared, lost, and missing Indigenous women and girls in Canada and Australia (National Inquiry into Missing Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, 2019; Higgins and Collard, 2019), and in the invisibility of/missing cases of older women (Roberts, 2021), the killings of women from marginalised or minoritised communities, by their intimate partners, are less likely to be reflected in official statistics. Their killings are further shrouded or obscured. In addition, counting femicides fails to capture the incalculable number of women’s untimely deaths caused by intimate partner violence. A woman may survive an act or acts of violence at the hands of her violent intimate partner or partners. The aftermath of such violence, however, including significant economic and health impacts, may end her life earlier than would have otherwise been the case (see, for example, Franzway, 2015; Webster, 2016). The link between male intimate partner violence and women’s untimely death is deeply embedded in the social, economic, cultural, and political structures that devalue women’s lives and fail to adequately protect, support, and restore women from the immediate and ongoing, sometimes intergenerational, harms that arise from such violence. The ongoing failure to systematically count intimate femicides and to create a framework that would capture all the current invisibilities and absences reflects the lack of value accorded to women’s safety and their lives (Walklate et al., 2020) and raises broader questions about how and whether counting alone will be enough. The increasing presence of visual and artistic memorialisations (such as the Red Shoes campaign in Mexico [Telesur, 2016]) that has expanded into a broader Red Shoes – Global Day of Solidarity and the Redress project by artist Jamie Black remembering missing Indigenous Women in the US (Ault, 2019) reflects the creation of alternative or additional ways in which the killing of women by men can be remembered or made to count. Thus, prevalence statistics and what they reveal about the nature and extent of intimate femicide, need to be considered with caution. The value of such statistics in promoting debate and policy concern about femicide, however, is beyond question. One way in which the value of such statistics is demonstrated is the increasing presence of empirical work focused on understanding the nature of intimate femicide.

Understanding Intimate Femicide: Typologies and Motivations Beyond efforts to count the toll of men’s fatal violence against women, there has been a significant body of scholarly work which has examined the scenarios within which men commit intimate femicide, their personal circumstances, that of their victim, and relevant situational features in which the femicide occurred (Boxall, Rosevear and Payne, 2015). This work has advanced in diverse ways, including the psychological model (which has lost favour in recent years, see Dekeseredy, 2011: p. 59) and the cultural and ecological models (Kouta et al., 2018), the sociological model (see, inter alia, Dawson and Carrigan, 2020), and through a legal perspective. While much of the work done to advance understanding in this field has focused on non-fatal intimate partner violence (see, for example, the foundational work of Johnson, 1995, 2005), there is a smaller body of intimate femicide focused work. This research has proposed a number of different ways in which we can better understand and, ultimately, predict and prevent this fatal form of intimate partner violence. 303

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The work of Dobash and Dobash has been critical in building understandings of the profile of men who commit intimate femicide and the circumstances within which they do so (Dobash and Dobash, 2015). Referring to the “ordinary man” who kills their female partner “out of the blue,” Dobash and colleagues (2004, see also Dobash et al., 2009) found that men who commit intimate femicide typically have “more conventional” histories than men who kill in other contexts of male violence. Of significance, the murder study by Dobash and Dobash (2015) found that the presence of conflict within the relationship, coupled with the often-masculinised traits of jealousy and possessiveness, were common dynamics present prior to the act of intimate femicide. Motivation-based explanations for understanding the perpetration of intimate femicide have also been proposed. In 1994 Australian criminologist Ken Polk in his ground-breaking book Why Men Kill set out in detail the motivations which underlie the killing of women, including by their male intimate partners. In his analysis of Australian coronial court files, Polk (1994: p. 28) illuminated the dominant feature of masculine possession as an underlying theme to cases of sexual jealousy and/or where women were killed during the period of relationship separation. He argued that “exceptional jealousy is a common threat through many accounts of masculinity, intimate homicide” (Polk, 1994: p. 32). Polk’s findings have been supported more recently by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2018: p. 11) in their Global Study on Homicide Report, which found that women continue to bear the heaviest burden of lethal victimization as a result of gender stereotypes and inequality. Many of the victims of “femicide” are killed by their current and former partners . . . the deaths of those killed by intimate partners does not usually result from random or spontaneous acts, but rather from the culmination of prior gender-related violence. Jealousy and fear of abandonment are among the motives. Polk’s analysis lay the foundations for a challenge to the notion of intimate femicides as occurring spontaneously or in the “heat of the moment” and highlights the extent to which jealous and controlling men will plan their acts of lethal violence. As Polk (1994: p. 31) notes, “these are planned homicides rather than a swift upswelling of passionate rage.” There are numerous other examples of scholarly work that seeks to categorise intimate partner violence more broadly and the killing of women by their male intimate partners specifically. Noteworthy here is Johnson’s (2006) typology, which, while focused on non-fatal violence, has informed understandings of the risk inherent in the lives of women prior to their killing. Johnson argues that intimate partner violence can be organised into four types – coercive controlling violence (also referred to as intimate terrorism), violent resistance, situational couple violence, and common couple violence. The legacy of such work is evident in the emergence of common risk assessment and management frameworks across Western jurisdictions. The formulation of “types” of intimate partner violence has been critical in framing the risk assessment tools and informing practitioners’ judgement on the circumstances within which women face risk of serious violence or fatality (Boxall, Rosevear, and Payne, 2015). It is important to note that many of these tools rest on the assumption that violence in a relationship escalates. This assumption and what it means have yet to be fully excavated. The recent work of Boxall and Lawler (2021) is illustrative of the work remaining to be done on this issue. Setting aside the problematic influence of such questions, it is to the assessment and management of women’s risk of intimate femicide that we now turn.

Assessing Risk of Intimate Femicide There have been numerous studies undertaken in recent years to inform better predictions, assessments and management of women’s risk of intimate femicide. These studies have embraced the concept of risk in similar ways in which the embrace of risk as a measurable concept has taken a 304

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hold of the criminal justice policy agendas more generally (see, inter alia, Mythen, 2014). Sometimes this work has had a direct input into the development of risk assessment instruments and risk management frameworks informing practitioners’ ability to predict and ultimately to prevent fatal acts of violence against women (see, inter alia, the work of Campbell, 1995). While elsewhere we have problematised the reliance on traditional risk narratives to inform policy responses to intimate femicide (see Walklate et al., 2020), here we accept the influence of the risk narrative in recent years and explore some of the work which has sought to identify risk factors of intimate femicide. In Canada, where there is a strong history of provincial based domestic violence death reviews (Dawson, 2017), a 12-year review of domestic homicide incidents revealed risk factors common to the killing of an intimate partner, including a history of violence in the relationship, actual or pending relationship separation, obsessive jealousy, threats to kill and/or threats to attempt suicide, escalation of violence, victim isolation, perpetrator unemployment, and a sense of fear among the victim (Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario, 2015). These risk factors have been found elsewhere, including in research from the United States (Campbell etc al., 2007), Australia (Johnson et al., 2019; Polk, 1994), and England and Wales (Dobash et al., 2004). Highlighting the important role of the health system as a potential site for early intervention and prevention, research has pointed to pregnancy and the time immediately preceding and following the birth of a child as a key risk factor (World Health Organisation, 2011; Campbell, Garcia-Moreno and Sharps, 2004). For those women who are already experiencing intimate partner violence, research has found that the severity of that violence can increase during the pregnancy period and following childbirth (Taft, 2002). This reflects broader research, which, somewhat alarmingly, has found that femicide is the leading cause of death for women during pregnancy and in first year postpartum (Cheng and Horan, 2010; Palladino et al., 2011; Lin and Gill, 2011). In recent years there has been increasing recognition of the presence of acts of non-fatal strangulation (Glass et. al., 2008) and coercive control preceding intimate femicide (see, inter alia, Johnson et al., 2019; NSW Domestic Violence Death Review Team, 2015). Notably a study conducted in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) found that coercive and controlling behaviours were present prior to intimate femicide in all cases under review (NSW Domestic Violence Death Review Team, 2015). Increasing recognition of the high-risk nature of these forms of violence have led to significant calls for improve detection, earlier intervention, and in some instances, standalone criminal justice system responses to these recognised risk factors. Both coercive control and non-fatal strangulation now feature in several high-risk assessment tools employed across Western countries and, in some UK, US, Canadian, and Australian jurisdictions, have been introduced as stand-alone criminal offences (Douglas and Fitzgerald, 2014; Walklate and Fitz-Gibbon, 2019). The jury is still out on the extent to which initiatives of this kind impact upon rates of intimate femicide. However, debates on the nature, extent, and appropriate intervention points in relation to intimate femicide have arguably taken a new turn during the global pandemic in the light of the associated public health policy interventions implemented throughout 2020–2021.

Intimate Femicide During the Pandemic A question which emerges here is the degree to which the COVID-19 pandemic necessitates a shift in our understandings of intimate femicide – both its risk and its prevalence. As has now been well evidenced, throughout the coronavirus global health pandemic, there has been a documented increase in the frequency and severity of men’s intimate partner violence (see, inter alia, Carrington et al., 2020; Pfitzner, Fitz-Gibbon and True, 2022; UN Women, 2020). These developments have taken a particular toll in those jurisdictions where “stay at home” regulations have been in place (UN Women, 2021) with the wider impact of the likely economic ramifications of the pandemic in terms of economic insecurity, job losses, and violence(s) against women yet to unfold (EIGE, 2021). 305

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To date, it is unclear how extensive the changing complex nature of intimate partner violence is, and the evidenced heightened associated service demands during the pandemic might extend to a heightened perpetration rate of intimate femicide over this period. What is potentially clearer is that the gains made in many jurisdictions in responding to and supporting women and children living with violence will suffer as the economic and other consequences of the global pandemic take a firmer hold (UN Women, 2021). At this juncture it is possible that some lessons might be taken from the wider literature on the impact of crises on violence(s) against women, including intimate femicide, more generally. There is limited literature examining the relationship between crises – whether natural, humanitarian, or financial – and femicide. However, the dearth of academic investigation into both the relationship between crises and femicide and the phenomenon of femicide more broadly constitutes an identified gap in current research (Weil, 2016). There is a larger body of literature examining the relationship between crises and gender-based violence. Over the last decade this work has established that the consequences of global crises are gendered (True, 2013). Research following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (Bhattacarya, 2013), the Australian bushfires (Parkinson and Zara, 2013), and natural disasters in several countries (Harville et al., 2011), work in India (Rao, 2016), the Philippines and Vietnam (Nguyen and Rydstrom, 2018), Iran, (Sohrabizadeh, 2016), and Japan (Yoshihama et al., 2019) has consistently demonstrated the heightened risk of intimate partner violence and increased stresses in family life during and post-crisis life as a result of disasters. It is unclear, however, the degree to which this risk extends to cases of fatal violence. Anecdotally, media coverage has, at times, throughout the pandemic pointed to a causal relationship between government enforced periods of lockdown and heightened prevalence of intimate femicide. In the United Kingdom, for example, in April 2020, the campaign group Counting Dead Women identified 16 alleged domestic abuse killings – including intimate femicides – which had occurred over a ten-day period (Grierson, 2020). It was suggested that this rate was over three times higher than the average number of deaths recorded for the same period over the last decade (Grierson, 2020). Campaign head, Karen Inglis Smith, explained, We have to be cautious about how we talk about increases in men killing women. . . . But we can say that the number of women killed by men over the first three weeks since lockdown is the highest it’s been for at least 11 years and is double that of an average 21 days over the last 10 years. (Grierson, 2020) Similar concerns have continued to emerge throughout the pandemic in other countries, including in Spain (Trujillo, 2020) and Algeria (Ghanem, 2021). Despite a number of femicide observatories continuing to gather data on femicides during 2020, the absence of any systematic data collection of intimate femicide rates during the pandemic (Weil, 2020) renders making sense of the impact of the pandemic problematic. To date, it is unclear to what degree COVID-19 will shift the dial on the global prevalence of intimate femicide and the extent to which new risk factors may emerge and take precedence during the pandemic and into the recovery period. However, from the review of the material presented here on what is already known about intimate femicide and the difficulties in both ensuring that women’s lives and deaths count and are counted, it is perhaps not too much of a leap of the imagination to suggest that the dial will shift in ways in which women’s lives continue to fail to count.

Taking Women’s Lives and Safety Seriously at a Global Level Concern about intimate femicide, the killing of women by their male intimate partners, has risen up the international agenda in recent years. At the same time, it is possible to observe an all-toocommon failure at the government level across the globe in tackling intimate partner violence with 306

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the level of attention (and resources) it merits. As we have argued elsewhere (see Walklate et al., 2019), while there is increasing attention from a legal, human rights, or public health perspective to the risks and harms of intimate partner violence and intimate femicide, there is an ongoing need for those in power to devote the resources required to meaningfully address and prevent this largely predictable form of lethal violence. This chapter has overviewed the ways in which we have come to understand intimate femicide, its prevalence, and its risk. While the prevalence of the killing of women by their male intimate partners varies within and across regions and countries, and we know that the effects, impacts, and outcomes of social stratifications grounded in sexism, racism, ableism, and misogyny influence the production of counts, it is apparent from over three decades of scholarship that intimate femicide is a global problem and one in which the recognised high-risk factors and explanations through which we come to understand its perpetration are relevant in many different geographical settings and jurisdictions. Shared understandings and learnings can, and should, facilitate a global movement not only to take women’s lives seriously but to count their deaths and take meaningful strides towards preventing them.

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28 POPULATION CONTROL AND SEX-SELECTIVE ABORTION IN CHINA AND INDIA A Feminist Critique of Criminalisation Navtej Purewal and Lisa Eklund Introduction This chapter focuses on policy approaches towards sex-selective abortion (SSA) within the contexts of population control policies in China and India, two countries that stand at the forefront of global patterns of masculine sex ratios attributed to daughter deselection before and after birth.1 Parallels between the two countries in terms of discrimination against females suggest that reproductive behaviour and demographic outcomes have multifaceted cultural and economic sources (Purewal, 2010; Eklund, 2011a; 2015; Eklund and Purewal, 2017). In India, within a broader Malthusian2 approach to population control, the government has addressed female deselection through stigmatisation and labels, such as “daughter-killing” (kurimaru) in its approach to SSA. In China, the government has highlighted sex ratio imbalance as an obstacle to sustainable development and ultimately a threat to the peace and stability of the country (Eklund and Purewal, 2017). In a two-pronged approach of incentivising the birth of female children and criminalising sex-selective abortion, both China and India exemplify how population control and sex selection have converged within a disciplinary discourse marked by carcerality. As a feminist analysis of the criminalisation of SSA, this chapter3 will provide an overview of policies and campaigns in both countries to scrutinise the significance of criminalisation in preventing abortions based on gender discrimination.

Feminist Analysis of Sex-Selective Abortion Feminist analyses of SSA have cut across positions highlighting women’s reproductive right to safe abortion, on the one hand, and those pointing to gender discrimination against the birth of female babies, on the other hand (Purewal and Eklund, 2018).4 The fault line between gender discrimination and reproductive rights signifies how feminist analyses have been divided on SSA. This has partly unsettled a previously established feminist discourse on abortion rights, which now sits uncomfortably alongside debates around the gender discrimination dimensions of SSA, debates which often evoke terms such as “femicide” and “gendercide.” The term “gendercide” gained currency in part due to the work of feminist philosopher Mary Anne Warren (1985), who initially did not consider SSA to be an act of gendercide but thought it may lead to gendercide. Warren later reconsidered her position and argued that SSA can be ethically defensible only in contexts free from gender preference (Warren, 1999, cited in Nie, 2010). Other DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-33

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feminist critiques of SSA have gone further by framing the practice as gender-based violence, drawing attention to the rights of the female foetus, rights which are commonly invoked by anti-abortion advocates (Goodkind, 1999). By combining the concepts of rights and violence in the discourse of “femicide” and “gendercide,” such positionings have led to misconstrued rhetoric surrounding the debate on SSA. The suffix “-cide” in “femicide” or “foeticide” synonymises SSA with mass killing or extermination. This has ushered a problematic policy conflation of criminalisation of abortion and SSA (Purewal and Eklund, 2018). Our main objective here is to highlight how the violence/rights debates have muddled the conceptual terrain of SSA-related policies by straddling a criminalising, punitive discourse alongside a rights framework.

Sex-Selective Abortion Policies: Criminalisation and Carceral Feminism The inclusion of SSA within identified practices of gender-based violence situates it within policy approaches tied to legal punitive measures. The function of criminalising SSA can be understood through an array of angles. Claude Faugeron (1995) pinpoints how criminalisation operates for serving parallel purposes. Through their study of prisons, Faugeron highlighted three strands or aims of imprisonment: “imprisonment of safety,” “imprisonment of differentiation,” and “imprisonment of authority.” Building on our earlier work (Eklund and Purewal, 2017), we argue that the criminalisation of SSA can be critically understood through this framework as it succinctly identifies the carceral discourse and measures which frame state policies addressing masculine sex ratios. The criminalisation of safety seeks to deter harm to the “girl child,” or the female foetus, by emphasising the state’s role as protector. The “criminalisation of safety” approach would view the pregnant woman as simultaneously a colluder or victim of gender-based violence and a potential perpetrator succumbing to social and cultural pressures but who is also the site at which an act of criminality, SSA, takes place. The “criminalisation of differentiation” isolates certain social categories which are deemed deviant for their propensity for son preference. As such, sex selection has become identified as a “social evil” and a source of stigma within an already contested terrain of abortion rights. The state’s powers and jurisdiction over its citizenry are exerted through the “criminalisation of authority”. Criminalisation requires constructions and rhetoric of stigma and deviance, and as Hatzenbuehler and colleagues (2013: 1) argue, “policies and interventions must address the social factor itself, rather than the putative mechanisms that link this factor to health.” The conflation of SSA as both a form of gender-based violence and a “social evil” exerts a disciplinary function through the “abnormalisation” of SSA, a process which helps legitimise extending measures of state authority (Alexander, 2011). Mobilisations, including feminists and civil society organisations, have pushed for SSA to be banned by the state and for there to be punitive measures in place. As such, criminalisation as a policy approach (Faugeron, 1995; cited in Wacquant, 2001) has contributed to emerging carceral feminism which has lobbied and petitioned for zero-tolerance and punitive measures against gender-based violence, including SSA, which has muddled the terrain between the violence and rights discourse on SSA. Carceral feminism, an outcome of feminist demands and mobilisations for the state to take action on gender-based violence, has been met with a critique which recognises the perils of criminalisation and considers the possibilities of operating outside of the carceral apparatus (Vergès, 2022; Bernstein, 2007; Terwiel, 2019; Crenshaw, 2013). To have a non-carceral feminist perspective on SSA means to adopt a critical approach towards criminalisation, which does not necessarily altogether dismiss punitive measures but looks critically at the state’s use of criminalisation as a means to address SSA. It also recognises that despite the criminalisation of SSA, son preference openly continues as a discriminatory logic, which justifies and sanctions the sentiments behind daughter deselection. Within the predominant carceral discourse on SSA, there has been an assumption that 312

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state laws to ban SSA will bring about change through fear of the law and legal jurisdiction, even if not followed up in action.

Policy Approaches to Population Control and SSA in China and India: An Overview Population Control in China: Conflicting Logics of Criminalisation China launched its population control policies in the 1970s through the wan, xi, shao policy, which encouraged couples to marry later, have fewer children, and have longer spacing between childbirths. Thanks to information campaigns and improved access to healthcare and contraceptive services, the total fertility rate dropped from close to 5.81 in 1970 to 2.75 in 1979 (Greenhalgh and Winckler, 2005: 17) when the one-child policy (OCP) was launched. The OCP represented an unprecedented interventionistic approach of criminalisation of authority, with an initial emphasis on the criminalisation of excess births (Eklund and Purewal, 2017). With few exceptions, Chinese couples were allowed only one child, and where two children were permitted, spacing of four years between the first and second child was required at least until the late 1990s. The OCP rested on a logic of criminalisation of safety, where the out-of-quota5, unborn child was seen as a threat to the development and future prosperity of the nation. Consequently, abortion became part of the Chinese nation-building project, and undergoing abortion became part of being a “good mother subject” (Cao, 2015). Though the fertility rate had dropped markedly during the 1970s, it was hard to reduce the number of births even further, as many couples, especially in rural areas, could imagine having one child only if that child was a son (Eklund, 2011a). Hence, during the 1980s and 1990s, the OCP had not fully achieved the function of criminalisation of differentiation. Except in some urban centres where one child had been normalised, wanting and ensuring a son was born was not seen as deviant or abnormal in popular terms (Greenhalgh and Winckler, 2005). Hence, the OCP met with resistance in many rural areas. To tackle this, China eased the one-child norm in most rural areas, allowing a second child if the first-born was a girl or had a disability. The criminalisation of safety logic was revised to reduce the number of excess births while, at the same time, granting rural families the opportunity to have one son or two daughters. This so-called “1.5-child policy” (Ebenstein, 2010), which remained until the two-child policy was introduced in 2016, effectively legitimised son preference, sanctioning the belief that girls are not as valuable as boys (Eklund, 2011a). As part of the implementation of the OCP, married women of reproductive age had to undergo gynaecological checks regularly to detect unauthorised pregnancies and to ensure IUDs were not removed (Milwertz, 1997). Essential to this task were ultrasound machines, which became widely available in the mid-1980s, even in remote rural areas. Soon, it became clear that it was possible to combine the strict birth control policies with the cultural and economic imperative to have a son – namely, using ultrasound to sex-determine the foetus (Nie, 2010). The fact that China’s sex ratio at birth (SRB) started to increase by the mid 1980s evidences the widespread practice of SSA, enabled by this new technology. To prevent escalating SRBs, sex determination was banned, first through a regulation issued by the State Commission for Family Planning and Ministry of Health in 1986 (Nie, 2010). Then, by 1994, the Law on Maternal and Infant Health Care criminalised not only foetal sex determination without medical ground but also SSA. Criminalising SSA presented a different logic to the OCP – namely, criminalisation of safety from the point of view of protecting the unborn girl child. While both the OCP and sex-selective abortion can be seen as part of controlling the population, they represented two conflicting logics, with abortion at its centre. Abortion was an important tool to prevent excess births, while at the same time an effective measure to deselect daughters. Hence, SSA contributed to keeping birth 313

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rates down. Turning a blind eye to SSA was a way for local family planning cadres to stay within the targets of unauthorised births, a target to which they were held accountable (Eklund, 2011b). Moreover, the four-year birth-spacing requirement was an effective argument for undergoing a late-term abortion. After all, having an out-of-plan birth was associated with fines, and with ethical considerations removed, the case for late-term abortion was easily made.

Carceral State Feminism with Chinese Characteristics The criminalisation of safety focused on reducing birth rates and the criminalisation of safety to protect the girl child portray a contradictory message of aiming to drive down the number of births while simultaneously claiming to protect female births. This could partly explain why the SRB imbalance continued to worsen around the turn of the century, reaching 120.5 in 2005 before it started to drop. Perhaps in acknowledging that it needed to alter its approach, the Chinese government showed a revised approach and launched the Care for Girls Campaign (henceforth, the Campaign) in 2003, to enhance the value of the girl child, promoting gender equality and normalising SRB by the year 2020 (Shang, Li and Feldman, 2012), a target which is yet to be met (Jiang and Zhang, 2021). Apart from strengthening the management of illegal sex determination and SSA, by collaborating with a wide range of government agencies, the Campaign consolidated the work to boost the function of criminalisation of differentiation. It was obvious that without affecting public opinion and attitudes around the girl child, SSA was hard to avoid given son preference and the OCP, which pressed fertility rates artificially low. By emphasising the equal value of girls and boys and by pitching son preference and SSA as “feudal” and “backwards,” being content with daughters only was seen as a sign of a “good citizens” (Eklund, 2011b). Yet as noted by Rachel Murphy (2014), the activities within the Campaign have had largely controlling effects, by way of a “care as control” policy response, ignoring institutional underpinnings, such as the 1.5-child policy, discrimination of women in the labour market, and son preference. Moreover, Eklund (2011b) found that by capitalising on stereotypical gender norms embedded in awareness campaigns, the Campaign fostered essentialist ideas of the value of sons and daughters respectively, partly contradicting the objective of promoting gender equality. Another dimension of the awareness-raising side of the Campaign was the attention drawn to the increasing numbers of men who would be “squeezed out of marriage” due to the shortage of future brides, generating so-called bare branches. Hence, concerns over SSA and skewed sex ratios were not only concerns for women and girls but indeed concerns for men and the nation as a whole since involuntary bachelors were seen as a destabilising factor. Hence, although often framed in a gender equality discourse, the Chinese state’s carceral approach to SSA concerns much more than the girl child (Eklund, 2011b). We argue that the lack of a firm anchoring in the women’s rights movement suggests a particular form of state feminism with Chinese characteristics. It is the overall structure, quality, and quantity of the population that is the overarching goals rather than the rights of individual women. In fact, abortion rights, or the lack thereof, have shifted over time. While abortion was readily available and accessible during the OCP, in late September 2021, the State Council (2021) issued The Outline of Women’s Development in China (2021–30), which includes that abortions for non-medical reasons should be reduced. Within a rhetoric of gender discrimination against the birth of female babies, restricted abortion services are pitched as a gender equality measure, with the unborn girl child at its centre, as well as the reproductive capabilities of women to carry children. Not only does this logic compromise women’s reproductive rights to safe abortion, but it also leaves silent the gender inequalities that underpin son preference and SSA in the first place. The recent turn in carceral state feminism feeds into the pronatalist ambition to boost fertility rates, a goal that became explicit with the shift to a three-child policy in May 2021. For the first time, Chinese women’s access to abortion 314

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services is being limited in the name of preventing SSA. Like this, China joins the ranks of other countries that have used restricted abortion rights to boost fertility, such as Japan and Poland (cf. Purewal and Eklund, 2018).

The Carceral Roots of Population Control in India The Indian state, without the same level of centralised authority as China, has not enacted any policy as all-encompassing as China’s one-child policy (OCP) or its subsequent two- and now three-child policies. Yet in 1952, India was the first country in the world to make family planning a state-led initiative. Despite this, India’s population size is regularly blamed for an array of development challenges, pressuring India to address its “population problem.” India’s population size and rate of growth became a key priority for the central government’s Planning Commission, which, in the 1960s, began to promote male and then female sterilisations as a direct approach to bring down population growth. Between 1975 and 1977, the government embarked on an unpopular forced sterilisation campaign for 22 months of martial rule, known as “the emergency.” Approximately six million men, mainly poor, were sterilised by coercion, evidencing the will and might of the state on this issue (Kasun, 1999). Ultimately, popular opinion formed against male sterilisation, and there was an immediate turn towards women as the new targets of population control. However, the mould had been set for coercion to achieve population targets by the state. Additionally, the small family as an ideal had become an established discourse for a range of population control campaigns across India. Notably, there was a decline in the average number of children per woman from 5.2 to 2.6 between 1972 and 2008 (Registrar General of India, 2008). However, the policy emphasis remained on population control rather than improving reproductive health or addressing inequalities. Population control and SSA have been intertwined throughout the history of population policy in India. India was also the first developing country to legalise abortion in 1971 through the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act (MTP) (Visaria, 2007; Visaria, Ramachandran, Ganatra and Kalyanwala, 2007). India’s approach to SSA sits against another historical backdrop of the British colonial state’s criminalisation of female infanticide under the Indian Penal Code in 1860. The skewed sex ratio became clearly identified as an outcome of inequality emerging from the decline in the fertility rate. Thus, the successes in hitting population target reduction had simultaneously generated the sex ratio as an indicator of reproductive inequality (Patel, 2007). Son preference was recognised as a part of the social context in which reproductive decision-making takes place. Sex selection became more widespread through technological means from the late 1970s through prenatal sex-identification technologies. Thus, as fertility declined, there was an intensification of male bias (Das Gupta and Bhat, 1997; Basu, 1999). Sex selection, which had previously fallen under the umbrella term “female infanticide,” was now renamed as “female foeticide” by the Indian women’s movement, which actively warned and protested against the use of reproductive technologies for prenatal female deselection (Gandhi and Shah, 1991). However, the Indian women’s movement was slow to assert a position to defend women’s rights to safe abortion which created a vacuum within the public discourse on SSA. As a result, there has been a conflation of sex selection and abortion within policy and legal debates on SSA in India. The two main legal frameworks which highlight the SSA policy terrain are the 1994 Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) (PNDT) Act, in which diagnostic methods of sex selection, such as the ultrasound scan, were made illegal, and the 2003 Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act. The banning of sex selection under these two acts did not reduce the masculine trend in the ratio of females to males, showing how ineffective banning SSA through its implicit conflation of sex selection and abortion has been (Potdar et al., 2015). 315

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India’s SSA Policies Across Three Types of Criminalisation After the two anti-SSA acts of 1994 and 2003 in India, the demographic data made it evident that the SRB was not being addressed by criminalisation. A number of schemes and campaigns were subsequently introduced to highlight the “social evil” of daughter discrimination through state-sponsored social messaging. These campaigns spanned several policy narratives – punitive, prohibitive, and preventative. All three forms of criminalisation were embedded in the policy discourses: in protecting the girl child as criminalisation of safety, criminalisation of differentiation by signalling a sense of deviance about those who sex-select, and criminalisation of authority which gave the state powers to invoke punitive measures. Within this framework of criminalisation in India, there are three main types of programmes promoted by local, state, and central governments: (1) awareness-raising or sensitising schemes, (2) incentivising schemes, and (3) prohibitive, deterrence schemes. Criminalisation of safety can be seen in awareness-raising schemes which have been a longrunning feature in India since the UN Decade of the Girl Child (1990–2000). Subsequently, in 2009, 24 January was declared National Girl Child Day. Each year schools and colleges organise anti-foeticide activities, produce posters, and host pledge-signings to not partake in the act of SSA (Purewal, 2014). However, these awareness programmes have done little to address structural aspects of son preference, such as the widely accepted practice of father-to-son inheritance and women’s lack of material ownership, which form the patriarchal underpinnings of son preference. Girls continue to be depicted to exist only as the proprietary subjects of the patriarchal unit and, therefore, in need of protection. Incentivising schemes through the private banking sector have been designed to encourage the continuation of daughter pregnancies through financial schemes which purport to provide financial compensation to the parents of female children due to the costs associated with having daughters. There is an implicit criminalisation of differentiation logic embedded in such schemes, which highlight the deviance of daughter deselection while incentivising daughters. Like incentivising schemes, awareness-raising campaigns fall short of confronting and rejecting the structural dimensions of daughter discrimination. Rather than challenging hegemonic normative patriarchal marriage practices – which burden the parents of girls – they make a play on the cultural backdrop of asymmetrical marriage relations between the girl’s side (bride) and the boy’s side (groom) and dowry customs. Instead, the idea of daughters as financial burdens has been propagated through the marketing of anti-daughter deselection by claiming to offset the costs of having a daughter (Purewal, 2010). The criminalisation of sex selection in India is firmly hinged on the criminalisation of authority by the sheer performance of state power over the discourse on SSA. By emphasising the criminalised status of SSA, state power merely projects the idea of punishment without much reinforcement or follow-up. For example, surveillance of medical records or tactics to assign stigma and shame to those suspected to have involvement in SSA have aided in the criminalisation and policing of SSA and medical and reproductive health services. In India, Malthusian techniques of coercive population control have been part and parcel of the history of sex selection through overlapping mobilisations (Purewal, 2014; Rahm, 2018; Singh, 2013). Even though mobilisations by feminist, medical and social activists initially have viewed the 1994 and 2003 anti-SSA legislations as victories, the impending carcerality of the SSA has produced a scenario in which the sex ratio has continued to decline while few to no cases have actually resulted in legal action. The carceral discourse therefore has enabled an official “anti-female foeticide” discourse in India with little follow-up, structural critique, or preventative, transformative work in addressing son preference.

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Carceral Discourses on Sex-Selective Abortion: Implications for Women In this section, we return to Faugeron’s three levels of imprisonment as a means for highlighting the ascent of the carceral discourse on SSA and what some of the impacts and outcomes have been for women in both contexts (cf. Eklund and Purewal, 2017). There are three points of analysis which caution us about the criminalisation of SSA from the point of view of women’s experiences. Here, we refer to the functions of criminalisation and relate them to the dangers when they are applied to SSA in the creation of a carceral discourse. We argue that this exacerbates rather than alleviates the pressures which produce son preference and skewed sex ratios. The first is that criminalisation outlines the normative function of the criminalisation of safety by utilising a narrow definition of safeguarding by situating the female foetus at the centre while distancing the safety of the mother and the girl child. The safeguarding function of the state produces contradictory outcomes simultaneously involving both protection and criminalisation. However, the violence against women framing of SSA and the burden placed on women to give birth to sons both continue to contribute to this murky terrain of gender-based violence (Bélanger, 2002; Raj et al., 2011; Rew et al., 2013). When applied to SSA, criminalisation fails to recognise SSA as a “preventative measure” taken by women for either averting violence directed at them or saving a female child from structural experiences of discrimination (Santhya and Verma, 2004). While we are not arguing for this as an example of why “choice” should exist, we recognise this as one of the biggest misconceptions which carceral discourses and measures have failed to address. This perhaps also signals why criminalisation has not generated normalised SRB in many contexts. The second point of analysis is that criminalisation, rather than alleviating stress, adds to the pressures and stress on women who are either considering or are undergoing SSA. There is no scope for support for women who are considering or are being forced to undergo SSA when it is identified as a procedure which violates the safety of the female foetus. In the absence of a resourced, accessible support system for women, women are isolated and fear the law rather than seek its protection. Women under duress from family and patriarchal pressures to undergo a SSA face a complex and potentially detrimental set of concerns and considerations (Puri et al., 2011). It is here that two forms of criminalisation operate in tandem in further exacerbating the pressures of sex selection. On the one hand, criminalisation of safety generates a sense of guilt, and on the other hand, criminalisation of differentiation generates shame (Eklund and Purewal, 2017). Within family and community environments, in many contexts, giving birth to girls can generate shame. As Bhagat, Laskar and Sharma (2012) highlight, the higher the propensity towards son preference in a community, the higher the chances of female SSA being practised. Therefore, the persistence of SSA needs to be understood in relation to these two functions of criminalisation, showing how both guilt and shame continue to be absorbed by women. Our third point of analysis highlights how SSA, far from being a choice of freedom, operates as a choice of duress within patriarchal social structures which frame decision-making contexts of son preference. Criminalising women’s engagement with reproductive technologies during pregnancy does little to challenge the hegemonic ideology of son preference, with the state and the family both retaining their proprietary claims over women’s reproductive rights and choices. Having the choice to sex-select is not a choice which strengthens women’s reproductive rights but exemplifies how reproductive technologies undermine women’s reproductive autonomy in the context of son preference (Petchesky, 1987; Purewal, 2010; Puri et al., 2011). Male, patriarchal proprietary control over women’s reproduction has been a key point of contention by feminists highlighting how violence is used as a tool to delimit and control women’s autonomy (Wilson and Daly, 1992). In defending women’s autonomy, the right to have access to safe abortion has been the primary mobilising message of the Western and, to some extent, global feminist movement. However, feminist movements in places where sex selection and masculine sex

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ratios are featured, such as in India, have focused less on the right to safe abortion than on SSA as a form of gender-based violence within the remit of criminalisation.

Conclusion This chapter has outlined some of the key concerns with the carcerality of SSA, highlighting that it offers no identifiable options for sustainable, women-centred, progressive change. Instead, the criminalisation of SSA sits firmly within other forms of carceral feminism. The inclusion of SSA as a form of gender-based violence in China, India, and other contexts has created a carceral discourse on SSA which had previously not existed. It is in the labelling of SSA as a form of violence that criminalisation of SSA has occurred. Feminist activists petitioning for recognition and inclusion of SSA as a form of gender-based violence are contributing to new forms of governance feminism and carceral feminism (Vergès, 2022; Engle, 2019) through mobilisations for the state to put punitive measures in place. Framing SSA as “female foeticide,” “femicide,” or “gendercide” is problematic, as such terms advance arguments for limiting women’s access to safe abortion through the indication and synonymising of abortion with the notion of killing. Such a conflation of abortion and killing runs many risks in compromising the long struggles of feminist movements globally to defend access to safe abortion. The criminalisation of SSA eclipses policy debates which threaten rather than protect women. We have identified the quandary that feminist analysis has been presented with in its attempts to supposedly protect women. While women’s rights and reproductive autonomy are central tenets of feminist mobilisations, this has become increasingly problematised with the availability and regulation of reproductive technologies in contexts of son preference and masculine sex ratios, such as China and India. While carceral space for disciplining of SSA has widened through legal bans, restrictions, and a sharpening discourse against SSA as a form of gender-based violence, available data highlights the futility and pitfalls of criminalising SSA. Historically speaking, criminalisation has not had any major effect on decreasing masculine sex ratios. The reason is that government policies in China and India have been unsuccessful in addressing the underlying factors which perpetuate patriarchy, male bias, and son preference. Punitive rather than preventative structural approaches have prevailed. While representing different ideological regimes, in both contexts, criminalising SSA has contributed to and bolstered the assertion of state power but without the feminist structural analysis of what generates son preference and daughter aversion.

Notes 1 China and India together account for 90–95% of female births that are missing globally due to sex selection (Kaur and Kapoor, 2021: 111). 2 A Malthusian approach refers to a view where population growth is regarded as a cause of poverty and where high fertility needs to be controlled (Rao, 2004; Purewal 2018). 3 This chapter builds on and further develops an earlier article that we published in Feminism and Psychology in 2017 (cf. Eklund and Purewal, 2017). 4 It should be noted that beyond SSA, there are other technologies for sex selection, such as sperm-sorting and pre-implantation sex selection of embryos. 5 During the most part of the 1980s and 1990s, the Chinese birth control policy was implemented through a quota system where each administrative unit had a certain number of birth quotas per year.

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29 SYSTEMIC SEXUAL FEMINICIDE Colonial Scars in Bodies and Territories Julia E. Monárrez Fragoso. Translated by Alan Mendoza

Introduction Since 1993, the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, has been known for atrocious murders of women – girls, young women, labourers, and students whose brown bodies have disappeared and been held captive. When some of these women were found dead, their bodies – naked and semi-naked, skinned and stiffened – were crudely left on the ground or partially buried, a parody of civilisation that humiliates the consumed body. Their corpses showed sexual torture, severed breasts, insertion of objects, and phalluses in cavities. Their bodies had their hands tied and were sometimes dressed in clothes of women who did not make it back, unprotected from human dignity, scattered like waste on the barren places of the city, revealing that the crimes against their humanity were an organised and systemic way of dehumanising them. Their families’ – primarily their mothers’ – cries for justice were unattended. On the contrary, accused of having raised enabling victims, their relatives were blamed for the murders. In this context, I asked myself, how can we understand – with the feminist hermeneutics of Jane Caputi (1987), Elizabeth Frazer and Deborah Cameron (1987), Diana Russell (1992) and Jill Radford (1992) – this systemic atrocity of disappearances and terrifying murders of girls and women? My answer was the category of systemic sexual feminicide. It is my contribution to the legacy of these scholars, my tribute to them and their contributions to scientific feminist knowledge, which opens ways of living for women. In the present chapter, I extend the reach and strength of this category, interweaving María Lugones’s decolonial feminism and her concept of the “Colonial/Modern Gender System” (2008) with Saidiya Hartman’s “politics of pleasure” (1997) and Sherene Razack’s “framework of disposability” (2016). These scholars reveal the colonial historical legacy of several hierarchical systems of oppression – sex, sexuality, gender, race, social class, space, and nation. They also show the long-lasting relationship between corporeal and territorial penetration that manifests in the pleasure and horror of sexualised violence against girls and women. Their contributions are empirically illustrated with the database Feminicidio, from Ciudad Juárez (1993–2020), based on the concept of feminicide and sources from feminist organisations, the government, and local newspapers.

The Genealogy of Systemic Sexual Feminicide Since the late ’80s and early ’90s of the 20th century, English-speaking feminists have theorised deathly violence against women, using concepts such as sexual crime, lust murder, and femicide.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-34

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Jane Caputi (1987) focuses on the sexual murders of women by men. She asserts that “lustmurder, rape-murder, recreational murder: these are new terms for a relatively new kind of crime” (p. 1). This murder has a motivation whereby rape, torture, mutilation, and finally, extermination speak of a “sexual murder” as sexually political murder, as functional phallic terrorism” (p. 2) against women. At the same time, Caputi highlights the method and place, two marks that appear in the murderers’ sadistic rituals to destroy femininity through the “sexual murder, the actual mutilation and display of a dead female body, is a ritual that manifestly says a great deal about contemporary sexual ideology and relations” (p. 7). Deborah Cameron and Elizabeth Frazer (1987) define sexual murder “as including all cases where the killer was motivated by sadistic sexual impulses” (p. 18). This type of murder combines blood desire and lust desire. However, what defines a sexual crime is not the murder of women but the transformation of people into the murderer’s sexual objects. This means that murderers can kill women or men indiscriminately and impose on them a transcendental masculinity that preys on, performs, penetrates, and conquers. These are the reasons why “ ‘true’ sex-killers attack generic objects and not particular persons” (p. 24). These sexual murders are the “product of social structures and power differentials” (p. 30). Cameron and Frazer underline something else: lust-murder is not new. What is new is naming it and understanding it from a feminist point of view. These theoretical contributions combined conceptions of feminicide from diverse perspectives, as Russell and Radford highlighted when they argued that “femicide, the misogynous killing of women by men, is a form of sexual violence” (Radford, 1992: 3) and that it is “the killing of women by men because they are women” (Russell, 1992, xiv). Radford (1992) explained that the study of feminicide required keeping in mind the cultural diversity that could produce different forms of feminicide. With these initial discursive frameworks, I built an archive of memory of the dispossessed lives and the category of systemic sexual feminicide, both of which I explain in the following paragraphs.

Archive of Memory of the Dispossessed Lives: Methodological Notes The database Feminicidio (Monárrez, 1998) was created 23 years ago. On 28 July 1998, one of the most outstanding figures in the anti-feminicide movement in Juarez, Esther Chávez Cano gave me the list of murdered women, which included 124 documented cases since 1993 (Estudio Hemerográfico de Mujeres Asesinadas (Newspaper Study of Murdered Women, 1993). The data were mined from local newspapers and official documents. Another source is the report published by the Procuraduría General de Justicia del Estado (Chihuahua’s Attorney-General’s Office, 1998). From 1998 onwards, there has been a consistent inspection of local newspapers and the district attorney’s press releases. The database was grounded on the conception of feminicide as the misogynistic murder of women for being women and perpetrated by known or unknown men. Among other sociodemographic variables of the victims, the database includes the following: name, date of death, violent acts marked on the woman’s body before or after being killed, age, marital status, relatives, level of education, address, place of origin, occupation, and place where the corpse was found. Concerning the murderers, there are the following variables: age, place of origin, occupation, address, district, and marital status. All these variables allow researchers to know the diverse forms of feminicide in the city – which this chapter does not address – in relation to the 2,239 documented cases up until 2020. I must stress that feminicide describes all the murders of women committed by men because of gender violence grounded in the patriarchal system. Nonetheless, feminicide manifests in complex ways and changes according to the socio-historical context in which it happens.

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Systemic Sexual Feminicide For systemic sexual feminicide, I considered what Jane Caputi calls the “conventional formula” (1987: 5) constituted by three variables that distinguish this way of murdering women. First, I mention the codes that identify the victims: predominance of women who are young or brown-skinned or those who are students or labourers – all economically marginalised. The murders have a signature: disappearance, torture, mutilation, rape, and extermination. Victims and signatures happen with an accompaniment, when, during the same period, these actors can appear and kill women: serial sexual murderers, multiple murderers, lone killers, or imitator-murderers. What makes them all comparable is their use of violence and sex. Moreover, these murderers leave the corpses in sexually transgressive stages (Cameron, 1996/1997: 47). With this fourth variable in mind, and after fieldwork with mothers and relatives of the victims, in 2004, I coined the category of systemic sexual feminicide. In my doctoral thesis titled “Feminicidio Sexual Sistémico: Víctimas y Familiares, Ciudad Juárez, 1993–2004” (Systemic Sexual Feminicide: Victims and Families), I define this concept as [t]he murder of a girl/woman committed by a man, where one can find all the elements of the unequal relationship between the sexes: the generic superiority of men vis-à-vis the generic subordination of women, misogyny, control, and sexism. Not only is a woman’s biological body murdered but also the cultural construction of her body, amidst the inaction and tolerance of a masculinised State. Systemic sexual feminicide has the irrefutable logic of the bodies of poor girls and women who have been abducted, tortured, raped, murdered, and dumped on sexually transgressive stages. The murderers, through their cruel acts, fortify unequal social relationships that distinguish the sexes: otherness, difference, and inequality. At the same time, the State, supported by hegemonic groups, fortifies patriarchal dominance, subjecting the victims’ families and all women to a permanent and intense lack of public safety through a continuous and endless period of impunity and complicity, neither punishing criminals nor bringing justice to victims. (Monárrez, 2005: 86) This definition allows us to understand the mortal violence against girls and women from the point of view of structural systemic complexity, going beyond the relationship between victim-killer. Notwithstanding, feminicides, sexual crimes, or lust murders are not modern phenomena. María Lugones, Saidiya Hartman, and Sherene Razack, through their critical perspectives on colonialism, help us answer how sexualised violence was inscribed, through colonial power, on the bodies of women and the conquered territories and how these wounds reappear in colonial modernity.

Historical Legacies of Colonialism, Imperialism, and Capitalism Decolonial feminist and Argentinian philosopher María Lugones advocates rethinking historically the unequal global distribution of power and the logic of oppression from the standpoint of what she called – with the same logic as Anibal Quijano’s Coloniality of Power (2020) – the Colonial/Modern Gender System. With the concept of “the coloniality of gender,” Lugones explained that in addition to race – organising principle of the division between coloniser and colonised as humans and beasts – the binary, heteronormative, and patriarchal system of sex-gender was reserved only for the white, capitalist, and Christian man and, to a lesser extent, to his companion, the white woman. Based on this excision between the human and the non-human, the primitive accumulation of capitalism was imposed on the bodies, conquered territories, knowledge, and sexual practices of bestialise populations whom “they called Indians and Blacks” (Lugones, 2012: 130).

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Women from these populations were seen as “genderless beings, sexually marked as females, but without the qualities of femininity” (Lugones, 2008: 94) and those who were “necessary for the processes of global capitalism” (p. 94) were the objects of multiple versions of “women.” This is the origin of the Colonial/Modern Gender System that sustains systemic acts of violence against women, which are tied to the indifference of racialised men that perpetuate their violence – their complicity in and collaboration with the system that produced these women. Aura Cumes challenges this view. She asks: if native patriarchy was under colonial domination, what resistance could oppose it to the use, abuse, and uprooting of Indigenous women? They could not say, “Do not take them because here I’m in charge, I’m the man” (Aguilar, 2021, n.p.). Cumes underscores, in addition, the lack of evidence whether before colonisation there had been a massacre of women like the witch trials in Europe. What did happen was that these relationships were reconfigured, giving way to an “exchange of women and gold to be ‘devoured,’ absorbed, corporeally integrated” (Althaus-Reid, 2005: 29). Mestizaje grows out of this differentiated control of women’s sexuality and the native men, under a racial domination that articulated the asymmetries of gender oppression, social class, and race (Viveros, 2008) for the use and abuse of the captive bodies. Focusing on the history of slavery in the United States, feminist and specialist in African American cultural studies Saidiya Hartman (1997) notes that the enjoyment of Black enslaved bodies was based on their transformation into merchandise within a system of private property in an economy of slavery. This permitted “fungibility” (p. 21), which means using, wearing away, and completely consuming the Black body – also through sexual violence – and begot “the politics of pleasure” (p. 21) and “the complicated nexus of terror and enjoyment” (p. 23). The enslaved person, Hartman explains, is the socially dead subject/object, who is unrecognised as a human, thought incapable of feeling pain, sadness, and suffering and disproportionately inclined to flesh and sex. Such an ideology hides the dark side of the materiality that originated the racialised relations of terror and enjoyment that enabled lynching, dismemberments, the separation of families, and sexual violence against Black men and women. The “erotics of terror” (p. 81) centred on both sexes, differently and unrecognised as such, for both, were outside the heteronormative and racist framework of the slave nation. Feminist and critic of race and colonialism Sherene H. Razack (2016), from Trinidad and Tobago, points out that Canada has usually been indifferent to the disappearance and murder of Canadian Indigenous women. She explains that the 1,200 disappeared Indigenous women reflect a history of sexual brutality. It is part of a “colonial terror” (p. 289) that inscribes on their bodies, facing the indifference of silent witnesses and their murderers’ sexism, racism, and classism. Within a theoretical framework of disposability, Razack explains that sexualised violence is key to explaining the dispensability of murdered women and “flesh is the site at which racial and sexual power are inscribed” (p. 291). It is where one sees how lack of privilege turns women into the target of persevering “colonial power” (p. 292). This sexualised violence reminds us that Indigenous populations were constructed as and considered primitive, barbarous, and incapable of taking ownership of their lands. That is the model of the disposability of body/territory: “Indigenous women are collectively sexually violable and that Indigenous lands are occupied” (p. 293). Unrooted from the total unity of their bodies, with the marks of sexual torture, they are transformed into waste, valueless scraps on the soil stolen from their ancestors. These “colonial dynamics” are at the root of the murder of “specific groups of people” (GarcíaDel Moral, 2018: 930). Without saying what activists and scholars should do about this problem, García-Del Moral posits that these murders can be reconceived as feminicides, taking an intersectional perspective, and considering the ongoing effects of coloniality. Similarly, I suggest that systemic sexual feminicide is present in the mass murders of Canadian Indigenous people. At the same time, we must explore whether this category works in other contexts of extreme feminicidal violence, where women are made into generic objects of sexual brutality resulting from the sexual

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eroticism of murderers, within the indifference of racialised states that construct women as subalterns and disposable. What we have posited so far assumes, following Maldonado-Torres, that colonisation gave rise to the “world of death” (2008: 64). In the 21st century, the dominant structure for the colonising and colonised nations is a globalisation based on exploiting racialised populations and stripping them of their lands and natural resources. Yet the classification of the diverse values of humanity also happens inside subordinated societies, consequently perpetuating the dispossession, by mixed-race and whitened classes, of these societies’ marginalised peoples. In this context, “the decolonial attitude does not originate from ‘wonder’ for nature or the ordinary, but rather from the ‘horror’ or fear of death” (p. 67).

Ciudad Juárez in the Modern Colonial Gender System Similarly, throughout its history, Ciudad Juárez has been an archetype of the Colonial/Modern Gender System’s modus operandi. At the same time, the city reflects the colonising relationship between the most powerful nation in the world and Mexico, the latter having been stripped of half of its territory in 1848. Gloria Anzaldúa (1999: 25) calls this dispossession the long-lasting “open wound,” the blister that never forms a scab because it is located on a constant haemorrhage. It is the border culture that forms a “third country” (p. 25). Profitable within the perennial accumulation of capital on a global scale, these are cumulating violent wounds that mark the body and the space of the border population. One of these is trans-border industrialisation, and the other is the internal armed conflict that has been going on since 2006. In the late ’60s of the past century, Ciudad Juárez entered the “global supply chain” (Narayan, 1997: 59). The construction of the textile factories started the process of trans-border industrialisation. These factories had the infrastructure and tax exemptions. They had cheap and abundant labour that contributed to the massive entrance of women into production processes. Despite that, men entered this workforce in the ’80s, and in 2004, there were 84 men hired for every 100 women (De la O, 2006). While this masculine workforce also receives low wages and belongs to a feminised proletary, it is women as “gendered beings” (De la O, 2006: 399) who are particularly undervalued. Their work as poor, young, and racialised women sustains transnational capital. And they are who, to a greater extent, are not granted rights to childcare, housing, and health (De la O, 2006). With these women, colonial structures adjust to the economic demands of a new epoch, where a state, a product of the neocolonial difference, leaves worker women’s bodies and sexuality unprotected in the interest of global capital. Another economy of dispossession was born in 1914 from a prohibitionist politics of utilisation and consumption of drugs in the United States, which was renewed by President Nixon in 1971 as the war on drugs. These are the antecedents of a global trans-border subsystem of illicit drug markets made up of several countries that connect in the Andean region, such as Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia, which connect with Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico in Central America. (Fuentes y Peña, 2017). Thus, Mexico and the United States connect from the long route of their northern and southern borders. The subsystem created violence in the production processes, importation, distribution, and consumption of illicit and prohibited drugs (Martin, 2013, cited by Fuentes y Peña, 2017). As part of this anti-narcotic politics, there is a “prohibitionist, punitive, and racist paradigm” for the bilateral relationship between Mexico and the United States (Vélez, 2001: 105 cited by Fuentes y Peña, 2017). The subsystem cemented in 2007 when the United States – the largest drug consumer in the world – extended its war on drugs to Mexico through the Plan Mérida, which made possible the local version of the war. These global dynamics affect Ciudad Juárez’s public safety and violence.

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Departing from these experiences of economic materiality that renew the Colonial/Modern Gender System, I open the Archives of Pain through the number of cases, the space of the wound, and the occupations of the victims that allow us to show the colonial marks on the bodies and the territories and to make the connection between “the politics of pleasure” and the “framework of disposability” of the victims of Juárez.

Archives of Pain: Marks of Globalised Colonisation on Bodies and Territories Systemic sexual feminicide has been the end of 149 victims, from 1993 to December 2020. (Figure 29.1). Twenty-nine percent of these deaths happened during the war on drugs, which officially and locally began on 18 March 2008 as Operativo Conjunto Chihuahua (Joint Operation Chihuahua) (Monárrez, 2013). Similarly, of the 215 registered cases of women and girls that remain missing, 86% (185 cases) happened after the war on drugs had begun (Monárrez, 2013). The infamy of feminicide and disappearance went on despite the presence of thousands of soldiers from the national military and other armed institutions in the city (Mayer, 2010). Since then, state forces have been outnumbered by different organised crime groups. The murderers’ transmission of sexual brutality, within the framework of disposability of a global industrial model, and a war sponsored by the governments of the United States and Mexico, can be traced chronologically. The years that present the most cases (Figure 29.1) are 1994 with 14 victims, 1996 with 19, 1997 with 10.1998, and 2001 with 13. In 2012 and 2013, respectively, there were 14 and 10 victims. There are also 35 men convicted for 56 cases. This means that one or more of the murderers took part in the murder of one or several women. However, the persistence of feminicide challenges the reliability of the investigations and those made responsible. We can ask whether impunity, largely tolerated, has contributed to the creation of peripheral sexualities for others’ enjoyment. How is it possible that, in a city completely besieged by armed forces and military checkpoints, disappearances of girls and women increased? Was there collusion between state forces and organised crime to consume the bodies of girls and women and left them like waste in the public spaces of the city?

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Figure 29.1  Systemic sexual feminicide: Ciudad Juárez (1993–2020).

Source: Julia Monárrez Fragoso, Base de datos Feminicidio (Feminicide Database), Ciudad Juárez, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte

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Map 29.1  Mapping the Political Landscape of Terror and Enjoyment Source: Luis E. Cervera Gómez, prepared from the Femicide database

The spaces where the bodies are tossed in groups (Map 29.1) show us the penetration of the territory, the places of sexual brutality – Lote Bravo (1995) with six victims; Lomas de Poleo (1995–1996) with six victims; Granjas Santa Elena (1994–1997) with eight dead young women, in addition to the other seven that were abandoned in the Cerro Bola and other hills that surround the northwest of the city; Campo Algodonero (cotton field) (2001) with eight victims; Cerro del Cristo Negro (2002–2003) with seven corpses. Between 2011 and 2013, the fragments of 23 women that had disappeared in 2008 were found. Their corpses had been tossed on the Sierra de San Agustin and the Arroyo del Navajo, both located in the Juárez valley, only a few kilometres away from the urbanised parts of the border city, bordering on the Río Bravo and El Paso, TExA. In socio-political terms, these places are what Franz Fanon (1973) calls places of “ill fame” (p. 34) of the cities divided into “compartments” (p. 34) of cities divided into two due to colonisation. They are systemic forms of territorial violences related to the unequal distribution of people’s social wealth. Around these dimensions (Cervera, 2010), cities become divided and reveal a lack of urban infrastructure: streets without asphalt, absence of schools, insufficient recreational spaces, lack of street lighting, empty plots, and so on. These deficiencies expose the “needs, many of them dramatic ones, of exploited populations” (Freire, 2010: 39). The geostatistical analysis allows us to identify the spatial patterns of feminicide in the urban context concerning urban marginalisation. We can assert that women who live in the places with the most deficiencies are more likely to be victims of feminicide. On the contrary, women who live in the north and north-east parts of the city, which have good urban infrastructure and wealth, are less likely to be victims of feminicide (Cervera, 2010). They do not end up in dangerous places, which are considered off limits. These places are sexually transgressive stages that are outside urbanising logic and publicly show the wounds of sexual brutality and the erotics of terror – which rest on the sexual, racial, social, and international division of labour – on the bodies of dehumanised women. 327

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Integrating the experience of the fungibility of the disposed body requires us to reconstruct the simultaneous oppressions, structurally and systematically organised for its fragmentation (Carastathis, 2016). The occupations and representations of the murdered women show us the economic value of their bodies, as Table 29.1 exposes. Female students and labourers, with 20 cases each, represent a total of 40 victims. Girls and young women make up 25 cases. We do not know the occupation of 46 women because they remained unidentified. These bodies of female students, labourers, and employees, alongside the ones who were underage and outside the workforce, represent, in Marx’s words, “a gelatine of undifferentiated human work” (1979: 47). Some were not active workers but rather potential ones and, as such, were subjected to the border job market. They are immersed in a context of low wages that produces “ ‘low-value-individuals’ especially for the ‘shadow economy’ who incorporates them in the illegal trafficking of women for prostitution and other forms of the sex industry such as tourism enclaves and the entertainment business” (Sassen, 2006: 187). What I have said so far confirms that there are Table 29.1 Occupations and Representations of Victims of Organised Systemic Sexual Feminicide in Ciudad Juárez (1993–2020) Housewife, domestic worker, and unspecified worker Occupation Housewife Unspecified worker Domestic worker/dish washer Subtotal Dancers, bar employees, and sex workers Dancer Bar Sex worker Subtotal Students and workers Student Student/worker Subtotal Textile factory laborers Labourer Labourer/student Subtotal Small business owners, professionals, and university students Businesswoman Teacher Subtotal Unemployed and underage Unemployed Underage Subtotal Unknown Total

Frequency 1 7 4 12

% 0.67 4.70 2.68 8.05

2 6 1 9

1.34 4.03 0.67 6.04

13 7 20

8.72 4.70 13.42

18 2 20

12.08 1.34 13.42

4 1 5

2.68 0.67 3.35

13 25 38 46 149

8.72 16.78 25.50 30.87 100.00

Source: Julia Monárrez Fragoso, Base de datos Feminicidio (Feminicide Database), Ciudad Juárez, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte Victims of systemic sexual feminicide are economically marginal. The dark side of colonialism shows in the racial, sexual, and class power inscribed on their lacerated bodies.

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oppressive dynamics – corporeal and territorial – that mutually interweave and that foster death. “Living on death row, always in fear of execution, results in an inability to live and is a major part of the death process” (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2002: 581), where sex/gender is linked to the place of residence and social class. The historical relationship between the colonial penetration of the body and the territory cannot be more explicit: social death is experienced significantly before physical death. Women walk from death row to the territory of death.

Integrating the Disintegration of Girls and Women In 2009, amid war, the Inter-American Human Rights Court made the Mexican state responsible for three of the young women found in Campo Algodonero (cotton field) – Claudia Ivette González, Laura Berenice Ramos Monárrez, and Esmeralda Herrera Monreal. They were victims of what the court named “homicide of a woman for reasons related to their gender, also known as feminicide” (CIDH, 2009: 42). At the same time, Judge Cecilia Quiroga (2009) asserted that regardless of the deficient investigations of the Mexican state, these three young women had indisputably suffered sexual violence and torture. The verdict urged the Mexican state to present the perpetrators of these feminicides and to prevent more murders from happening. However, as we have explained, new collective necropolises for women have been found, Arroyo del Navajo and Sierra de San Agustín. Disappearances also increased in 2008 and were announced publicly in 2011. It is also known that there is an imprecise and unidentified number of bone fragments found in that area. Therefore, asserts Hérika Martínez, a journalist who specialises in women’s violence, it is possible that Arroyo and Sierra are not the last “women’s cemetery” on the border (personal communication, 8 August 2021). As a result, the victims of the present, like those of the past, face “the very conditions that have produced the broken and disciplined body and the body as object, instrument, and commodity ensure that the work of restoration or recompense is inevitably incomplete” (Hartman, 1997: 77). In this sense, systemic sexual feminicide remains concerning a long and tolerated impunity and in conjunction with transnational economic developments and projects, embedded in the renovation and mutation of historical, material, and cultural inequalities of Ciudad Juárez. The conditions hinder reparative and transformative actions in societies with colonial legacies, regardless of verdicts from international courts, which go further beyond the victim’s body.

Conclusion While we have traditionally understood feminicide as a tool/apparatus/technology of the patriarchy to analyse the politics of sexual violence against women committed by a predatory masculinity, we can also reconceptualise this category, which is associated with other forms of structural violence. Understanding feminicide from a historical perspective, particularly in relation to colonial and imperial settlements that form part of the Colonial/Modern Gender System, allows us to comprehend patriarchal alliances throughout time and dynamic intersections of corporeal-territorial oppression and domination that hurt women. In Ciudad Juárez the stamp of colonialism is present in systemic sexual feminicide. The Colonial/Modern Gender System manifests through the marks that the politics of pleasure leave on the victims, within the framework of the disposability of bodies and territories. These marks have as material corollary: the development of economic and military transnational and national projects, such as the textile industry and the war on drugs. Thus, material and cultural inequalities, rooted in Ciudad Juarez, become manifest on the bodies and the spaces of life and death of murdered girls and women. Their bodies are the receptacle of a matrix of intersecting oppressions such as colonial capitalism, patriarchy, and imperialism. These oppressive systems become renewed in modernity and

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are embodied in the victims’ experiences of misogyny, sexism, capitalism, racism, marginal neighbourhoods, age, and occupations. Their enforced deaths renovate the ideology of predatory sexual relationships for dehumanised women and permit women’s fungibility, whereby sexual violence is part of the use, wear, and total consumption of women. There, colonial terror and the erotics of pleasure become renewed. It is racialised women who have low salaries in globalised companies; it is racialised women who are disappeared and murdered in an armed conflict. They are still the versions of women necessary for global capital accumulation before a racialised state that, with its indolence, does not grant them justice and allows the prevalence of feminicide. The prejudice and injustice surrounding their deaths and disappearances conceal the complex oppressive hierarchy – sex, sexuality, race, social class, space, nation – that crystalised on the bodies and territories of systemic sexual feminicide.

Acknowledgements I want to thank the anonymous readers for their observations and to Diana Penniel Sandoval, Zaira Andrea Moreno, Perla Josseline Mora, and Miriam García for their assistance in this research. Also, I want to thank Paulina García-del Moral for expanding my understanding of feminicide.

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30 “HONOUR”-BASED FEMICIDE Aisha K. Gill

Introduction Femicide – the killing of a woman or girl, usually by a man (often an intimate partner), on account of her sex – is the leading cause of premature death among women globally (Vives-Cases, Goicolea, Hernández, Sanz-Barbero, Gill, Baldry, Schröttle and Stoeckl, 2016). Femicide is a complex phenomenon. To prevent it (and other forms of violence against women and girls [VAWG]), we must understand the factors that influence it (Vives-Cases et al., 2016). It is essential to consider how Western and non-Western cultures influence myriad individual, organisational, communal, and societal attitudes regarding male-perpetrated VAWG and how these attitudes contribute to public policies and state responses (Vives-Cases et al., 2016). The abuse of women by husbands, boyfriends, and other male family members is not an isolated phenomenon but is present in every socio-economic, cultural, and racial group (Jiwani and Hoodfar, 2012). This chapter explores the intersection between femicide and honour-based violence (HBV), examining how relevant socio-cultural norms support and facilitate different types of violence – for instance, the belief that men have a right to control and/or discipline women makes women vulnerable to violence from intimate partners (Gill, 2020), demonstrating how patriarchal values increase the risk of gender-based violence (Vives-Cases et al., 2016). The closeness of the relationship between violence that has a symbolic meaning and the culture that ascribes such meaning influences the daily environment in which VAWG plays out. Intersections of class and race also play a significant role in shaping this environment. Debates about intersections have a long history in the UK and have taken place specifically in gender studies, race and ethnic studies, and cultural and diaspora studies (Thiara and Gill, 2010). These debates have challenged the invisibility of Black and racially minoritised people and the absence of theoretical/ analytical frameworks that can account for how intersecting social divisions such as class and race affect different groups within particular contexts (Day and Gill, 2020). According to Brah and Phoenix (2004), a person’s multiple identities are neither discrete nor explicit but are inseparable: each identity has its own unique, related form of oppression or dominance that alters when it intersects with another identity. For example, minority women face the differing oppressions that stem from being women and from being an ethnic minority. The common and important thread linking these assertions is the idea that in order to understand gendered violence, we must consider social and cultural difference. Further, we must explain this in ways that do not simply reproduce stereotypical

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representations of Black and racially minoritised women’s subjectivity or everyday experiences of their cultures and communities. Gender has enjoyed a significant and sustained level of engagement in the British criminological community, and this is reflected in the UK’s criminal justice policies. However, notwithstanding some exceptions, British criminology has yet to incorporate intersectional frameworks, with race in particular being conspicuously absent (Day and Gill, 2020). In 2016, the UK Ministry of Justice published findings of a review into ethnic minority involvement in the justice system. It concluded that a statistically significant difference exists between the experiences of Black and racially minoritised women and those of white women at the arrest, charging, and prosecution stages for a range of crimes/reports (i.e. not just sexual abuse) and that Black and racially minoritised women are more likely to receive custodial sentences on conviction (Uhrig, 2016). While all VAWG is underpinned by the patriarchal notion of women/girls as property, it manifests in different ways depending on the cultural context in which it occurs and the specific socio-cultural factors at play. We therefore must understand those factors to avoid misrepresenting entire cultures or viewing some forms of VAWG as specific to a particular culture or as entirely culture-based (i.e. the mistake made in the case of Shafilea Ahmed, which this chapter explores in detail) (Gill, 2022). When the media misrepresents crimes against women from ethnic minorities, they are in danger of misrepresenting entire cultures. Such violence must be understood as part of the broader, systemic violence wrought by so-called liberalisation and structural adjustment policies (Anitha and Gill, 2018). To investigate these issues, this chapter examines the murder of Shafilea Ahmed and the role that the socio-cultural notions of “honour” and “shame” played in her death.

Cultural Definitions of Femicide Different forms of femicide encompass, but are not limited to, intimate partner killings (Vives-Cases et al., 2016), “honour” crimes, dowry-related murders, forced suicide, female infanticide, genderbased sex-selective foeticide, and the targeted killing of women during wars or in the context of organised crime. Understanding femicide from a cultural perspective involves considering the specific nature of femicide crimes – for example, by analysing the murders of women committed in the name of “honour” by their partners, former partners, or family members, it is possible to explore whether such murders are motivated by a desire to punish adultery, homosexuality, divorce, or a refusal to marry (Kaplanian and Gill, 2020). The socio-cultural differences between European countries and between those who inhabit them mean that prioritising “expert” voices from the hegemonic culture (i.e. politicians, religious/cultural leaders, journalists, and in some cases, researchers) over less visible minority groups manifests in a country’s practices, norms, values, and beliefs being treated as monolithic and in diversity being largely ignored. Cultural dialogue involving engagement with “experts” across the sociocultural spectrum is key to explaining the variety of causes behind femicide (Shalhoub-Kevorkian and Daher-Nashif, 2013) and, thus, to tackling and preventing it. Adopting a broad definition of femicide facilitates recognising the fact that the circumstances that perpetuate misogynistic attitudes and/or socially discriminatory practices against women contribute to why VAWG is so prevalent around the world (Kaplanian and Gill, 2020). As it is often difficult to determine whether women and girls have been killed because of their sex, researchers investigating femicide generally include all killings of females in the first stage of analysis and then differentiate between cases that are more or less influenced by gendered contexts and motives (Balica and Stöckl, 2016; Vives-Cases et al., 2016). These contexts and motives vary across countries and cultures. Western nations with large multi-ethnic immigrant communities, such as Britain, began recognising HBV as a significant and growing domestic issue in the late 20th century. The increased

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understanding and awareness of HBV prompted concerted national and international efforts to counter this form of VAWG (Begikhani, Gill and Hague, 2015; Olwan, 2014). “Honour” killings embody the most extreme form of such aggression (Faqir, 2001; Gill, 2014) and demonstrate perpetrators’ willingness to take radical measures to remedy the loss of honour. This willingness derives from the fact that when someone does not take appropriate action after their honour is threatened, they may be subjected to shame, ridicule, loss of respect, loss of social resources, and even complete ostracism from their family or wider social group (Gill, 2014). In societies where social mobility is limited and individuals’ social, psychological, and material prospects are closely interwoven with those of their family, tribe, or clan, ostracism not only means losing social support but also the material resources necessary for survival. As a result, susceptibility to shame is considered a positive quality, as illustrated by how often phrases such as “having a sense of shame” are used as compliments in such societies (Abu-Lughod, 2011). As shame is both an emotional consequence of losing honour and an important behavioural regulator, shame and honour represent interlinked, dynamic social processes rather than static attributes. This is why avoiding shame and preserving honour are major, continuous concerns for individuals, families, and communities in both Western and non-Western cultural contexts. It is worth noting that while honour and shame play a distinct role in some non-Western cultures, they also operate in Western cultures – this demonstrates that honour/shame are not exclusively cultural factors, just as femicide is not an exclusively cultural crime.

“Honour” Killings Gendered violence encompasses HBV, “crimes of honour,” “crimes related to honour conflict,” “crimes of tradition,” and “culture-based violence.” Some scholars and activists reject the use of these designations altogether, categorising such crimes as domestic violence (Terman, 2010), while others place HBV under the umbrella of VAWG. In this chapter, HBV is considered to exist on the VAWG spectrum, as most HBV victims are female and the majority of perpetrators are male. Honour-based femicide takes many different forms that are often specific to certain cultures and communities. However, all share the same dynamic: women are killed by male family members in order to restore lost honour, and their murder is deemed socially acceptable, understandable, excusable, and even desirable. As “honour” covers a broad variety of concepts and behaviours (Gill, 2009), the violations that may trigger violence are also wide-ranging, with honour killings most commonly committed against a woman for actual or alleged behaviours that are considered immoral according to the dominant social norms (Jiwani and Hoodfar, 2012; Gill, 2014) and that involve intimate relations with a man, whether in the form of adultery, sex outside marriage, or simply close companionship. As even accusations alone of immoral behaviour can lead to loss of honour, the truth is often irrelevant and proof is rarely required. Indeed, rumours and gossip are the community’s greatest weapons for instilling shame in men who cannot “preserve the purity and chastity” of their female relatives (Shalhoub-Kevorkian and Daher-Nashef, 2013). As it is seen to be the responsibility of male family members to preserve the whole family’s honour, “misbehaviour” on the part of female relatives tarnishes not only their own honour but that of the entire family, especially the men. Even women who have been raped and/or sexually assaulted can become targets for honour killings. This is because the norms and values of honour cultures focus on maintaining women’s sexual “purity” to ensure that only certain bloodlines are allowed to blend, preventing wealth from becoming diluted by marriage – for instance, by ensuring that women from the landed class do not form family bonds with individuals of lower social status. Other common ways honour is seen to be lost such that it can only be restored by HBV include a woman or girl (1) being in the presence of a male who is not a relative, (2) refusing an arranged marriage, (3) falling in love with someone who is unacceptable to the family, (4) seeking a divorce, (5) trying to escape marital violence, (6) 334

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presenting herself in a “Western manner” in terms of clothing and/or make-up, (7) staying out late (Papp, 2010), and (8) engaging in perceived “defiance and disobedience” (Schliesmann, 2012: 48). For white women in many Western contexts, shame tends to have a more personal character and is not seen to tarnish other family members or the wider community – but minoritised victims living in cultures and communities centred on notions of honour and shame often see themselves as responsible for damaging their loved ones through real or perceived actions that lead to loss of honour (Feldman, 2010; Gill and Day, 2020). In the UK in particular, reports released over the last decade have variously described South Asian men involved in, for example, child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation cases as “evil” people who had undertaken “depraved acts” (Mogra, 2013). One characterised girls in the Rochdale child sexual abuse cases as being “recruited into sexual factory farming by Muslim men described as ‘pure evil’ by detectives” (Pearson, 2012). Further, a Mail Online report described the murder of a white 17-year-old woman, Laura Wilson, by her 18-yearold boyfriend, Ashtiaq Ashgar, as Britain’s “first white honour killing” (Brennan, 2016). After Laura’s death, it was revealed that social workers were aware she had been exploited by groups of men since she was 11. It is not clear if her partner was involved in her exploitation, but to ascribe the name “honour killing” to a crime that bore all the hallmarks of a domestic homicide at the hands of an intimate partner conflates two tropes about South Asian men and evokes ideas of racial exceptionalism. This type of framing creates the conditions under which South Asian men in general can be constructed as folk devils. Furthermore, this type of framing positions honour-based femicide as a solely cultural crime. This complicates the issue of speaking out and/or seeking help. For those who are part of honour-based cultures, women not speaking to outsiders about family affairs and being expected to smooth over difficulties through self-sacrifice and repressing their own desires and feelings also play a role in the low reporting rate of HBV and other forms of VAWG by minoritised victims. However, just as negative family and community responses encourage victims to remain silent about abuse, positive responses are integral to enabling them to discuss their experiences of violence (Gill, 2014). Thus, policies and practices geared towards providing support and justice for victims must take account of the specialised needs of minoritised victims if those victims are to have equal access to help and redress. The following sections explore the murder of Shafilea Ahmed in relation to these issues and explain why culture came to be seen as the key explanation for this crime. However, a critical analysis of such racialised interpretations of murder demonstrates that accepting honour as the sole justification for the brutal killing of young women perceived to have shamed family members fails to grasp the importance of individual and family dynamics. It also overlooks how this specific form of violence relates to the broader issue of VAWG, which affects all communities and countries (Gill, 2014).

Shafilea Ahmed Shafilea Ahmed was born in Bradford, England, on 14 July 1986, shortly after her parents emigrated to the UK from Pakistan. From the age of 15, Shafilea frequently reported that she was suffering violence and abuse at the hands of her parents (Gill, 2014). She attended Great Sankey High School in Warrington until her father removed her from school temporarily in February 2003 for a trip to Pakistan. Shafilea was murdered in the UK in September 2003 at the age of 17. In the year prior to her death, tensions over clashing “traditional” versus “Western” values had intensified between Shafilea and her parents. One of her parents’ complaints was that Shafilea’s circle of friends consisted of mostly Caucasian peers from her school, with only a small percentage being from minority ethnic backgrounds. Shafilea’s case was first referred to Warrington social services on 3 October 2002 after another pupil told teachers that Shafilea’s parents had physically assaulted her and prevented her from 335

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attending school. Following this first referral, Shafilea’s social services file notes a mark on her face and the fact that she believed she was going to be sent to Pakistan for an arranged marriage. When Shafilea returned to school five days later, she revealed to her best friend that her mother had threatened a forced marriage. According to the friend, Shafilea’s mother said, “I can’t wait till you go to Pakistan to teach you a lesson” (Gill, 2014: 181), prompting school staff to refer Shafilea to social services again. This time, Shafilea’s social services file noted that her father had forced her to withdraw savings from her bank account, indicating an attempt on his part to exert financial control over her. In late November 2002, one of Shafilea’s friends saw her in a park, carrying her belongings and wearing only a “thin sari”; Shafilea said that she was running away from home “because her parents would not let her be” (Gill, 2014). Although the school reported the incident to social services, there is no record of this on file. In a meeting subsequently arranged between Shafilea and her parents by her teacher, Shafilea spoke “quite openly” about wanting “to be able to work and have money and go out” (Gill, 2014: 181). By the end of the meeting, her father had agreed that she would be allowed more freedom. However, things did not improve, and teachers continued referring Shafilea to social services and suggesting that she should contact a counselling service, Childline (Gill, 2012). On 18 February 2003, Shafilea’s parents drugged her and took her to Pakistan (Gill, 2014). The trip was cut short in May when Shafilea swallowed bleach (or a similar caustic liquid) and required treatment at a local hospital. The family then returned to the UK. Her mother later told British police that Shafilea had accidentally ingested the bleach, mistaking it for mouthwash. However, medical practitioners reported that Shafilea’s mouth injury was inconsistent with the action of gargling mouthwash but was consistent with a deliberate act of swallowing. The most likely explanation is that this was a conscious act of self-harm by Shafilea to frustrate her parents’ plans to force her into marriage. As a result of this injury, Shafilea was no longer considered marriageable and was, thus, deemed to have shamed her family. Despite her injury, Shafilea was determined to continue her education and become a lawyer. In September 2003, she commenced a series of courses at Priestly College in Warrington. On the evening of 11 September, she worked at her part-time job until the end of her shift at 9:00 p.m., when another employee observed her leaving the premises. She spent the evening at her family’s home in Warrington with her parents and four younger siblings. Her father claims that she was alive, though asleep, when he and the rest of the family went to bed at 11:00 p.m. Although Shafilea was due to receive hospital treatment the following day, she was not seen alive again after that night. Shafilea’s former teacher reported her missing on 18 September 2003, prompting an extensive police investigation into her disappearance. At the time, the primary sources of information were Shafilea’s family, friends, and teachers, but significant inconsistencies soon emerged between their accounts. The investigation also revealed the history of school, social services and law enforcement involvement with Shafilea and her family. In December 2003, Shafilea’s parents were arrested on suspicion of abduction. Shafilea’s parents denied any involvement in her disappearance and were released on police bail (Gill, 2014). On 4 February 2004, the decomposed remains of a human body were found on the banks of the River Kent near Force Bridge. A DNA match to Shafilea was made on 23 February 2004. Shafilea’s parents gave a number of press interviews in March 2004, including one broadcast on Newsnight on 2 March. Whereas Shafilea’s mother remained silent throughout the interview, her father appeared attentive and focused, distancing himself from Shafilea by referring to her as “the daughter” or “the girl.” When asked about Shafilea’s suicide attempt, he contradicted the medical evidence, stating that his daughter “took a sip” of poisonous liquid. He claimed, “I’m not a strict parent in any way . . . I’m as English as anybody can picture me, right. But obviously the police portrayal of me is different . . . we have not been treated fairly” (Gill, 2014). He complained that his family was misunderstood by the police and the public and feigned being hurt by the suspicion that he and his wife were responsible for the death of “the girl.” Rather than making a plea to those 336

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responsible for his daughter’s death, he defended his “Englishness,” illustrating the importance he placed on saving face and maintaining honour in the eyes of others; he used the word “normal” many times in the Newsnight interview when describing Shafilea, his family, the “holiday” to Pakistan during which Shafilea swallowed bleach, and the night of her disappearance (Gill, 2014: 184). He continuously sought to present his family in a positive light, focusing less on the loss of his daughter and more on what he perceived as the unfair treatment directed at him and his family. In September 2004, the police submitted a file of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to determine whether to pursue a case against Shafilea’s parents. Six months later, Mr Robin Spencer, QC, advised the police that there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and secure a conviction. On 11 January 2008, a coroner’s inquest into the circumstances of Shafilea’s death found that she had been “unlawfully killed” (Warrington Guardian, 11 June 2009), but the matter was not progressed because there had been no new evidence since the original CPS decision not to prosecute. The situation changed in August 2010 when Shafilea’s sister, “Alesha” (a pseudonym), was taken into custody on suspicion of having arranged a robbery at her parents’ home. Having requested to speak to officers about another matter, Alesha was interviewed in the presence of her solicitor. During the interview, she claimed that on the night of 11 September 2003, when she was 15, she and her three surviving siblings had witnessed their parents killing Shafilea. “Both of my parents were very controlling and tried to bring us up in the Pakistani Muslim way,” Alesha said before explaining that Shafilea was the one who was “picked on” the most by their parents (Gill, 2014: 185). Alesha’s testimony allowed the CPS to advance a convincing case against Shafilea’s parents. In September 2011, both were charged with murder. Their trial commenced on 21 May 2012 at Chester Crown Court.

The Trial During the trial, Shafilea’s parents insisted that they had not been involved in their daughter’s disappearance or murder; they also denied claims that they had repeatedly beaten her over a prolonged period. As a witness for the prosecution, Alesha was called to describe the night of Shafilea’s disappearance. She recalled going with her mother and brother to collect Shafilea from work. When Shafilea reached the car, they saw that she was wearing a lilac T-shirt and white trousers made from stretchy material, with ties at each hip. As soon as their mother saw Shafilea, she complained that her clothes were too revealing. Alesha stated that when they arrived home, the whole family assembled in the kitchen, with their mother demanding that they collectively search Shafilea’s bags; this practice was not unusual. Finding some money in Shafilea’s handbag increased their mother’s anger; she accused Shafilea of hiding the money and pushed her, placing both hands on her daughter’s chest and shoulders to shove her onto the settee in the sitting room. Alesha stated that Shafilea, still weak from her injuries as a result of the bleach, had a small frame and weighed only about five or six stone (31–38 kg). Alesha then heard her mother say, “Etay khatam kar saro,” Punjabi for “Just finish it here.” Their father went to Shafilea and pulled her into a lying position on the settee. Shafilea began to struggle as both her parents hit her and held her down. One of them said, “Get the bag.” Alesha saw her mother grab a thin white carrier bag from the stool next to the settee; she and the children’s father together forced the entire bag into Shafilea’s mouth. Each placed a hand over her mouth and nose. Shafilea’s legs kicked, but her father put his knee on the settee to pin her down until she stopped struggling (Gill, 2014: 186–187). Despite having seen her sister die the night before, Alesha told the court that the following morning she asked her mother where Shafilea was. Alesha and her siblings were sternly instructed that, if anyone asked, they were to say that Shafilea came home from work, went to bed, and then ran away during the night. Alesha and her siblings were sent to school as normal. There Alesha broke down 337

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and told some friends what had occurred; in court she described being very upset and confused at the time and, as a result, spontaneously blurted out that her father had killed her sister. When her teachers asked her about this, she recanted in fear of reprisal from her parents. Questions remain as to why those who witnessed Alesha’s breakdown at school did not contact the police until days later, on 18 September 2003. Eight weeks into the trial, Shafilea’s mother changed her defence in what the judge described as a “significant” development (Gill, 2014: 187). On 8 July 2012, Shafilea’s mother admitted that an incident of “violence” involving Shafilea took place on 11 September 2003 at the family home (Gill, 2014: 187). Until then, she had denied having any knowledge of what had happened to her daughter. Now, her defence counsel stated that, on the night in question, Shafilea’s father was very angry, “hitting [Shafilea], slapping her with his hands towards the facial area and punching her two to three times to the upper part of her body. [The defendant] tried to intervene but she was told to go away” (author’s personal notes, 2012). The defence counsel went on to explain that when Shafilea’s mother tried again to help her daughter, she was “pushed away by both hands and also punched with a clenched fist” (Gill, 2014: 187). Contrary to Alesha’s account, the girls’ mother claimed that only her youngest daughter, then aged 12, was present. “Extremely scared” and fearing for her younger child’s safety, she took the 12-year-old upstairs. Some 20 minutes later, she heard a car leave and came downstairs to find Shafilea and her husband gone, along with her car. At 6:30 a.m. the next day, her husband returned without Shafilea (author’s personal notes, Gill, 2012). However, there was more evidence for her complicity in Shafilea’s murder than just Alesha’s testimony. This came from a covert listening device that had been installed in the Ahmed home by the police in November 2003, after Alesha’s teachers had contacted them to report her story about Shafilea’s murder. On one recording, Shafilea’s mother, in conversation with her other children, can be heard warning them not to say anything at school about what had happened to Shafilea, including telling her son, “If the slightest thing comes out of your mouth, we will be stuck in real trouble. Remember that.” In another exchange, she scolded her children, saying, “Today is not a day to be beaten up, okay. Are you listening to me? I’m talking to you,” demonstrating that abuse and violence were a normal part of family life in the Ahmed home. The actions of Shafilea’s mother can also be understood as an attempt to preserve her family’s honour and to protect herself against potential accusations from her husband of complicity in Shafilea’s behaviour. Kandiyoti’s seminal 1988 study of the phenomenon of mothers abusing their daughters in South Asian families can further illuminate why Shafilea’s mother treated her as she did: Kandiyoti saw this type of abuse as a culturally specific form of “patriarchal bargain” between the mother and the extended household (Walker and Gill, 2019). Men make the rules, but if women play by them, they can gain a form of symbolic capital; specifically, they can present themselves as conforming women, enabling their survival under the patriarchal system. When one woman’s misbehaviour can dishonour the entire patriarchal familial unit, women monitor one another’s behaviour as much as men do and enact punishment for transgressions to ensure their survival and security. Shafilea’s case reveals how the honour-shame nexus may prompt both inaction and violent action, especially in terms of the prevailing culture of silence around intrafamilial violence – this was evident in Alesha’s reluctance to speak out against her parents, despite knowing that they had murdered her sister. While the concept of patriarchal bargaining is useful here, it is important not to confuse it with a lack of female agency (Kandiyoti, 1998), as this risks depicting women in such situations as merely passive victims of culture (Kapur, 2002). In turn, this can lead to the stereotyping of whole social groups through ignoring the other socio-cultural and individual factors at play in any crime as complex as murder. While the jury accepted Alesha’s version of events and Shafilea’s parents were convicted of her murder on 3 August 2012, the specific complexities of the case were overlooked by the criminal justice system and the media. In sentencing both Shafilea’s parents to life, the judge, Justice Roderick 338

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Evans, described Shafilea as a determined, able, and ambitious girl “squeezed between two cultures, the culture and way of life that she saw around her and wanted to embrace and the culture and way of life her parents wanted to impose upon her” (Gill, 2014: 195); similarly, the media presented a tale of backward parents acting against modern Britain’s progressive social values. While all the accounts of what happened on 11 September 2003 circle back to the key role of honour, Shafilea’s murder was a product of many factors, including the relationship between honour, gender, and power inequalities within the Ahmed household. This relationship was particularly apparent in the challenges that faced the two Ahmed sisters. In struggling to make their own life choices, Alesha and Shafilea were continuously confronted with the contradictions between their internalised need to conform to their family’s values (and, in doing so, avoid bringing shame upon themselves and their family) and their own desires to pursue greater personal freedom as British citizens living in the UK. While culture was a major factor, complex family dynamics, intersectional intergenerational differences, and general gender issues all played their part in Shafilea’s murder.

Conclusion This chapter examined the intersections between HBV and femicide through the lens of the close relationship between honour and shame. Culture is a major factor in HBV, but it is not sufficient to explain the phenomenon. While individual and family dynamics also play a role, it is critical to understand HBV as part of the broader problem of VAWG, which affects all communities and sectors of society – only then can the specific forms that VAWG takes in different contexts be properly understood and tackled through effective policy, practice, and law. Reflecting on this case ten years after Shafilea’s parents were convicted of her murder, it is clear that we are far from eradicating everyday misogyny, racism, and sexism – sadly, they continue to contribute to a pandemic of VAWG that shows no sign of abating. The criminal justice system itself is a significant part of this problem: ineffective and discriminatory policing and gender-biased court and sentencing processes are hampering the path to justice for victims/survivors of VAWG. Positive and effective police responses are often a postcode lottery or simply a matter of which officer a victim encounters. Meanwhile, COVID-19 and austerity measures have greatly reduced the types and sources of support available to women, particularly specialist refuges (Anitha and Gill, 2021). Despite these issues, our society has the power to protect women and girls – and we must put this power to better use. The police and other statutory services must accept culpability when they make mistakes and commit to learning from their errors. This level of change requires investment, commitment, and accountability, as well as a cohesive strategy rather than the fragmented responses presently in place. The police must be able to identify and understand the risk factors associated with all forms of VAWG in order to respond effectively. In Shafilea’s case, the police refused to call her murder an “honour” killing because they wanted to stress that no licence should be granted to those who claim that their cultural rights excuse acts of brutality. Police officers must receive training based on case studies of both successful and unsuccessful prosecutions for HBV, as well as the processes employed to successfully bring offenders to trial, if they are to effectively identify, investigate, and support the prosecution of HBV and other forms of VAWG. Knowledge of best practice must be disseminated throughout the government, statutory agencies, and NGOs if the UK is to develop effective policy, law, and practical guidelines to tackle and prevent VAWG nationally and internationally. The need for a holistic, intersectional approach to achieving successful prosecutions and better supporting victims must be recognised and carried forward in better inter-agency cooperation and more effective engagement with specialist providers. It is only with the requisite knowledge that all victims can receive equal treatment. Increasing the number of female officers from minoritised 339

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communities (and promoting their engagement in work to develop training, policy and practice) will help ensure that the police service can draw on a wide range of lived experience within its own ranks. Understanding the violence experienced by Black and racially minoritised women in Britain requires a criminal justice approach that not only considers the links between all forms of VAWG but also addresses the specificity of particular forms of VAWG, such as HBV. A distinction must be drawn between condemning the culture of a specific social group and condemning a particular cultural practice while recognising that culture is never a complete explanation for an individual act of violence.

References Abu-Lughod, L. (2011). Seductions of honor crime. Differences: Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 22(1), 17–63. Anitha, S., & Gill, A. K. (2018). Making politics visible: Discourses on gender and race in the problematisation of sex-selective abortion. Feminist Review, 120, 1–19. Anitha, S., & Gill, A. K. (2021). Domestic violence during the pandemic: The experience of frontline practitioners supporting racially minoritised women in England & Wales. Organization, 29(56). Balica, E., & Stöckl, H. (2016). Homicide – suicides in Romania and the role of migration. European Journal of Criminology, 13(4), 517–534. Begikhani, N., Gill, A. K., & Hague, G. (2015). “Honour”-based violence: Experiences and counter strategies in Iraqi Kurdistan and the UK Kurdish diaspora. Aldershot: Ashgate. Brah, A., & Phoenix, A. (2004). Ain’t I A Woman? Revisiting Intersectionality. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 5(3), 74–87. Brennan, S. (2016). The Rotherham whistleblower: Incredible story of the woman who risked everything to bring Asian men who groomed and raped white girls for TWO DECADES to justice. The Mail. Retrieved from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3509707/Youth-worker-Janye-Senior-reveals-battledtwo-decadesexpose-shocking-Rotherham-scandal.html Day, A. S., & Gill, A. K. (2020). An intersectional approach to improving the efficacy of partnerships between women’s organisations and the criminal justice system in relation to domestic violence. British Journal of Criminology, 60(4), 830–850. Faqir, F. (2001). Intrafamily femicide in defence of honour: The case of Jordan. Third World Quarterly, 22(1), 65–82. Feldman, S. (2010). Shame and honour: The violence of gendered norms under conditions of global crisis. Women’s Studies International Forum, 33(4), 305–315. Gill, A. K. (2009). “Honour” killings and the quest for justice in black and minority ethnic communities in the UK. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 20(4), 475–494. Gill, A. K. (2012). Author’s personal notes related to expert court attendance of this case at. Chester Crown Court. Gill, A. K. (2014). “All they think about is honour”: The murder of Shafilea Ahmed. In A. K. Gill, C. Strange, & K. Roberts (Eds.), “Honour” killing and violence: Theory, policy and practice (pp. 177–199). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Gill, A. K., & Day, A. S. (2020). Moral panic in the media: Scapegoating South Asian men in cases of sexual exploitation and grooming. In S. Ramon, M. Lloyd, & B. Penhale (Eds.), Gendered domestic violence and abuse in popular culture. Emerald: Bingley. Gill, A. K., & Walker, S. (2020) On honour, culture and violence against women in black and minority ethnic communities. In S. Walklate, & K. Fitz-Gibbon. (Eds.), Emerald handbook of criminology, feminism and social change (pp. 157–176). Bingley: Emerald Publishing Ltd. Gill, A. K. (2022). Child sexual exploitation and scapegoating minority communities. In Routledge companion to gender, media and violence. London: Routledge. Jiwani, Y., & Hoodfar, H. (2012). Should we call it ‘honour killing’? No. It’s a false distancing of ourselves from a too-common crime: The murders of females. The Montreal Gazette. Retrieved from www.violenceisnotourculture.org/News-and-Views/should-we-call-it-%E2%80%98honour-killing%E2%80%99-no Kandiyoti, D. (1988). Bargaining with patriarchy. Gender and Society, 2(3), 274–290. Kandiyoti, D. (1998). Gender, power and contestation: Rethinking ‘bargaining with patriarchy’. In C. Jackson, & R. Pearson (Eds.), Feminist visions of development: Gender analysis and policy. London; Routledge.

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“Honour”-Based Femicide Kaplanian, C., & Gill, A. K. (2020). Honour killings in Jordan. International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences, 14(July–December). Kapur, R. (2002). The tragedy of victimization rhetoric: Resurrecting the ‘native’ subject in international/postcolonial feminist legal politics. Harvard Human Rights Journal, 15(1): 1–37. Mogra, S. (2013). Statement to home affairs: Minutes of evidence [HC 68]. Home affairs, UK Parliament, Session 2013–14. Available at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/130319. htm Olwan, D. (2014) “No place in Canada”: Triumphant discourses, murdered women and the “honour crime”. In A. K. Gill, C. Strange, & K. Roberts (Eds.), ‘Honour’ killing and violence. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Papp, A. (2010). Culturally driven violence against women: A growing problem in Canada’s immigrant communities. FCPP Policy Series No. 92. Winnipeg, MB: Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Pearson, A. (2012). Asian sex gang: Young girls betrayed by our fear of racism. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9254651/Asian-sex-gang-young-girls-betrayed-byour-fear-of-racism.html Schliesmann, P. (2012). Honour on trial: The Shafia murders and the culture of honour killings. Toronto, ON: Fitzhenry and Whiteside. Shalhoub-Kevorkian, N., & Daher-Nashif, S. (2013). Femicide and colonization. Between the politics of exclusión and the culture of control. Violence against Women, 19(3), 295–315. Vives-Cases, C., Goicolea, I., Hernández, A., Sanz-Barbero, B., Gill, A.K., Costanza Baldry, A., Schröttle, M., & Stoeckl, H. (2016). Expert Opinions on Improving Femicide Data Collection across Europe: A Concept Mapping Study. PLoS One, 11(4): e0154060. Terman, R. (2010). To specify or single out: Should we use the term “honour killing”? Muslim World Journal of Human Rights, 7(2), 1642. Thiara, R., & Gill, A. K. (2010). Violence Against Women in South Asian Communities: Issues for Policy and Practice. London: Jessica Kingsley. Uhrig, N. (2016). Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic disproportionality in the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales, Ministry of Justice. London: Ministry of Justice. Walker, S., & Gill, A. K. (2019). Women who kill: Examining female homicide through the lens of honour and shame. Women Studies International Forum, 7(75). Warrington Guardian. (2009, June 12). Shafilea Ahmed’s father fails to overturn verdict that she was “unlawfully killed”. Warrington Guardian. Retrieved from www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/news/644 4436238.print/

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31 FEMIGENOCIDE Rita Segato and Lívia Vitenti

Part I: Defining the Juridical Type Femigenocide This text is the result of a journey of writing and reflections on gender, sexuality, and violence which has been brewing from the first author’s encounters with histories of feminicidal violence in Mexico1 (Segato, 2006; 2010; 2019),2 El Salvador (Segato, 2018), Guatemala (Segato, 2016), Colombia (Segato, 2016),3 Honduras (Segato, 2016)4 and Brazil (Segato, 2014).5 This resulted in proposing the legal category of “femigenocide” as a major crime against humanity and for it to be considered one of the types of the crime of genocide.6 One of the significant problems for the effective transformation of the malaise that affects women and, therefore, society as a whole is the difficulty of their full access to the anthropological and legal category of “person,” which would grant them access to sovereignty over their bodies and the eradication of gender violence. This difficulty originates in the acceptance of the multicultural binary structure that admitted the minority category of the so-called political identities, since then perceived as defective positions, minoritised alterities concerning a “universal subject” representative of the collective interests, encompassing everything that claims to be of political strict meaning and enunciator of everything that is considered “of general interest”: politics, economy, science and technology, health, and so on. A serious consequence of this binary political and legal structure has been the privatisation and referral of all crimes against women to the intimate sphere, especially those that include sexual aggression. Thus, crimes against women are felt/understood as “minor crimes” or “lesser crimes.” The proposal of the crime of “femigenocide” as a crime against humanity within the genocide category is an important step towards the perception of its victims as “full persons” by common sense and, especially, by “legal common sense,” which is generally very deficient and always inclined to attribute crimes against women to the sphere of privacy and intimacy. The formulation of this new category implies the need to differentiate, within the general type of femicide, crimes with lethal intent based on gender, which have an intimate and personal character on the part of the aggressor, either independently or referring to the context of the interpersonal relationship between the aggressor and their victim. On the other hand, there are crimes in which it would be impossible to attribute a motive that could be personalised in either of the two senses, as mentioned earlier. The so-called new forms of war, the expansion of mafia-like spaces dominated by factions, gangs, and armed cliques (Segato, 2018c), and the proliferation of the trafficking business for sexual exploitation are the scenes that make the postulation of this subtype necessary. 342

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The category femigenocide is defined as crimes of systematic and public violent aggression, generally followed by death, mutilation of the body, or reduction to conditions of existence against women, in generic terms, of a specific legal domain or social group and perpetrated by members of an armed group of a criminal or paramilitary type. This crime must leave the legal vacuum in which it is currently found and obtain a more efficient and precise legal definition. The latter would allow their inclusion in national and international legislation and their investigation by permanent committees of the United Nations, as well as consistent monitoring and pressure by these committees on the authorities of the member countries where these crimes occur. Femicide crimes are derived from the gender or patriarchal structure, but the differentiation between intimate and fully public crimes is indispensable to allow their correct registration in statistics, for police and forensic investigation protocols to reach their intended purposes, and for the legal interpretation guidelines to bring justice, and to ensure that the media adequately inform the population about the dangers that surround them.

Why and How to Propose the Crime of Femigenocide as a Subtype of Femicide Within the Legal Category of Genocide In the general review elaborated by Patsilí Toledo Vásquez for the Mexico Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in 2009, the author addresses the state of the art of the incorporation of the concept of femicide in the legislation of Latin American nation-states and international human rights law (Vásquez, 2009). In her conclusions, after a detailed examination of a wide variety of national and international laws that represented at the time practically all the legislative and juridical efforts already made in the region to include the specificity of crimes against women, Toledo Vásquez unwittingly reveals the mechanism that gives rise to the blind spot in the law. The author rightly argues that the attempts made within national jurisdictions – a necessary basis for its typification in international criminal law – find their impossibility in the imprecision of the definitions of the crime of femicide and, therefore, in its normative indeterminacy (Vásquez, 2009, p. 143). She also explains, when referring to international law, that none of its three major categories – genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes – could be adequate to contemplate the crime of femicide. This is so because, in the case of genocide, women are not included among the groups – national, ethnic, racial, and religious – enshrined in the 1948 Convention and reconfirmed by the Rome Statute (Vásquez, 2009, p. 50). Some countries have extended this definition to “political groups or other groups with an inherent identity,” and it is worth noting the case of Uruguay, where Law No. 18.026, in cooperation with the International Criminal Court in the Fight Against Genocide, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity of 2006, criminalises genocide in its article7 as an action “with intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial, religious, political, trade union group, or a group with an inherent identity based on gender, sexual orientation, cultural, social, age, disability or health reasons” (Vásquez, 2009, p.51). However, Vásquez (2009) warns, the problem will always be the subjective dimension of its definition, that is, “to succeed in demonstrating the intention to totally or partially destroy a certain group.” She concludes that genocide cannot entail the crime of femicide. In the case of crimes against humanity, the author’s conclusion does not differ since, as she argues, major attacks on women committed “in the private or intimate sphere” would prevent proving the intention of a generalised and systematic attack on them as a group. Vásquez (2009) rightly refers, in this regard, to the argument put forward in the essay “Territory, sovereignty and crimes of the second state: the writing on the body of murdered women”8 as well as to the argument of Monárrez (2006), who emphasises the systemic aspect of femicides in Ciudad Juarez and describes them in detail in the conceptual chapter of her report. However, Toledo Vásquez fails to make productive use of either 343

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analysis because she remains sequestered in the positivity of the already consecrated legal lexicon and, rejecting a broader perspective open to the pressures of time, does not agree to propose a new category capable of bringing together the crimes that we define here as femigenocide. The same happens when the author refers to war crimes and the possibility of including femicides in international humanitarian law since discarding the typification of a new type of war scene9 – which those of us who have worked on the Central American and Mexican reality is trying to define – means losing a great opportunity to exercise creativity by promoting the formulation of concepts that have become necessary today. The conceptual fragility resulting from such positivist legal literalism and caution is finally revealed in a conclusive synthesis in which Toledo Vázquez explains and justifies the series of impossibilities she relates by arguing that most of the models analysed reveal an inadequate penal configuration because the types tend to fall into ranges of indeterminacy or imprecision that may violate the guarantees of legality and typification. However, if the law does not consider the complexities and historical transformations of human action, or if it is incapable of drawing on the contributions of anthropology and sociology to formulate rights and guarantee protection, it should give up its normative intent and reinvent itself as a system. If the technicality and categorical purism that prevails in legal circles kill the possibility of capturing the dynamism of history and the consequent mutability of the practices that cause suffering, the law must declare itself incapable of speaking about what matters to people. The argument of the impossibility of creating something because it has not yet been created is not acceptable; the justification of the non-creatable by the non-existent is a circular and fallacious reasoning. We argue here that, considering the existence of a scenario of new forms of war (Segato 2018c; 2022) and a para-state sphere of control of life, the attack on the female gender (or genus) and the conditions of impersonality – which is a requirement of the Convention of Genocide – lethal intent or irreparable destruction of health, and proportionality different from crimes of individual motive amply justify the formulation of the new legal category femigenocide.

Femigenocide as a Specific Type of Femicide The specificity of the crime of femigenocide is defined by the following considerations, which differentiate it from the general type of femicide. The lethal aggression is directed to women as a category or genus10 of persons. The intentionality of these crimes is no other than, through the bodies of these targeted women, achieving and exhibiting territorial control in the context of a dispute or belligerent scenario. 2 The aggressions are systematic and public. 3 Generally, involving rape, systematic sexual aggression, or torture results not only in the achievement of sexual access but also in the destruction of the victim’s body, causing death or irreparable damage to her health – as in the case of human trafficking, for the purpose of sexual exploitation. 4 The motive is impersonal in character; that is, its intention is entirely generic and not of personal motivation, neither concerning the aggressor’s purpose (for example, a serial offender, a sociopath, or being instigated by a personal compulsion aggressor is ruled out) nor regarding the personal relationship between the aggressor and his victim (intimate violence is ruled out). Thus, there is no possibility of personalising or individualising either the motive of the perpetrator or the relationship between perpetrator and victim. With respect to the attacks of impersonal and generic nature, they must be understood in contextual intersectional dimensions related to the disputes and conflicts of interest in which they occur, such as race, ethnicity, and territory, as usual examples. 1

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The multiplicity of victims is in inverse relation to the number of perpetrators of the crime. Since these femicides are impersonal – and, thus, here called femigenocides – their systematic and repetitive character results from shared norms within the armed faction that perpetrates them. This differentiates them from crimes that occur in interpersonal contexts or with subjective and private motivations. The proportionality between perpetrators and victims differs from that in personal crimes since, in the latter, the numerical relationship between aggressor and victim is most often one-to-one, whereas in the femigenocide type there will be a faction, gang, or organised criminal group of some kind, acting as perpetrators of the crime on numerous women belonging to a contingent identified by race, people, class, or territory. The latter is often induced by the mandate of a chief or instigator and with the intention of sending a message of jurisdictional sovereignty to a front conceived as an adversary and oriented towards antagonistic interests.

Comment The crimes of forced disappearance, sexual torture, and annihilation of women are often unintelligible to the public and treated with incredulity by a part of public opinion due to the difficulty of accessing its rationality. They can be better understood if we stop considering them as the possible result of instrumental violence – that is, to extract forced sexual services marketable in cyberpornography or snuff movies, for example, or the sale of organs, as has been said without ever being proven for the cases in Ciudad Juárez. They are more accurately understood as expressive violence.11 If we consider them as expressive violence, then it becomes necessary to indicate to whom these crimes speak, what they say, and who speaks in them. On the expressiveness of these crimes, as they are communicative actions, they end up establishing themselves as a form of language and, therefore, obtain two characteristics: their automation as an unreflective semiotic practice and their capacity to spread as a language, accompanying the expansion of the mafia territories. These crimes impose a pact of complicity and silence within the joint perpetrator group and its circle of close allies. Therefore, the crimes are not merely the consequence of a situation of impunity but also, and above all, active reproducers of impunity by exhibiting, on the one hand, the existence of owners – true landlords – of the jurisdiction and, on the other hand, an unbreakable cohesion of the perpetrator’s fraternity. In this regard, they can be called “jurisdictional crimes” since they affirm before the local, regional, and international civil society and the state that the perpetrator’s fraternity has a firm territorial control over the jurisdiction, with tentacles at the heads in the public administration. To that end, they resort to arbitrary, discretionary cruelty, which gets isolated and unambiguously manifests as a message by harming those who are not perceived as war antagonists, as it is in the case of women. The exhibition of senseless violence leaves no doubt about the members of the group’s enormous death power and capacity for cruelty. They can, therefore, be considered crimes of a second state,12 crimes of a second reality,13 or crimes of a para-state sphere of control of life,14 of an underground state that, precisely, makes itself known, revealing its existence in that way. They are crimes of a power that shares a political culture which strategy is terror. They are, therefore, crimes of a corporate type because their perpetrators belong to corporate groups for the realisation of illicit actions. “Corporation” is, in this context as in others, the group or network that administers resources, privileges, norms and duties inherent to a parallel state – or second state – firmly established in the region, thus, transformed into its jurisdiction, and with tentacles in the public, State and federal administration. The responsibility of the State for the occurrence of these crimes results from the taking over of politics by mafia structures and the capture of the criminal field by the State. As territorial crimes, proper in every way to those in a situation of war, women’s bodies are perceived as part of a territory or domain. The appropriation, conquest, reconquest, or territorial resistance also includes the manifest control and occupation of women’s bodies – and, in some cases, of 345

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men’s feminised bodies. Given the equivalence and semantic continuity of the female body with the territory, men get at war with each other in women’s bodies, and these become the battlefield. Hatred of the enemy, the antagonist, the competitor, is expressed and written in the body of their women. For this reason, we must choose between two alternatives: (1) continuing to consider the sum of all murders of women, whether public or intimate, as a single and inseparable crime, and designating all cases indistinctly with the category “femicide,” thus obtaining the impact of the resulting high numbers of victimisation, or (2) accepting to distinguish, through the category femigenocide, corporate and territorial crimes as a specific type of public and systematic murder of women, differentiated from both domestic crimes and those produced by serial aggressors or individuals acting by personal and spontaneous compulsion in non-systemic-action delinquent groups. If the choice is the latter, what results is as follows: 1

To be able to claim protection from international law by drawing the analogies between femigenocide and the crime of genocide because they share the following characteristics: they are systematic crimes, with lethal intent or irreparable harm to the health of the victims, in which the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim is not personalised – that is, in which the perpetrators act as members of a corporate group and the victims are such only for belonging to a type or genus – in this case, intersecting gender and membership to a particular collective. 2 To guarantee a special legal status for women victimised by this type of violence. This includes victims of human trafficking for sexual exploitation because it comprises a reduction in concentration conditions of existence and predatory treatment of their health. 3 To obtain a clearer typification of the two types of criminal phenomena so that records for statistics, the police, forensic experts, and courts can carry out their investigations and interpretive work according to specific methodologies for both categories: those of private murders of women and femigenocides. 4 To analyse and interpret more accurately the elements that play a role in femicidal practices in the public order and, in this way, to be able to identify crimes that are dispersed and remain poorly understood in a wide variety of local and national contexts. 5 To confer greater intelligibility, in the legal, political, and sociological fields, to crimes of a systematic, public, and impersonal nature that are obscured when there are no parameters to distinguish them from the murders of women in private and domestic contexts. 6 To avoid the incredulity of public opinion, motivated by the difficulty of understanding this type of crime. Such incredulity favours the isolation of the whistle-blower, precisely because he or she denounces something that cannot be fully grasped with the common-sense and legal categories with which we usually operate.

Part II: National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) Because of the pressure exerted by indigenous communities and segments of civil society, pressure stemming from the 1,800 censused cases of indigenous women killed and missing in Canada over the past 40 years – a figure that certainly does not reflect the actual number of occurrences – the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls, created by the government of Justin Trudeau, was launched in September 2016. The inquiry had as its objectives: • •

Examine and address the systemic causes of all forms of violence against indigenous women and girls, including sexual violence. Examine the underlying social, economic, cultural, institutional, and historical causes that contribute to the ongoing violence and the vulnerability of indigenous women and girls in Canada. 346

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Examine and report on existing institutional policies and practices to combat violence, including those effective in reducing violence and increasing safety (Canada, 2019).

On 3 June 2019, the Commission responsible for the inquiry published its report containing 231 calls for justice. In addition, a separate volume of conclusions and recommendations intended for the province of Quebec was produced, which included recommendations related to the safety of women who identify as 2SLGBTQQIA.15 Since the official publication, other documents have been produced, and we now have over 400 well-documented calls for justice and recommended actions from a multiplicity of sources whose objective is to end the disappearance and murder of indigenous women and girls. Such calls for justice and recommendations also seek to restore indigenous women to their rightful place in their families, communities, and nations. There are many similarities and juxtapositions between the various sets of calls, but this is not surprising, as the root causes are the same across Canada: colonialism, gender-based discriminatory policies, and systemic racism. These are nefarious and violent policies that accumulate, intersect, amplify, and repeat themselves. The report also includes a definitive word: genocide. Moreover, the inquiry states that it is a planned genocide, headed by the Canadian government, either by its colonialist and assimilationist policies or by its inaction. Otherwise, we want to stress that this genocide is based on race and identity, but above all on gender. To advance in our analysis of the Canadian case, we must examine the political and social context in which the attrocious attempted extermination of the indigenous populations of this territory was established. To bring the femigenocide category into discussion, we will show how it can be associated with Canadian indigenist policies, drawing attention mainly to the phenomenon of missing and murdered women. Among the five crimes of femigenocide described, it is safe to say that we can identify how they are perpetrated against indigenous women and girls in Canada. For example, indigenous women are targets of extreme violence and discrimination because they are women and indigenous, they are the principal target of human trafficking and sexual assault, this violence perpetrated against them is not motivated for interpersonal relationships, they are victims of forced sterilisations, and they are more vulnerable to the disappearance and murder (MMIWG, 2019). The subject is vast, and we are urged to narrow our focus. It is most relevant to say that the extermination methods can be different from one context to another. However, indigenous women and girls in Canada have to face the frequent persecution of the government and other sectors of the society, the usurpation of their rights, and the constant discrimination, in addition to all the techniques used by human trafficking gangs to destroy ties and disrupt forms of coexistence. Based on this conceptualisation, it is valid to affirm that colonialism, patriarchy, historical and structural violence, racism, and gender-based discrimination are factors that continue to perpetuate violence against indigenous women and girls. The various ways of colonisation and the engendered inter-generational trauma, as well as other repercussions, continue to place indigenous women and girls in situations of violence, poverty, and vulnerability.

Statistics for Canada We can find data about missing and murdered indigenous women from different sources, such as the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC, 2015), and the National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains (NCMPUR, 2018). According to the National Inquiry, there was no “reliable estimate of the numbers of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA persons in Canada” (NWAC, 2015, p.65). This affirmation helps us to criticise the political and social purpose behind the process of quantitative evaluation of the disappearance and murder of 347

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indigenous women and the constructed or hidden reality around this genocide. Nevertheless, it is worth to mention that even if each source has collected data from different periods and criteria, all of them lead us to the same conclusion: indigenous women have a much higher rate of murder and disappearance than the rest of population. Emmanuelle Walter (2015), in her book Stolen Sisters, affirms that indigenous women and girls have been victims of what she calls femicide – but we will call it femigenocide – for several decades, particularly in British Columbia along Highway 16, now known as the Highway of Tears. Based on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) 2014 report, the author affirms that between 1980 and 2012, approximately 1,200 indigenous women and girls disappeared or were murdered, while they represent only 4% of women in Canada. However, other sources document the number to be over 4,000. Again, we can criticise these statistics, affirming that the lack of reliable data can be linked to the under-reporting of violence against indigenous women and girls. Most of these cases are linked to social situations of extreme precariousness, of vulnerability, and in contexts of racism and gender-based violence and discrimination, trivialised by a patriarchal society. As mentioned in our introduction, the final report of MMIWG for the first time concludes that genocide was involved instead of the term “femicide” to emphasise the intersectional dimension of these disappearances and murders.

Comments Although the Canadian government recognises that the murder and disappearance of indigenous women and girls constitute genocide, Canadian policies addressing the issue attribute responsibility for the deaths and disappearances entirely to the individual or group of individuals who perpetrated the violence. This understating emphasises that we are dealing with crimes of personal or interpersonal nature, acts of physical violence by one singular person against another. However, this approach does not contemplate the sociological and anthropological nature of the criminal acts since it is not taken into consideration that indigenous women have always been the target of combined violence, persecution, and discrimination. In other words, indigenous women and girls are at the centre of intersectional violence, which makes them targets both because they are women and because they are indigenous. To conclude, we can affirm that most of the characteristics that constitute the crimes against indigenous women and girls in Canada can be placed into the femigenocide category.

Conclusion The term femigenocide arises from the need to typify a subtype of femicide that differs from intimate or privately motivated crimes precisely because it does not occur in interpersonal relationships. We insist that because there is no legal category of its own, there are no statistics made specifically for femigenocide crimes, making it difficult to identify them and hold their perpetrators accountable. That’s why it is so important to recognise the new forms of non-institutional war, in which women’s bodies are exterminated with extreme cruelty. It’s a way to spectacularly display boundless violent capacity, territorial dominance, and sovereignty over life in a disputed jurisdiction, an operational characteristic of such new forms of war. We argue that in femigenocide crimes, there is no relationship of proportionality between the killer and his victim. Those crimes victimise many women, have a systematic and impersonal nature, and are specifically aimed at the destruction of women (and of bodies considered feminised) just because they are women. Thus, we would assign the category femicide to all misogynistic crimes that victimise women, both in interpersonal and impersonal gender relations. And we would introduce the particle “geno” to denote those femicides that target, with their lethality, women as genus, under conditions of impersonality. 348

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Notes 1 Tribunal Permanente de los Pueblos – TPP, Capítulo México: Libre Comercio, Violencia, Impunidad y Derechos de los Pueblos en Mexico. Jury Member of the Hearing on Gender Violence in Mexico. Chihuahua, September 2014. 2 External Advisor for the Diagnostic Study of Types and Modalities of Violence against Women in the State of San Luis Potosí, Volume II, Colegio de San Luis, 2019. Seminar “Metodologías emergentes y reflexiones sobre las violencias de género: Diálogos con Rita Segato,” Laboratorio de Investigación: género, interculturalidad y Derechos Humanos, Colegio de San Luis Potosí, México. 4 to 8 March 2019. 3 “Pedagogías de la crueldad, disciplinamiento, feminicidios y fase apocalíptica del capital,” master conference, Foro Internacional sobre Feminicidios en Grupos Étnicos- Racializados: Asesinato de Mujeres y acumulación Global, Buenaventura, Valle, Colombia, 25 to 28 April 2016. 4 Workshop for prosecutors, judges, and social organisations on the importance of the Femicide category in law and its inclusion in the new Honduran penal code. Instituto Universitario Democracia, Paz y Seguridad (IUDPAS) y Observatorio Nacional de la Violencia (www.iudpas.org), Universidad Nacional de Honduras, San Pedro Sula, Honduras, 18 to 21 December 2016. 5 See, about the situation of indigenous women in Brazil, Segato, Rita Laura: “Sex and the Norm: On the State-Corporate-Media-Christian Front,” in Segato, Rita Laura: The Critique of Coloniality: Eight Essays. London and New York: forthcoming. 6 Segato, 2007. “Feminicidio, orden de género y Derecho.” Conferencia proferida durante el Seminario Feminicide Sanctioned Murder: Race, Gender and Violence in Global Context, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, 16 to 22 May 2007. 7 See Segato, Rita Laura 2006 and 2010 a. 8 See Segato, Rita Laura 2006 and 2010 a. 9 See Segato, Rita Laura 2018 a. 10 Genus to approximate it to the meaning of “genocide”: the extermination of a genus, realm of people, a complete category of people. 11 About sexual violence as expressive violence, see Segato, Rita Laura: “La Estructura de Género y el Mandato de Violación,” in Segato, Rita Laura: Las Estructuras Elementales de la Violencia. Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2003; Segato, Rita Laura 2006, 2010 a y 2018 b. 12 See Segato, Rita Laura 2006. 13 See Segato, Rita Laura 2018 b. 14 See Segato, Rita Laura 2018 c. 15 Two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, questioning, intersex, and asexual +.

References CANADA. (2019). National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. (2019). Reclaiming power and place. The final report of the national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. The National Inquiry. www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Final_Report_Vol_1a-1.pdf. Retrieved October 11, 2021. Monárrez, J. (2006). Las diversas representaciones del feminicidio y los asesinatos de mujeres en Ciudad Juárez, 1993–2005. In Sistema Socioeconómico y Georeferencial sobre la Violencia de Género en Ciudad Juárez, Vol. II. Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte y Comisión para Prevenir y Erradicar la Violencia Contra las Mujeres en Ciudad Juárez. www.comisioncdjuarez.gob.mx/Portal/PtMain.php?nIdHeader=39& nIdPanel=81&nIdFooter=40 NCMPUR – National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains. (2018). Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Retrieved October 11, 2021. NWAC. (2015). Fact Sheet: Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women and Girls (PDF). Native Women’s Association of Canada. Retrieved October 11, 2021. Segato, R. L. (2006). La Escritura en el cuerpo de las mujeres asesinadas en Ciudad Juárez: Territorio, soberanía y crímenes de segundo estado. México, DF: Ediciones de la Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, Colección Voces. Segato, R. L. (2007). Feminicidio, orden de género y Derecho. Conferencia proferida durante el Seminario Feminicide Sanctioned Murder: Race, Gender and Violence in Global context, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, May16th to 22nd. Segato, R. L. (2010a). Territory, sovereignty and crimes of the second state: The writing on the body of murdered women. In Fregoso, R. L. and Bejarano, C. (Eds.), Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas (pp. 70–93) 1ed. Duke University Press, v. 1.

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Rita Segato and Lívia Vitenti Segato, R. L. (2010b). La lucha por el derecho a nombrar el sufrimiento en el derecho. In Polack, D. and Despouy, L. (Eds.), Voces y Silencios de la Discriminación. Buenos Aires: APDH y AECID. Segato, R. L. (2010c). Femi-geno-cidio como crimen en el fuero internacional de los derechos humanos: El derecho a nombrar el sufrimiento en el derecho. In Fregoso, R. L. and Bejarano, C. (Eds.), Terror de género. México: Centro de Investigaciones de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Segato, R. L. (2016). Peritaje antropológico de Género presentado ante el Tribunal de Mayor Riesgo para el Caso Sepur Zarco, Guatemala. Documento interno encomendado por el Ministerio Público de Guatemala. www.academia.edu/43400437/Guatemala_Caso_Sepur_Zarco_Peritaje_Antropol%C3%B3gico_ de_G%C3%A9nero_%C3%8DNTEGRA; www.academia.edu/43400490/Guatemala_Caso_Sepur_Zarco_ CONCLUSIONES_LEI_DAS_ANTE_EL_TRIBUNAL Segato, R. L. (2018a). Diagnóstico de la Policía Nacional Civil de la República de El Salvador relativa a Los Delitos de Género. Documento Interno encomendado por el órgano. www.academia.edu/57228917/DIAGNO_ STICO_DE_LA_POLICI_A_NACIONAL_CIVIL_DE_LA_REPU_BLICA_DE_EL_SALVADOR_ RELATIVA_A_LOS_DELITOS_DE_GE_NERO_Final Segato, R. L. (2018b). Refundar el feminismo para refundar la política. Lecture read at the Conference Cuerpos, despojos, territorios: vida amenazada. Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, October 16th to 19th. Segato, R. L. (2018c). Las Nuevas Formas de la Guerra y el Cuerpo de las Mujeres. In Segato, R. L. (Ed.), La Guerra Contra las Mujeres 2nd ed. Buenos Aires: Prometeo Segato, R. L. (2022). Les nouvelles formes de guerre et le corps des femmes. In Segato, R. L. (Ed.), La guerre aux femmes. Paris: Éditions Payot & Rivages. Segato, R. L. (2019). A Manifesto in Four Themes. Critical Times 1(1): 198–211. Vásquez, P. T. (2009). Feminicidio. Consultoría para la Oficina en México del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los derechos Humanos. México: OACNUDH. Walter, E. (2015). Stolen Sisters: The Story of Two Missing Girls, Their Families, and How Canada Has Failed Indigenous Women. Hoboken, NJ: HarperCollins Publishers.

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32 SEX WORK FEMINICIDE AND THE MAKING OF #SAYHERNAME CAMPAIGN BY SWEAT IN SOUTH AFRICA Phoebe Kisubi Mbasalaki

Introduction: “Prostitute’s Body Found with Missing Head1” This quote is made in reference to “typical degrading headlines in South Africa” about the murder of sex workers highlighted by a former the employee of Sex Worker’s Education and Advocacy Task Force (SWEAT) who convened the #SayHerName campaign (Mwareya, 2016). SWEAT is a nongovernmental organisation (NGO) that has been championing the rights of sex workers over the last twenty years or so in South Africa2. SWEAT launched the #SayHerName campaign at Constitutional Hill in Johannesburg in 2016 with the aim of building a database of murdered sex workers in South Africa between 2016 and 2019 (Mwareya, 2016). In the opening remarks of this launch, Rasebitse states, “Say out her name! Murdered sex workers are sisters, mothers, and daughters. They have names, dear media!” (Mwareya, 2016 para. 3). This remark was specifically targeted towards the media who report the death of sex workers as dismembered bodies. At that time, Nosipho Vidima, who was the human rights lobbyist at SWEAT, added, “Sex worker murder cases dust away unsolved in police files, because South Africa’s laws do not recognise [that] sex work is labour just like teaching, nursing or bricklaying” (Mwareya, 2016 para. 3). The lack of justice for murdered sex workers was one of the drivers behind the #SayHerName campaign. The first report by SWEAT that focused on deaths of cisgender and transgender womxn during the 2014–2017 period reported 55% of 118 had been murdered (Manoek, 2018). Whereas the 2018–2019 period reported 45% of 101 deaths of female and transwomxn3 sex workers had been a result of murder (Vidima, et al., 2020). Of the reported murders, many of the deceased had also been sexually assaulted. Indeed, most of the documented killings included acts of severe brutality; such as repeated stab wounds, mutilations, acid burns, and even decapitation (Yingwana and Luthuli, 2019). It is important to note that SWEAT’s #SayHerName Campaign draws from the US. According to Vidima et al. (2020), the campaign’s name is drawn from an American social movement convened under the auspices of the African American Policy Forum. This social movement drew attention to the murder of black women who were dehumanised in the media and whose deaths received very little attention. In the USA, deaths of black women are often framed in headlines as “woman found dead” or “body found”; they are seldom portrayed as a human being whose DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-37

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loss is observed and mourned. This is also the way in which the deaths of sex workers in South Africa are often represented. (Vidima et al., 2020, p. 5) One could argue that murder of females and transwomxn in South Africa is located within the larger gender-based violence and feminicide epidemic raging on in post-colonial and post-apartheid South Africa, where a womxn is murdered every three hours. However, as this chapter will show, there is a specific characterisation that distinguishes sex work feminicide. The main distinguishing characterisation is the fact that sex work is criminalised in South Africa and, therefore, the (nation) state plays a role in the murder of sex workers. This occurs despite South Africa being seen as having one of the most progressive constitutions in the world that offers liberties on grounds of gender, sexuality, and religion, to mention but a few (Mbasalaki 2020). The rather dated South Africa’s Sexual Offences Act (Act 23, 1957) makes it illegal to exchange sex for financial reward. The act is a remnant of the apartheid regime’s Immorality Act of 1927, which criminalised sexual interactions across racial lines, specifically prohibiting sex between black (African, Indian, and Coloured) and white (Afrikaner and European) people (Yingwana and Luthuli, 2019). According to Gould and Fick (2008), this act criminalises any activities related to the sale of sex, including living off the earnings of selling sex, persuading someone to become a sex worker, or keeping a brothel. The Sexual Offences Act was amended in 2007 to include purchasing of sex since, prior to this, only the selling of sex was criminalised. A study commissioned by the Institute for Security Studies sheds some light on the lives of street-based sex workers, whose lives are gravely marginalised and who are more vulnerable to harassment, arrests, abuse, and violence than indoor-based sex workers. In Cape Town, Gould and Fick (2008) found that street-based sex workers experienced various forms of physical abuse, violence, and corruption at the hands of police. The statistics are alarming: “47% of street-based sex workers had been threatened with violence by police, 12% had been raped by police officers and 28% had been asked for sex by policemen in exchange for release from custody” (Gould and Fick, 2008, p. 6). This brings to the fore the dehumanisation that goes with criminalisation of sex work, especially making their lives marginal in South Africa and thus resulting in the murder of sex workers due to their unprotected work environment. Because sex work is criminalised in South Africa, sex workers are not protected by law and cannot access justice like other workers, when they are injured at work for instance. The criminalisation also makes sex workers vulnerable to constant harassment from “public nuisance” municipal by-laws, which pave the way for abuses as they have little access to justice to assert their rights (Nortier, 2020). In this context, it becomes a case of state-sanctioned criminalisation and injustices. In a Foucauldian sense, an illustration of biopower, in combination with Mbembe’s necropolitics (Mbembe, 2003), through a stipulation of who must live and who must die, where the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability feature in this calculus. In other words, Mbembe’s notion and theorisation of necropolitics then offers a crucial critical lens that helps us understand the “politics of death” as demonstrated by the dictation of the death of sex workers. This occurs in collusion with heteropatriarchy and misogyny to enforce social and political power, which then becomes the main frame within which feminicide of sex workers thrives. These collusions manifest in the abject death of sex workers who often remain nameless bodies with a missing head or multiple stab wounds. Having closely worked with the NGO SWEAT over the last three years or so, in this chapter, I present sex work feminicide by centring the kind of work SWEAT does. I begin by setting the frame within which feminicide is propagated in South Africa, where, according to the World Health Organisation (2012), feminicide is generally understood to involve the intentional murder of female or transwomxn because they are womxn. By working with Mbembe’s notion of necropolitics, or the politics of death, I begin by pinning it within the criminalisation of sex work, where the nation-state plays a role in contributing to the politics of death of sex workers. I carve out how judicial criminalisation leaks into the moral criminalisation that leads to social sanctions that further contribute to the politics of death or in between life and death. Secondly, I bring out a decolonial gender analysis that connects the collusion of heteropatriarchy to necropolitics, further contributing to 352

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the in-betweenness of sex workers. Thirdly, I offer the material manifestation of this in-between life and death that is littered with violence where death is ever-present. This is presented through various examples of experiences of violence that sex workers experience, which aim is to dehumanise. I then centre the SWEAT’s #SayHerName campaign as a counternarrative to the dehumanisation, by zeroing in on Nokuphila Kumalo’s death and the activism SWEAT deployed. This campaign and activism offers moments that humanise after which I conclude with some key points.

The Necropolitics of Sex Workers Feminicide in South Africa Having highlighted in the introduction how sex work is judicially and morally criminalised in South Africa, there is something in that criminality that is illustrative of necropolitics in its interaction with heteropatriarchy and misogyny to enforce feminicide of female and transwomxn sex workers. This is the theoretical route I am taking in framing feminicide of sex workers in South Africa. Necropolitics is a notion that was first theorised by Achille Mbembe in his 2003 essay and then, later on, in a book (2019). Mbembe’s necropolitics offers a novel approach as it draws both on Foucault’s notion of biopolitics and a decolonial approach inspired by Frantz Fanon (Fanon, 1952) theorising around the zone of being and non-being to conceive necropolitics as the political making of spaces and subjectivities as an in-between of life and death (Pele, 2020). Necropolitics, then, translates into “the politics of death,” which Mbembe describes as “the capacity to define who matters and who does not, who is disposable and who is not” (Mbembe, 2003, p. 27). And so Mbembe poses this question: what place is given to life, death and the human body (in particular the wounded or slain body)? How are they inscribed in the order of power (Mbembe, 2003, p. 12)? Verghese (2021) notes how necropolitics is then a framework that illuminates how governments assign differential value to human life, where the closer one is to dominant power (usually white, cisgender male, wealthy, and heterosexual), the more your life is worth. And therefore, the further away one is from the realm of privilege, the less your life is worth under the logic of necropolitics and the more precarious your existence becomes – such as street-based sex workers in South Africa. Within the global economy of values, it becomes a case of whose life is worthy of protection, access to health, social, economic, judicial, and educational opportunities, among others. Street-based sex workers become the embodiment of the “walking dead,” as Mbembe succinctly puts it. When we zero in on sex workers, the moral and judicial criminalisation of sex work in South Africa points to politically driven neglect of life, health, education, police, and the judicial economy, among others. The judicial criminalisation – through the enactment of the Sexual Offences Act – filters into the moral criminalisation, which is rooted in stigma around sex work, usually informed by religious values. The combination of the judicial and moral criminalisation produces discourses of exclusion at a social and political level, resulting in marginality and dehumanisation. When the logic of necropolitics is deployed, sex workers – especially street-based sex workers in South Africa – life is negotiated in the midst of an ever-negotiated economy of values shaped by judicial and moral hierarchies of power. This implies there are constant barriers to accessing healthcare, education, the police, and judicial system, as well as opportunities for professional advancement, among others (Le Marcis, 2019). The popularising strategies enacted through moral and judicial criminalisation processes then deny the very existence of sex workers. Their existence is relegated to precarious lives that locate them in a physical and spiritual in-betweenness, where death is always imminent. In order to enact death, various processes are deployed such as gender-based violence with the main purpose of this being to enforce that in-betweenness. Power is inscribed within these processes; for example, gender-based violence is one way of contributing to the making of the differential citizens. When a decolonial gender analysis is added to this framing, in a context like South Africa, which has endured 400 years of colonisation and 50 years of apartheid, the eminence of death for black women/womxn, who have historically been subjected to institutionalised forms of terror, is ever-present. It is well known and written that the female body and sexuality were central to the colonial project on the African continent (Lewis, 2011; Tamale, 2011; McClintock, 1995). For example, McClintock (1995) posits how African bodies and sexualities became focal points for the 353

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justification and legitimisation of the fundamental objectives of colonialism: to civilise the barbarian and savage natives of the “dark continent.” This came with several terrorising tactics and abuses – such as rape (Abrahams, 1997; Boonzaier, 2017). Indeed, present-day violence in South Africa is deeply rooted in its apartheid and colonial past (Morrell, 1998; Glaser, 2000; Boonzaier, 2018). Indeed, we see historical notions of entitlement that deploy similar tactics like that which white males enacted over black women’s bodies and control during colonialism and apartheid playing out in contemporary South Africa through high levels of violence against women/womxn, rape, and femicide/feminicide. For instance, scholars such as Wood (2005) paint a vivid picture of how apartheid left a legacy of militarisation, repression, interpersonal violence, and an excess of illicit weapons as drivers of violence. “South Africa society under apartheid was a violent one and psychological and physical violence was embedded in the laws and practices of the system” (Boonzaier, 2018 p. 71). These processes and discourses intersect with patriarchy in their aim to subjugate and direct violence towards women/ womxn. What I am trying to drive at here is the complex processes that inform the dominant language of violence as directed towards women/womxn, sex workers, and feminicide in South Africa – adding more to the framing of the politics of death, where females and transwomxn sex workers are pushed further away from the centre of the privileged as the “walking dead” in the logic of necropolitics. The differential value of life becomes even more clear when sex workers are located within this framing. Here I would like to take a moment to break down how that in-betweenness manifests for sex workers in South Africa in a material sense. It is, therefore, in this context that we see high levels of violence, rape, murder, and police harassment of street-based sex workers – the embodiment of disposable bodies or death in waiting. A recent report commissioned by SWEAT presents that one of the largest studies on female sex workers found very high levels of violence: one-half of the female sex workers in Johannesburg (50.9%) and nearly half in Cape Town (47.3%) had experienced physical assault at least once within the timeframe of 12 months, while one out of every six female sex workers in Durban had also been assaulted (Vidima et al., 2020). In these three cities, nearly one out of every five female sex workers had been sexually assaulted in the past year. Perpetrators included clients, intimate (non-commercial) partners, law enforcement officers, third parties, and the general public (Vidima et al., 2020). This report further noted how in a criminalised context like South Africa, law enforcement officers pose a particular threat to sex workers and their clients such as unlawful arrest, excessive use of force during arrest, using the threat of arrest to extort sex workers – and rape and abuse of sex workers while being detained or when in custody (Vidima et al., 2020). The report also points out that certain subgroups of sex workers are at greater risk of violence than others, such as those who are homeless, migrants, drug users, or transgender. These extraordinarily high levels of direct violence experienced by sex workers increase their risk of ill health and sexually transmitted infections, as well as the constant threats which affect their physical and mental well-being. Within the necropolitics logic, this intensity of violence alludes to the “walking dead,” with death in waiting visible in the life expectancy of 36 years. Zeroing in on death, the report presents 101 deaths of female sex workers, of which 3% were transwomxn (Vidima et al., 2020). Moreover, the report attributes 45% of the deaths to murder, the common methods being poisoning, gunshot wounds, stabbing, strangulation, and being pushed out of a moving car (Vidima et al., 2020). We need to take these statistics with a pinch of salt because there is under-reporting of sex workers’ murders, given that moral and judicial criminalisation hinders the sketching of a true picture of sex worker feminicide. For instance, researchers of the recent #SayHerName report (2020) found that government data on the murder of sex workers were scarce and unreliable as doctors and family members were unlikely to declare the deceased’s occupation as sex work in official documents because it is stigmatised and criminalised. Moreover, because of these criminalisation processes, abuses, violence, rape, and murder take place with impunity, where there is little or no legal justice afforded to the victims and survivors. In other words, sex workers are treated as disposable bodies, left to fend for themselves. This level of dehumanisation is countered by some of the activism work that SWEAT does, such as the #SayHerName campaign, which I unpack in the next section. 354

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The Humanising of Sex Workers Through SWEAT’s #SayHerName Campaign Having laid out the construction of the state of in-betweenness for sex workers in South Africa, which is constantly dehumanised in life and death, here I would like to take a moment and unpack SWEAT’s #SayHerName campaign as a humanising project. As pointed out in the introduction, the #SayHerName campaign that SWEAT deploys has similar tactics and draws from the US by bringing attention to the violence and death of sex workers who are usually portrayed as nameless, dismembered bodies by the media. Vidima et al. (2020), who wrote the recent report commissioned by SWEAT on the murder of sex workers under the #SayHerName campaign highlight that [t]hrough the South African #SayHerName Campaign, SWEAT aims to humanise sex workers and to celebrate their lives. It also aims to increase public recognition of the high levels of violence against sex workers, and to demand justice for those who are murdered. The Campaign highlights how stigma and discrimination hamper police investigations into crimes committed against sex workers, and how such crimes are often rendered invisible in the public imagination and the bureaucracies of justice. The Campaign strongly encourages sex workers to report crimes they experience or witness, and to insist on proactive, adequate and empathetic state responses and access to justice. (Vidima et al., 2020 p. 5) As the discussion that follows will illustrate, the #SayHerName campaign has various facets, including publicly responding to sex worker human rights violations. Through SWEAT’s legal clinics, sex workers are referred for legal representation and provided court support and case monitoring in cases where their human rights are violated through, for example, violence and harassment. Moreover, the campaign also “often serves as a communication channel between sex workers and the deceased’s families. Through the Campaign, sex workers are supported to attend the funerals of their colleagues and to serve as mutual sources of support in times of grief ” (Vidima et al., 2020 p. 5). In addition, the #SayHerName report pays tribute to and names the sex workers who have been murdered. The report does not only offer a comprehensive write-up on violence and murder of sex workers but also offers vignettes about their lives, such as who they were, what they loved doing, where they were born, and so on. All these facets serve to offer moments that humanise and make sex workers visible in their condemnation of in-betweenness and death. This way, sex workers are seen as human rather than as stigmatised and criminalised or dismembered bodies who are nameless and faceless in their death. By pushing through those contours of in-betweenness that place sex workers on the margins, slowly chipping away, at times with some level of success in their activism, this activism works to expose the underlying assumptions within the moral and judicial criminalisation that nourish the language of violence directed towards sex workers. For instance, this activism works towards judicial justice in cases of violations, as well as mitigating violence. Indeed, these various forms of activism are what make for humanising of sex workers in South Africa. When speaking of SWEAT’s activism, there is one story that exemplifies the situation starkly – that of Nokuphila Kumalo, a sex worker who was murdered in April 2013 by an internationally renowned South African artist – Zwelethu Mthethwa. This is a stark illustration of the materiality of the in-betweenness and politics of death. She was beaten to death in Woodstock, an evolving neighbourhood with hipster cafes in Cape Town, at 2.30 a.m. (Mukadam, 2013). Mukadam (2013) notes how CCTV footage captured the murder, showing a man climbing out of a Porsche and approaching Nokuphila, hitting her continually with slaps and fists directed at her head, and when she fell to the ground, he kicked her repeatedly in the middle of her body. She died on the scene. She was 23 years old at the time of her death. According to medical evidence introduced in court, Kumalo died from blunt force trauma – “her liver was basically torn in half ” (Steinhauer, J., (a) 2017). Nokuphila’s mother, Eva Kumalo, notes how her daughter liked pink and white flowers (Vidima et al. 2020). Her 355

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court case lasted about four years; while it was ongoing, one of South Africa’s renowned museums in Cape Town – Iziko South African National Gallery – put up an exhibition in 2016 in their display that would run concurrently with the 16 Days of Activism4 exhibition (Pather, 2016). This exhibition, titled Our Lady, featured two art pieces from the artist and convicted murderer of Nokuphila Kumalo – Zwelethu Mthethwa. According to Iziko Museums of South Africa (2016), the inclusion of the artwork Untitled (from the Hope Chest Series 2012) by Zwelethu Mthethwa from the New Church Museum Collection was part of Our Lady as an opportunity for critical engagement. It was contextualised within a theme of the exhibition that looked at portraits of “unnamed women.” The inherent brutality of denying a woman the right to her individuality and her name, by varying social constructs and systems, had been unpacked with the inclusion of five different artworks made over the course of many years by five different artists. SWEAT released a statement condemning the gallery for their action in displaying and promoting the work of an artist who was at that time undergoing a trial for murder. In SWEAT’s statement, the then Human Rights and Advocacy Manager Ishtar Lakhani said, “The irony of promoting the work of a man accused of murdering a woman as part of an exhibition aimed at empowering women, is not wasted on us” (Kgosana, 2016). The initial response from one of the curators of the exhibition was that the decision to show the work was a carefully considered plan to “open dialogue,” noting, “Curators are not judges, and museums are not courtrooms” (Kgosana, 2016). However, within 48 hours of SWEAT releasing their statement and challenging the museum, an agreement was made between SWEAT and Iziko, which included a constructive dialogue that took place on one of the evenings engaging with violence against sex workers. In addition, direct action included a painting from SWEAT in their upcoming At Face Value exhibition, as well as an addition to the text that accompanied Mthethwa’s work to place it within the context of the murder trial (Pather, 2016). SWEAT commissioned local artist Astrid Warren to paint a portrait of Kumalo, using the last mugshot used by the police, which was then included in Iziko’s exhibition titled At Face Value (Pather, 2016).

Figure 32.1 The figure was taken and supplied by SWEAT. A portrait of Nokuphila Kumalo was commissioned by SWEAT and painted by local artist Astrid Warren, which eventually featured in an exhibition at Iziko Museum. Here, we see it sitting outside the courthouse on the day of the delivery of the verdict in the Mthethwa trial.

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At most court case hearings, SWEAT activists showed up with placards in support of their slain sister Nokuphila and called for justice to be served. In March 2017, the presiding judge found Mthethwa guilty of the murder of Nokuphila Kumalo. The artist, who refused to testify, had maintained his plea of innocence, stating he had no recollection of the events that took place on that fateful night, citing being intoxicated with alcohol as the reason (Steinhauer, J., (a), 2017). The presiding Judge Patricia Goliath called the CCTV footage a “silent witness” and condemned Mthethwa’s refusal to testify (Steinhauer, J., (a), 2017). The artist was denied bail on the day of the verdict and sentenced later to 18 years in prison for the murder of Nokuphila Kumalo. In her sentencing, the presiding judge called the murder “unimaginable” and “horrific” and said that the courts need to send a clear message to tackle the scourge of gender-based violence. The court needs to send a clear message to the community and all would-be criminals that violence against women will not be tolerated. The killing of women in general will not be tolerated. The killing of sex workers in particular will not be tolerated. (Steinhauer, J., (b), 2017, para. 4) It was significant that she singled out sex work within the context of criminality of sex work in South Africa, and it is here that we see Nokuphila Kumalo as a human – humanised with justice served. However, it is important to note that this is but one of few examples in which justice was served. Within the framework of such high levels of violence and feminicide in South Africa that go unnoticed and unpunished, other than statistics, sex worker feminicide is even more invisible. Yet through SWEAT’s activism and #SayHerName campaign, we see Nokuphila Kumalo become visible in her death, humanised, and afforded justice. The kind of activism work deployed by SWEAT conjures up what decolonial scholars call re-membering, which is about wholeness (wa Thiongo, 2009). In post-colonial and post-apartheid South Africa, having endured 400 years of colonisation and 50 years of apartheid, the power for life is rooted in whiteness, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy at the expense of the in-betweenness of life and death of the mainly black female. In the case of Nokuphila Kumalo, the state of in-betweenness brought death in such a brutal way at the age of only 23. It is against this backdrop that we see the #SayHerName activism from SWEAT humanising; in this sense, making whole what has been dismembered by society in the project of life and death. For Ngugi wa Thiong’o re-humanising entails re-membering as a decolonial act underpinned by a “quest for wholeness” (2009). Like in the US, SWEAT’s activism that led to multiple layers of justice for Nokuphila then took the form of re-membering, which humanised in a context rife with dehumanisation of sex workers in South Africa. However, much this moment must be recognised, acknowledged, and celebrated, it is but just one in a milieu of lack of justice, rife with impunity due to the moral and judicial criminalisation of sex workers condemned to in-between life and death materially and spiritually. In conclusion, indeed the high rates of gender-based violence and feminicide have been well documented in South Africa. As this chapter has carved out, violence and feminicide of sex workers take on a specific dimension. Necropolitics offered a critical lens within which we expose the murderous function of the (nation) state in criminalising sex work, which colludes with community moral sanctions and heteropatriarchy in its entanglement with white capitalism. Materially, this manifests through the in-betweenness of life and death, which is heavily imbricated in the language of violence towards sex workers in its physical, sexual, psychological, economic, and structural elements. This makes death ever-present, which was the case for Nokuphila Kumalo, who was brutally murdered at the tender age of 23 and, as such, relegating especially street-based sex workers to the realm of non-human or constantly dehumanised. However, the kind of work and activism SWEAT does, such as the #SayHerName campaign, negates these dehumanising processes by offering a counter-narrative that humanises sex workers like Nokuphila Kumalo. This kind of activism, first of 357

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all, offers moments that humanise, such as seeking social and judicial justice for nameless sex workers, whose bodies are violently dismembered through death, both materially and socially/symbolically in society. And secondly, it makes a contribution to a discursive engagement with politics of activism in a post-colony like South Africa, where female and transwomxn sex workers’ bodies are disposable. But perhaps it is through the full decriminalisation of sex work in South Africa that will work towards and see everyday experiences of humanising sex workers in South Africa. That very disruption of criminality will cascade into a disruption of the moral order that fuels stigma. This way opens up barriers to access to health, education, and social, economic, and judicial justice. Sex work must be decriminalised.

Notes 1 This is a direct quote from Katlego Rasebitse, a former head of Advocacy at Sex Workers Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) and the convener at that time of the #SayHerName campaign, which was launched in 2016. 2 SWEAT works within the liberal framework of “sex work is work” and, as such, have a 20-year history in organising sex workers and advocating for the delivery of services to South African sex workers. Their organising and advocacy have birthed two movements – namely, the pan-African Alliance of Sex Workers and the national movement of sex workers in South Africa – Sisonke (meaning “we are together” in isiZulu). UNAIDS (2001) defines sex work as “any agreement between two or more persons in which the objective is exclusively limited to the sexual act and ends with that, and which involves preliminary negotiations for a price.” SWEAT works with transwomxn in their report and work in relation to transgender female-bodied subjects. 3 SWEAT works with transwomxn in their report and work in relation to transgender female-bodied subjects. 4 The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence is an annual international campaign. It starts on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on 25 November and runs till Human Rights Day on 10 December. This campaign is recognised in South Africa and commemorated every year.

References Abrahams, Y. 1997. The great long national insult: science, sexuality and the Khoisan in the 18th and early 19th century. Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, 34–48. Boonzaier, F., 2017. The Life and death of Anene Booysen: Colonial discourse, gender-based violence and media representations. South African Journal of Psychology, 47(4), p. 470–481. Boonzaier, F., 2018. Challenging risk: The production of knowledge on gendered vioence in South Africa. In: K. Fitz-Gibbon, S. Walklate, J. McCulloch & J. Maher, eds. Intimate Partner Violence, Risk and Security. London: Routledge, pp. 71–87. Fanon, F. 1952. Black Skin, White Masks. New York Groove Press. Gould C. & Fick N., 2008. Selling Sex in Cape Town: Sex work and Human Trafficking in a South African City, Cape Town: Institute For Security Studies. Glaser, C., 2000. Bo-Tsotsi The Youth Gangs of Soweto, 1935–76. 1 ed. Oxford: Heineman. Iziko Museums of South Africa, 2016. Zwelethu Mthethwa’s artwork in Iziko exhibition. [Online] Available at: https://artsvark.co.za/zwelethu-mthethwas-artwork-in-iziko-exhibition/ [Accessed 01 08 2021]. Kgosana, R., 2016. Take down murder accused Mthethwa’s artwork – Sweat Mthethwa is on trial for allegedly kicking and beating to death a 23-year-old sex worker. [Online] Available at: www.citizen.co.za/news/ south-africa/1359847/take-down-murder-accused-mthethwas-artwork-sweat/ [Accessed 04 08 2021]. Le Marcis, F., 2019. Life in a Space of Necropolitics. Ethnos, 84(1), pp. 74–95. Lewis, D. 2011. Representing African Sexualities. In S. Tamale, African sexualities: A readear (pp. 199–216). Cape Town, Nairobi, Dakar & London: Pambazuka Press. Manoek, S.-L., 2018. #SayHerName Report 2014–2017, Cape Town: SWEAT. Mbasalaki, P. 2020 “Through the Lens of Modernity: Reflections on the (Colonial) Archive of Gender and Sexuality in South Africa.” GLQ 26 (3): 455–476. Doi: 10.1215/10642684-8311800 Mbembe, A., 2003. Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15(1), pp. 11–40. Mbembe, A, 2019. Necropolitics. Duke University Press

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Sex Work Feminicide in South Africa McClintock, A. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context. New York, London: Routledge. Morrell, R., 1998. ‘Of Boys and Men: Masculinity and Gender in Southern African Studies’. Journal of Southern African Studies, 24(1), p. 605–630. Mukadam, S., 2013. I didn’t know she was a sex worker. [Online] Available at: www.iol.co.za/news/i-didn’tknow-she-was-a-sex-worker-1589948 [Accessed 11 08 2021]. Mwareya, R., 2016. Campaign collects names of murdered sex workers. [Online] Available at: www.groundup. org.za/article/sayhername-demands-dignity-sex-workers/ [Accessed 07 07 2021]. Nortier, C., 2020. #SayHerName: Murders of sex workers remain high, yet invisible. [Online] Available at: www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-03-05-sayhername-murders-of-sex-workers-remain-high-yetinvisible/ [Accessed 01 08 2021]. Pather, R., 2016. The public gallery: Activists continue to seek justice for murdered sex worker. [Online] Available at: https://mg.co.za/article/2016-12-01-the-public-gallery-activists-continue-to-seek-justicefor-murdered-sex-worker/ [Accessed 21 05 2021]. Pele, A., 2020. Achille Mbembe: Necropolitics. [Online] Available at: https://criticallegalthinking. com/2020/03/02/achille-mbembe-necropolitics/ [Accessed 08 08 2021]. Steinhauer, J., (a) 2017. Artist Zwelethu Mthethwa Convicted of Murder [UPDATED]. [Online] Available at: https://hyperallergic.com/365675/artist-zwelethu-mthethwa-convicted-of-murder/ [Accessed 21 05 2021]. Steinhauer, J., (b) 2017. Artist Zwelethu Mthethwa Sentenced to 18 Years in Prison for Murder. [Online] Available at: https://hyperallergic.com/384248/artist-zwelethu-mthethwa-sentenced-to-18-years-in-prison-formurder/ [Accessed 04 08 2020]. Tamale, S. 2011. Researching and theorizing sexualities in Africa. In S. Tamale, African Sexualities: A Reader (pp. 11–36). Cape Town, Dakar, Nairobi and Oxford: Pambazuka. Verghese, N., 2021. What Is Necropolitics? The Political Calculation of Life and Death. [Online] Available at: www.teenvogue.com/story/what-is-necropolitics[Accessed 15 06 2021]. Vidima, N., Tenga, R. & Richter, M., 2020. #SayHerName Female and Transwomxn Sex Workers Deaths in South Africa 2018–2019, Cape Town: SWeAT. wa Thiong’o N (2009) Re-Membering Africa, Nairobi, Kampala, Dar es Salaam: East African Educational Publishers Ltd. Wood, K., 2005. Contexualising group rape in post-apartheid South Africa. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 7(4), pp. 303–317. World Health Organisation, 2012. Understanding and addressing violence against women, Geneva: WHO. Yingwana, N. & Luthuli, L., 2019. Day Seven | Remember Sex Workers during the 16 Days. [Online] Available at: https://16daysblogathon.blog/2019/11/30/day-seven-remember-sex-workers-during-the-16-days/[Accessed 11 07 2021].

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33 ARMED CONFLICT FEMICIDE Anna Alvazzi del Frate

Introduction Armed conflict femicide is a specific category of gender-related killings affecting women and girls in conflict settings. Conflict deaths are not only battle casualties or victims of bombings. Women and girls in contexts affected by armed conflict and terrorism experience a specific status, determined by their role in society and sex, which exposes them to additional risks. This was already acknowledged by the Beijing Platform of Action in 1995 (UN, 1995, para. 136). Also, the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights notes that “conflict can result in higher levels of gender-based violence against women and girls, including arbitrary killings, torture, sexual violence and forced marriage” (OHCHR, n.d.). “Armed-conflict-related killings” is one of the categories of direct gender-related killings identified by the special rapporteur on violence against women in her 2012 “Gender-related killings of women” report (UNGA, 2012, para. 16). Knowledge of armed conflict femicide can only advance in the presence of reliable data. This chapter will start with definitions of the elements constituting armed conflict femicides, including related concepts, such as sexual violence in conflict settings and the role of firearms to connect different spheres and areas of study. It will then continue analysing counting rules and indicators currently available to measure the phenomenon and the methodological challenges faced by international organisations and humanitarian actors attempting to do so. Finally, the chapter will focus on proposed initiatives under international law aimed at responding to armed conflict femicide.

Definitions and Concepts Armed Conflict To contribute to the correct definition, identification, and counting – and therefore effectively addressing and preventing – armed conflict femicides, it is necessary to look at each of the distinct elements which are included in this concept. First of all, these killings occur in armed conflict settings. Armed conflict can be defined based on the Geneva Conventions as including both international and non-international (internal) conflicts (see ICRC, 1949). This consideration is very important for assessing the impact on civilian communities and the increased likelihood that women and girls experience various forms of violence. 360

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A specialised research group defines modern armed conflict as “organised violence,” including state-based armed conflict, non-state conflict, and one-sided violence (Uppsala Conflict Data Program – UCDP, n.d., Definitions). Another research group, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED, n.d.), focuses on political violence and demonstrations. Even though smaller and isolated riots and tensions may not qualify as armed conflicts, this becomes the case when the death toll increases (UCDP sets the threshold at 25 conflict deaths per year). Generally defined by the use of arms, including but not exclusively firearms, armed conflict largely overlaps with the concept of “armed violence.” For example, the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development defines armed violence as “the intentional use of illegitimate force (actual or threatened) with arms or explosives, against a person, group, community, or state that undermines people-centred security and/or sustainable development” (Geneva Declaration, 2006). The majority of combatants are males, and so are the majority of victims of direct conflict-related violence, injuries and killings. In armed conflict and the most violent settings, large numbers of combatants and civilians are killed, with men and boys representing the vast majority of casualties. Women victims of gender-based violence (GBV), and femicide may be killed in the margins of conflicts and may not even be included in the count of casualties.

Femicide and Gender-Based and Sexual Violence in Conflict Femicide has been defined as the gender-motivated killing of a woman or a girl, “the misogynist killing of women by men” (Radford and Russell, 1992: xi, 3). It has its roots in cultural and contextual beliefs and prejudices of masculine supremacy, which tend to tolerate and even encourage physical, sexual, and psychological violence against women and girls as justifiable behaviours, virtually unpunishable. More broadly, GBV against women is internationally defined as “violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately” (CEDAW, 1992: 6 and CEDAW, 2017). According to the World Health Organization the tensions of conflict, and the frustration, powerlessness and loss of traditional male roles associated with displacement may be manifested in an increased incidence of domestic violence against women. Alcohol abuse may also become more common and exacerbate the situation. (WHO, 1997) Femicide often occurs in protracted situations of GBV, either domestic or within communal or group tensions and conflicts. These represent violent environments in which women and girls may never experience safety. Killings of women and girls with a wide range of characteristics and perpetrators can be counted as armed conflict femicides. “Targeted killing of women and girls in the context of armed conflict” is one of the forms of femicide identified in the Vienna Declaration on Femicide (ECOSOC, 2013). In armed conflict, extremely violent acts targeting women are part of the same major “systemic failures” (Eriksson Baaz and Stern, 2010: 12) which may be inherent to the conflict itself. Gender-based violence in these settings, which are very lethal, is a direct consequence of conflict. It includes systematic rape and sexual violence against women and girls and may be used among a variety of other violent behaviours as a “weapon of war” (UNGA, 2012, para. 51). While femicide victims are most frequently killed by a particular perpetrator who may know and target them specifically, in conflict settings, women and girls from specific communities or backgrounds as a group may become the target of perpetrators who do not know them individually. Misogyny is used as a form of hate against those specific communities and backgrounds. Abusing, raping, and killing women and girls “because of their gender” may be committed during conflicts 361

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to intimidate and weaken the communities (UNGA, 2012, para. 52; CFOJA, n.d.). This is the case with mass forms of gender-based and sexual violence, which have been committed in a large number of conflicts in history and keep occurring in modern conflicts. Violence is perpetrated by both state and non-state actors and includes murder, unlawful killings, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, abductions, maiming and mutilation, forced recruitment of women combatants, rape, sexual slavery, sexual exploitation, involuntary disappearance, arbitrary detention, forced marriage, forced prostitution, forced abortion, forced pregnancy and forced sterilisation. (EIGE, n.d.) The international community became aware of these forms of gender-based and sexual violence when the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda (ICTR) and former Yugoslavia (ICTY) recognised these crimes as crimes against humanity in the ’90s (Adams, 2018: 752). In both conflicts, it was observed that members of “the dominant group” targeted female members of “the other group” with physical and sexual violence, often resulting in the victims being killed by armed soldiers (Adams, 2018: 767). Female activists or professionals who help other women in getting out of domestic violence, or in advancing in their studies or professions, or in improving their situation, may also become targets of violence as a group. For example, the report of the UN secretary-general on conflict-related sexual violence reports on numerous female human rights defenders targeted in Colombia in 2020, including many who were killed (UNSG, 2021: 11). In many cases, the killing is the final step in a continuum of violence against designated victims, either because of gender or because of prejudice or stigma. Too often, cases are not investigated, offenders are not identified, and in many, even if they are brought to justice, they are not held accountable. Impunity prevails for femicide, based on a prevalent culture of discrimination against women, weak rule of law, and lack of modern legislation specifically targeting femicide. In extreme cases, especially in post-conflict settings, prejudice may lead to women, elders, and children being killed based on the accusation of sorcery or witchcraft practice (Alvazzi del Frate et al., 2013: 2888). A database called Harmful Practices: Accusations of Witchcraft and Ritual Attacks (HPAWR) has been compiled by the United Nations independent expert on the enjoyment of human rights by persons with albinism, which shows that killings for these reasons were most frequent in sub-Saharan African countries and India (OHCHR, 2020: 12).

The Role of Firearms Between 2004 and 2018, about a quarter of killings with female victims were committed with firearms globally (Hideg and Alvazzi del Frate, 2021: 10). In general, higher rates of firearms killings, including femicides, are observed in countries and regions, both with and without active conflicts, with a high prevalence of arms. In 2018, for example, firearms holdings were high in several South and Central American countries (El Salvador, Jamaica, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico) and some conflict-affected countries (Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan) in which rates of firearm killings with female victims were highest (see Small Arms Survey GVD, n.d. and Small Arms Survey GFH, n.d.). Easy access to firearms, as in conflict settings, represents increased risks of misuse, including for committing GBV. For example, guns held inside the household by armed combatants or for defence frequently end up used for intimidation (and ultimately killing) against family members (Kivisto and Porter, 2020). UNODC estimates that among victims of intimate partner killings, which represent a high proportion of domestic killings, females represent roughly 82%, versus 18% of males (UNODC, 2019: 11). 362

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The risk of exported arms being used “to commit or facilitate serious acts of gender-based violence or serious acts of violence against women and children” has been taken into consideration by the Arms Trade Treaty (UNGA, 2013, art 7(4)), which notes that “civilians, particularly women and children, account for the vast majority of those adversely affected by armed conflict and armed violence” (UNGA, 2013, Preamble). The treaty requires exporting state parties to carry out a risk assessment to prevent misuse of arms for committing GBV in the country of destination. Effective control and regulation of arms trade and prevention of illicit proliferation of firearms, which can be used for committing gender-based violence, has been advocated as an indispensable part of a gendered approach to conflict prevention and resolution by the platform of United Nations and regional independent expert mechanisms on the elimination of discrimination and violence against women (EDVAW, 2020).

Current Knowledge on Armed Conflict Femicides Knowledge is crucial to properly address armed conflict femicide, and it requires reliable data. Unfortunately, the available information on this phenomenon is still too poor for developing effective response and prevention policies. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warns that in conflict settings, the medico-legal and forensic skills and services necessary to properly document the circumstances of death in cases where GBV or sexual violence are combined with killing (or the death of the person) may be lacking, thus underestimating or overlooking the sexual or GBV implications in death (ICRC, 2020: 10). This information is crucial for defining femicides. Measurement of femicides in conflict is, however, facing severe limitations. According to data collected by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on SDG indicator 16.1.2 (conflict-related deaths) for the period 2015–2017, 13,244 out of 106,806 (12.4%) of identified civilian victims were female (UNDESA, n.d.a). Women and girls suffer from specific forms of sexual and physical violence in armed conflict and tend to be disproportionately affected by long-term effects of conflict, including poor sanitation and lack of adequate nutrition, infectious diseases, and other indirect effects which may lead to death (Ghobarah, Huth and Russett, 2003). Furthermore, women and children account for the majority of refugees and forcibly displaced people (Strachan and Haider, 2015: 11).

Methodological Challenges Data on GBV-related killings are quite difficult to capture, even in peaceful societies. Monitoring systems in conflict settings can be run by national agencies, international organisations, and civil society. Several UN peacekeeping missions monitor sexual violence in conflict, including killings. Monitoring systems may vary in terms of scope and coverage (see, for example, Pavesi, 2017; Hideg and Alvazzi del Frate, 2020: 7). Conflict-related killings or direct conflict deaths are counted based on media reports or monitoring systems carried out by civil society, human rights activists, or international organisations. These monitoring initiatives often originate from the need of one party in conflict to track conflict deaths. These improvised systems may not have access to the best methodology and are rarely standardised. Furthermore, in many conflicts, there are many different systems monitoring conflict deaths. For example, seven different sources were monitoring conflict deaths in Syria in 2016, making it the best-documented conflict (Pavesi, 2017: 5). It should be noted, however, that different capacity, priorities and mandates may result in low consistency, especially across smaller local sources. News of casualties is often obtained from media reports. The counting unit of these reports is generally the incident (or the “event”). Availability of details of persons involved and circumstances, which also determine the quality of the data produced, may depend on the scope of 363

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the monitoring system, the data collection tools, and whether such information exists and is adequately captured in data collection (Alvazzi del Frate, Hideg and LeBrun, 2020: 6). Generally, datasets are not specific enough and lack crucial information regarding the circumstances of the killings. Even essential details, such as the sex of victims and perpetrators or their relationships or if the perpetrator is known, are often missing (UNODC, 2019: 7; Hideg and Alvazzi del Frate, 2020: 3 and 10). Only advanced data collection systems devote sufficient time and resources to note down such information, which is key for advancing knowledge and the development of prevention policies (Alvazzi del Frate, Hideg and LeBrun, 2020: 8). For example, UCDP carried out a pilot study in Afghanistan and India, two of the countries with the best data coverage in the UCDP database to code the sex and age (minor/adult) of conflict victims. The study found that disaggregated data was only available for 11–12% of the cases in the database. The researchers also noted that the sex and age of victims were more frequently reported if the event involved deliberate civilian victimisation rather than in the case of deaths of combatants. (Eck and Nygard, 2017: 3). It will, therefore, depend on the focus of the monitoring system whether the GBV or sexual nature of the killing will be recorded or not. The OHCHR has developed guidance for recording casualties (OHCHR, 2019b), which includes recommendations for “minimum data” to be collected concerning each incident. This includes location and date of the incident, type of incident, the number of killed/injured; cause of death/injury, the status of victims in humanitarian settings, alleged perpetrator by individual/entity/umbrella group (where applicable)/unidentified; and other information needed per the scope of the casualty recording system; minimum data needed to establish the nexus to the human rights situation or armed conflict. The guidelines recommend data disaggregation at least by sex, age, the role of the victim and the perpetrator in conflict, cause of death, and additional information, such as, for example, the intended target and the modalities of the attack, to allow for more in-depth analysis (OHCHR, 2019b, p. 37). An important contribution to data collection and methodology comes from the United Nations 2030 Agenda. Target 16.1 aims at a “significant reduction of all forms of violence and related death rates” (UNGA, 2015). Progress on this target is measured on the basis of two key indicators, one of them specifically aimed at capturing conflict-related deaths (UNGA, 2015, Indicator 16.1.2: “Conflict-related deaths per 100,000 population, by sex, age and cause”). The metadata for indicator 16.1.2 (UNDESA, n.d.b) separates direct from indirect conflict deaths and defines direct conflictrelated deaths as follows: [D]eaths where there are reasonable grounds to believe that they resulted directly from war operations and that the acts, decisions and/or purposes that caused these deaths were in furtherance of or under the guise of armed conflict. These deaths may have been caused by (i) the use of weapons or (ii) other means and methods. Deaths caused by the use of weapons, including but not limited to those inflicted by firearms, missiles, mines, and bladed weapons. It may also include deaths resulting from aerial attacks and bombardments (e.g. of military bases, cities and villages), crossfire, explosive remnants of war, targeted killings or assassinations, and force protection incidents. Deaths caused by other means and methods may include deaths from torture or sexual and gender-based violence, intentional killing using starvation, depriving prisoners of access to health care or denying access to essential goods and services (e.g. an ambulance stopped at a checkpoint). 364

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Armed conflict femicide includes killings strongly motivated by gender issues, which may involve both sexual and non-sexual violence. Available data on femicides committed by intimate partners show that they are prevalent worldwide, both in conflict-affected and non-conflict-affected contexts (Mc Evoy and Hideg, 2017: 71–74). The International Classification of Crime for Statistical purposes (ICCS) does not define femicide, which is included in the intentional homicide category. The ICCS indicates four scenarios for killings in armed conflict (UNODC, 2015: 18): 1 2 3

4

War crimes: Any targeted or excessive killing by a combatant (acting in association with or in the context of the conflict) of a civilian taking no active part in the hostilities. Breaches of international humanitarian law: The killing of combatants by other combatants. Unlawful killings associated with armed conflict: The killing by a combatant which is considered a criminal offence in the national legislation (and is prosecuted as such) but does not amount to a war crime. Intentional homicides: Killings perpetrated by a combatant which are not directly in association with the armed conflict or by a civilian taking no active part in hostilities in a situation of armed conflict should not be considered as associated with the conflict and should be classified as any other killing, irrespective of the conflict situation, into the existing typologies of violent death, according to the standard definitions. In the case of femicide, the same category as intentional homicide shall be used.

Nevertheless, considering the importance of correct classification and international recording of femicide, the following principles have been agreed: • • •

The gender-related killing of women and girls is a type of killing within the broader category of intentional homicide as defined in the ICCS. The notion of gender-related killings of women and girls (femicide) differs from other types of homicide as it refers to homicides of women and girls that are gender-related. Determining what constitutes the “gender-related motivation” of a homicide becomes the paramount aspect in reaching a common approach for statistical purposes and the most challenging aspect of the measurement of gender-related killings of women and girls. (UNODC, 2022: 5)

UNODC stresses that the count of female victims of “intimate partner/family-related homicide” does not capture the entire extent of femicides since it excludes those perpetrated outside the family sphere “such as some killings of female sex workers or gender-related killings of women and girls in conflict situations” (UNODC, 2019: 27). Being aware of the need to advance on better standardisation and recording of femicides, UNODC indicates a possible focus on data on different types of the gender-related killing of women and girls, based on the categorisation provided by the special rapporteur on violence against women (UNGA, 2012, para. 16). These include killings because of intimate-partner violence, sorcery-/witchcraft-related killings, honour-related killings, armed-conflict-related killings, dowry-related killings, gender-identity- and sexual-orientation-related killings, and ethnic- and indigenous-identity-related killings (UNODC, 2019: 29). Advancing work in this direction would be extremely useful in generating evidence and data on armed conflict femicides.

Statistics on Armed Conflict Femicides Crime statistics measure crimes, or breaches of existing laws. In some countries where femicide laws exist, statistics can be based on the application of these laws. For example, specific laws criminalising 365

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femicide as an offence in the criminal code have been adopted in 18 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, including some countries (such as El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, and Peru) that broadened the concept of femicide to go beyond domestic/intimate partner femicide (UNODC, 2019: 47 and Annex). Most countries use sex-disaggregated data on victims and victim-offender relationships as the basis for filtering the characteristics of cases that can be validated as femicides. The process is the same in both conflict and non-conflict settings. While most data collected on homicides – from both public health and criminal justice sources – include information on the sex of the victim, this is not always the case with conflict-related deaths. Further details surrounding the incident – for example, the instrument used for killing, the possible causes, and other characteristics of the perpetrator, including the relationship with the offender – are even more rarely available in any context. For example, an analysis of casualties of explosive devices in the five largest conflicts between 2011 and 2018 shows that only a small percentage of the recorded incidents contained disaggregation by sex of victims (see Table 33.1). As mentioned, one of the key elements to define a conflict situation is the number of casualties over a time period. Some countries or regions which are not in open conflict show very high levels of violent killings, sometimes higher than in conflict settings, and are as dangerous as conflict settings. Femicides in these very violent non-conflict settings have similar characteristics to those in conflict settings. The proportion of males killed is higher in the countries with the highest rates of violent deaths, which include both countries in conflict and not (Hideg and Alvazzi del Frate, 2021: 10). In these settings, female victims of violent deaths remain the closest proxy to measure GBV and femicides. Table 33.2 presents counts and rates of female victims of violent deaths per 100,000 female population in a group of the highest-violence countries in 2018, including several countries which were not in conflict at the time. The highest rates were indeed observed in Honduras (27 females killed per 100,000 female population) and El Salvador (14). These rates are, respectively, ten and six times higher than the global average. Although conflict-affected countries, such as Syria (12.8), Yemen (9.5), Afghanistan (7.9), Mali (7.1), and Iraq (7.0) also show high rates, the largest countries, such as Brazil, Nigeria, and Mexico, produced the largest numbers of victims. Considering that the widespread use of firearms in the most violent settings, it can be observed that armed violence is highly gendered. In 2018, males represented 84% of the total victims of violent deaths, and 92% of those killed by firearms (Hideg and Alvazzi del Frate, 2021: 10). The Armed Conflict Location and Data Project (ACLED) has recently developed a plan for a more focused gender analysis of how women are targeted in conflict, introducing a new categorisation to their database (ACLED, n.d.), to monitor and assess “political gender-based violence,” which includes wartime sexual violence, attacks on female politicians, and active repression of women in politics. Preliminary analysis revealed that political violence targeting women extends beyond sexual

Table 33.1 Proportion of Incidents with Female Casualties of Explosive Devices in the Five Most Widespread Conflicts (2011–2018) Country

Total Number of Incidents

No. of Incidents With Female Casualties

Proportion of Incidents with Female Casualties

Syria Iraq Afghanistan Pakistan Yemen

5,650 4,401 3,070 2,374 1,239

1,147 208 308 314 148

20% 5% 10% 13% 12%

Source: Elaborated from Alvazzi del Frate, Hideg, and LeBrun, 2020: 6

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Armed Conflict Femicide Table 33.2  Female Victims of Violent Death per 100,000 Female Population in Selected Countries (2018)

Honduras El Salvador Syrian Arab Republic Cote d’Ivoire Central African Republic Venezuela Jamaica South Africa Yemen Afghanistan Guatemala Mali DRC Iraq Mexico Nigeria Brazil Colombia Somalia Haiti

Rate

Count

27.0 14.0 12.8 11.6 11.2 11.0 10.2 9.7 9.5 7.9 7.8 7.1 7.0 7.0 6.8 6.8 6.6 6.6 6.4 5.9

1,296 476 1,080 1,444 264 1,616 150 2,831 1,339 1,426 683 673 2,944 1,327 4,408 6,593 7,028 1,663 482 335

Source: Global Violent Deaths database, n.d.

violence, with non-sexual attacks targeting women being predominant in some regions, such as the Middle East (82% of the events, Kishi, Pavlik and Matfess, 2019). Inevitably, statistics on these specific forms of armed conflict femicide – if and when available – may reveal very small numbers. While the reasons to accurately measure specific phenomena may appear evident, at the outset to develop specific response and prevention policies and measure their impact, counting femicides in armed conflict is not an easy task. Seeking statistical precision may lead to focusing only on a portion of better-documented incidents and, ultimately, underestimating the phenomenon, as many countries and especially conflict settings may struggle in their attempt to align to international standard parameters of measuring.

Qualitative Research and Recent Developments Qualitative research and a multidisciplinary approach are necessary to identify the GBV portion of female killings in armed conflict which qualify as femicide. This requires refined methodologies and focus on the details and context of the incidents. For example, the UN Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) recently specified that it’s monitoring only counts “verified” civilian casualties, which can be determined if at least three different and independent types of sources provide evidence that civilians have been killed or injured (UNAMA, 2021). In May–June 2021, just before the withdrawal of the US and allied forces from the country, UNAMA reported a marked increase in the number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, with almost half (46%) being women and children. Over two months, UNAMA reported 219 women killed and 508 wounded, with women being specific targets of at least 18 incidents, which resulted in female casualties (UNAMA, 2021: 4). The reasons indicated for these attacks included the professional affiliation of women (they are professionals of the judiciary or the media), political reasons, and accusations of “immoral conduct” or 367

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adultery (UNAMA, 2021, footnote 9, p. 4). Most of these reasons qualify for these killings to be considered femicides. In September 2021, High Commissioner Bachelet reported orally on the analysis carried out in Syria to revise the figures of conflict casualties in the period 2011–2021, in line with the methodology developed by OHCHR for monitoring SDG indicator 16.1.2 on conflict-related deaths (see Bachelet, 2021; OHCHR, 2019a). Based on the mandate received by the Human Rights Council to resume work to establish the extent of civilian casualties in the Syrian conflict, the OHCHR issued a “call for submission of available data on civilian casualties during the 10 years of conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic” (OHCHR, 2021), open to civil society and human rights monitoring systems. This exercise was able to document 350,209 direct conflict deaths, identifying the names of the victims and circumstances of death. Female victims were 26,727 (less than 8%). The high commissioner highlighted that this is certainly an undercount, but work has started to gain access to information on alleged actors, civilian and non-civilian status of victims, and the causes of death by types of weaponry. Once this type of work will be carried out, it will be possible to have better insight into the real extent of gender-based killings in the conflict.

Responding to Armed Conflict Femicides Further to the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which recognised rape and sexual violence as a crime against humanity, the generalised use of physical, sexual, and psychological violence against women and girls in conflict was recognised by Security Council Resolution 1820 as a “weapon of war” (UNSC, 2008, para. 4). This wording suggests that these crimes may be subsumed within the Rome Statute (UN, 1998). According to the resolution, rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute a war crime (Article 8 of the Rome Statute), or a crime against humanity (Article 7), or a constitutive act with respect to genocide (Article 6). Although femicide per se is not mentioned in the Rome Statute, armed conflict femicides could qualify as genocide killings under Article 6(a), or as murder under Article 7 (crimes against humanity), or as wilful killing under Article 8 (war crimes). Each of these scenarios, however, requires interpretation and possibly stretching of the reading of the law, which could ultimately defeat the purpose of incorporating femicide under the international framework addressing the most serious violations. In practice, if the aim is to include femicide among war crimes to provide a stronger response and exemplary deterrence, this could fail if the requirements are too strict and the law cannot be applied. The problem is that both in conflict and non-conflict settings, with the exception of countries which have taken a proactive step to adopt specific legislation, femicides are rarely investigated, and an overall climate of impunity (including underreporting, lack of investigations, and mitigating circumstances established by law, resulting in mild sanctions) surrounds the perpetrators of femicide. The inclusion of femicide in the Rome Statute as a crime per se has recently been advocated to provide visibility to this very serious crime and increase the accountability of states, which too often lack initiative and energy in investigating and prosecuting femicides (DelgadoFitzgerald, 2021: 18). The UN framework to combat sexual violence in conflict was strengthened in 2009 by establishing a special rapporteur (UNSC, 2009, para. 4). “Detailed information on parties to armed conflict that are credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for acts of rape or other forms of sexual violence” is the subject of regular reporting by the UNSG, mandated by the same resolution. Several initiatives to advance national criminal justice responses to gender-based killings and other forms of conflict-related sexual violence have been undertaken by the Team of Experts on the Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict, mandated by UNSC Resolution 1888. Despite some progress made over the past decade (for example, support for the establishment of specialised courts in post-conflict settings, such as Liberia and the Central African Republic, and support for similar 368

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initiatives in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Colombia), impunity for these crimes is still the norm (UNSG, 2021: 4).

Conclusions Armed conflict femicide remains largely undocumented. During armed conflict, women and girls may be the most exposed members of their communities, risking being systematically targeted as part of precise war strategies aimed at weakening the opponents through sexual and hate crimes. The concept of armed conflict femicide differs from what is largely known as femicide because gender-related killings in conflict settings are frequently committed by strangers instead of intimate partners or other family members, which is most frequently the case with femicide. Both conflict and non-conflict femicides are subsets of the larger category of killings with a female victim. Yet data on disaggregation by sex of the victim, with some possible additional information on the victim’s relationship with the perpetrator, if known, is too little information to get an insight that would allow evidence-based policy-making. But the larger proportion of strangers among perpetrators makes impunity the norm (UNGA, 2012). Over time, more attention has been placed on better verification and recording of civilian casualties to acknowledge female victims of violent death in conflict settings. Many of these casualties are in reality femicides and should be visible as such. Qualitative research, such as a “registry” aimed at providing as much detail as possible to the circumstances of death, could be helpful for acknowledging victims and advancing knowledge. Establishing a registry of armed conflict femicides would imply developing a broad set of metadata, which could be applied not only by existing data collection mechanisms but also by NGOs who could use this methodology in conflict settings from which at the moment relevant information is scarce. A registry approach typically includes personal data on victims, which could help understand the circumstances surroundings these killings and take evidence-based actions. This type of qualitative research is necessary to supplement and complement data collection, especially for SDG indicator 16.1.2 on conflict-related deaths, which could remain blind on armed conflict femicide.

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34 FEMINICIDE IN THE CONTEXT OF GANG-RELATED VIOLENCE IN EL SALVADOR Silvia Ivette Juárez Barrios and Erika J. Rojas Ospina. Translated by Alan Mendoza Introduction According to a 2021 report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), since the end of armed conflict in 1992, El Salvador has become the country with the worst criminal record in the region. It has the highest homicide rates in the world due to criminal structures, such as maras and gangs (CIDH, 2021: 18). In addition, El Salvador is among the countries with the largest numbers of violence against women, and it has the largest count of murdered women in Central America (ibid., p. 81). However, even though the public knows that gangs commit different kinds of violence against women “including threats, abductions, murders, rapes, and sexual enslavement” (ibid., p. 83), these numbers cannot be attributed only to gang violence. Two main circumstances prevent us from doing that. First, due to a lack of official data (Callamard, 2018; CIDH, 2021), there is no thorough study of how gang violence impacts women’s rights and their experiences of violence. Second, as we will explain, violence against women in El Salvador is a social incident that manifests in diverse ways and permeates all aspects of women’s lives. In the last decade (2009–2019), reforms have engendered a raft of new and abrogated norms and public policies to promote institutional equality. Some examples are the Ley de Igualdad, Equidad y Erradicación de la Discriminación contra las Mujeres (LEI) (Law on Equality, Equity and Eradication of Discrimination against Women), and the Ley Especial Integral para una Vida Libre de Violencia para las Mujeres (LEIV) (Special Comprehensive Law for a Life Free of Violence for Women), ratified, respectively, in 2011 and 2012. Between the two, LEIV contains more integral legislation to promote the recognition of the violence and insecurity that Salvadorean women experience (Cortez de Alvarenga, 2013). Nevertheless, the official analysis of sexist and gender violence has been simplistic and has shortsightedly focused on individual cases. Under such a vision, feminicide has not been understood as systemic violence, and its study has blamed the victims. Indeed, the prevalent impunity suggests that women’s lives are not recognised as deserving the protection of the state. Moreover, the current focus of security policy in El Salvador reproduces a patriarchal and androcentric hierarchical construction of gender and power relations in society, replicating a public/private division of violence (Hume, 2009b). Currently, violence is measured predominantly by focusing on the homicides of men. As a result, security public policies see criminality as their only target, oblivious to how economic and social intersections impact people’s exposure to violence. From a perspective that centres on women’s experience of violence, the current narrative about criminality does not reflect the unique

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effects of violence on women and people with non-normative gender expressions. By erasing gender violence from public debate and displacing it in the private sphere (RED-FEM, 2016), the security narrative hinders public policy from attending to other forms of violence that do not relate directly to criminality. Consequently, different forms of violence are not adequately addressed or confronted.

Feminicide in Violent Contexts According to the National System of Data, Statistics, and Information About Violence Against Women (SNDVCM), between 2016 and 2020, there was an annual average of 19,972 cases of violence against women, registered under five indicators of violence (sexual, physical, domestic, and job-related violence, as well as feminicide) (MJSP, 2021). In the last decade, at least 4,790 women have been killed in El Salvador. Between 2015 and 2020, 2,314 women died violently. From these deaths, 1,219 have been catalogued as feminicides (MJSP, DIA, & DIGESTYC, 2021: 18). In El Salvador, feminicide is considered a new crime described as simple or aggravating, and “it is categorised as hate crime or discrimination based on the victim’s gender” (Cortez de Alvarenga, 2013). Though violence against women has decreased since 2015, moving from a rate of 17.3 murders of women per 100,000 people in 2015 to 3.9 in 2020 (MJSP et al., 2021)1, other kinds of violence persist. These indicate that women in El Salvador still experience an important lack of legal accountability. Even though the Constitution recognises equality de jure, and non-discrimination as a right and a principle, and though laws to protect women have been designed, El Salvador has not established de facto the principles of equality, non-discrimination for sex and gender, and respect, as ethical and transversal values in all its public activity. A clear example is the norms regarding crimes against sexual freedom that have been applied since 1998, when abortions were penalised in the country using religious, sexist, and prejudiced arguments (Agrupación Ciudadana, 2019; Dudley, 2003; Peñas Defago, 2018). The criminalisation of abortion reveals that women’s experience of security is not the main concern of El Salvador’s security and civil protection public policies; the state ignores women’s integrity and their free choice over their bodies and lives. Currently, other forms of violence against women, such as enforced disappearance and sexual violence, are prevalent. Despite having little systematised information, in 2020, 541 women were reported missing (ORMUSA, 2020), alongside 73 feminicides (MJSP et al., 2021: 18). According to the General Attorney’s Protocolo de Acción Urgente y Estrategia de Búsqueda de Personas Desaparecidas en El Salvador (Protocol of Urgent Action and Strategy to Search for Disappeared Persons), these murders can be related to gangs, maras, cartels, and criminal organisations. However, women-led organisations argue that gender violence should also be considered a possible cause (OSCM, 2020). In addition, there exists an exacerbated rape culture, which normalises sexual violence, through its impunity, in popular culture and the justice system (CIDH, 2021: 82)2. In fact, according to the Poll on Violence Against Women carried out in 2017, 67.4% of 2.6 million women older than 15 (1,790,440 women) have suffered some kind of psychological, physical, or sexual violence (DIGESTYC, 2018: 1). According to the report, gender violence is committed by a diversity of men, but the majority includes relatives, romantic partners, or people who were close to the murdered women. People unknown to them were a minority (DIGESTYC, 2018; MJSP, 2021). These murderers are sometimes affiliated with criminal groups, but there is little information about this (MJSP, 2021). Moreover, violence against women is also perpetrated by public and private institutions which still reproduce inequality in their organisational culture and their members’ imaginary. One such organisation is the National Civil Police (PNC) (Rojas Ospina, 2020). Despite such legislation, there has not been a radical improvement regarding female oppression. The recognition of violence against women as real and lethal has not been achieved either, resulting

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in the vulnerability of some reforms and institutions that defend equity, in peril of being repealed by changing political administrations. For instance, currently, the government is discussing the viability of LEIV (Espinoza, 2022). Under these considerations, gender violence in El Salvador must be understood intersectionally and take into consideration historical forms of violence that construct power hierarchies based on gender, race, social and economic class, and age. These hierarchies prevent people from regarding gender violence as “real.” And official narratives do not usually recognise gender violence, equating “real” violence with spectacular expressions of violence (Hume and Wilding, 2015). These tend to be forms of violence perpetrated by men upon men, normally seen without a gender perspective. Such an understanding of what constitutes “real” violence is what defines the focus of the public security agenda in the country. Currently, the narrative around security has centred around a war against maras and gangs, a perspective that has generated new forms of war that affect women’s bodies (Segato, 2016: 57).

New Wars, Old Patriarchy To understand the context in which current gangs are structured, we must understand that El Salvador experienced 12 years of civil war (1980–1992). During this time, El Salvador crafted a narrative of security around the category of “internal enemy,” represented by guerrillas of the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional), and the civil population that supported them (Molinari, 2017). In 1992, the war ended after the Peace Accords between the government and the FMLN guerrillas3. These accords transformed political dynamics, established mechanisms to control human rights, and reformed security (dismantling armed forces and creating new civil police) (Martínez Peñate, 2007). However, during the post-war, officials did not address the structural causes of violence and gave complete amnesty to members of the military who severely violated victims’ rights. This left a legacy of rampant impunity, and no mechanism for reparations or reconciliation, that still impacts how violence is weaponised and justice undermined. There was also a disregard for the socio-economic problems created by the neoliberal structures imposed by fiscal austerity, privatisation, and deregulation, weakening the state when it was most needed (Kurtenbach 2010; Murcia, 2015; Wade, 2008). The post-war economy created a critical social situation that exacerbated the persistent socio-economic inequalities and a wave of criminal violence (Wade, 2008: 23). Rather than addressing criminal violence from a social perspective, officials took a militaristic approach focused on police force (García Pinzón and Rojas Ospina, 2020). In this context, gangs began to emerge in the security public discourse and became synonymous with insecurity. Since 1999, officials have relied on mano dura (iron fist) measures to control them (Hume, 2007b; Wolf, 2017). Though security policies have changed names with different administrations, the repression and authoritarianism in dealing with security and interacting with youth have worsened (Reyna, 2017). In this sense, the conceptualisation of security is strongly gendered, when its public representation connects to the need to fight crime and violence using “men with big guns” (Hume, 2007a). Therefore, these security tactics have set in motion new forms of war, for gangs have mutated into sophisticated organisations that challenge the “war on gangs.” Segato (2016) defines the new wars, or what could be understood as an atypical war, as conflicts wherein struggle is not between states but between armed corporations, intertwined and mixed with elements of the state and with semi-public forces (p. 58). The diversity of the actors involved also implies that there is a strong structural framework of the political economy behind these conflicts, which opens opportunities in war and makes the war financially attractive to many. Segato explains the connection between these new wars and current violence in El Salvador and the violence in women’s lives. She argues that the body is inscribed as territory, subject to being appropriated, 374

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exploited, and raped (pp. 69–70). In this sense, in the new wars that are being fought in El Salvador, both women’s bodies and those of gang members have become “a battlefield for the powers in conflict” (ibid.).

Masculine Violent Criminal Structures: Maras The high level of current violence in El Salvador is the result of the confrontation between three gangs with the police and the military (Bergmann, 2020). The gangs, or maras, are not new. Their existence dates back to the ’70s, to small groups of young men from marginalised communities surrounding San Salvador’s downtown that have transformed into criminal transnational organisations, which have been politicised and targeted by security policy (Cruz, 2017; van der Borgh and Savenije, 2015). These first groups of gangs – self-named maras, the term used in El Salvador to refer to a group of young men or friends – began to lose attention after the arrival of maras from the United States, such as Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS13) and Barrio 18 (18th Street) – the latter split into two rival gangs, 18 Revolucionarios (18th S. Revolutionaries) and 18 Sureños (18th S. Southerners) (Bergmann, 2020). These gangs, made up of Salvadorean immigrants in Los Angeles, arrived in El Salvador in the ’90s, after massive deportations from the United States of people with criminal records and gang affiliations (Smutt and Miranda, 1998). Gangs returned to a country that few of their members knew well, bringing a particular gang culture into a context marked by violence, a worn-out social fabric, a consequence of the civil war (1980–1992), and the Neoliberal Structural Adjustment Program established in 1980 by conservative governments (Kurtenbach, 2010; Wade, 2016).4 Despite the war that El Salvador carried out against maras with the creation of anti-mara laws in 2003, gang proscription laws in 2010, the designation of maras as “terrorist groups” in 2015, and the subsequent repressive policies against youth (Reyna, 2017), maras are still present in economically, socially, and politically marginalised places, where they have established a violent order, imposing authority of territorial control (Murcia, 2015). Present-day maras live a violent lifestyle, defined by the values, representations, and languages adopted by the group to which their members belong, among which are distinctive attires for each mara, and tattoos with which they express their affiliation. These codes, alongside the rivalry between MS-13 and Barrio 18 (with their internal strife) have been imported from their experience in the US. One example is their clothing and the public association of these groups with loose garments (wearing larger sizes) and sports shoes, used by members to express their relationship to their group. These dress codes have evolved alongside the sophistication of the gangs. However, clothes have also transformed into external signs of social recognition that stereotype youth and have served both to characterise them as criminals in the eyes of the police and to make these youth identifiable by rival gangs outside their territory. In this sense, as Segato (2016) asserts, the body is marked with “rituals, codes, and emblems” to denote a jurisdiction, a territory (p. 67). At the same time, since these groups dispute urban territory with violence that includes murder, property damage, extortion, and sexual violence against women, their bodies express territorial conflicts, and are punished for treason (Smutt and Miranda, 1998). The territorial control of gangs and the rivalry between them have made potential victims of a great portion of El Salvador’s population. Territorial control is the basis of gangs’ power and their monetary revenue through extorsion (Knox, 2018: 19). Additionally, these organisations restrict free mobility of people inside cities and even neighbourhoods, limiting access to sources of employment, education, or health (ibid.). Inhabitants of places controlled by gangs live in constant anxiety, for they risk being interrogated, extort, abducted, or murdered for being perceived as enemies or informants of a rival gang (Murcia, 2015: 17). People are also at risk of finding themselves in a crossfire during an armed confrontation between gangs and the police. Moreover, the security measures implemented by different governments often arbitrarily catalogue people from these communities, 375

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particularly the youth, as members of or collaborators in gangs, subjecting them to excessive police force and extrajudicial violence (Reyna, Hernández, Esquivel, and Ramírez, 2017).

Violated Masculinities and Invisible Gender Violence Even though the risk of becoming a victim is high for everyone who lives or works in areas controlled by gangs, risks are different for men and women. Gangs have strong gender divisions, subordinating women to men and considering them the gang’s property, a characterisation that portrays gangs as possessing total control of women’s lives and bodies (D’Aubuisson, 2016; Knox, 2018: 19). In some cases, women married to imprisoned or murdered gang members are expected to remain faithful to the gang and submit to its demands, lest they become victims of individual or collective aggressions, including rape and feminicide (Boerman and Knapp, 2018). In other words, regardless of whether victims belong to gangs, women and girls remain disempowered and subjugated under gang’s use of gender violence, including rape and feminicide, to punish women or people that offend them or challenge their authority (Boerman and Knapp, 2018; Knox, 2018). In Segato’s logic (2016), if we regard patriarchy as a system of oppression – that is, recognising that it exists in collective memory and replicates in social relations through an idea of power over women – feminicide perpetrated by gangs can be understood as an attack against women for belonging to a socially marginalised group. The power of these criminal groups rests on a masculinity reified through gender violence and oppression, which sees the female or feminised body as something that can be sacrificed. From Segato’s perspective (2016), violence on these bodies produces and reproduces impunity (p. 43), transforming the experience of security of women who live in the gangs’ territories into one of vulnerability. For these reasons, we must regard maras and gangs as violent masculine structures made up of marginalised and poor young men living in a society that has normalised structural inequality of power and a hegemonic social order that privileges men, where violence is seen as an important element of masculinity (Hume, 2008). The coupling of internal violence and hegemonic masculinity in a highly violent patriarchal context portrays men as the only authorities and main breadwinners. A problem arises when these young men grow up in marginal contexts with persistent inequities and a lack of education and income opportunities, which exclude them from an economic, social, and political power that emasculates them (Zulver, 2016). The consequences of emasculation in patriarchal societies are that, whereas it does not question hierarchical gender roles, it suppresses men’s perceived social power. This situation creates, in the eyes of these men, the need to balance their roles by participating in masculinising acts and adopting forms of “hyper-machismo” (ibid.). The violence transforms, then, in a way to “balance” the perceived expression of masculinity. Therefore, it is not surprising that inside a context where violence is functional and an expression of masculinity and where women are conceived as male property, violence against women, girls, and non-normative gender expressions becomes a way of expressing masculinity. Gangs become strong agents of the patriarchy when young men from marginalised areas, without greater possibilities or opportunities for social ascent – with fragile family structures, insufficient social protection, big economic and social disadvantages, and cycles of violence – find gangs as alternative sources of wealth and even familial belonging (Murcia, 2015). In this way, belonging to a gang, a highly masculine criminal structure, is perceived as a form of balancing the emasculation that results from disempowerment and exclusion. When we analyse how gangs redirect their frustrations to other communities or society, the masculinities that they reinforce through their gang codes and their violence can be seen as a way to reclaim power and survive during structural violence. Their methods add to a context not only where domestic violence is normalised, but also where repressive security policies generate even a stronger need to express masculinity violently. The consequence of these two phenomena is the high level of violence against women and its ensuing impunity (Boerman and Knapp, 2018; Hume, 2009a). 376

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Double Dilemmas of Security The lack of effective security measures for the rights of poor women and girls and marginalised sectors in El Salvador make these women vulnerable to a territorial war between maras and gangs and the war that the government weighs on these groups. In these contexts of organised crime, women face specific and unique risks due to their gender. Among these risks are sexual violence, sexual exploitation, or sexual abuse, derived from the widespread perception of women as inferior beings who must submit to men’s sexual will (Boerman and Knapp, 2018). There are documented cases of families that have been forced to migrate because a gang member set his eye on a woman in the family, often the youngest girl, and either accepting or rejecting the attention puts the family in danger (Knox, 2018: 22). Another documented risk women face is being exploited or enslaved to carry out domestic and care labour. In such cases, traditional gender roles assigned to women, such as taking care of gang members’ children, are not altered. However, there are cases of women that have had to take care of the children of other gang members, male and female, when they are sent to prison (Avelar, 2017). Moreover, women also fear for their children: boys are at risk of being forced to join a gang, and girls are in danger of sexual violence. There have been other cases of gang members who invade the houses of single mothers, forcing them to feed them and do domestic chores (washing their clothes, making food, cleaning, caring labour, etc.) (Delgado and Vargas Méndez, 2016: 29). Another great risk, systematically ignored by authorities, is between women, their relationship with gangs, and the police. These risks have been documented by activism and research, which have shown two realities that are similar but cross different intersections of gender and sex. For example, for cis women, there is a risk of “mortal duality” when they experience violence from their couples or gangs, and due to the territorial control of the gangs, they can neither denounce the violence nor seek government protection because doing so would put them in trouble with the gangs. Women are then restricted in their search for justice because denouncing violence would make them enemies of the gangs and put their lives, already threatened by gender violence, in danger. In addition, police officers often perceive some women as gangs members and criminalise them, particularly those who are mothers, daughters, sisters, and partners or ex-partners of gang members, without understanding the different levels of coercion and unsafety to which these women are subjected (Boerman and Knapp, 2018: 11). Finally, a transversal situation that increases the vulnerability of female or feminised bodies is an implicit patriarchal pact at work among men in society through an extensive network of loyalty (Segato, 2016: 47–48). This works in everyday acts, such as sexual harassment, which a man carries out and other men celebrate, and the “truces” between government and gang structures – in conjunction with the victimising institutional responses received by women who seek legal support. The pact between government and gangs includes respect for life in exchange for minimal persecution but never the unrestricted respect for women’s bodies (Alemán, 2019; Reyna, 2021).

Conclusions Official analyses of crime do not see the causal relationship between masculine hegemony and the discrimination that women, as a social group, have experienced for centuries due to crimes committed by men in gangs. Women face lethal risks derived from a history of discrimination based on gender and sexual hierarchies (added to other intersecting structures) that make them more vulnerable than men in similar violent contexts. The creation of laws to protect women and guarantee equity and equality must not ignore the different social dynamics that intersect the violent contexts of gangs. As we discussed in this chapter, gangs are violent, masculine, and armed organisations that burgeon from social marginalisation and exclusion. Gender violence is usually erased from the public security discourse, which celebrates a culture of masculinist war. Violence is inscribed on the bodies 377

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of the victims but remains unrecognised as violence, resulting in the re-victimisation and systemic vulnerability of women’s bodies. In this sense, feminicide in contexts of gang violence is connected to the same oppressive system wherein criminal structures commit violence against women in conjunction with the government. In other words, governmental institutions and security policies have failed to eliminate women’s risk of being murdered and of experiencing different kinds of violence. These institutions have not included in their policy and actions the notion of women’s humanity and the non-negotiable respect for their bodily, economic, and political autonomy.

Notes 1 In 2015, the homicide rate in El Salvador reached 106.7 homicides for every 100,000 inhabitants. These were historical figures that placed the country among those with the highest violence statistics in the world (CIDH, 2021: 18). Overall, the rate of homicides has decreased. In 2020, it was 40.1 (MJSP et al., 2021: 20). 2 This is reflected in the National Survey on Sexual Violence against Women, which shows that 63% of women over the age of 15 (1,743,375) has experienced sexual violence. Of this total, 94.7% women did not seek help for various reasons, among these the idea that their experiences were irrelevant or that others would not believe them (DIGESTYC, 2018, 41). 3 The Peace Accords were agreements negotiated by El Salvador’s government and the FMLN. They were mediated by the United Nations, lasting two years and resulting in six accords: Geneva, Caracas, Mexico, New York, and Chapultepec (Mexico). 4 The primary components of the neoliberal model imposed in El Salvador post-war were “privatization, tariff reductions, a regressive value-added tax (IVA), dollarization and participation in the Central American Free Trade Agreement” (Wade, 2008: 23)

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35 CONTINUITIES AND DISCONTINUITIES BETWEEN THE CONCEPTS OF FEMINICIDE AND TRANSFEMINICIDE IN MEXICO Sayak Valencia and Liliana Falcón. Translated by Alan Mendoza Introduction In the present chapter, we reflect on the continuities and discontinuities in the use of the concepts of feminicide and transfeminicide in Mexico, stressing trans women’s aggravating social circumstances and legal exclusion and insisting on the ways that trans resistances challenge necro-patriarchal subjugation.1 Feminicidal violence is an extremely serious global problem, and on the American continent, it is lacerating. While Latin American countries have ratified the UN’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and 14 countries have signed the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence Against Women (Belém Do Pará Convention), which stipulates that violence against women violates their fundamental human rights, the political will of several countries, Mexico included, has not created a reality that protects us against violence. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean’s Observatory of Gender Equality in Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) informs that in 2009, 4,555 feminicides occurred in fifteen Latin American and three Caribbean countries (CEPAL, 2020). Since 2015, countries like Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panamá, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, México, Perú, and Argentina regard feminicide or femicide as a crime, differing significantly in their penal categorisation and formulation. While this contributes to the visibility of the problem – given that which does not have a name does not exist – it is necessary to bring together not just the terminology but also a cultural, institutional, and political transformation that reflects in concrete actions to eradicate the killings of women. However, if it is already difficult to count feminicides, the matter worsens when we talk about transfeminicides. Trans women also face a continuum of violence due to their gender deviance: family rejection expels them from their homes; the negation of their feminine self-identification in the educational system and institutional harassment pushes them to drop out of school, resulting in labour exclusion that forces them into stigmatised jobs without social security, such as sex work; they lack access to the health system; and finally, they confront physical violence of different intensities that can end in transfeminicide (Mendoza, Ortiz, and Salazar Ballesteros, 2018).

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In their monitoring from 2008 to September 2020, the Trans Murder Monitoring project (TvT Research Project, 2016) reports 3,664 transfeminicides. Nevertheless, the organisation remarks that the real number of these cases is larger. The data presented in this report do not include all reported cases worldwide, but only those which can be found on the Internet. As a result, finding reports of murdered trans and gender-diverse persons, in particular, is also problematic, as not all trans and gender-diverse people who are murdered are identified as trans or gender-diverse. (TvT Research Project 2016) The TMM informs that at least 286 trans people were murdered in Latin America between October 2019 and September 2020. Brazil is the top country on the list, with 152 transfeminicides, and Mexico the second, with 57 murders over the same period (TvT Research Project 2016). Considering these numbers, it is necessary to broaden our discussions of transfeminicide.

Theoretical Concepts: Femicide, Feminicide, and Transfeminicide The most widespread story about the origin of the term “femicide” suggests that the concept was proposed by Diana Russell in 1976 at the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women in Brussels, naming the extreme violence suffered by women. Since then, the term has been perfected and refers to the “murder of women by men motivated by hatred, contempt, pleasure, or a sense of ownership of women” (Caputi and Russell, 1990: 34). Feminicide (feminicidio) is the translation used in Mexico to name the murder of women by men. The concept grew in strength in 1993 after the condemnation and visibility of several ultra-violent murders in Ciudad Juárez. In this context, feminicide refers to the murder of women perpetrated by men that also included different aggravating circumstances, such as sexual and family violence or kidnapping, as several great Latin American theorists, such as Rita Segato, Montserrat Sagot, Julia Monárrez, and Marcela Lagarde, have submitted. The category transfeminicide, usual in activism, describes the murder of trans women2 by men and, in that sense, has a direct relationship with the definition of feminicide. However, a more complex definition of transfeminicide argues it is “the most visible and final expression of a chain of structural violence that responds to a cultural, social, political and economic system structured by an exclusionary binary gender division. This system is called cissexism” (Radi and Sardá-Chandiramani, 2016: 5). The 02/2019 recommendation of Mexico City’s Human Rights Commission to Mexico City’s Attorney-General’s Office (Procuraduría General de Justicia) defines transfeminicide as the term describing murders of women at an intersection of transphobic and misogynist violence that does not admit that gender roles, expressions, and identities deviate from the norm assigned at birth, from the imposed expectation. This murder is committed by men, motivated by hatred, contempt, pleasure, or a sense of ownership of trans women. (CDHCM, 2019) The definitions of these three concepts are key to elaborating on the continuities and discontinuities between feminicide and transfeminicide. To do so, we will refer to several Latin American authors who have substantially contributed to perfecting the category of feminicide and its influence in Latin America. Subsequently, we will reflect on transfeminicide in the continent and, particularly, in Mexico.

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In Latin America, feminicide has become an endemic problem, as shown by the number of assassinations of women that, according to the Latin American Feminicide Map, add up to 5,457 in 2020 (MundoSur, 2020). In Mexico, in 2012, Marcela Lagarde achieved the classification of the concept in Article 325 of the Federal Penal Code. For her part, Julia Monárrez proposed a typology of feminicide that divides the concept into (1) intimate feminicide, subdivided into child and familial feminicide; (2) systemic sexual feminicide, subdivided into organised and disorganised; and (3) feminicide resulting from stigmatised work, related to jobs and professions in leisure, entertainment, and sexual industries (Monárrez, 2005: 198). In Argentina, Laura Rita Segato extends the term feminicide to femigenocide as a possibility to legislate it on an international scale with a severity similar to that attributed to the genocide of certain populations, classifying the concept as a crime against humanity (Segato, 2016: 148). In Costa Rica, feminist theorist and activist Monserrat Sagot proposes feminicide as an expression of “necropolitics” (Mbembe, 2011) – that is, as a form of managing subaltern populations through extreme violence and murder. These authors, all feminists and gender studies specialists, have contributed to feminicide’s contextualisation and to think of intersectionality3 as a necessary interpretative framework for each case. On a similar note, there is a contemporary need to extend the term “feminicide” for naming the systemic murders of trans women. In this regard, we must remark that, in Latin America, the concepts of transfeminicide and travesticide already circulate4 as part of the transfeminist vocabulary for making visible the extreme violence that trans women share with cisgender women and feminised bodies. In a historical pronouncement that includes in its verdict the juridical typification of transfeminicide as a grave violation of human rights and as a crime against humanity, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights stated on 26 March 2021 that Honduras had violated the rights to life and personal integrity of Vicky Hernández, a transgender woman murdered in 2009 (CIDH, 2021). We know that the violence against the trans community is not experienced only by trans women, but we focus on them because we consider that their deaths carry an enormous symbolic and social weight that castigates, in an especially bloody way, “the becoming-woman” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988: 279). Thus, murders of trans women feed, compliment, and justify misogyny, reinforcing a cis-sexist social imaginary. For this reason, both cis and trans women must have common vocabularies to denounce the violence that lethally affects us. In this sense, the concept of transfeminicide allows us to recognise the theoretical roots and the feminist fights that try to position feminicide as a codified crime but that, above all, are expanding the language to talk in a precise way about social acts of violence and their impunity.

The State of Play in Mexico: Hate Crimes, Invisibility, and Revictimisation Only in March 2020, an average of 11 feminicides happened daily in Mexico (ONU and COLMEX, 2020). This number has galvanised the incessant fights of feminist activists demanding justice and the recognition of the serious problems of machismo, misogyny, and sexism that results in the killing of women. These same causes are shared with transfeminicides: a hatred of and disdain for femininity and, in the case of trans women, the (unforgivable) treason against masculinity. The problem lies in the belief – of course erroneous yet generalised in Mexico, according to the National Survey on Discrimination (Encuesta Nacional sobre Discriminación [ENADIS], 2017) – that women are subordinate to men. Similarly, the 2016 National Survey on Household Relationship Dynamics (Encuesta Nacional sobre la Dinámica de las Relaciones en los Hogares [ENDIREH]) reflects this problem, showing that in Mexico, 66% of women older than 15 revealed having suffered at least one incident of discrimination or emotional, economic, physical, or sexual violence. Likewise, 41% of 382

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women declared having been victims of sexual violence (ENDIREH, 2016). This violence exposes that men regard women as their private property, like things, objects that they can own and dispose of. The constructions of binary roles, romantic love, and myths that portray maternity as the greatest wish of women – always subjected to their couples or children – sustain this structural violence, which ends not only in inequality but also in feminicide, often misrepresented by the press and the officials responsible for delivering justice as “crimes of passion,” a characterisation of feminicide that revictimises the murdered women and absolves the murderer of any responsibility. Mexico has subscribed to the Declaration of Human Rights, the Pact of San José, and other international agreements that compromise it to guarantee the principles of no discrimination and protection of rights. However, this has not stopped hate crimes. To combat them effectively, Mexico must recognise the problem and legislate accordingly. Currently, only 12 states have codified aggressions against people who identify as lesbian, gay, travesty, transgender, transexual, intersexual, and more (Migueles and Careaga, 2020). Some proposals advocate creating an autonomous penal figure that codifies these crimes to tackle them as such (Rangel, 2018). This must be implemented alongside interrelated public policies, for criminal policy alone does not have an impact on the social fabric. The National Observatory of Hate Crimes Against LGBT People in Mexico (Observatorio Nacional de Crímenes de Odio contra Personas LGBT) (Migueles and Careaga, 2020) works with collectives in 10 out of 32 Mexican states. In its report from 17 May 2020, the organisation reported 75 murders in 2019, a considerably higher number than the 13 murders reported in 2014. Nevertheless, these numbers fall short. For each visible case, there are at least three invisible ones, for the tracking of violence is usually done with information from news media, and newspapers often censor these hate crimes or revictimise murdered trans women by erroneously characterising them as “men dressed as women.” Likewise, it is frequent that relatives do not honour the gender identity of murdered trans women, complicating accounting for hate crimes against the trans population. Between May 2020 and April 2021, the Observatory reported 87 aggressions against LGBT people, 47% committed against trans women. It is equally important to highlight that the average life expectancy of cisgender Mexican women is 79 years while that of cisgender men is 73. By contrast, this number decreases to 35 years for trans women (Alfosín et al., 2020) (Murillo and Gómez, 2019) since violence marginalises them and keeps them out of education, employment, and health.

Rights According to Geography Mexico has 32 states but only 13 of these have approved the General Gender Identity Law (Ley de Identidad de Género), which recognises the right of citizens to modify the gender assigned at birth that appears in their official documents. These states are Ciudad de México, Coahuila, Colima, Chihuahua, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Michoacán, Nayarit, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, San Luis Potosí, Sonora, and Tlaxcala. Only two (Jalisco and Oaxaca) include underage people in their legislation, even though people do not start identifying as trans only after they reach adulthood. For this reason, activists have fought for the Law of Trans Childhoods (Ley de Infancias Trans), which would make possible the official change of gender identity for those people who ask for it, regardless of whether they are underage (El Financiero, 2021). In the remaining states, people who want to change their gender identity must undergo a prohibitively expensive legal process (between 250,000 and 350,000 Mexican pesos for a country where the minimum monthly wage is 2,724.45 pesos), which requires them to hire lawyers and violates trans people’s rights (López, 2021). We can then affirm that in Mexico women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights depend on people’s place of birth. Granted, the problem is significantly more complex, for it not only involves the aggressor 383

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and the community that protects him but also the institutions and public officials that refuse to abandon their prejudices and, blatantly abusing their authority, ignore and breach the guidelines that demand them to respect citizen’s human rights.

Trans Social Death in Mexico There is an extensive debate about the marginalisation, exclusion, and social well-being of trans women (Bennholdt-Thomsen, 1981; Boltvinik, 2001; Cullen and Pretes, 2000; Eguía, 2003; Escobar, 1995; Hernández Laos, 2001; Sachs, 2001). For the purposes of this reflection, we use the framework of situated knowledge. For most trans women, embracing gender identity implicates family and social rejection and marginalisation. The ensuing loss of housing also often means losing the possibility of getting an education, which reduces access to an already competitive job market that is often also transphobic. If trans people choose to embrace their gender identities, the problem of changing their official documentation – including their academic certificates and university diplomas – can be insurmountable for many. Then, homeless, uneducated, jobless, and without access to healthcare, the trans population is led to take on sex work, suffering double stigmatisation and constant harassment by the police, whose officers engage in violence and lock trans women in deplorable detention centres (Mendoza, Ortiz, and Salazar Ballesteros, 2018). The results of the HIV Sero-prevalence Health Survey of Transgender Women in Mexico City (Encuesta de Salud con Sero-prevalencia de VIH a Mujeres Transgénero [COPRED], 2013) revealed that 63% of interviewed women were sex workers, in response to the lack of job opportunities. Hairdressing or performing as drag queens were other job options, but the job market is limited. These situations do not result from individual choices but rather from a neoliberal capitalist and cis-hetero-patriarchal system that not only enforces inequality but also punishes sexual diversity and gender deviance. Then, marginalised and excluded, trans women in Mexico are doomed to “social death” (Králova, 2015), a multifaceted phenomenon that describes the situation of people facing extreme circumstances and is the opposite of the concept of well-being. Establishing higher order concepts that allow us to develop a global theoretical framework, Králova (2015) systematically compares across disciplines the concepts that structure social death and points at three elements: 1

Loss of social identity

The author relies on Goffman’s (1961) concept of “no person,” Agamben’s (1998) “homo sacer,” and Biehl’s (2004) “exhuman.” She compares their similarities and differences to affirm that the loss of social identity is embedded in the concept of “social death” since it makes a person appear “inadequate” in the eyes of others. Many contexts can cause this, but socio-economic status is key. 2

Loss of social connection

Social roles are never static, but they are crucial to the social existence of a person. When one loses them, one also loses the quality of life and the ability to connect with others. Being alone means being “socially dead.” 3

Losses associated with the disintegration of the body

Králova holds that the body, animated by the agency of its owner, can become an effective tool to keep or end personal identity. Therefore, we must ask when bodies die socially. That is, when does 384

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the body become powerless, neglected, and corrupted by precarity and lack of health? What happens with the bodies that die, that are forgotten? Who buries them? In the case of trans women, these bodies are transformed, often called “inadequate,” and effaced by the media and relatives. Meanwhile, Cacho (2012) maintains that those who are socially regarded as less worthy depend on capitalist and heteropatriarchal value metrics and even on race and ethnicity. Those who do not perform masculinist gender expectations and are neither white nor wealthy can fall into “social death” since their deaths are not deemed worthy of mourning. According to Cacho (2012), the danger of “social death,” as an abstraction grounded on the intersection of race and socio-economic status, is that it can lead to a “real death.” For trans women in Mexico, there are no abstractions. There are harsh realities reflected in the halved life expectancy in comparison to the cis population. Thus, the return of extreme conservatism puts at the centre of our analysis masculine supremacy, a political cartography central to the most brutal necropolitics involving gender, race, class, and non-heterosexuality, and crystalising in the “(trans)feminicidal machine” (González, 2005).

Transfeminisms, Trans Resistance, and Post-mortem Politics: We Do Not Want to Die That Death In addition to talking about the number of murders of trans women, we must understand that these numbers correspond to continuous acts of annihilation of cisgender and transgender women. Their murders do not correspond only to a dystopian tallying that contravenes all conceptions of wellbeing and instead proposes a lacerating and horrifying stage of the power relationships between genders. Rather, these records refer to a strong problem of social and structural violence that has colonial historical roots in which the assassinations of women have been utilised as a form of government that creates surplus value for the necropatriarchy. We discuss these ideas in the following paragraphs. We begin by underscoring the centrality of the concepts of feminicide and transfeminicide as an exercise of necropower. These terms uncover the intersection of gender, class, and race as an institutional motor that constitutes state governability through the construction of subaltern subjects. They are the keys to critically rethinking contemporary power relations, anchored in the coloniality of power, of being, and of knowing. The subalternation and dispossession of women are fed by the modern colonial necropatriarchal system, historically producing women as minoritarian, and making them condemnable for any kind of protest or gender dissidence, just as is affirmed by the feminist historian Silvia Federici (2010), the Nigerian sociologist Oyeronke Oyewumi (2017), and the Argentinian philosopher María Lugones (2008). Thus, this extreme dispossession engenders alliances and resistances between feminisms and communities of trans women, galvanising a transfeminist coalition that fights for eliminating murder as a form of political and social control of vulnerable populations. Because of this, the political body of transfeminisms is characterised by the attempt to build strategic associations that exceed the limits of traditional politics, which are binary and centred on biology. Therefore, it is necessary to refer to some trans resistances against transfeminicide. These open new ways of making politics, outside of the traditional state-sanctioned frameworks. They are grounded on a demand for public and intersectional dignity of women, appropriating the right to speak in public. In this context, trans resistances recreate corporeally and “in the flesh” the lexicon of subordination. They make possible the potential reorganisation of politics from little-traversed contexts in spaces where injustice is the norm for dissident and/or minoritarian bodies, whose massive deaths contribute to the sexual economies of death – those where vulnerability and condemnation of feminised bodies are made profitable as a surplus value within gore capitalism, a term that refers to explicit and unjustified blood spilling (it is the cost that the Third World pays for clinging to the 385

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increasingly demanding logic of capitalism). The gore capitalism concept refers to the disproportionally high percentage of viscera and dismemberments, frequently mixed with organised crime, gender, and the predatory use of bodies, all carried out with the most explicit violence as a tool for necro-empowerment (Valencia, 2010). An example of these bodily resistances to the massacre of trans populations is trans women’s unflinching refusal to not die murdered and their aim to modify how the media exhibit the remains of murdered trans women. Both matters, murder and mediatisation, are part of trans resistances connected to post-mortem politics, which refers to practices, appropriations, and actions set in motion by those who have experienced the murder, feminicide, or disappearance of someone they love and that, after that experience, get organised to demand justice. Post-mortem politics refers to all forms of political agency that originate after a massacre, after trauma, or after the death of a loved one. It is the enfleshed politics of those who keep fighting for dead ones through resistance, searching campaigns, and the dignification of demanding social justice. We know an instance of this. It is the protest of a community of trans sex workers who, in October 2016, demonstrated, holding a coffin that carried the dead body of a trans friend named Paola Sánchez Romero. They did so after the murderer – discovered in flagrante delicto – was absolved by the Mexican authorities (Regeneración, 2016). Their protest opens up post-mortem politics for their community, questions the Mexican legal apparatus for its inefficacy, and makes a call to action for the creation of communities and alliances where politics is not reserved only for living bodies but also constructs alliances with murdered bodies, dead bodies, and disappeared bodies that make up the necropolitical and aching map of contemporary Mexico. Thus, the presentation of that trans woman’s dead body, dignified and accompanied by the community, cuts the social inaction in the face of a massacre and produces affective responses that modify the social perceptions of trans bodies and minoritarian becomings, making them worthy of dignity and life. Likewise, these trans women inspire others with their ability to exercise their agency with unexpected political imaginations, creating routes and ways of acting and appearing in a form that cannot be assimilated by the normalising logic of institutional politics. In an unprecedented event, on 30 September 2021, District Attorney Ernestina Godoy, director of the Mexico City’s Public Prosecutor’s Office (Fiscalía de la Ciudad de México [FGJ-CdMx]), issued a public apology for the transfeminicide in 2016 of Paola, the murderer of whom was convicted and then set free by authorities. This public apology follows the 02/2019 recommendation of Mexico City’s Human Rights Commission since Godoy argued that members of the Mexico City’s Attorney-General’s Office (Procuraduría General de Justicia de la Ciudad de México [PGJ-CdMx]) violated the following rights of Kenya Citlaly Cuevas Fuentes: right to gender identity concerning the right to equality and non-discrimination, right to private life, right to legal personality and the free development of identity, right to access justice and right to the truth with a gender perspective, and right to personal integrity due to secondary victimisation (Grant, 2021). Thus, trans resistance and post-mortem politics have directly influenced recent policy. On 5 October 2021, legislation to recognise the crime of transfeminicide in the Penal Code of Mexico City was presented. It includes sentences that range between 35 and 70 years of conviction. In addition, the Civil Code, the Attorney-General’s Organic Law, and Mexico City’s Law of Victims also demand that close friends are allowed to claim the victim’s body since relatives often refuse to do so.

Conclusions We close with three key and urgent matters about the need to legislate transfeminicide. First, the population of trans women faces vulnerability to marginalisation, exclusion, precarity, discrimination, and violence. It is not enough to mitigate, commiserate, or legislate: their rights as citizens are 386

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perfectly laid out in the Mexican Constitution. Therefore, it is urgent to have an effective public policy to guarantee their right to a better life. Second, it is necessary to codify transfeminicide to name the problem and be able to fight it. After codifying it, the judicial branch would be forced to train its officials, who would not be able to make up excuses adducing their ignorance, and they would be held accountable for their neglect. Third, legislating transfeminicide is only one necessary step. Real change comes from the revolution of effects, trans resistances, and alliances between transfeminisms and other feminisms. It comes from activist and engaged scholarship – from the demand for accountability. ¡Vivas nos queremos!

Notes 1 With necropatriarchy, we mean the perverse patriarchal order that subjugates women, which gives the social construction of masculinity the privilege to perpetrate brutal violence – that is, lethal violence that results in the death of women and feminised subjects. 2 We understand that the prefix “trans” names diverse forms of identification or disidentification with gender binarism. As Halberstam remarks in his book Trans*, this concept is diverse and complex, and varies depending on context: “trans* can be a name for expansive forms of difference, haptic relations to knowing, uncertain modes of being and the disaggregation of identity politics predicated upon the separating out of many kinds of experiences that actually blend together, intersect and mix” (Halberstam, 2018: 5). In this article, we centre on transgender women, whom Janice Joseph defines as those “whose identities, expression and/or lived experiences differ from what is typically associated with the sex that they were assigned at birth” (Joseph, 2020:106). 3 We take Joseph’s definition of intersectionality as “a conceptualisation that examines the simultaneous interaction of two or more axes of subordination that result in social inequality. This multi-level analytical framework takes into account both the micro and the macro levels (social class, gender, race and gender identity) of analysis. It examines the disempowerment of marginalised people and attempts to capture the consequences of the interaction of two or more forms of subordination” (Joseph, 2020: 108). 4 The concept of travesticide (travesticidio) is used in Argentina by transfeminist activists. It re-signifies and dignifies the term “transvestite,” recognising the self-identification of trans women who use it as a historical form of self-differentiation, using it as resistance during the military dictatorship, a period when they were identified as transvestites and murdered lawlessly. Thus, more than a pejorative term, the concept is a local form of self-dignification among diverse trans identities.

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36 FEMI(NI)CIDE AS WAR AS FEMI(NI)CIDE Violence and Justice-Seeking Beyond Borders Dilar Dirik

Femi(ni)cide,1 which Diana Russell defined as “the killing of females by males because they are female,” is enabled by patriarchal social, economic, and political structures in society (Russell and Harmes, 2001; Lagarde, 2010; Radford and Russell, 1992). Patriarchal mentalities themselves structure war, militarism, forced migration, and political violence, creating brutalisation, trauma, and impunity atmospheres that normalise gendered violence (Enloe, 2000; Sjoberg, 2013; Eisenstein, 2007). Although women are specifically targeted during wars and genocides, official documentation of gendered attacks is relatively absent. During the Armenian Genocide, an episode of murder, violence, torture, forced migration, and exposure, ordered by Turkish officials, women were sexually terrorised during long, deadly deportation journeys by a range of male actors, including Turkish, Kurdish, and Arab civilians (Derderian, 2005). During the Holocaust, women were additionally or disproportionately subjected to rape, forced prostitution, special experiments, and child loss (Hedgepeth and Saidel, 2010). “Although the Nazis kept meticulous records, there is virtually no official Nazi documentation of rape and sexual abuse of Jewish women . . . There is no such thing as a ‘rape certificate’; in fact, rape victims were often murdered” (Hedgepeth and Saidel, 2010: 2). Cases in the late 20th century, like in Rwanda, Congo, and former Yugoslavia, showed that targeting women through sexual violence, abduction, cultural assimilation (e.g. forced marriage), and interventions in reproductive cycles (e.g. forced abortion, forced maternity) can act as a weapon of war, ethnic cleansing, or genocide (Sharlach, 2000). According to patriarchal-patrilineal logics, killing men destroys the enemy’s ability to fight, while targeting women humiliates the enemy’s masculinity and ensures cultural annihilation (Seifert, 1996). As the example of so-called comfort women, who were coerced into prostitution under imperial Japan in the 1930s and 1940s shows, sexual violence scars and wraps survivors and communities in silence and shame, rendering justice and accountability difficult (Myadar and Davidson, 2021). The private/public dichotomy, long criticised by feminists, permeates scholarship on gender and war and forced displacement. Women’s loss of life in conflict is not always treated as femi(ni) cide in scholarship or policy-making. Within and outside systematic annihilation plans, perpetrators of sexual violence take advantage of environments of impunity in conflicts. Survivors frequently become targets of violence in their communities in the name of national or family “honour.” Even when women physically survive conflict, their health, social relations, and sense of self may not – a kind of social femi(ni)cide. Likewise, people working on femi(ni)cide do not always focus on wider political contexts beyond individual deaths. Past episodes of large-scale femi(ni)cide, such as the 390

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-41

Femi(ni)cide as War as Femi(ni)cide

European witch-hunts, are barely named as such or linked to processes like capitalist accumulation and colonialism (Federici, 2004). The chapter begins by surveying critical feminist literature on femi(ni)cide and on gendered violence in war and forced migration. Connecting such bodies of work is helpful considering methodological and definitional issues around the study of femi(ni)cide, an area marked by reliance on incomplete data (Corradi et al., 2016; Cullen et al. 2021). My definition of femi(ni)cide builds on perspectives that centre state violence, capitalism, and colonisation (Lagarde, 2010; Segato, 2016; Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010; Federici et al., 2021). Such critical works resist the liberal, bureaucratic compartmentalisation of violence into categories. Drawing on her work on Palestine, ShalhoubKevorkian (2003) offers a broadened understanding of femi(ni)cide, considerate of systems and structures (including settler-colonial state violence), beyond individual cases: the process leading to death and the creation of a situation in which it is impossible for the victim to “live.” That is, femicide is all of the hegemonic masculine‐social methods used to destroy females’ rights, ability, potential, and power to live safely. It is a form of abuse, threat, invasion, and assault that degrades and subordinates women. It leads to continuous fear, frustration, isolation, exclusion, and harm to females’ ability to control their personal intimate lives. (p. 601) Scrutinising the interaction between state, colonisation, capitalism, and patriarchy offers powerful insights into the relationship between femi(ni)cide and war/forced migration. Linking violence against women, including femi(ni)cide, to wider power structures and historical episodes allows us to theorise how deeply such violence ruptures community relations and controls populations (Federici et al., 2021; Heineman, 2011). Beyond androcentric paradigms that take for granted the near-universal occurrence of gendered violence in war, “the predominant conception of warfare as a matter of man-to-man violence must be transformed from the ground up” (Gaca, 2011: 76). The following discussion encourages scholars to take seriously the language, methodology, and actions of political/social movements as dynamic agents in knowledge production on violence. The chapter examines the revolutionary Kurdish women’s liberation movement’s theory and praxis on femi(ni)cide. I specifically engage the movement’s “political feminicide” concept, which theorises the specific targeting of women’s political resistance and leadership. Femi(ni)cide against politically active women in times of political/social transformation has a long, global history. For example, in the late 1920s, Uzbek women who unveiled in the context of the Communist Party’s cultural agenda became targets of murder campaigns (Kamp, 2011). While many were killed by their families in the name of “honour,” the surge in femi(ni)cides unfolded during a moment in which politics around women’s bodies ideologically demarcated difference. On violence against “politicised” women in Central Europe during World War I, Gerwarth (2011) notes that perpetrators aimed to subject “unruly women” to degradation so as to take revenge for their alleged crime of weakening the home front and to fulfil the general aim of “disciplining” a society that was apparently out of control. Violence against “politicized women” also served to compensate for military defeat and a corresponding crisis of masculine identity at a time that coincided with increasing female social and political emancipation. (p. 136) Making the case for the term “political feminicide” addresses attacks on specific individuals and collectives without erasing the political nature of other femi(ni)cides. Instead, it embeds the politically driven killings of specific women within a larger political economy of femi(ni)cide. It recognises 391

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the political origins of the evolution of the terms “femicide” and “feminicide,” their subsequent de-politicisation via a global rise in (often securitisation-linked) interest in violence against women (Grzyb et al., 2018; Meger, 2016) and argues for re-politicisation of femi(ni)cide analysis, through explicit considerations of genocide and ecocide and the role of militarism and the neoliberal state. Building on feminist scholarship and collective knowledges within women’s struggles, one may propose the following working definition for political feminicide: the politically motivated killing of women, including but not limited to publicly engaged personalities, to undermine, prevent, and destroy women’s individual or collective resistance against patriarchal structures and systems of power, including the state. By eliminating women who resist, political feminicide protects powerbased systems that generate violence and injustice. Whilst recognising the importance of studying political dynamics behind all femi(ni)cide, political feminicide as a concept responds to the oftenspectacular targeting of women’s social and political leadership. This captures several inter-related phenomena: systems and structures beyond individual perpetrators of femi(ni)cide, femi(ni)cide as a domination/annihilation concept and its employment during war, and the targeting of individual women, who resist patriarchal systems of power, including the state, especially during war and conflict. The final section of the chapter outlines recent campaigns of the Kurdish women’s movement that take femi(ni)cide across sites – from homes to warzones, from so-called “honour killings” to “political feminicide” – as an occasion to build transnational alliances against war and violence.

Femi(ni)cide and War In the aftermath of 20th-century conflicts, gendered violence in war and forced displacement increasingly received attention, the UN-led Women, Peace, and Security agenda being one example of the global shift in focus. Top-down and security- and/or development-oriented paradigms, however, depart from critical analyses of militarism, warfare, and violence (Meger, 2016). Feminists argued that violence against women is not a by-product but a key organising principle of war. Moreover, as in the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, women’s protection can be a pretext to justify imperial and militarist agendas and cover up war crimes (Khalid, 2011; Eisenstein, 2007). Kolmasova and Krulisova’s (2019) critical feminist discourse analysis examines how the circulation of unevidenced claims about state-ordered rape by the military in Libya helped justify the NATO intervention in 2011. International actors frequently resort to sensationalist narratives about “rape as a weapon in war” in a manner that distortedly appropriates legal language (Lokot, 2019). Co-optation of feminist language can, therefore, dampen knowledge production on war – and resistance against it. Latin American feminists engaged in struggles against violence developed the term “feminicide” (Spanish: feminicidio), pointing to the critical role of the state in the killing of women (Lagarde, 2010; Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010). Segato (2016) argues that “the distinction between intimate femicides and public, warlike femicides”2 (p. 623) is indefensible especially in colonial and racialised contexts. She uses the term femigenocide for “femicidal violence, which has a public character and is not a matter of personal relations” (Segato, 2018: 203). In Guatemala, soldiers systematically committed sexualised atrocities against Mayans under the guise of anti-communist counterinsurgency, destroying communal relations through terror and forced displacement (Cumes, 2021). One similarity between victims of state, parastate, and intimate femi(ni)cide across colonised contexts is the spectacular display of corpses, charged with symbolic meaning. Theorising the performative effect of fem(ni)cides, Shalhoub-Kevorkian and Daher-Nashif (2013) argue that “crimes in colonised zones must never be divorced from the political contexts and workings of power that envelop them” (p. 311). Similarly, indigenous women argue that, in addition to genocide, ecocide goes hand in hand with femi(ni)cide, as extractive projects for neoliberal settler economies create environments of impunity for sexual violence and killing against indigenous women, many of whom are land

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defenders subjected to police brutality. Violence and displacement thus serve to colonise, terrorise, and control populations, territories, and relationships. States’ role in both femi(ni)cide and war/forced migration (and related issues like climate change) impacts justice-seeking. Access to legal mechanisms is gendered and classed (Walsh and Menjívar, 2016). The frequent framing of femi(ni)cides among migrant and/or minority communities as honour killings reduces complex manifestations of violence to stigmatising cultural norms (Ercan, 2015) while rendering invisible the femi(ni)cidal character of killings outside of racialised communities. This obfuscates institutional inequalities that sustain conditions that enable violence. For example, migrant women may refrain from reporting violence when their legal status depends on their partners (Ghafournia, 2011; Briddick, 2020). Feminist perspectives criticise existing international legal mechanisms’ limitations in the protection of women in war and forced migration. As Ramji-Nogales (2011) points out, international law fails to fully account for harms suffered by refugees and the internally displaced at the hands of husbands, boyfriends, family members, neighbours, aid workers, peacekeepers, and strangers, none of whom is acting at the behest of a state or militia or fulfilling an organisational master plan. (p. 465) Drawing on similar limitations around femi(ni)cide, Fregoso and Bejarano (2010) propose a feminist approach to human rights that is “not just of the living but for living” Seeing as “substantive and indivisible” – the right to work, food, health care, and housing, along with the right to a life free from violence and torture – opens up new possibilities for treating feminicide as part of a broader set of human rights violations that affect women and for framing remedies within a comprehensive justice model that considers peoples in local communities as agents of social change. (p. 20) Beyond the legal realm, justice-seeking against violence involves political struggle, community activism, and education. Collective transformative justice approaches target not the individual perpetrator but wider systems such as state, capitalism, and colonialism when seeking solutions outside of stateowned, carceral, or force-using structures (police, prisons, etc.). Here, experiences of communities at the margins of the international state system offer perspective. Similar to other peoples, the lack of international recognition of the Kurds as a collective group deprives people of legal mechanisms to hold actors accountable for injustices against the community. This, coupled with system-critical political perspectives of the Kurdistan freedom movement,3 created conditions for a transnational bottom-up struggle against patriarchal violence, including femi(ni)cide.

Femi(ni)cide as a War Concept in Kurdistan In June 2021, two weeks before Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, Deniz Poyraz, a young Kurdish woman, was murdered in the Izmir headquarters of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the third largest party in parliament whose popular base is Kurdish. Poyraz was not the main target of Onur Gencer, a far-right Turkish nationalist, who planned a massacre but found the building of the opposition party largely empty (Ertan, 2021). Yet the leftist-progressive HDP, women’s activists, and the wider Kurdish movement immediately referred to the attack as “feminicide.” Statements, articles, social media posts, and protest speeches emphasised the gendered nature of the

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Figure 36.1 A HDP Women’s Assembly rally following Deniz Poyraz’s killing. The banners in Kurdish and Turkish read (a.o.): “We defend ourselves and the Istanbul convention,” “The women’s struggle is everywhere,” “Feminicide must end.” Source: TJA Twitter account

murder. Banners at the rally-like funeral and at protests held by Kurdish communities in Western Asia and Europe displayed symbols and slogans of the women’s struggle (Figure 36.1). The framing of a nationalist attack as an expression of a state-led system of femi(ni)cide against Kurdish women reflects the political context: the murderer had recently stayed in a Turkish-occupied region in Northern Syria. In one Instagram photo tagged in Syria, he posed with an assault rifle and made a supremacist gesture behind a Turkish flag in another. The majority-Kurdish regions of Northern Syria, commonly referred to as Rojava (western Kurdistan), drew international attention after 2014 during the fight in Syria and Iraq against the so-called Islamic State (hereafter, Daesh). Daesh systematically used sexual violence in war, governance, and propaganda. In Iraq, it massacred thousands of Êzîdîs in the region of Şengal (Sinjar) and kidnapped and enslaved thousands of Êzîdî women and children. The Kurdistan freedom movement, which includes Êzîdî assemblies, consistently referred to the genocide also as femi(ni)cide. Moreover, thousands of Kurdish women died fighting against Daesh, mainly in Rojava. In Rojava, the ideas of imprisoned Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan around radical democracy, women’s liberation, and ecology have been implemented since 2012 (Dirik, 2021). The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria was built as an outcome of the Rojava Revolution. This internationally unrecognised self-governance structure claims women’s liberation as a pillar of its political system. In 2018, Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch in the Afrin region, and in 2019, it launched Operation Peace Spring in the area between Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ain in Northern Syria. Islamist militias trained, funded, and commanded by the Turkish army committed documented war crimes, including torturing, kidnapping, and killing of women (UN Human Rights Council, 2020). They circulated footage of mutilated and stripped bodies of Kurdish women fighters they killed. Prior to these operations, in 2015, the peace process between the Turkish state and the PKK had collapsed. Thousands of women, including prominent rights defenders, MPs, and mayors, were imprisoned by the state for “terrorism.”4 In this context, the Kurdish women’s liberation movement accused Turkey of leading a comprehensive “genocidal-feminicidal war,” often jointly with Islamist terror groups. The specific targeting of Kurdish women in war has been part of the Turkish state’s war conduct especially in the 1990s (Dirik, 2022). 394

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Within these conflicts, multiple triple femi(ni)cides on Kurdish women occurred: Sakine Cansız (a PKK co-founder); Fidan Doğan and Leyla Şaylemez in Paris (France) in 2013; Sêvê Demir, Fatma Uyar, and Pakize Nayır in Silopi (Turkey) in 2016; Zehra Berkel, Hebûn Mele Xelîl, and Amîna Weysî in Kobanê (Syria) in 2020. The first group was assassinated by an agent with the Turkish intelligence service right before the start of the peace process between the PKK and the Turkish state.5 The second group were civilians killed by the Turkish army during the urban war that erupted after the peace process collapsed. The third group died in a cross-border Turkish state drone strike on a women’s gathering in a civilian house in Kobanê.6 In the years that followed, groups of women continued to be killed in Turkey’s drone strikes on gatherings. Such developments were interpreted by the Kurdish women’s movement through its ideological analysis of patriarchy as a 5,000-year-old system related to the state. This view is presented by Öcalan, who refers to “capitalist modernity” as a 500-year-old rule of the nation-state, colonialism, positivism, ecocide, fascistic ideologies, and sexism (Öcalan, 2017). Within these trajectories, the movement locates a “war on women” as presenting the basis for all other kinds of oppression. The geography that overlaps with historical Upper Mesopotamia is understood as having a longue durée history of femi(ni)cide. Indeed, especially within the one-century-old history of the colonially imposed nation-state in the region, several episodes of large-scale, state-led violence can be examined through the lens of femi(ni)cide: the Armenian Genocide, the Seyfo (Ottoman-era genocide on Syriacs, Assyrians, and Chaldeans), genocidal massacres on the Kurds (especially in Turkey and Iraq), and Êzîdîs, a Kurdish-speaking faith-based community. The next section surveys documents published by the confederally organised Kurdish women’s liberation movement on femi(ni)cide and war. The selected dossiers and brochures were published in Iraq, Syria, and Europe between 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.7 They reflect the movement’s focused knowledge production in the aftermath of the aforementioned political developments and during a global momentum around the rise of gender-based violence, including femi(ni)cide, during the pandemic.8 These materials, available in different languages, were circulated by movement networks9 and accompanied by campaigns and (online) events. They only marginally refer to statistics, as government-produced data is widely seen as politicised, unreliable, or incomplete.10 Only occasionally appealing to states and international bodies for protection, they privilege society-led transformative justice approaches.

The Genocidal-Femi(ni)cidal State In 2020, the Kurdish Women’s Movement in Europe (TJK-E) launched the campaign “100 Reasons to Prosecute the Dictator,” highlighting stories of women, who were killed directly or indirectly by policies of the Turkish state under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. One hundred stories were showcased as representations of a widespread phenomenon. The main dossier (Figure 36.2) describes violence experienced by women, including femi(ni)cide “as part of a systematic destruction of women’s identity, free thought, will, creativity and self-determination.” The dossier builds on Latin American feminists’ elaboration on the role of the state and defines “feminicide as a comprehensive, structurally anchored war against women – both in armed conflicts and in everyday life. This war takes place on a physical, military level as well as on an ideological and psychological level” (p. 14). Consistent with the movement’s analysis of patriarchy and state as pillars of a 5,000-year-old civilisation of power, femi(ni)cide is defined as a system of governance, entangled with other forms of hierarchy and domination: From the beginning until today, the creation, implementation and maintenance of the patriarchal system of rule has been based on feminicide. Even the deepening of this first 395

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Figure 36.2 Front page and content table of the “100 Reasons” campaign main dossier titled “100 Reasons to Prosecute the Dictator: The Feminicidal Politics of Erdoğan and the AKP.”

relationship of oppression through colonialism, imperialism, capitalism and nationalism always used feminicide as one of its most powerful instruments. (p. 16) In women’s personage, the fabric of society gets targeted; the campaign thus links femi(ni)cide to both genocide and “societycide”: “Women are not (only) attacked as biological bodies, but as potential representatives of a society based on cooperation and care, justice and peace, community and sustainability, love and diversity.” Kurdish activists often express scepticism towards mainstream human rights approaches to violence in war. They criticise human rights reports for lacking theoretical depth, political analysis, and context. For instance, Turkey’s military operations forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands, yet the NATO country continues to be congratulated for hosting refugees. That extremist groups in Syria were trained, funded, or armed by countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, with the support of the US and European countries, is rarely pronounced internationally. The Western Asia–based Kurdish Women’s Relations Office (REPAK) published a dossier in 2020 (Figure 36.3) on the evolution of the conservative, authoritarian Justice and Development Party (AKP)’s “patriarchalfeminicidal policies.” It connects discrimination and violence against women in the Turkish government’s domestic policies to its regional militaristic and expansionist policies. The dossier centres complicity of institutions like NATO and the EU in femi(ni)cidal policies perpetrated by their allies. Complementing these publications, in November 2020, the term “political feminicide” was outlined in a joint brochure (Figure 36.4) by Kongreya Star, the umbrella grassroots women’s movement in Rojava, and Women Defend Rojava,11 an international campaign launched by the former in response to the Turkish invasions. 396

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Figure 36.3 Front page of Kurdish Women’s Relations Office (REPAK) dossier titled “The AKP’s War on Women: A dossier on the AKP government’s (hostile) policy towards women in Turkey.”

The selective killing of women who organize and take an active role in defending freedom is a widespread and systematic practice throughout the world and history. Hundreds of thousands of women have been murdered for their political thought and practice, and on many of these occasions, these crimes have been orchestrated by states and perpetrated by state military or police forces or by paramilitary groups, mercenaries or hitmen. (p. 14) 397

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Figure 36.4 Front page of Kongreya Star brochure titled “Political femicide: Systematized State assassination of politically organised women.”

The text gives (a.o.) Rosa Luxemburg, Marielle Franco, Berta Cáceres, the Mirabal sisters, and Meena Kashwar Kamal as examples of resisting women targeted by state or paramilitary agendas in Germany, Brazil, Honduras, Dominican Republic, and Afghanistan (pp. 15–16). Following the previously mentioned triple femi(ni)cide in June 2020 in a Turkish cross-border drone strike in the city of Kobanê, Kongreya Star presented political feminicide as key to the Turkish state’s occupation concept. One dossier (Figure 36.6) documents instances of femi(ni)cide and violence against women in Afrin. In one information brochure (Figure 36.5), one of the demands 398

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Figure 36.5 Front page of Kongreya Star information dossier, titled “The extra-legal execution of Kongr(ey)a Star activists on June 23rd in Helince village, Kobane.”

(in addition to ending drone warfare and occupation) is the “[o]fficial recognition of femicide as a crime against humanity, as well as clarification and condemnation of the femicide practices of states and allied mercenary groups” (p. 8).12 In January 2021, Saada al-Hermas, co-chair of Til El-Shayir Municipality Civil Council, and her deputy Hind al-Khedr were abducted, tortured, and murdered in the majority Arab region of Shaddadi, administered within the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. Daesh 399

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Figure 36.6 Front page of Kongreya Star dossier titled “Women under Turkish Occupation: Femicide and gender-based violence as systematic practice of the Turkish occupation in Afrin.”

claimed the assassinations. In its short report (Figure 36.7), Kongreya Star called these murders an attack to undermine civilian women’s struggle and solidarity: In this context, the targeted assassination of two Arab women who were organised in local structures of the Autonomous Administration aims to intimidate and discourage women from organising and fighting for their rights. It is a direct attack on the achievements of

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Figure 36.7 Front page of Kongreya Star report titled “They can’t break the free will of women: Political femicide of two local activists.”

women who have made decisive steps within society with their struggle against traditional patriarchal roles. (p. 4) The confederal, transborder nature of the wider movement is reflected in its femi(ni)cide-related efforts. One early anti-violence campaign within Turkey in the 2000s was “Jin jiyan e, jiyanê nekuje” (Woman is life, don’t kill life). Following Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring in October 2019, women’s

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Figure 36.8 Photo of a rally against the Turkish occupation. The large photos show Hevrin Khalaf, assassinated by the Turkish-backed Ahrar al-Sharqiya. The photo shows the logo of the Kongreya Star, with the slogan “Occupation Is Violence,” with photos of the Mirabal sisters and women murdered in the Turkish occupation. Source: Kongreya Star Twitter account

organisations launched a campaign with the same name across Northern Syria. The campaign connected war and occupation to the rise of violence against women, including child and forced marriage, domestic abuse, and femi(ni)cide. That year, Kurdish, Arab, Syriac, Assyrian, Chechen, and Turkmen women organised mass demonstrations in multiple cities on 25 November, International Day Against Violence against Women, with the slogan “Occupation Is Violence.” The common logo depicted women who were recently murdered in Turkey’s invasions, alongside the Mirabal sisters, who were executed by the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic (Figure 36.8). At the start of Turkey’s October 2019 military invasion, Hevrin Khalaf, spokeswoman of the Syrian Future Party, was executed by members of Ahrar al-Sharqiya, an Islamist militia allied with Turkey (Ibrahim et al., 2020). The day after the previously mentioned killing of Deniz Poyraz in Turkey in 2021, protests were coordinated across Northern Syria, explicitly framing these two deaths as feminicide-genocide. Among organisers were women’s assemblies and structures of Afrin residents displaced during Turkey’s 2018 invasion.

Self-Defence and Autonomy Using official data only occasionally, the movement’s discourse on femi(ni)cide rarely features words like “prevention,” “risk,” and “protection” (by state or formal bodies) but invokes ideas around self-determination, autonomy, and organised struggle to abolish patriarchy. One brochure prepared in 2020 by Kongreya Star and Women Defend Rojava “Self-defense: The Answer to GenderBased Violence” (Figure 36.9) references femi(ni)cidal practices in contexts like in Armenia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Nazi Germany, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Kurdistan, and territories of indigenous peoples, 402

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Figure 36.9 First three pages of Kongreya Star and Women Defend Rojava dossier titled “Self-Defence: The Answer to Gender Based Violence.”

calling for organised resistance against patriarchy. In 2020, to mark 25 November, the Êzîdî Women’s Umbrella Assembly (SMJÊ) called for women’s autonomous self-organisation to abolish violence (ANF, 2020a). In 2020, the Free Women’s Movement TJA mobilised the campaign “Em xwe diparezin” (We defend ourselves) across Kurdistan and Turkey. Traditionally, “martyrs of the women’s struggle” described guerrillas, politicians, and activists, who died in the political struggle. Recent developments widened the use, changing protest aesthetics: assassinated/executed political figures like Rosa Luxemburg, the Mirabal sisters, and Kurdish revolutionaries feature in statements and banners that condemn femi(ni)cides without apparent political motive (by family, partner, etc.). In July 2021, weeks after Poyraz’s murder in Turkey, the women’s movement in Northern Syria rallied around the two femi(ni)cides of girls. Eyde El-Seîdo was murdered by her family for attempting to run away with her boyfriend, while Aye Xelef was strangled to death by her father after her cousin raped her. Quickly, Kongreya Star rallied in multiple cities and towns. One representative statement said, “The mentality that murdered Aye and Eyde is the same one that murdered Hevrin and Deniz and that rapes/abuses women in the occupied areas” (ANHA, 2021). The movement’s anti-violence work is largely invisible to outsiders; it takes place through women’s assemblies, justice committees, and other social work, independent from the surrounding state. However, existing campaigns and protests are widely showcased in affiliated news agencies, TV channels, and newspapers in several dialects of Kurdish, as well as in Turkish, Arabic, Farsi, English, Spanish, and German. Guerrilla leaders, including men, mainstream women’s struggle into the wider liberation cause, by speaking of femi(ni)cide in interviews on political developments. The guerrilla-led umbrella organisation Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), based in the mountains, issued a call in 2019, on the fifth anniversary of the Daesh massacre on the Êzîdîs, to make 3 August the International Day Against Femi(ni)cide (ANF, 2019).

An Occasion for Transnational Struggle Since femi(ni)cide is not limited to one geography, it presents an occasion to “move beyond solidarity,” as Kurdish women’s organisations and activists advocate and to “build common struggle” (ANF, 2021b). In Rojava-Northern Syria, the struggle against femi(ni)cide created platforms among neighbouring communities to link patriarchy to ethnic, religious, or political oppression. Anti-femi(ni) cide work also opens international spaces to discuss the proposal of World Democratic Women’s Confederalism as a form of women’s grassroots democracy and internationalism. 403

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, Turkey issued a prison amnesty to control the spread. Among the released were men, who committed femi(ni)cides upon release.13 Political prisoners, including women’s rights defenders, were excluded from the amnesty. In response, the Kurdish women’s movement launched the Solidarity Keeps Us Alive campaign for women political prisoners, with groups and activists based in countries like Pakistan, Palestine, Egypt, Afghanistan, Morocco, Colombia, Tunisia, and the Philippines14. The campaign connected the imprisonment of women’s activists to ongoing global debates around femi(ni)cide as “the other pandemic.” To mark the first anniversary of the triple femi(ni)cide in Kobanê, the “Weaving for Life platform: Stop feminicide” international campaign launched in June 2021 in an online conference (ANF, 2021). Components of the Kurdish women’s movement were joined by nearly 300 individuals/organisations, mainly from Latin America, in a statement (ANF, 2021a) that included the following: All feminicide is political, it is a product of the relations of power and domination that the patriarchal system has established over the last 5,000 years. From then until now, the alliance of religion, state and military continues to subjugate the land, the people and the women. Meanwhile, the “100 Reasons” campaign collected 235,727 signatures from 25 November 2020 to 8 March 2021 to prosecute Erdoğan for femi(ni)cide. The first stages circulated information and gathered signatures. Future phases (currently unfolding) prepare the ground for a transnational women’s grassroots justice initiative to demand accountability for femi(ni)cides committed/enabled by state actors and to get femi(ni)cide recognised as a war crime under international law. At the time of writing, the Kurdish women’s movement is connecting with women’s rights defenders, feminist lawyers, and movements for the possibility of creating an international women’s tribunal against patriarchal actors, systems, and mentalities that perpetrate femi(ni)cide.

Conclusion The Kurdish women’s movement constructs a political-ideological discourse around a “war on women,” a 5,000-year-old continuum from the household to world politics. Adapted across sites, this refuses to compartmentalise violence against women even while treating the targeting of politically engaged women as a distinct phenomenon. Taken to the logical conclusion, fighting femi(ni) cide cannot be “surrendered” to the state. Instead, it is a long-term struggle to dismantle patriarchal domination through consciousness-raising within society, autonomous knowledge production, and transnational action. The movement aims to abolish, not reduce, violence and calls for worldwide autonomous women’s politics to make this happen. These perspectives reflect a worldwide trend in movements that seek justice through decolonisation and social-political transformation and outside of legal mechanisms monopolised by states. Future research on femi(ni)cide and war and forced migration should take seriously – not as metadata but as analysis – grassroots knowledge produced within struggles for justice against femi(ni)cide and other forms of violence and domination.

Notes 1 Except when citing others, I use “femi(ni)cide” to acknowledge wide feminist scholarship. 2 The use of “femicide” here is likely due to the English translation. Segato uses “feminicide” in Spanish. 3 The movement within the PKK’s four-decade-old struggle, organising along the ideas of Abdullah Öcalan. 4 For one report by the Peoples’ Democratic Party, see HDP, 2019. 5 For a news report from the time, see Vincour and Hudson, 2013. 6 For background, go to https://100-reasons.org.

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Femi(ni)cide as War as Femi(ni)cide 7 I contributed to some campaigns described here. My activism shapes my scholarly representation of the issue. I therefore encourage critical engagement. 8 One “mainstream” report was issued by UN Women: Majumdar and Wood, 2020. 9 Downloadable on the respective websites and in https://100-reasons.org. 10 Countries in West Asia do not usually track femi(ni)cide. 11 More information on the campaign website: https://womendefendrojava.net. 12 Kurdish women’s organisations prefer “feminicide.” Inconsistencies are usually due to amateur translations. 13 In one tragic case, a man, jailed for stabbing his wife, murdered his nine-year-old daughter upon his release. 14 More information on the campaign website: https://solidaritykeepsusalive.wordpress.com.

References ANF (2020a, November 25). Yazidi women: Only we can protect ourselves!. Retrieved from https://anfenglish.com/women/yazidi-women-only-we-can-protect-ourselves-48216 ANF (2019, August 02). KCK: August 3 should be recognized as Day Against Femicide. Retrieved from https://anfenglish.com/features/kck-august-3-should-be-recognized-as-day-against-femicide-36668 ANF (2021, June 23). Weaving for Life holds online panel against political femicide. Retrieved from https:// anfenglish.com/women/weaving-for-life-holds-online-panel-against-political-femicide-52973 ANF (2021a, May 11). Weaving ourselves for life: Stopping feminicides. Retrieved from https://anfenglish. com/women/weaving-ourselves-for-life-stopping-feminicides-51971 ANF (2021b, May 22). REPAK member Çiçek: Femicide must be fought in an organized way worldwide. Retrieved from https://anfenglish.com/women/repak-member-Cicek-femicide-must-be-fought-in-anorganized-way-worldwide-52230 ANHA (2021, July 06). “Zihniyeta ku Aye û Eyde qetil kiriye heman zihniyeta ku Hevrîn û Deniz qetil kiriye”. Retrieved from https://hawarnews.com/kr/haber/zihniyeta-ku-aye-eyde-qetil-kiriye-heman-zihniyetaku-hevrn-deniz-qetil-kiriye-h48420.html Briddick, C. (2020). Combatting or enabling domestic violence? Evaluating the residence rights of migrant victims of domestic violence in Europe. International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 69, 1013–1034. https:// doi.org/10.1017/S0020589320000317 Corradi, C., Marcuello-Servós, C., Boira, S., & Weil, S. (2016). Theories of femicide and their significance for social research, Current Sociology, 64(7), 975–995. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392115622256 Cullen, P., Dawson, M., Price, J. & Rowlands, J. (2021). Intersectionality and invisible victims: Reflections on data challenges and vicarious trauma in femicide, family and intimate partner homicide research. Journal of Family Violence, 36, 619–628. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-020-00243-4 Cumes, A. E. (2021). Sexual Violence in the Genocide of the Mayan People in Guatemala. In S. Federici, L. Mason-Deese & S. Draper (Eds.). Feminicide and Global Accumulation: Frontline Struggles to resist the Violence of Patriarchy and Capitalism (pp. 74–88). Common Notions. Derderian, K. (2005). Common fate, different experience: Gender-specific aspects of the Armenian genocide, 1915–1917. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 19(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dci001 Dirik, D. (2021). Stateless citizenship: ‘radical democracy as consciousness-raising’ in the Rojava revolution, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. https://doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2021.1970978 Dirik, D. (2022). The Kurdish Women’s Movement: History, Theory, Practice. London: Pluto Press. Eisenstein, Z.R. (2007). Sexual Decoys: Gender, Race and War in Imperial Democracy. London: Bloomsbury. Enloe, C.H. (2000). Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Ercan, S. A. (2015). Creating and sustaining evidence for “failed multiculturalism”: The case of “honor killing” in Germany. American Behavioral Scientist, 59(6), 658–678. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764215568988 Ertan, N. (2021, June 17). Gunman kills woman volunteering for Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party. Al-Monitor. Retrieved from www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/06/gunman-kills-woman-volunteering-turkeyspro-kurdish-party/ Federici, S., Mason-Deese, L., & Draper, S. (2021). Feminicide and Global Accumulation: Frontline Struggles to resist the Violence of Patriarchy and Capitalism. Common Notions. Federici, S. (2004). Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body, and Primitive Accumulation. London: Autonomedia. Fregoso, R-L., & Bejarano, C. (2010). Introduction: A cartography of feminicide in the Américas. In R.L Fregoso & C. Bejarano (Eds.), Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas (pp. 1–42). Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822392644

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Dilar Dirik Gaca, K. (2011). Girls, women, and the significance of sexual violence in ancient warfare. In E. Heineman (Ed.), Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones: From the Ancient World to the Era of Human Rights (pp. 73–88). University of Pennsylvania Press. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812204346.73 Gerwarth, R. (2011). Sexual and nonsexual violence against “politicized women” in Central Europe after the great war. In E. Heineman (Ed.), Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones: From the Ancient World to the Era of Human Rights (pp. 122–136). University of Pennsylvania Press. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812204346.122 Ghafournia, N. (2011). Battered at home, played down in policy: Migrant women and domestic violence in Australia. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 16(3), 207–213. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2011.02.009 Grzyb, M., Naudi, M., & Marcuello-Servós, C. (2018). Femicide definitions. In S. Weil, C. Corradi & M. Naudi (Eds.), Femicide across Europe: Theory, Research and Prevention (pp. 17–32). Policy Press (University of Bristol). https://doi.org/10.51952/9781447347163.ch002 Hedgepeth, S.M., & Saidel, R.G. (2010), Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust. Brandeis University Press. Heineman, E. (Ed.). (2011). Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones: From the Ancient World to the Era of Human Rights. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Ibrahim, N., Garthwaite, R., Ganguly, M., & Khalili, M. (2020, January 13). Hevrin Khalaf: Death of a peacemaker. BBC. Retrieved from www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-middle-east-51068522 Kamp, M. (2011). Femicide as terrorism: The case of Uzbekistan’s unveiling murders. In E. Heineman (Ed.), Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones: From the Ancient World to the Era of Human Rights (pp. 56–70). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812204346.56 Khalid, M. (2011). Gender, orientalism and representations of the ‘other’ in the war on terror. Global Change, Peace & Security, 23(1), 15–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/14781158.2011.540092 Kolmasova, S., & Krulisova, K. (2019). Legitimizing military action through “rape-as-a-weapon” discourse in Libya: Critical feminist analysis. Politics & Gender, 15(1), 130–50. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S1743923X18000326 Lagarde y De Los Ríos, M. (2010). Feminist keys for understanding feminicide: Theoretical, political, and legal construction. In R.L. Fregoso & C. Bejarano (Eds.), Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas (pp. xi–xxv). Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822392644 Lokot, M. (2019). Challenging sensationalism: Narratives on rape as a weapon of war in Syria. International Criminal Law Review, 19(5), 844–871. https://10.1163/15718123-01906001 Majumdar, S., & Wood, G. (2020). UNTF EVAW briefing note on the impact of COVID-19 on violence against women through the lens of Civil Society and Women’s Rights Organizations. New York: UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women. Retrieved from https://www2.unwomen.org/-/media/field%20 office%20untf/publications/2020/external%20brief/impact%20of%20covid-19_v08_single%20page-compressed.pdf?la=en&vs=2705 Meger, S. (2016). The fetishization of sexual violence in international security. International Studies Quarterly, 60(1), 149–159. https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqw003 Myadar, O., & Davidson, R.A. (2021). Remembering the ‘comfort women’: geographies of displacement, violence and memory in the Asia-Pacific and beyond. Gender, place and culture: a journal of feminist geography, 28(3), 347–369. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2020.1715351 Öcalan, A. (2017). The Political Thought of Abdullah Öcalan Kurdistan, Woman’s Revolution and Democratic Confederalism. PlutoPress. HDP (2019, February). Report on Turkey’s prisons. Retrieved from https://hdp.org.tr/en/report-onturkeys-prisons/12900/ Radford, J., & Russell, D.E.H. (1992). Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing. Twayne Publishers. Ramji-Nogales, J. (2011). Questioning hierarchies of harm: Women, forced migration, and international criminal law. International Criminal Law Review, 11(3), 463–476. https://doi.org/10.1163/157181211X576366 Russell, D.E.H., & Harmes, R.A. (Eds.). (2001). Femicide in Global Perspective. Teachers College Press. Segato, R. L. (2016). Patriarchy from margin to Center: Discipline, territoriality, and cruelty in the apocalyptic phase of capital. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 115(3), 615–624. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-3608675 Segato, R. L. (2018). A Manifesto in four themes. Critical Times, 1(1), 198–211. https://doi. org/10.1215/26410478-1.1.198 Seifert, R. (1996). The second front: the logic of sexual violence in wars. Women’s Studies International Forum, 19(1–2), 35–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-5395(95)00078-X Sharlach, L. (2000). Rape as genocide: Bangladesh, the former Yogoslavia and Rwanda. New Political Science, 22, 89–102. https://doi.org/10.1080/713687893 Shalhoub-Kevorkian, N. (2003). Reexamining femicide: Breaking the silence and crossing “scientific” borders. Signs, 28(2), 581–608. https://doi.org/10.1086/342590

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Femi(ni)cide as War as Femi(ni)cide Shalhoub-Kevorkian, N., & Daher-Nashif, S. (2013). Femicide and colonization: Between the politics of exclusion and the culture of control. Violence against Women, 19(3), 295–315. https://doi. org/10.1177/1077801213485548 Sjoberg, L. (2013). Gendering global conflict: Toward a feminist theory of war. University of Columbia Press. UN Human Rights Council (2020, August 14). Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic. Retrieved from https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/ GEN/G20/210/90/PDF/G2021090.pdf Vincour, N., & Hudson, A. (2013, April 16) Special Report: In Paris Kurd killings, a suspect and a mystery. Reuters. Retrieved from www.reuters.com/article/us-france-kurds-specialreport-idINBRE93F08C20130416 Walsh, S.D., & Menjívar, C. (2016). “What guarantees do we have?” Legal tolls and persistent impunity for feminicide in Guatemala. Latin American Politics and Society, 58(4), 31–55. https://doi.org/10.1111/laps.12001

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PART 6

Legal Responses to Femicide and Feminicide

37 FEMICIDE/FEMINICIDE AND LEGISLATION Patsilí Toledo Vásquez

Introduction The political use of the category femicide/feminicide by feminist activism has had various levels and social impacts in diverse countries and regions. Latin America has been the region where its use and influence has reached probably its highest point, leading many countries to engage in legal reforms to acknowledge femicide/feminicide as a specific criminal offence. Since 2007, diverse forms of gender-based killings of women have been specifically introduced in the criminal law in most Latin American countries. While several countries in other regions, often propelled by international human rights treaties, have adopted legal provisions to deal with gender-based violence against women, including killings of women, those provisions tend to be gender-neutral, mostly focusing on intimate partner violence and/or sexual violence committed against any person irrespective of their gender. On the contrary, the distinctiveness of femicide/feminicide as a gender-specific offence – that is, only applicable to cases in which the victim is a woman – has prompted legal responses that acknowledge the particular characteristics of gender-based violence against women. This chapter briefly presents some of the recent developments on legal responses to genderbased killings of women, with emphasis on those using the category femicide/feminicide. Analysing the characteristics and limitations of these legislations, it outlines the normative panorama on the enactment and application of these crimes, a trend that has gone beyond Latin America and, more interestingly, beyond criminal law.

I  Political Meanings Versus Legal Definitions The public visibility of femicide/feminicide in Latin America started with the conjunction of feminist theoretical production and increasing feminist mobilisations around some of these crimes. The influential publications on femicide by Diana Russell in the early 1990s1 and their use by prominent Latin American feminists2 were combined with the growing social impact and mobilisation around high profile cases of gender-based killings of women. The social concern about cases such as those occurring in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, characterised by outrage and impunity and internationally denounced since the mid-1990s,3 was intensified by the wider social distress about organised crime and armed violence in some countries. Regional and international mobilisations around those crimes was an example of the strength and coordination of the feminist movement in Latin America,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-43

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also manifestly expressed in the adoption of the Belem do Pará Convention in 1994, the first binding instrument on gender-based violence against women.4 Such violence was already a serious concern for Latin American feminists who, for example, had declared 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women in 19815 and had set it as a priority in their common agenda and networking (Molyneux and Lazar, 2003; Lau, 2006; Toledo, 2015). The impact of this coordinated activism grew with the visibility of femicides/feminicides as extreme forms of gender-based violence against women in diverse countries especially since the early 2000s, and it was expressed in the legislation criminalising them since 2007. Despite the word “femicide” had been used by some authors by the early 1990s,6 the concept developed by Russell – that is, referring to “the misogynist killing of women by men” (Radford and Russell, 1992) – motivated its translation and use by Latin American activists and scholars as femicidio and feminicidio. The latter concept, however, had an additional element in the definition provided by Lagarde (2005): a reference to the impunity of the crimes, to state responsibility, as this was a particular element that characterised crimes such as those in Ciudad Juárez and other countries and regions. This diverse meaning was later rejected by Russell (2012), but Carcedo (2010), instead, proposed a differentiated use of both concepts, keeping the expression feminicidio for the femicide cases in which there was impunity, and femicide to all others. The laws that have criminalised femicide/feminicide in the region, however, have used both terms indistinctly, as an individual crime, with no reference to impunity nor state responsibility. Unsurprisingly, through these laws, the states have removed, in particular, the specific political meaning of feminicide, displacing the focus of the attention away from the state’s responses towards merely individual actions and responsibility (Toledo, 2018). In other regions, the use of the expressions femicide/feminicide by feminist activists notably varies among countries. In Europe, the use of these expressions is quite extended in those countries that have received the influence of Latin American – in particular, Mexican- feminist theories and activism. Italy and Spain are among these countries, where feminists and researchers tend to use the expression feminicide (and not femicide) to refer to gender-based killings of women. In other European countries and in English-speaking countries, the concept used is femicide (Weil, Corradi and Naudi, 2018) or its translation, such as femizide in Germany (Heppner and Çelebi, 2020).

II  Diversity in Femicide/Feminicide and Gender-Based Killings of Women Legislations Criminalising Gender-Based Killings Several European and Latin American countries, even in the second half of the 20th century, punished the killing of the adulterous wife by her husband – that is, committed for gender reasons – with mitigated sentences, as it was considered a form of “honour crime.”7 The criminalisation of femicide/feminicide in Latin America, in contrast, has granted these crimes the consideration of aggravated homicide, leading to higher penalties than those for simple forms of homicide. Still, the Latin American criminalisation trend has some precedents. For example, dowry-related killings of women were specifically criminalised in India in 19868 before the widespread use of the concept of femicide.9 This offence, however, is restrictive to certain family relationships as well as the type and endurance of violence employed against the victim. On the contrary, femicide/ feminicide as criminalised in Latin American countries tends to encompass diverse forms of genderbased killings. Other countries have included gender-related elements in aggravating circumstances that apply not only to crimes against women but against any person and not only to homicide but also to other 412

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offences. Some European countries have included gender-related aggravating circumstances applicable to all crimes and in gender-neutral terms (i.e. that apply not only to women victims/survivors) to comply with the provisions of the Istanbul Convention requiring the introduction of diverse aggravating circumstances in the states parties’ internal law.10 These mostly refer to the existence of intimate or family relations between the perpetrator and the victim. For example, the Austrian Penal Code was modified to aggravate the punishment of offenders who commit violent acts against family members and/or (ex-)partners, if the offender was living with the victim at the time of the act or abused a position of authority concerning the victim.11 The Netherlands also aggravates homicide and serious bodily harm if the offence is committed against the perpetrator’s mother, legal father, spouse, life partner, child, a child over whom he or she exercises parental authority, or a child whom he or she cares for or is bringing up as part of his or her family.12 Several countries consider as an aggravated offence the killing after a sexual crime committed against the victim.13 In other countries, the killing of a pregnant woman is an aggravated offence.14 An interesting step beyond was given in Spain, after its ratification of the Istanbul Convention in 2014, reforming the Penal Code in 201515 to expand the existing aggravating circumstance for committing a crime for discriminatory motives, to include those committed “for gender reasons” (por razón de género).16 Before 2015, the Penal Code included a general aggravating circumstance (i.e. for all crimes) for offences committed with discriminatory motivation.17 That provision already encompassed discrimination based on the sex of the victim, in similar terms as those foreseen in other penal codes in Europe, such as the Belgian Penal Code,18 as well as other discriminatory motives, including those based on the victim’s gender identity and sexual orientation. While the 2004 Spanish legislation on gender-based violence against women had included criminal law provisions that aggravated the punishment of certain crimes of gender-based violence,19 it was restricted to intimate partner violence against women and only applied to relatively “minor” offences, such as injuries, mistreatment, threats, and coercion. Notably, sexual crimes and homicides were excluded from such aggravation.

Expanding the Understanding of Gender-Based Killings The 2015 reform of the Spanish Penal Code heightens the punishment of gender-based killings of women, although the new aggravating circumstance is not restricted to killings, nor killings of women, as far as they are related to gender-based violence against women. Remarkably, this aggravating circumstance has built on the previous gender-specific legislation of 2004, expanding the scope and understanding of gender-based violence against women. The aggravation “for gender reasons” has been applied mostly to cases of homicide and murder of women (including attempted homicide/murder), but it is also being applied to cases of illegal detention, sexual assault, coercion, threats, and injuries. And while initially there was some controversy with the use of this aggravation to cases beyond intimate partner violence against women, the Spanish Supreme Tribunal has made clear that the protection provided by this new aggravating circumstance was wider than for intimate partner violence victims.20 For example, it has been applied to cases in which the victim was a woman unknown to the perpetrator21 or to the case of a man who killed another man, just because the latter was talking to the former’s ex-girlfriend.22 In this last case, the court explicitly points out that the man victim of the homicide was a victim “for gender reasons” because of the domination exercised by the perpetrator over his ex-girlfriend. So despite being a gender-neutral aggravating circumstance, in terms that apply to any victim irrespective of their gender, it allows for an expanded understanding of gender-based violence against women and its role in a diversity of crimes. Likewise, this circumstance provides for an expansion with respect to the range of possible victims of gender-based crimes that coincides with notions developed by Latin American feminist activists 413

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and theoreticians who have acknowledged that femicide victims were not limited to women directly targeted by an attacker. Carcedo and Sagot (2002), for example, defined as “femicide by connection” (femicidio por conexión) the cases of women who were killed “in the line of fire” of a man trying to kill a woman, including female relatives, girls or other women who tried to intervene or were simply caught in the action of the killer. Although these authors restricted the notion of femicide by connection to female victims (to make visible the number of women victims of male violence), the development of the notion of “linked femicide” (femicidio vinculado) in Argentina by civil society organisations, intended to expand it to make visible also the cases of children killed by their mother’s abuser as a form of punishment (Toledo, 2014). Later, this concept gained legal recognition in Argentina, with the aggravation of gender-based killings of women in 2012, which included the aggravation of homicides committed to cause suffering to a person with whom the perpetrator had or had had an intimate relationship.23 Similar concepts have been used by activists in other countries to point out those crimes.24

Latin American Variety in Femicide/Feminicide Laws The criminalisation of femicide/feminicide in Latin American countries has been, on the contrary, mainly characterised by a focus on women victims.25 Beyond this aspect, there are significant differences among Latin American legislations. In some countries, such as Chile, criminalisation of femicide/feminicide is limited to criminal law provisions, with no accompanying gender-specific legal provisions on the broader public policies needed to adequately address them. Many countries, on the contrary, have included the criminalisation of femicide/feminicide within or along with comprehensive laws on gender-based violence against women. Such laws have been called “integral” or comprehensive laws because, together with criminalising diverse forms of gender-based violence against women, they also comprise diverse institutional measures in the areas of prevention, protection, access to justice, and reparations to women victims/survivors. Considering only the crime of femicide/feminicide, the penal provisions diverge in multiple aspects,26 including the name of the offence (femicide or feminicide), the factors considered to its configuration (objective and/or subjective elements), aggravating circumstances, punishment, etc. While all femicide/feminicide laws criminalise some killings of women, the elements introduced to define which killings are included considerably vary among countries. Those diverse gender-related elements, in addition to the act of killing or causing the death of a woman, include the type of relationship between victim and perpetrator (especially intimate partners), existence of previous violence committed by the perpetrator (in particular, domestic or sexual violence), characteristics of the killing and related acts (for example, type of injuries or body parts affected), characteristics of the victim (including, for example, their pregnancy, certain occupations, their age and other “vulnerabilities”), or other circumstances (the killing being committed in front of the victim’s children is one of the most frequent). Some legislations also require a specific mental state of the perpetrator – such as misogyny, hatred, or contempt for the victim because of her gender or any other motive related to their gender-, that the crime is committed because the victim is a woman or for gender-related reasons, or that there is a context of unequal power relations between men and women, for example. These broader elements have usually not been further defined, which is not only conflicting with traditional criminal law restrictive interpretation but also leading to difficulties in their application (Díaz Castillo et al., 2019). Often the factors considered do not imply, per se, that the crime is gender-based, and their inclusion in the laws seems to respond to the social impact of certain crimes. This happens, for example, when laws consider it as femicide/feminicide whenever a woman killed was in a “vulnerable situation” or her body was left exposed in a public place. Though those crimes might be gender-based, 414

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the sole existence of such factors (for example, the fact of being a woman with a disability) does not necessarily imply that the killing was gender-based or that it was committed because she was a woman. The fact that a victim is pregnant and that the crime is committed in front of a woman’s children are also among these factors, probably related to the traditional consideration of a woman’s value in relation to her maternity. In cases of shootings affecting several people, for instance, often in the context of organised crime, singling out some of the crimes as femicides/feminicides and others as simply homicides, does not contribute to the understanding of the gender-based elements that should define these crimes. Some noteworthy legislations, as in Argentina,27 have expanded the criminalisation of genderbased killings to aggravate not only those committed against women “by men through gender-based violence” – named by the doctrine and activism as femicide – but also those committed because of hatred based on gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression of the victim, as well as those against intimate partners and other family members (in gender-neutral terms) and the alreadymentioned killings committed with the intention of causing suffering to a current or former intimate partner. These wide provisions make it relatable that this is the only country in the region that did not use the expression femicide nor feminicide in the text of the law that aggravated these crimes. More interestingly, the killings motivated by hatred based on gender identity or expression of the victim are named in Argentina as travesticidios or transfemicidios, expressions used not only by activists but also by jurisprudence28 and at the institutional level,29 in coherence with its overall pioneering gender identity legislation.30 Other countries, such as Chile, include these crimes within the definition of femicide.31 On the opposite trend, however, feminicide, as defined in Brazil, has explicitly intended to exclude transgender women from its application by stating that the crime has to be committed against a woman “for reasons of being female” (contra a mulher por razões da condição de sexo feminino).32 In general terms, the criminal law approach of femicide/feminicide legislation has favoured a view that, by focusing on gender, obscures the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination affecting the victims. While multiple reports show, for example, how immigrant women are overrepresented among femicide/feminicide victims (Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación, 2021; Observatorio Feminicidios Colombia, 2021) or the disproportionate share of black women among those victims of killings in countries such as Brazil (Cerqueira et al., 2021), these factors remain largely invisible in the text of femicide/feminicide laws.

III  Towards a Model Legislation on Femicide/Feminicide Being impunity one of the main concerns in relation to femicide/feminicide cases in some Latin American countries, the adequate investigation of these crimes has been the focus of international initiatives (OHCHR/UN Women, 2014). Despite efforts, difficulties in the identification and investigation of these crimes still prevail. For example, in 2020, only 25.3% of all killings of women in Mexico were investigated as feminicides.33 This is related to the complexities of these varying legal figures34 and the pervasiveness of discriminatory or otherwise inadequate investigations. Many of these problems are widespread also in other Latin American countries, where stereotyped judicial views are expressed even in the cases in which there are “successful” sentences in femicide/feminicide cases (Toledo, 2018). To address these problems, the Follow-up Mechanism to the Belém do Pará Convention (MESECVI, according to its acronym in Spanish) elaborated a Model Law on femicide/femicide, to promote the adoption of this type of laws by those countries that have not yet done so.35 It is also aimed at promoting the update of existing legislation that, in several cases, is restricted to criminal law provisions, overlooking the wider state’s obligations to eradicate gender-based violence against women foreseen in the Convention – that is, prevention, protection, investigation, and providing reparations. 415

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The Inter-American Model Law on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of GenderRelated Killings of Women and Girls (Femicide/Feminicide)36 – hereinafter, the Model Law – was approved in December 2018. It includes provisions concerning prevention of femicide/feminicide, protection of victims/survivors and their families (in particular, children), investigation and punishment of femicide/feminicide and related conducts, and provisions on reparations to victims and survivors. Intersectionality, women’s autonomy and a victim-/survivor-centred approach are some of the guiding principles of the Model Law, innovative and substantive aspects that surpass most of the laws on femicide/feminicide in the region. Regarding criminalisation of femicide/feminicide, the Model Law opts for the creation of a separated offence (instead of an aggravating factor), keeps both denominations femicide/feminicide and acknowledges their equivalent use in the region, and specifically states that the perpetrator has to be a man.37 It lists several gender-related elements that should be present in the killing of a woman to become a femicide/feminicide, most of them based on those already recognised in various laws in the region (intimate partner or family relationship, cases in which the perpetrator has intended to establish an intimate relationship with the victim, the existence of previous violence even when not reported, committing the crime because of the woman’s pregnancy, etc.). It also includes the crimes committed as a form of preventing or obstructing the political rights of the victim or other women. This provision is relevant considering that three-quarters of the global total of murders of human rights defenders, many of them women, have occurred in Latin America, mainly related to the protection of the environment, land, and indigenous rights, as well as transgender women activists who have been murdered (Front Line Defenders, 2021). The Model Law also recommends the criminalisation of wrongful death due to denial of access to abortion in the event of a life-threatening risk for the woman, “feminicidal suicide” (to punish induction or suicide aid in cases in which there was previous violence against the woman), and the obstruction of access to justice in cases of femicide/feminicide. Diverse aggravating circumstances are also included in the Model Law, related to characteristics of the victim (being deprived of liberty, being in a situation of vulnerability, being a girl or an elderly woman), of the perpetrator (being a state agent or taking advantage of a relation of trust, family, authority, or other with the victim), or of the crime (committed in presence of children or ascendants or descendants of the victim or committed using certain forms of violence or injuries). Importantly, the Model Law states that defences or mitigation factors based on the provocation by the victim (honour, jealousy, cultural beliefs, customs, etc.) should not be applied in the crimes of femicide/feminicide. The Model Law also contemplates a series of guiding principles for the investigation and prosecution, such as non-revictimisation, use of evidentiary standards free of gender stereotypes and prejudices, cultural appropriateness, and so on. It underlines that all investigations on women’s killings should be initiated considering it as a probable femicide/feminicide and any previous violence suffered by the victim should be investigated, even in absence of reporting, in all cases. Despite being aimed at harmonising and expanding the legislative framework on femicide/feminicide in the region and being the result of an explicit requirement by the states’ parties to the Convention,38 the Model Law is still far from reaching the expected impact. More than four years after its approval, it is not yet widely known in the region. The Model Law has been used in the reform of femicide legislation in Chile, which led to the expansion of the offence to cover diverse types of femicide beyond intimate partners (Sepúlveda, 2020), the Chilean legislation on femicide continues to be reduced to criminal law provisions. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be exceptional, as, in the last few years, the initiatives for reforming laws on femicide/feminicide in Latin America have been focused on criminal aspects: increasing punishment,39 broadening of the offence,40 or improvement of criminal investigations.41

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IV  Femicide/Feminicide Beyond Criminal Law The expanded focus on non-penal provisions in the areas of protection, reparations, and prevention is, as mentioned, one of the characteristics of the Model Law. It envisages diverse protection measures for victims/survivors, including persons dependent on the victim, precautionary measures, and measures to ensure their access to justice. It emphasises the victims’ right to a comprehensive reparation, which should be transformative and provide for guarantees of non-repetition, recommending the creation of reparations funds. It also refers to public policies on prevention, containing several measures ranging from data collection, judicial information, coordination, protocols, capacity building, and training to the regulation of possession and use of firearms, together with measures aimed at awareness-raising and public information. These types of measures, in some countries, are part of comprehensive legislation on gender-based violence against women but are often absent in femicide/feminicide laws in Latin America. Interestingly, a piece of legislation publicly known as the law on feminicide (legge sul femminicidio) was passed in Italy in 2013.42 Though it did not create any crime named femicide/feminicide, it provides for several measures aimed at combating gender-based violence, including the aggravation of several crimes (including crimes against life and safety and sexual crimes) whenever they are committed against a pregnant person or against a person with whom the perpetrator has had any intimate relationship, even without cohabitation. However, despite the provisions of the Italian law on feminicide being applied in practice mostly to women victims or survivors of gender-based violence, the law is gender-neutral in all its terms – that is, it is not specifically applicable to cases of gender-based violence against women. More remarkably, in late 2020 the concept of feminicide was introduced in the Catalonian legislation,43 defined as “the murders and homicides of women on the grounds of gender, inductions to suicide and suicides as a result of pressure and violence against women.”44 This legislation is not criminal law, as autonomous communities in Spain have no penal competence, but legislation focused on the rights of victims/survivors and on the obligations of public services and institutions towards them. While the practical consequences of the introduction of the concept of feminicide in the Catalonian legislation are yet to be seen, its inclusion goes in the same line of non-penal provisions, displacing the emphasis from individual perpetrators to state responsibility and obligations (in this case, at the autonomous level) to adequately respond and eradicate gender-based violence against women.

V Conclusion Despite the criminalisation of femicide/feminicide having been a legislative trend in Latin American countries for more than a decade, insufficient or inadequate state responses are still frequent in many countries, and impunity remains a serious concern in some of them, like Mexico.45 Criminalisation could have reached its impact in some cases, but it is insufficient. Recent developments, such as the Model Law on femicide/feminicide, with its focus on broad measures not limited to criminal responses, clearly express that women’s killings need to be understood and addressed within comprehensive policies on gender-based violence against women. Although this seems obvious, it has not been the case in many Latin American countries where criminal legislation has been presented as the main state response to femicide/feminicide for almost two decades. Together with the recent legislation in Catalonia, these instruments somehow give a new turn in the political and legal understanding of femicide/feminicide: from its criminalisation as an “ordinary crime” and focus on individual criminal responsibility to the focus on the state’s responses, strengthening the public institutions’ accountability. In this sense, these recent normative examples show that

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the concepts of femicide/feminicide still have the potential for promoting legal reform that could positively impact the state responses to gender-based violence against women.

Notes 1 Caputi and Russell, 1990; Radford and Russell, 1992. 2 Such as Marcela Lagarde, Julia Monárrez, Ana Carcedo, Montserrat Sagot, and Rita Segato, among others (Toledo, 2014). 3 See, for example, the 2005 Report on Mexico produced by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women under article 8 of the Optional Protocol to the Convention (UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, 2005) and the 2009 Judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the Case of González et al. (“Cotton Field”) v. Mexico (Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 2009). 4 Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence Against Women (OAS, 1994). 5 During the first Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encuentro in Bogotá, Colombia, it was declared as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women by the UN General Assembly in 2000 (A/RES/54/134). 6 For example, Stout, 1989, and Gartner and McCarthy, 1991. 7 Formally removed, for example, in 1963 in Spain and 1981 in Italy (Toledo, 2014). However, this type of defence, disguised under the “provocation defence,” has remained in use even in the 21st century, although using gender-neutral terms (i.e. not exclusively for the killing of women) (Howe, 2019). 8 Indian Penal Code, section 304B. 9 See, for example, Van Willigen and Channa, 1991. 10 Art. 46 of the Council of Europe (2011) Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention). 11 §33 para. 2 and 3 StGB. This reform to the Penal Code entered into force on 1 January 2016. 12 Section 304 of the Dutch Criminal Code. 13 For example, Spain, Art. 140 of the Penal Code; Russian Federation, Criminal Code, article 105(2)(j); Canada, Criminal Code, section 230; Italy, Penal Code, article 576(5.1). 14 Croatia, Criminal Code, article 111(2); France, Penal Code, article 221–4(3); Russian Federation, Criminal Code, article 105(2)(d); Turkey, Penal Code, article 82(f). 15 Organic Law 1/2015 of 30 March modifies Organic Law 10/1995 of 23 November of the Penal Code. 16 Art. 22 of the Spanish Penal Code states, “The following are aggravating circumstances: . . . 4. Committing the crime for racist, anti-Semitic or other types of discrimination regarding the ideology, religion or beliefs of the victim, the ethnic group, race or nation to which they belong, their sex, orientation or sexual identity, gender reasons, the disease they suffer from or their disability” (emphasis added). 17 Art. 22.4 of the Spanish Penal Code. 18 Art. 405 quarter of the Belgian Criminal Code. 19 Organic Law 1/2004 of 28 December on Comprehensive Protection Measures Against Gender Violence. 20 See, for example, STS 99/2019, 26 de Febrero de 2019. 21 For example, Sentencia 121/2019, de 16 de abril, de la Sección 4ª de la Audiencia Provincial de Valladolid. 22 Sentencia 6/2021, de 21 de enero, de la Sección 1ª de la Audiencia Provincial de Gipuzkoa. 23 Art. 80 No. 11 of the Argentinian Penal Code, modified by Law 26.791 of 11 December 2012. 24 In Chile, for example, the Chilean Network on Violence Against Women has used the expression “femicidal punishment” to refer to people with a family or emotional bond with the woman victim/survivor who were murdered by the killer in order to psychically punish or destroy the woman (Santana and Astudillo, 2014). 25 As it has been previously mentioned, some laws on femicide/feminicide – as the case of Argentina – have included provisions related to crimes which victims are other than a woman. 26 For a list (in English) of the varied elements included in the diverse legal definitions, see Carrigan & Dawson (2020). 27 Law 26.791, 11 December 2012. 28 As the 2018 judgement in the notorious case of the killing of the travesti activist Diana Sayacán (Pizzi and Saralegui, 2018). 29 For example, the Decree 123/2021 of 21 February 2021, which creates the “Federal Council for Preventing and Addressing Femicides, Travesticides and Transfemicides.”

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Femicide/Feminicide and Legislation 30 Argentina was the first country in the world to allow trans people change their legal gender without requiring a judge’s permission or medical interventions, in 2012. 31 Art. 390 ter No. 4 of the Chilean Penal Code, as reformed by the Law No. 21.212 of 4 March 2020. 32 Art. 121 § 2, VI of the Brazilian Penal Code, as modified by Law No 13.104 of 9 March 2015. 33 Only 946 cases were investigated as feminicide and 2,795 as homicide (Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública de México, 2021). 34 The crime of feminicide is defined and punished differently in the diverse Mexican states. 35 Of the state parties to the Convention, only Latin American countries have laws on femicide/feminicide, while similar legislation has not been adopted in the Caribbean region, with the only exception of the Dominican Republic. 36 The Model Law was approved at the XV Meeting of the Committee of Experts of the MESECVI, in December 2018, and was officially launched on 15 March 2019. Available at www.oas.org/es/mesecvi/ docs/leymodelofemicidio-en.pdf. 37 In diverse Latin American legislations, perpetrators can also be women, having a disproportionate impact on lesbian women (Toledo, 2014). 38 The drafting of the Model Law was requested to the Technical Secretariat of the MESECVI by the Sixth Conference of States Parties to the Belem do Para Convention, in October 2015 (OEA, 2015). 39 For example, in Mexico (Forbes Staff, February 18, 2020) and Honduras (Proceso Digital, 11 May 2020) in 2020. 40 As in Guanajuato, Mexico, in June 2020 (Eslocotidiano.com, 23 June 2020), and in Costa Rica, in August 2021. 41 In Oaxaca, Mexico (Congreso del Estado de Oaxaca de México, 2019). 42 Law No. 119/2013 of 15 October. 43 Law 17/2020 of 22 December, amending Law 5/2008, on the right of women to eradicate male chauvinist violence. 44 Art. 5, 4th, b. 45 See, for example, Amnesty International Mexico (2021).

References Amnistía Internacional Mexico. (2021). Justice on Trial. Failures in criminal investigations of Feminicides preceded by Disappearance in the State of Mexico. www.amnesty.org/es/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/ AMR4145562021ENGLISH.pdf Caputi, J. & Russell, D. (1990). Femicide: Speaking the unspeakable. Ms.: The World of Women, 1(2), 34–37. Carcedo, A. (Cord.) (2010). No olvidamos ni aceptamos: Femicidio en Centroamérica, 200–2006. San José, C. R.: Asociación Centro Feminista de Información y Acción. Carcedo, A. & Sagot, M. (2002). Femicidio en Costa Rica: balance mortal. Medicina Legal de Costa Rica, 19(1), 05–16. www.scielo.sa.cr/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1409-00152002000100002&lng=en&tlng=es. Carrigan M. & Dawson M. (2020). Problem representations of femicide/feminicide legislation in Latin America. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 9(2): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd. v9i2.1354 Cerqueira, D., Ferreira, H., Bueno, S., Palmieri, P., Lima, R., Marques, D., Barbosa da Silva, F., Lunelli, I., Imanishi, R., Lins, G., Chacon, K., Lira, P., Coelho, D., Barros B., Sobral, I., Pacheco, D., & Pimentel, A. (2021). Atlas da Violência 2021. FBSP/IPEA. www.ipea.gov.br/atlasviolencia/arquivos/artigos/1375atlasdaviolencia2021completo.pdf Congreso del Estado de Oaxaca de México. (2019). Otorga Congreso justicia a oaxaqueñas; asesinatos de mujeres se asumirán como feminicidio. Comunicación social del 24 de junio de 2019. www.congresooaxaca.gob.mx/boletins/299 Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación. (2021). Registro Nacional de Femicidios de la Justicia Argentina. Edición 2020. www.csjn.gov.ar/omrecopilacion/docs/informefemicidios2020.pdf Council of Europe. (2011). Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, April 12, 2011. https://rm.coe.int/168046031c Díaz Castillo, I., Rodríguez Vásquez, J., & Valega Chipoco, C. (2019). Feminicidio. Interpretación de un delito de violencia basada en género. Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Departamento Académico de Derecho. Centro de Investigación, Capacitación y Asesoría Jurídica. Eslocotidiano.com. (2020, June 23). Aprueban reformas penales sobre feminicidio y violación entre cónyuges. Es lo Cotidiano. Retrieved from: www.eslocotidiano.com/articulo/legislatura-gto/aprueban-reformaspenales-feminicidio-violacion-conyuges/20200623180317061670.html

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Patsilí Toledo Vásquez Forbes Staff. (2020, February 18). Diputados aumentan pena a 65 años de prisión por feminicidios. Forbes México. Retrieved from: www.forbes.com.mx/diputados-aumentan-pena-a-65-anos-de-prision-por-feminicidios/ Front Line Defenders. (2021). Global Analysis 2020. www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/resource-publication/ global-analysis-2020 Gartner, R., & McCarthy, B. (1991). The social distribution of femicide in urban Canada, 1921–1988. Law and Society Review, 287–311. Heppner, C., & Çelebi, D. (2020). Wenn Männer Frauen töten – zum Phänomen des Femizids in Deutschland. djbZ Zeitschrift des Deutschen Juristinnenbundes, 23(1), 24–26. Howe, A. (2019). ‘Endlessly Valuable’ Discursive Work – Intimate Partner Femicide, an English Case Study. Laws, 8(4), 33. Inter-American Court of Human Rights. (2009). Case of González et al. (“Cotton Field”) v. Mexico. Preliminary Objection, Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of November 16, 2009. Series C No. 205. Lagarde, M. (2005). “El feminicidio, delito contra la humanidad”. In: Cámara de Diputados del H. Congreso de la Unión – LIX Legislatura Feminicidio, justicia y derecho. Congreso de la Unión 151. Lau, A. (2006). El feminismo mexicano: balance y perspectivas. De lo privado a lo público, 30, 181–194. Molyneux, M., & Lazar, S. (2003). Doing the rights thing: Rights-based development and Latin American NGOs. Intermediate Technology. Observatorio Feminicidios Colombia. (2021). Feminicidios en Colombia. 1º de Enero a 31 de Diciembre de 2020. Available at: https://observatoriofeminicidioscolombia.org/attachments/article/451/Feminicidios%20en%20colombia%202020.pdf OHCHR/UN Women. (2014). Latin American Model Protocol for the investigation of gender-related killings of women (femicide/feminicide). https://www2.unwomen.org/-/media/field%20office%20americas/documentos/publicaciones/latinamericanprotocolforinvestigationoffemicide.pdf?la=en&vs=1721 Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA). (2015). Acuerdos de la Sexta Conferencia de los Estados Parte del Mecanismo de Seguimiento de la Implementación de la Convención Interamericana para Prevenir, Sancionar y Erradicar la Violencia contra la Mujer, “Convención De Belém Do Pará” (MESECVI), OEA/ Ser.L/II.7.10 MESECVI-VI/doc.118/15.rev1 Organization of American States (OAS). (1994). Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence Against Women. www.oas.org/en/mesecvi/docs/belemdopara-english.pdf Pizzi, L., & Saralegui, N. (2018). El continuum de violencias contra el colectivo travesti y trans a la luz del fallo de Diana Sayacán. Estudios Sobre Jurisprudencia. Referencia Jurídica e Investigación. Secretaría General de Capacitación y Jurisprudencia. https://jurisprudencia.mpd.gov.ar/Estudios/2018.08.%20El%20continuum%20de%20violencias%20contra%20el%20colectivo%20travesti%20y%20trans%20a%20la%20luz%20 del%20fallo%20de%20Diana%20Sacay%C3%A1n.pdf Proceso Digital. (2020, May 11). Con reforma al nuevo Código Penal aumentará hasta 40 años la pena por feminicidio, según CN. Proceso Digital. Retrieved from: https://proceso.hn/con-reforma-al-nuevo-codigopenal-aumentara-hasta-40-anos-la-pena-por-feminicidio-segun-cn/ Radford, J., & Russell, D. (Eds.) (1992). Femicide: The politics of woman killing. London: Twayne Pub. Russell, D. (2012). Defining Femicide. Introductory speech presented to the United Nations Symposium on Femicide on 11/26/2012. www.dianarussell.com/f/Defining_Femicide_-_United_Nations_Speech_ by_Diana_E._H._Russell_Ph.D.pdf Santana, P., & Astudillo, L. (2014). Violencia extrema hacia las mujeres en Chile (2010–2012). Red Chilena contra la Violencia hacia las Mujeres/Heinrich Böll Stiftung. Andros Impresores. Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública de México. (2021). Información sobre violencia contra las mujeres. Incidencia delictiva y llamadas de emergencia 9–1–1. Centro Nacional de Información. Información con corte al 31 de marzo de 2021. Available at: https://drive.google.com/ file/d/1IFK_FRGveCmv9eCWSlHJ7s_5u2DHw3N7/view Sepúlveda, I. (2020). Femicidio como un delito por razones de género en Chile. Revista Jurídica del Ministerio Público, No. 78, Abril 2020. Stout, K. (1989). “Intimate Femicide”: Effect of Legislation and Social Services. Affilia, 4(2), 21–30. Toledo, P. (2014). Femicidio/Feminicidio. New York: Ediciones Didot. Toledo, P. (2015). “Movimiento de mujeres, derechos humanos y tipificación del femicidio/feminicidio en Latinoamérica”. In Femenias, M.L. (Comp.) Violencias Cruzadas. Miradas y perspectivas. Los ríos subterráneos. Vol. 4. Rosario (pp. 25–45). Prohistoria Ediciones. Toledo, P. (2018). Criminalising femicide in Latin American countries – legal power working for women? In Howe, A., & Alaattinoğlu, D. (Eds.). Contesting Femicide (pp. 39–51). Routledge. UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. (2005). Report on Mexico produced by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women under article 8 of the Optional Protocol to

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Femicide/Feminicide and Legislation the Convention. CEDAW/C/2005/OP.8/MEXICO Thirty-second session. 27 January 2005. www.un.org/ womenwatch/daw/cedaw/cedaw32/CEDAW-C-2005-OP.8-MEXICO-E.pdf UN General Assembly. (2000). Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 7 February 2000 -- International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Fifty-fourth session. A/RES/54/134. https://documents-ddsny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N00/271/21/PDF/N0027121.pdf Van Willigen, J., & Channa, V. (1991). Law, custom, and crimes against women: The problem of dowry death in India. Human organization, 369–377. Weil, S., Corradi, C. & Naudi, M. (Eds.) (2018). Femicide across Europe: Theory, research and prevention. Bristol: Bristol University Press. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv8xnfq2

Legislation Argentina – Decreto 123/2021 (21 February 2021). https://oig.cepal.org/sites/default/files/2021_decreto_ 1232021_arg.pdf Brazil – Lei No 13.104 (9 March 2015). https://oig.cepal.org/sites/default/files/2015_bra_lei13104.pdf Catalonia, Spain – Llei 17/2020 (22 December 2020). https://portaldogc.gencat.cat/utilsEADOP/ PDF/8303/1828756.pdf Chile – Ley No. 21.212 (March 4, 2020). https://oig.cepal.org/sites/default/files/2020_chl_ley21.212.pdf Costa Rica – Ley 9975 (9 August 2021). https://oig.cepal.org/sites/default/files/2021_ley9975_cri.pdf Italy – Legge 15 ottobre 2013, n. 119. Available at: www.lexitalia.it/leggi/2013-119.htm

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38 FEMICIDE AND TRANSNATIONAL LAW Adriana Isabel López Padilla Tostado and Helene Saadoun

I Introduction Femicide is a global crisis of pandemic proportions (UNHCR, 2021). Each day, roughly 137 women across the world are killed by a family member or partner. Although women account for a small part of the totality of homicide victims – 19% in 2017 – they make up for most of the victims of homicides perpetrated by family members or intimate partners – 82% in 2017 (UNODC, 2019). This phenomenon is transnational, deeply rooted, and systemic. A global problem calls for a global solution. The world community has come to realise that isolated efforts are not sufficient to properly address femicide. Notwithstanding the relevance of local particularities in the extent and dimensions of gender-based violence against women (GBVAW), the scale and proportions of the issue impel recurring to transnational law (Jessup, 1956/2006) – the law that regulates action or events that transcend national frontiers. In Catharine MacKinnon’s words, “the international is the appropriate level, finally, that fits the scale and structure of the women question” (Banda and MacKinnon, 2006). However, international law is not a static body of rules that can be straightforwardly “downloaded” to the national context. International human rights norms, including those on GBVAW, are enforced through a complex dynamic that Koh (1999) denominates “transnational legal process,” which entails the interaction whereby global norms are first debated, then interpreted, and ultimately internalised by domestic legal systems. In this process, for international human rights law (IHRL) to thrive, domestic judges must take the lead. These norms are only operative if they are applied by judges in their jurisdictions, endowing them with an impact on the protection of the rights that norms strive to protect. Thus, national courts take on a crucial role when they interpret, nurture, and apply international norms in their jurisdiction favouring their continuity and proliferation. By incorporating IHRL norms in judicial decisions, they embrace and make them their own, slowly consolidating them into domestic judicial precedents (Quintana Osuna, 2018) that on their own, can also be a source of international law. This cycle of interpreting, embracing, applying, and further nurturing international standards on a domestic level is consequential for the evolution of IHRL. This chapter examines the interaction of international and domestic courts through the interpretation and enforcement of international norms in the making of landmark femicide cases in Latin America. Initially, it analyses the first Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ (IACtHR) ruling on femicide – the Cotton Field case – as a ground-breaking point that established regional standards on the states’ obligations to prevent, punish and eradicate GBVAW. 422

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Secondly, the chapter focuses on the use of international norms and judicial precedents by domestic judges in the Mariana Lima-Buendía case in Mexico – a turning point for the investigation and sanction of femicide in the country. Subsequently, it examines the use of soft law by domestic judges in the case of Ányela in Colombia, a historical sentence that for the first time in the country recognised a transgender woman as a victim of femicide. Finally, it refers to a recent landmark ruling by the IACtHR in Vicky Hernández v. Honduras, in which the court recognises that international women’s rights instruments include trans women.

II  Enforcement of IHRL on Femicide by International and Domestic Courts Judicial decisions play a crucial role in the development and enforcement of IHRL (Roberts, 211). The abstract knowledge of human rights set out in constitutions and treaties is just one side of the coin. It is solely through the interpretation given by the courts that the scope and meaning of each right truly emerges (De Carvalho Ramos, 2016). In the transnational arena, the same goes for GBVAW, and specifically femicide. Both international and domestic tribunals, in their interpretation and application of international standards, have contributed to landmark femicide cases that now constitute references for the strengthening and advancement of case law in the matter. Initially, the international organs specifically mandated to interpret and enforce human rights treaties give meaning to the rights provided and to the consequent obligations imposed upon the states. In Latin America, that was the case of Gonzalez et al. (“Cotton Field”) v. Mexico (2009) – the IACtHR’s first ruling on femicide. The IACtHR studied Mexico’s responsibility for the disappearance and subsequent death of three women, whose bodies were found in a cotton field in Ciudad Juárez. The state was considered responsible for the failure to prevent these crimes and the lack of due diligence in the investigation, despite full awareness of the existence of a pattern of GBVAW that had resulted in hundreds of women and girls murdered (González et al. v. Mexico, 2009). The court ruled that Mexico failed to protect the women’s rights – to life, integrity, and personal freedom – and to guarantee their access to justice. By inadequately investigating the systematic killings of women, Mexico had contributed to “an environment of impunity that facilitates and promotes the repetition of acts of violence . . . and sends a message that violence against women is tolerated and accepted as part of daily life” (González et al. v. Mexico, 2009, para. 388). Furthermore, following the Belém do Pará Convention (1994), the Court concluded that GBVAW constituted a form of discrimination and that the creation and use of stereotypes constitute both, a cause, and a consequence of GBVAW. Particularly, the Court explained that [t]he subordination of women can be associated with practices based on persistent socially dominant gender stereotypes, a situation that is exacerbated when the stereotypes are reflected . . . in policies and practices and, particularly, in the reasoning and language of the . . . authorities, as in this case. (González et al. v. Mexico, 2009, para. 402) The court’s decision sets important regional standards regarding the obligation of states to prevent, punish, and eradicate GBVAW, including the acts committed by private actors. The ruling drifted apart from the traditional understandings of reparation and under a “transformative” approach demanded Mexico to address the underlying causes of femicide in Ciudad Juárez and implement several measures intended to eliminate structural causes of GBVAW (González et al. v. Mexico, 2009).1 423

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But international courts are not alone in the enforcement of IHRL on femicide. Domestic courts have a pivotal role given their accessibility and the enforceability of their judgements (Falk, 1964; Koh, 1999). National court decisions are unique within the international law doctrine of sources2 because of their dual functionality. On the one hand, they serve as evidence of state practice, which may be relevant to the determination of custom and the interpretation of treaties – law creation; on the other, they constitute a subsidiary means of determining the existence and content of international law3 – law enforcement (Roberts, 2011). Accordingly, in their law enforcement role, domestic courts in Latin America have decidedly started to enforce international law on matters of GBVAW through their ordinary processes of adjudication. They are doing so, not only to allow their respective states to fulfil their international obligations (Amman, 2019) – under the customary principle pacta sunt servanda (United Nations, 1969) – but also as part of a recent tendency in Latin America: the “constitutionalisation” of IHRL. Since the end of the 1980s, many Latin American countries have adopted new constitutions4 or introduced major constitutional reforms.5 Irrespective of the specificities of each country, these reforms manifest a greater commitment to the protection of rights and “a vigorous opening to IHRL, through special treatment and privileges . . . to treaties in this area” (Huneeus, 2016: 185). In this regard, one of the main aspects of neo-constitutionalism in the region is the doctrine known as “constitutional block.” The constitutional block entails a set of norms and principles with constitutional rank that encompass the Constitution and human rights treaties ratified by the states, among other instruments, making the latter part of the constitution itself rather than a separate and external source of law. Under this doctrine, domestic courts interpreting the scope and meaning of constitutional rights must consider not only the text of the Magna Carta but also IHRL (Huneeus, 2016). This doctrine has been a ground-breaking tool for domestic courts to give direct applicability to IHRL through national rulings. In this context, an additional crucial feature, developed by the IACtHR, has come to amount further efforts to the international law enforcement process by domestic judges: the conventionality control. Conventionality control is the analysis of the compatibility of national norms with international treaties, particularly the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR). This theory was first explicitly used by the IACtHR in Almonacid-Arellano v. Chile (2006, para. 124), as follows: [D]omestic judges and courts are bound to respect the rule of law, and therefore, they are bound to apply the provisions in force within the legal system. But when a State has ratified an international treaty such as the American Convention, its judges, as part of the State, are also bound by such Convention. This forces them to see that all the effects of the provisions embodied in the Convention are not adversely affected by the enforcement of laws which are contrary to its purpose. . . . In other words, the Judiciary must exercise a . . . “conventionality control” between the domestic legal provisions which are applied to specific cases and the American Convention on Human Rights. To perform this task, the Judiciary [must consider] not only the treaty, but also the interpretation thereof made by the Inter-American Court, which is the ultimate interpreter of the American Convention. It changes the role of domestic judges by requiring them to be the guardians of the supremacy of the Convention as interpreted by the IACtHR (Dulitzky, 2015). Conveniently, the provisions of the new/reformed Constitutions of Latin American states, along with their constitutional block 424

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doctrine, have enabled domestic judges to exercise conventionality control as part of their internal processes of judicial constitutional review. That is how, in March 2015, the Supreme Court of Justice of Mexico issued its first ruling on femicide, in the case of Mariana Lima-Buendía (Sentence 554/2013, 2015). The court implemented a constitutional judicial review that considered as a parameter of validity not only the Constitution but the Belém do Pará Convention (1994), the ACHR, and the IACtHR precedents on the criminal investigation of GBVAW6 as a whole. Mariana was constantly abused by her husband, a police officer from the Prosecutor’s Office of the State of Mexico. She decided to leave him and told her mother, Irinea. The following morning, on 29 June 2010, Mariana’s husband called Irinea and told her that she had committed suicide. She was found dead in her home. Despite several inconsistencies with the suicide theory and irregularities during the investigations, in September 2011 the Prosecutor’s Office concluded that Mariana had committed suicide and decided not to prosecute. Irinea filed an appeal, and the case was brought before the Supreme Court. The court determined the existence of multiple irregularities, omissions, and obstruction of justice within the criminal investigation and ordered the Prosecutor’s Office to immediately undertake all necessary actions to investigate Mariana’s death with due diligence and a gender perspective,7 following the guidelines provided in its ruling concerning crime scene preservation, chain of custody, autopsy, and expert interventions, among others (Sentence 554/2013, 2015). The court ruled that in every violent death of a woman the authorities must identify the conducts that caused the death and verify the presence or absence of underlying gender-based motives. That includes requesting pertinent expert appraisals and examinations to verify whether sexual violence was committed or if the victim was immersed in a context of violence (Sentence 554/2013, 2015). Mexico has specific legislation that criminalises femicide,8 which may have provided a favourable context for the adoption of the referred standards. However, these laws do not expressly require incorporating a gender perspective into a criminal investigation. The Mexican Supreme Court built on the criteria of the IACtHR’s case of Veliz Franco (2014) to establish that authorities are bound to investigate ex officio the possible gender-based discriminatory connotations of an act of violence perpetrated against a woman, especially when it takes place in a context of GBVAW in a specific region, as it was in this case. In this ruling, international jurisprudence conveys an important source for domestic judicial review. Not only does it press for state compliance with international law; it has become a tool to challenge states’ practices and laws before the domestic judiciary (Alter, Helfer and Madsen, 2018). National courts embrace international standards as their own through their case law, endowing them with a new sense of internal legitimacy and strengthening their binding force for national authorities – even when they are almost identical to those of the international organ. As Scelle once considered, national courts have the potential to fulfil dual roles, as either national actors operating within the national order or as international actors enforcing international law within their national jurisdiction on behalf of the world community (Cassese, 1990).

III  Soft Law in the Making of Femicide Landmark Cases In the Mariana Lima-Buendía case, the Supreme Court of Mexico also resorted to instruments that fall outside the scope of human rights treaties, seemingly expanding the conventionality control to human rights soft law.9 Soft law is defined as “any international instrument other than a treaty that contains principles, norms, standards, or other statements of expected behaviour” (Sheldon, 2006) and is commonly accepted as a source of international law, albeit deprived of a legally binding effect (Shaw, 2008; Hillgenberg, 1999; Bothe, 1980; Shelton, 2006; Olivier, 2002). It encompasses but is not limited to 425

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declarations, guidelines, principles, resolutions, and reports adopted by international organs. It also includes instruments drafted by private actors that set out a specific regulatory framework (Heyvaert, 2009), such as the Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity – known as the Yogyakarta Principles (YP).10 The interpretation of parameters established in soft law and their incorporation to judicial precedents of femicide in domestic courts constitutes a turning point for the creation of law in the transnational arena. The doctrine agrees that “the advantage of non-legal rules is that they provide some stability in cases where legal rules, with all its rigidity, would not be acceptable to states, would serve no useful purpose or would be too difficult to create” (Bothe, 1980: 94). Its malleable aspect makes it convenient to reach some degree of agreement in controversial matters in which actors might not wish for a full-fledged agreement that would compromise their international responsibility should there be a breach.11 That said, the use of soft law has proliferated enormously in human rights law. Henkin (1996; 1995) argues that the international system has moved beyond state values towards human values and thus lead to turmoil in the traditional settings of the sources of international law. Faced with hermeneutical challenges arising from the evolving and dynamic essence of human rights (Zambrano Pérez, 2016), judges found an undeniable utility in soft law, exploiting its flexibility and drawing from the fact that, despite the lack of a legal consequence, they create a “shared expectation of state behaviour” (Olivier, 2002: 297). The role of judicial bodies in providing clarity as to the significance and applicability of human rights soft law is crucial. As Dworkin (1986) once wrote, judges create law. The use of soft law in judicial decisions can go as far as equipping them with a de facto coercive effect through judicial precedents. A noteworthy example of that is the use of the YP, a soft law instrument that, nonetheless, acquired a binding force through judicial construct and has had a direct impact on the construction of emblematic jurisprudence on femicide. The YP address a broad range of human rights standards and their application to issues of sexual orientation and gender identity (Yogyakarta Principles, 2007). Apart from guiding the application of human rights to LGBTQ people,12 it is the only international instrument that sets out a clear and comprehensive definition of gender identity (Yogyakarta Principles, 2007). The YP has had a crucial impact on the development of legislation and judicial decisions around the globe (Ettelbrick and Trabucco Zerán, 2010). Legislation adopted in Uruguay (Law N° 19.684, 2018) and Argentina (Law N° 26.743, 2012) incorporate in identical terms the definition of gender identity set out in the YP, and these have been cited by judges’ decisions in many countries.13 As stated, soft law can be used by judges to fill a gap in the international corpus iuris of legally binding instruments that struggle to stay up to speed with a fast-evolving globalised world. The internalisation of the YP in a Colombian judicial decision on femicide is a clear example of that. In 2018, in a case brought before the Garzon Circuit Criminal Court No. 2 in Huila, Colombia, the judge had to decide whether the crime of femicide had been committed against Ányela, a transgender woman (Sentence N° 063, 2018). In Colombia, femicide is provided in Article 104 A of the Criminal Code (2000) as “to cause death to a woman, because she is a woman or for motives related to her gender identity” whenever specific circumstances have concurred or preceded the death – that is, history or signs of any sort of violence or threat committed by the perpetrator against the victim. Thus, the criminal definition of femicide requires the victim to be a woman. In this case, to determine whether the criminal conduct had occurred, the court had to examine prima facie the existence of the elements of femicide, specifically whether the victim was indeed a woman. Unlike other Latin American countries, such as Argentina (Law N° 26.743, 2012) and Uruguay (Law N° 19.684, 2018), Colombian legislation does not provide a legal definition of 426

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“woman” or gender identity. Accordingly, it was left to the judges to fill the gap. They did so by internalising a provision set out in the YP. The decision cited the definition of gender identity of the YP (Sentence N° 063, 2018) and asserted its status as an international norm, alongside two of the most prominent human rights treaties in the region, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the ACHR, thus seemingly elevating its authority well beyond a simple soft law instrument. Its coerciveness was not disputed by the court nor examined at all. With no hesitation, the judicial organ acquiesced its authority as an international benchmark on gender identity basing its ratio decidendi primarily on the YP’s definition.14 The court stated, There is no doubt that the gender identity of Luis Ángel Ramos Claros was as a trans woman, her deeply felt internal and individual experience was as a female and did not correspond to the masculine sex assigned at birth. For this reason, her quality as the victim of the criminal conduct investigated here today is adequate since it was perpetrated against a woman and specifically for her gender identity as a trans woman. (Sentence N° 063, 2018: 13) The court handed down a guilty sentence for aggravated femicide in a landmark ruling that for the first time in Latin America considered a transgender woman as a victim of femicide.15 The reference to the YP is by no means novel for Colombian courts and for the region nor is the use of soft law. The IACtHR had already delivered a sentence (Case Duque v. Colombia, 2016) and an advisory opinion on gender identity (Advisory Opinion OC-24/17, 2017), but none of those pronouncements involved the practical application of the definition of gender identity to a criminal case. Analogously, the Constitutional Court of Colombia has shown a well-established history of systematically referring to the YP.16 In their rationale, judges asserted that the YP has not been adopted by a formal authority but they constitute soft law; through a teleological interpretation, they point out that they can be considered as part of the “constitutional block” because they constitute a comprehensive parameter to efficiently apply human rights law to the protection of gender identity and sexual orientation (T-099/15, 2015; T-236/20, 2020). That said, the significance of the sentence in Ányela’s case lies in the judges’ power to create law when confronted with a legal gap in domestic legislation. They decided to resort to soft law instruments that apply to the facts. In other words, “it is the voice of the Court that gives them force” (Quintana Osuna, 2018: 154). Even more significant is the fact that the judge had no judicial precedent to resort to either by the Constitutional Court of Colombia or the IACtHR.17 It was not until recently that the IACtHR had the opportunity to pronounce itself for the first time on this issue in Vicky Hernández v. Honduras. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights submitted the case before the IACtHR and considered that the events could be characterised as a killing motivated by prejudice based on the gender identity of a trans woman and, therefore, amounted to transfemicide (Case Vicky Hernández et al. v. Honduras, 2021). Through an “evolutive interpretation,” in March 2021 the IACtHR ruled that the scope of the Belém do Pará Convention (1994) – as a “living instrument” – also refers to trans women. In this case, Honduras was considered responsible for the failure to take appropriate measures to prevent, punish, and eradicate violence against women – including trans women – and the failure to investigate, adequately and with due diligence, the death of Vicky (Case Vicky Hernández et al. v. Honduras, 2021). The IACtHR goes even further as to recognise gender identity as a factor that can contribute, in an intersectional manner, to the vulnerability of women to GBVAW (Case Vicky Hernández et al. v. Honduras, 2021), thus including trans women under the protection of the international corpus iuris of women rights. 427

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IV  Conclusion: Towards a Transnational Judicial Dialogue on Femicide National courts’ decisions play a crucial role in developing international law, particularly in areas that tend to be tested through judicial review, including the protection of human rights. (Roberts, 2011). By enforcing it, they inevitably engage in some degree of law creation (Provost, 2008), especially in issues that international organs have not yet determined – as was initially the case with the genderbased killing of trans women. In that regard, the international corpus iuris is dynamic and partially constituted by domestic court decisions. It not only permeates down from the international to the domestic sphere, but it also “bubbles up” (Roberts, 2011). The domestic legal sphere is not only a site of compliance or transposition of international law but rather a powerful platform in which domestic courts are sites of endogenous international change (Farrell and Newman, 2014). The Latin American socio-legal context conjugates auspicious features to enable the development of strong case law on femicide. Certainly, under the doctrine of the “constitutional block” and a routine exercise of conventionality control, domestic courts can – and, in our opinion, must – assume the role of transnational rule-makers by directly interpreting national and international laws. National judges have the potential of shaping transnational law both via international courts (Benvenisti and Downs, 2009) and through dialogical law making with their foreign peers (Kahraman, Kalyanpur and Newman, 2020). In the first scenario, domestic judgements on femicide could serve as a legal resource for international courts not only by establishing state practice but as a direct interpretative tool of international norms – as it has already occurred with the IACtHR’s on different topics.18 On the other hand, when interpreting new meanings into existing law, judges often consult the rulings of foreign courts and cite each other on myriad trans-border issues (Slaughter, 1999). In new problematic areas, national courts, lacking any previous national jurisprudence, are tempted to look for solutions in foreign legal systems and their case law (Matusiak-Frącczak, 2020). We hope that this transnational judicial dialogue flourishes on matters of GBVAW and, thus, enables a faster consolidation of robust case law on femicide. Undoubtfully, transnational jurisprudential dialogue (Slaughter, 1994; Slaughter, 2003) can make a huge impact on the recognition and protection of women’s rights throughout the world, especially for those countries outside Latin America where femicide is not considered by the law nor named. In Koh’s words (2005: 749), we call for a transnational dialogue about femicide between courts that facilitates human rights standards to be “uploaded, then downloaded” and even “horizontally transplanted.” As the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said, [W]e are losers if we neglect what others can tell us about endeavours to eradicate bias against women, minorities, and other disadvantaged group. For irrational prejudice and rank discrimination are infectious in our world. In this reality, as well as the determination to counter it, we all share. (Bader Ginsburg, 2000)

Notes 1 In the context of the killings of women in Ciudad Juárez, feminist anthropologist Marcela Lagarde y De Los Rios coined the term “feminicide” in Mexico that encompasses not only the killing of women – femicide – but also the systemic structure of GBVAW and state impunity, going as far as to consider it a state crime. 2 The traditional approach to the sources of public international law is set out in article 38(1) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which lists (1) international conventions, whether general or particular, establishing rules expressly recognised by the contesting states; (2) international custom, as evidence

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Femicide and Transnational Law of a general practice accepted as law; (3) the general principles of law recognised by civilised nations; and (4) the provisions of Article 59, judicial decisions, and the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations, as subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law. 3 Under article 38(1)(d) of the ICJ Statute. 4 Brazil in 1988, Colombia in 199, Paraguay in 1992, Peru in 1993, Venezuela in 1999, Ecuador in 2008, and Bolivia in 2009. 5 Costa Rica in 1989, Argentina in 1994, and Mexico in 2011. 6 Mainly those contained in González et al. v. Mexico (2009) and Véliz Franco v. Guatemala (2004). 7 Gender perspective is a method that analyses the impact of gender on people’s opportunities, social roles, and interactions (Pedrero, 1999). 8 Femicide is a crime in all 32 states of the Mexican Republic. 9 The sentence analyses the compliance of law enforcement agents with the guidelines set out in OHCHR, UN Women (2014). 10 Drafted and unanimously adopted by a group of human rights experts following an experts’ meeting held at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, from 6 to 9 November 2006. 11 The effectiveness and repercussions of international responsibility is on itself a debatable subject in international law. 12 The Declaration of Montreal (2006) was a previous attempt to unite the demands of international LGBT movement in an advocacy instrument. 13 In Naz Foundation v. Government of NCT of Delhi and Other (2009) the Delhi High Court held that “the principles are intended as a coherent and comprehensive identification of the obligation of States to respect, protect and fulfill the human rights of all personas regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.” The YP have also been cited in decisions by many judicial authorities, such as the Constitutional Court of Colombia, the Supreme Court of Mexico, the Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal of Bolivia, and the Supreme Court of Nepal. 14 The court cites the definition of gender identity found in other documents and studies that adheres to the definition provided by the YP, see OHCHR (2013) and OEA (2012). 15 In Argentina, a guilty sentence for femicide was handed down in a case where a transvestite activist was murdered in October 2015 (CCC 62182/2015/TO1, 2018). 16 See T-099/15 (2015), T-077/16 (2016), T-447/19 (2019), T-143/18 (2018), C-006/16 (2016), T-622/14 (2014), T-063/15 (2015), C-356/19 (2019), T-248/12 (2012), T-717/11 (2011) and T-443/20 (2020). 17 Its only predecessor in Latin America is the femicide sentence handed down by the Criminal Court No. 4 of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the Diana Sacayán case in June 2018, in which the judge sentenced the perpetrator for committing a femicide against a transvestite woman. However, in recent developments, the Supreme Court of Argentina reclassified the conduct to an aggravated homicide and an extraordinary appeal filed by the district attorney is still ongoing (Ministerio Público Fiscal, 2021). 18 In Osorio Rivera v. Peru (2013), the IACtHR quoted cases from the Supreme Courts of Venezuela, Mexico, and Chile; from the Constitutional Courts of Peru and Bolivia; and from a Court of Appeal of Argentina.

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Femicide and Transnational Law IACtHR. Case Almonacid-Arellano vs. Chile. Preliminary Objections, Merits, Reparations and Costs. 26 September 2006. Series C No. 154. www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_154_esp.pdf IACtHR. Case Duque vs. Colombia. Interpretation of the Judgment on Preliminary Objections, Merits, Reparations and Costs. 21 November 2016. Series C No. 322, para. 110. www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_310_esp.pdf IACtHR. Case Osorio Rivera y familiares Vs. Perú. Excepciones Preliminares, Fondo, Reparaciones y Costas. Sentencia de 26 de noviembre de 2013. Serie C No. 274. www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/ seriec_274_esp.pdf IACtHR. Case Véliz Franco et al. vs. Guatemala. Preliminary Objections, Reparations and Costs. Sentence of May 19, 2014, Series C No. 227. www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_277_esp.pdf IACtHR. Case Vicky Hernández et al. v. Honduras. Merits, Reparations and Costs. 26 March 2021. Series C No. 422, para. 72 www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_422_esp.pdf Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence Against Women (“Belém do Pará”), June 9, 1994. www.oas.org/juridico/spanish/tratados/a-61.html International Conference on LGBT Human Rights (2006). Declaration of Montreal. www.declarationofmontreal. org/ Jessup, P. C. (2006). Transnational Law Revisited (C. Tietje, A. Brouder, K. Nowrot, Eds.). Faculty of Law, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, p. 28. www.wirtschaftsrecht.uni-halle.de/sites/default/files/ altbestand/Heft50.pdf (Original work published 1956). Juzgado Segundo Penal del Circuito con Funciones de Conocimiento de Garzón. Huila, Colombia. Sentence N° 063. (2018, December 3). www.suin-juriscol.gov.co/diversidad/FalloN063.pdf Kahraman, F., Kalyanpur, N. & Newman, A. (2020). Domestic courts, transnational law, and international order. European Journal of International Relations. 26(SI), 184–208, p. 194 https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066120938843 Koh, H. H. (1999). How Is International Human Rights Law Enforced? Indiana Law Journal, 74(4), Article 9, p. 1399. www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol74/iss4/9 Koh, H. H. (2005). Why transnational law matters. Penn State International Law Review 24(4), 745–753, p. 749. https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1678&context=psilr Matusiak-Frącczak, M. (2020). Interpreting Law Through International Judicial Dialogue by Polish Courts. Bratislava Law Review. 4(2), 49–70. https://doi.org/10.46282/blr.2020.4.2.181 Ministerio Público Fiscal. (2021, October 10). Caso Diana Sacayán: el Ministerio Público Fiscal presentará un recurso extraordinario contra el fallo que quitó la agravante de “odio a la identidad de género” [Press release]. www.fiscales.gob.ar/genero/caso-diana-sacayan-el-ministerio-publico-fiscal-presentara-unrecurso-extraordinario-contra-el-fallo-que-quito-el-agravante-de-odio-a-la-identidad-de-genero/ Naz Foundation v. Government of NCT of Delhi and Others (2009) WP(C) No. 7455/2001. www.escr-net. org/sites/default/files/Court_decision.pdf OEA. (2012). Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (OEA/Ser.G, CP/CAJP/INF.166/12). www.oas.org/dil/esp/cp-cajp-inf_166-12_esp.pdf OHCHR, UNWOMEN. (2014). Latin American Model Protocol for the investigation of gender-related killings of women (femicide/feminicide). www.ohchr.org/documents/issues/women/wrgs/protocololatinoamericanodeinvestigacion.pdf OHCHR. (2013). Orientación sexual e identidad de género en el derecho internacional de los derechos humanos. https:// acnudh.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/orentaci%C3%B3n-sexual-e-identidad-de-g%C3%A9nero2.pdf Olivier, M. (2002). The relevance of ‘soft law’ as a source of international human rights. The Comparative and International Law Journal of Southern Africa. 35(3), 289–307, p. 297. www.jstor.org/stable/23252173. Pedrero, M. (1999). Agricultural Censuses and Gender Considerations. FAO Provost, R. (2008). Judging in Splendid Isolation. American Journal of Comparative Law. 56(125), 125–172, p. 139. www.jstor.org/stable/20454605 Quintana Osuna, K. I. (2018). The Mariana Lima-Buendía case: an in-depth scan of the violence and discrimination against women. Cuestiones Constitucionales. Revista Mexicana de Derecho Constitucional, (38), 143–168, p 154. https://doi.org/10.22201/iij.24484881e.2018.38.11878. Roberts, A. (2011). Comparative International Law? The role of national courts in creating and enforcing International Law. International and Comparative Law Quarterly. 60(1), 57–92. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0020589310000679 Shaw, M. N. (2008). International Law (6th ed.). Cambridge University Press, p 117. http://euglobe.ru/wpcontent/uploads/2017/01/Malcolm-N.-Shaw.-International-Law-6th-edition-2008.pdf Shelton, D. (2006). Normative Hierarchy in International Law. The American Journal of International Law, 100 (2), 291–323, p. 319. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0002930000016675

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Adriana Isabel López Padilla Tostado and Helene Saadoun Slaughter, A (1994). A Typology of Transjudicial Communication, University of Richmond Law Review, 29(1), 99–137. https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2120&context=lawreview Slaughter, A. (1999). Judicial globalization. Virginia Journal of International Law 40(4), 1103–1124. https:// heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/vajint40&div=28&id=&page= Slaughter, A. (2003). A Global Community of Courts. Harvard International Law Journal. 44(1), 191–219. www.jura.uni-hamburg.de/media/ueber-die-fakultaet/personen/albers-marion/seoul-national-university/ course-outline/slaughter-2003-a-global-community-of-courts.pdf Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación, First Chamber, Sentence 554/2013, approved on March 25, 2015. www.scjn.gob.mx/derechos-humanos/sites/default/files/sentencias-emblematicas/sentencia/2020-12/ AR%20554-2013.pdf Tribunal Oral 4 de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Sentence CCC 62182/2015/TO1 (2018, June 18). www.pensamientopenal.com.ar/system/files/2018/07/fallos46792.pdf UNHCR. (2021, June 29). Urgent action needed to end pandemic of femicide and violence against women, says UN expert [Press release]. www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=26533&LangID=E United Nations. (1969). Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Treaty Series, 1155, 331. UNODC. (2019). Global Study on Homicide. Gender-related killing of women and girls. United Nations. p. 11. www. unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/gsh/Booklet_5.pdf Uruguay. Law N° 19.684 Comprehensive Law for Trans Persons. (2008). www.impo.com.uy/bases/ leyes/19684-2018 Yogyakarta Principles: the principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. (2007). http://yogyakartaprinciples.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ A5_yogyakartaWEB-2.pdf Zambrano Pérez, D.A. (2016). La incidencia del llamado soft law o derecho blando en la interpretación del juez constitucional. In Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación, Tribunales Constitucionales y jurisprudencia. Casos prácticos: Cuba, Italia, Colombia, México, Serie Interpretación Constitucional Aplicada, p. 122. https:// sistemabibliotecario.scjn.gob.mx/sisbib/2016/000286847/000286847.pdf

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39 THE LATIN AMERICAN MODEL PROTOCOL FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF GENDERRELATED KILLINGS OF WOMEN (FEMICIDE/FEMINICIDE) A Partially Achieved Success Story Françoise Roth, Mariela Labozzetta and Agustina Rodríguez Introduction Her brand-new high-heeled red boots won’t be used again. They now lie inside a judicial investigation cardboard box, among other pieces of evidence. Karla Pontigo was 22. She lived in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, with her mother and two brothers. On 28 October 2012, after finishing her shift in the bar where she was a hostess, Karla was found lying in a pool of blood, with a long, deep gash in her upper thigh. After undergoing the amputation of her leg, Karla was pronounced dead the following day. Mexico registers one of the highest numbers of femicides1 in the region;2 most cases remain unsolved, without perpetrators to sanction. In Karla’s case, after a year of investigation, the local prosecutor indicted the bar’s owner for negligence. He argued that it was merely an accident due to the recklessness of the proprietor for not having secured the glass window through which Karla crashed. However, from the onset, Karla’s family could not believe this version, inconsistent with what they had witnessed and heard. Tenaciously, Karla’s mother and brother challenged the prosecutor’s conclusions to the Mexican Supreme Court of Justice. Finally, in October 2019, seven years later, the highest court recognised that the prosecutor’s investigation was deficient and partial. It declared that the investigation had failed to include a gender perspective, thus impeding the exposure of the judicial truth. It enjoined the San Luis Potosí Prosecutor’s Office to reinitiate the investigation from the beginning.3 Four years before, in the Mariana Lima case,4 the same court laid out what an investigation with a gender perspective should be. Both cases used the “Latin American Model Protocol for the Investigation of Gender-Related Killings of Women (Femicide/Feminicide)” (the LAMP) as a reference5. These cases concretely illustrate the LAMP’s impact on judicial rulings. Published in 2014 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), the LAMP provides practical guidelines to improve the investigation and prosecution of gender-based killings of women and girls. This was not the first protocol written on the subject; the General Prosecutor’s Offices of Mexico DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-45

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and El Salvador, among others, had similar documents. The LAMP is, however, the first regional tool that provides common investigative tools and techniques to address femicides based on international human rights law standards. The publication and adaptation of the LAMP have contributed to raising awareness of judicial practitioners, in particular prosecutors, on the relevance of investigating and sanctioning crimes from a gender perspective. This chapter first describes the LAMP’s elaboration process. Since its publication, several general prosecutor’s offices (GPOs) in Latin America have drafted country-specific manuals or protocols, adapting the LAMP to their national legal frameworks and cultures (such as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Peru, and Uruguay). Significant aspects of these processes are presented in a second part, with a special emphasis on Argentina’s experience. The adaptation process has enriched the LAMP in several aspects. After a review of the LAMP’s main content in the third section, some of these complements are identified afterward. The LAMP’s tangible results are examined in the conclusion, together with the challenges that remain for its concrete application.

The LAMP Elaboration Process In the late 1990s, the brutal murders of young women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, splashed the topic of femicide into the public spotlight, first in Central America, then to the whole continent. Between 1993 and 2003, in the large urban centre of the State of Chihuahua, many women were “abducted and kidnapped, and then either raped and murdered or made to ‘disappear.’ ”6 The situation gave rise to numerous reports from international and national NGOs, national authorities,7 and international human rights protection entities.8 In its November 2009 Cotton Field ruling, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) ordered the State of Mexico, among other recommendations, to conduct criminal proceedings into these murder cases with a gender-sensitive perspective following “protocols and manuals” harmonising investigation procedures and applying international human rights standards and instruments.9 This recommendation came on the heels of an initiative developed by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) – the predecessor of UN Women – to create an investigation protocol focused especially on femicide.10 The IACtHR decision motivated several GPOs and Women Institutes from local Mexican states to develop technical instruments to investigate femicide and related crimes.11 This movement ricocheted across other Latin American countries, such as Chile12 and Argentina,13 and in El Salvador, OHCHR supported the GPO in elaborating the Protocol to Investigate Feminicide.14 In 2011, at the initiative of the Spanish Federation of Human Rights Associations (Federación de Asociaciones de Derechos Humanos de España), a group of experts, including some from OHCHR, met to analyse how international human rights law could foster state responses to femicides. The idea emerged to elaborate a regional document aimed at translating international human rights standards for criminal prosecution of gender-based killings of women into a practical, usable framework.15 It was decided that the document would be oriented towards providing hands-on tools for different judicial practitioners (judicial police, forensics, prosecutors, judges, public defenders) to better investigate and prosecute cases of femicides. To attain its goal, the LAMP had to be conceived from a multidisciplinary perspective, apply a human rights and gender approach, and take into account existing protocols and tools.16 After conceptual explanations, the document follows the logical unfolding of typical criminal procedure (thus familiar to judicial practitioners involved in a case) in considering how to detect the specificities of gender-based killings of women on the criminal scene, how to orient the search for evidence, and how to argue a case. It insists on the relevance of carrying out the criminal procedure in a way that respects victims’ rights so critical in cases of femicide. It was clear that the LAMP would be relevant only if the professionals at which it was aimed could review and gain ownership of its content. To that end, a series of regional expert meetings were organised in 2013 to validate the first draft. In parallel, similar workshops were organised at the 434

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country level, in the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica,17 and Panamá.18 These high-level meetings carefully examined the accuracy and applicability of the guidance included in the document. In tandem, OHCHR and UN Women organised communication campaigns to raise public awareness on femicide.19 A final key for the LAMP’s favourable acceptance was political. Through an advocacy strategy, OHCHR Representation in Panama presented the LAMP’s draft to the General Assembly of the Ibero-American Association of Public Ministries (Asociación Iberoamericana de Ministerios Públicos [AIAMP]) and to the Interamerican Women Commission (Comisión Interamericana de Mujeres). Both fora recognised the pertinence of the document. The AIAMP “recommended its implementation in the Member States.”20 The LAMP’s final version was completed and reinforced based on commentaries obtained from these different rounds of consultation. In August 2014, the LAMP was published21 and translated into English and then Portuguese the following year.

The LAMP’s Adaptation to Different Latin American Countries22 Since its publication, the LAMP has been adapted by several Latin American countries,23 meaning that it was used as a model to elaborate national protocols or guidelines purportedly tailored to the characteristics, needs, and legal system of each country. Other GPOs, such as in Panama and Ecuador, decided to directly apply the LAMP without going through the adaptation process. The LAMP contains general guidance easily applicable to every country. Its application only entails a paradigm shift, a transformed lens, in the practice of judicial practitioners. Nonetheless, several reasons coincide with the need for the LAMP’s adaptation to each country’s legal system. First, the LAMP is a regional tool addressing issues that criminal laws tackle differently. It does so from a general perspective since it cannot consider legal specificities by country. For example, in Argentina, the national protocol had to follow the legal definition of the term “woman” given by the law on gender identity,24 which defines this concept based on the person’s self-perception of her/his gender. For this reason, it was decided that the Argentinian protocol should also apply to persons with female gender identity or expression. In addition, judicial practitioners, especially investigators, need precise guidance that they can concretely apply to legal procedures. Moreover, some GPOs require a practical tool (e.g. Argentina), while other GPOs opted for a more thorough document that combines theoretical knowledge with practical guidelines (e.g. Guatemala). These adaptation processes have provided opportunities to learn some valuable lessons. To begin with, achieving adaptation largely depends on the general prosecutor’s will and understanding of the document’s relevance, which in turn determines how the writing process is conducted, the content of the final document, and its implementation. Then, the national protocols25 should be tailored to the knowledge judicial professionals have of gender. In general, their theoretical proficiency is less relevant than how their own culture impregnates their approach to gender-based criminal cases. This must be taken into consideration for any exercise that explains how gender cases are investigated. Finally, legal culture should also permeate the style, the length, and the content of the document. The more the text looks like a “typical” legal document, the more it will be read and used. The process of adapting the LAMP is as important, if not more, than its content. Ideally, the document should be the outcome of an interdisciplinary exercise that gathers various dependencies of the GPO and judicial institutions. However, this is not always possible. As an alternative, in Guatemala and El Salvador, working groups convened through an official decree that gathered prosecutors from different GPO dependencies to meticulously review the various drafts. In Argentina, the drafting was carried out by the GPO Specialised Unit on Violence Against Women (Unidad Fiscal Especializada en Violencia contra las Mujeres [UFEM]), with personnel from different disciplines specially trained in gender issues and with operational capacity to produce training tools. 435

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Following the LAMP experience, the national protocols were validated by judicial practitioners (judges, defenders, prosecutors, members of the security forces, lawyers). It was clear that this process was an essential step towards achieving the legitimacy of the instrument.

The LAMP’s Relevant Content as Complemented by National Adaptation Processes LAMP’s content is a restatement of existing standards. It clarifies how international human rights law standards can concretely be applied to criminal procedures in cases of gender-based killings. It has certainly filled a vacuum in Latin America as it introduces concrete guiding principles and methods to orient the investigation and prosecution, analysed in the first part of this section. The LAMP’s success also resides in the dynamics it has generated. Its adaptation to various countries has created an opportunity to enrich its content, as detailed in the second section.

The LAMP’s Relevant Content “The investigation shall include a gender perspective.”26 This sentence from the Cotton Field case is requisite to a proper investigation of the killing of a woman: the prosecution must be done with a gender perspective, an approach demanded again and again by different human rights mechanisms. The challenge remains, however, of what “prosecuting with a gender perspective” concretely entails for investigators, prosecutors, and judges. The LAMP is designed to address that question. The LAMP focuses first on the basic concepts needed to understand gender-based killings of women (Chapters I–III). It clarifies the social and legal concepts of femicide and feminicide, providing diverse examples of how they manifest. Chapter II deconstructs each aspect of the “reinforc[ed]”27 due diligence duty as applied to the investigation of femicides. Special emphasis is placed on the need for an investigation to be timely, exhaustive, effective, and serious. The right of (direct and indirect) victims to effectively participate in criminal proceedings is also underscored. Chapter III provides tools to identify femicide and the gender motivations behind the criminal act. It develops what gender analysis is and how the feminist ecological model can be used as an analytical tool in the prosecution of femicides. The LAMP’s core content – the guiding principles and methodological recommendations – is detailed in Chapters IV–VI. When 19th-century French police officer Alphonse Bertillon stated, “One can only see what one observes, one observes only things which are already in the mind,”28 he certainly could not have predicted how relevant this statement would be for the conceptualisation of femicide criminal prosecution. These opening words of Chapter V aptly express that what one perceives prima facie as objective, such as a crime scene, could be, in reality, very subjective. Gender-based crimes are often read through subjective lenses, their investigation blurred or tainted by gender stereotypes. Negative prejudice affects how the victim is perceived, how the facts are interpreted, how the investigation is conducted, or how evidence is valued. It also denies the seriousness of the crime and its implication. Introducing a gender perspective requires looking at the criminal act, the persons involved and their stories through a gender-sensitive lens. For most judicial professionals, this is still neither natural nor intuitive. Through a series of practical guidelines, the LAMP specifies what a gender perspective entails. The first recommendation is straightforward. From the notitia criminis, the very onset of the investigation, “[a]s an initial hypothesis, the killing of the woman that is being investigated should be considered a femicide.”29 As one of the LAMP’s benchmarks, this recommendation constitutes the methodological basis for a femicide investigation. It “ensure[s] the inclusion of a gender perspective as the primary focus for the inquiry into the facts. This hypothesis can be proven or thrown out according to the results of the investigation.”30 Because evidence regarding the crime’s motivation 436

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and modus operandi are often found at the crime scene or during initial proceedings, investigators should be open to the perspective that the death of a woman could, in fact, be gender-motivated. Ignoring this possibility could lead to the loss of crucial evidence, difficult – or often impossible – to recover later. The same principle also applies to “suspicious” deaths (i.e. death whose cause is unknown), such as the ones that occur during traffic accidents, household calamities, fire, drowning, or apparent suicides. Adopting a gender perspective also orients the objectives and the methods used to investigate and prosecute gender killings by questioning the very nature of incident-focused criminal law. Searching for the crime’s gender motivation or characteristics broadens the investigative strategy beyond the concrete act. Therefore, an investigation into the killing of a woman should necessarily involve scrutiny of the context of the crime, the profile of the victim and the perpetrator, the relationship between them, and the specific circumstances of the murder. Naturally, this method involves more work for investigators and prosecutors, but those who baulk forget that similar techniques are systematically used for other motivated crimes, such as hate crimes, terrorism, or torture. This approach simply reorients the search for evidence, obvious, and straightforward for any prosecutor who has investigated gender-based killings. Interestingly, most of the femicides that have occurred in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, are clearly not the result of inter-partner violence.31 Four general contexts are identified in the LAMP for Latin America: intimate femicides, sexual femicides, femicides in a group setting, and other types of femicides. Importantly, [t]hese contexts are not to be considered mutually exclusive or rigid divisions, but rather as general frameworks that define the presence of a series of elements in the criminal acts. Therefore, depending on the circumstances, there may be cases with shared elements from the [first] three contexts.32 Each context with its distinct evidence needs to be understood and investigated differently. The methodological approach proposed by the LAMP sheds light on how to organise the investigation, suggests which evidence investigators should look for, and characterises the expertise prosecutors need. Described later, these considerations coalesced into a fundamental methodology. Interinstitutional cooperation is also fundamental for the effective prosecution of femicide. The case of Karla Turcios, investigated by Salvadorian prosecutors, is often cited as an example of positive practice. The body of the young journalist was found in April 2018, lying on an isolated road, an hour and a half north of San Salvador. It presented signs of strangulation, and her head was wrapped in plastic bags tied around her neck. A team of prosecutors and police investigators quickly identified the perpetrator, the individual who had reported his wife’s disappearance: her husband.33 Such quick mobilisation of judicial police, forensic specialists, and prosecutors at the crime scene, then regular communication afterwards, should be standard practice, but the reality is often very different. Judicial officials attending a crime scene often vary from one country to the other and only seldomly do they all gather around the victim. Subsequent coordination between entities often depends on institutional culture, personal relationships, or the prosecutor’s insistence. This lack of effective cooperation between institutions has negative repercussions for any crime, but it is even worse in cases of femicide where, from the start, negative stereotypes and insufficient interest often prevent the crime from being adequately considered. The LAMP underscores such a need for cooperation, but only local institutional relationships can determine how the LAMP’s suggestions take concrete shape in each country. To facilitate prosecutorial work and interinstitutional relationships, some national protocols include useful due diligence checklists, reminding prosecutors what tasks to complete and what to request from other dependencies. Extensive checklists guide prosecutors to look at elements in the crime scene or evidence to be considered in the autopsy from a gender perspective, noticing clues 437

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that they might otherwise dismiss (e.g. making a point to look for objects of sentimental significance to the victims, like a diary, photos, or keepsakes, or evidence of controlling behaviour of a partner). Reviewed by forensic and judicial police experts, these checklists also serve to ensure better coordination among all GPO dependencies involved in a femicide case. Finally, following both international human rights and the evolution of criminal law in Latin America, the LAMP places a special emphasis on all aspects of victims’ rights. Many countries have implemented assistance and protection mechanisms for direct and indirect victims of crimes, particularly femicides, some more efficiently than others. Addressing other rights of victims remains problematic. For example, a victim’s participation in criminal proceedings is often considered disruptive to the investigation. Reparations pose another challenge. In cases of femicides, reparations are seldom granted and rarely beyond material compensation for the family of women. Prosecutors still do not take on their full roles in the reparation process, often considered a purely civil matter for which the victim (or their family) alone is responsible. Based on the LAMP’s general recommendations, however, national protocols now insist that prosecutors make sure that reparations can be granted (for example, by freezing the accused’s assets or investigating his properties and possessions) and include the claim for reparation in their litigation strategy.

The LAMP’s Completion Through Different Adaptation Processes An evolving document, the LAMP’s content has been improved and complemented by national protocols and guidelines. Some examples are considered here. To begin with, the national protocols have broadened the LAMP’s scope, by including guidelines for all stages of criminal procedure. For example, the Argentinian protocol covers not only investigation and litigation but also the appeals process, the execution of the sentence and reparations. In other words, it seeks to ensure that the entire criminal procedure is carried out from a gender-sensitive perspective. The protocols also offer additional details on the operations investigators should perform and the evidence they should seek in the crime scene and the autopsy. The checklists are useful instruments that can be easily replicated in other countries. Another crucial complement to the LAMP is methodological. Based on the femicide contexts identified in the LAMP, the Argentinian protocol added the context of organised crime, transvesticides/transfemicides, and other femicidal contexts, which include cases that do not fit into prior contexts. This allowed the identification of the signs and evidence of gender violence associated with each of the femicidal contexts, a systematic methodology adopted in Guatemala and El Salvador. As previously noted, femicides are not limited to situations of domestic contexts. From the interviews conducted at the onset of the writing process in Guatemala and El Salvador, it was clear that femicides occurring within organised crime groups or as the result of their activities should receive special consideration in the national protocols. Gang groups often reproduce societal patriarchal and misogynistic values, and consequently, women involved in their ranks are subjected to similar gender-based violence or even worse. Investigators point out that women – gang members or not – are often not killed the same way as other victims: they are raped and tortured before being executed, their corpses discarded in public areas, or their bodies disappeared. The gender motivation behind these killings clearly indicates that women are considered either as property whose life and body should be controlled or as disposable objects used for business purposes and replaceable anytime. Surprisingly, investigators and prosecutors do not necessarily consider these killings to be gendermotivated. Ignoring the context, modus operandi, and specific motivation of the murders, judicial practitioners often overlook these cases as possible femicides. Without intentional and targeted effort to clarify the circumstances of these murders, the deaths of these women are not qualified or registered as femicides, preventing the extent of the phenomenon from being accurately documented. For this reason, following the Argentinian example, the Guatemala and El Salvador protocols devote 438

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an entire section on explaining the gender dynamics of this violence, specifying precisely what to do, for example, when corpses are dismembered, or partially or completely destroyed. They then insist on the close coordination that is required among the various GPO dependencies in charge of organised crime investigations. The adaptation process in Argentina revealed another situation, that of trans-person femicide, arising from the murder case of Amancay Diana Sacayán. A renowned human rights activist, Diana was the first person in Argentina to apply for the change of her sex (gender) in her identity document. On 13 October 2015, her body was found inside her home in Buenos Aires. It was determined that, during the attack, she was beaten, her hands and feet were tied, she was gagged, and she was stabbed with a knife. The autopsy established a total of 27 injuries. From the beginning of the criminal procedure, the investigation was carried out by the UFEM with a gender-sensitive approach, following the LAMP guidelines. This case became the first court ruling in Argentinian judicial history to use “tranvesticide” and the first conviction for homicide that was aggravated because of the victim’s gender identity.34 Based on this experience, the UFEM qualified the murders of transvestites and trans persons as “travesticidio” and “transfemicidio” in its protocol. This femicidal context was then replicated in Guatemala and Uruguay. Another notable addition to the LAMP relates to indigenous rights. The LAMP points to the importance of indigenous victim rights, underscoring the need for an intersectional approach, but it does not go into further detail. Guatemala offers a unique opportunity to explore the convergence of indigenous rights and criminal law. The Guatemalan GOP indigenous unit delegates participated actively in the national protocol writing process. They were decisive in incorporating an indigenous perspective into case management. Most obviously, investigators should provide indigenous victims and witnesses with adequate translators. Other intricacies were also considered, such as cultural rituals around death, the role of indigenous leadership, the need for victims to be accompanied by spiritual figures during judicial proceedings, or how the community can retrieve a body, given logistic and financial limitations when the forensic office is too far away.

Conclusion: The Challenges and the Ways Forward for the LAMP’s Application The LAMP has become a point of reference for the prosecution of femicides throughout Latin America. With its concomitant national protocols, it has been used for training purposes, as well as in emblematic cases. In Mexico’s Karla Pontigo case, for example, following the Mexican Supreme Court ruling, the GOP of San Luis Potosí appointed a special investigator to review all the investigations from a gender perspective. In Argentina, in the case of the femicide of Lucía Pérez,35 the responsibility of two adults was initially ignored based on gender stereotypes. The Supreme Court of the Province of Buenos Aires pointed out the deficiencies of the first instance ruling, in particular the lack of a gender perspective, citing the UFEM Protocol.36 The LAMP is also the centrepiece of the work of the Specialized Gender Network (Red Especializada en Género), created within the AIAMP (Asociación Iberoamericana de Ministerios Públicos). The Network, which gathers the persons in charge of gender from the 22 member GPOs, is looking at promoting the LAMP’s use throughout the continent. These are only a few examples that illustrate the LAMP’s impact, but ahead stretches a road of hurdles, hampering the effort to create a useful tool in reducing impunity. Some obstacles are structural to the Latin American justice system; others are more specific to femicide as a specific criminal phenomenon or practice. Besides substantial progress made over the last 20 years, gender-motivated violence is still not well understood and its implications are too often denied. Culturally enshrined gender stereotypes remain one of the main roadblocks ensuring women equal access to justice. Clear consequences of this enduring situation are represented by the obstacles women still face to obtain adequate 439

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protection, the erroneous legal qualification judicial professionals still give to gender-based violence, and the difficulties judicial systems encounter to prevent femicides. In addition, the understanding of gender-based killings of women is often limited to intimate partner violence, overshadowing the many other contexts in which femicides occur. If public institutions do not clearly analyse femicides in their diverse manifestations, women will remain unprotected. Lastly, the response to violence against women has been fragmented. Femicides, sexual violence, human trafficking, cyber criminality, and so on are singly tackled, giving rise to separate policies, separate protocols, separate training, and separate answers. This hampers the application of an integrated solution to combatting violence against women. Another challenge facing the implementation of the LAMP and its national adaptations is the concrete application. These protocols are only tools. To be applied effectively, they need to be understood and implemented by those in charge of the investigation, prosecution, and sanction of femicides. To this end, a multifaceted strategy should be put into place within the GPO that entails significant financial and human resources, thus requiring the general prosecutor’s commitment. The following measures should be considered: training with other key participants in the prosecution, such as the judicial police, the forensic institution, and the judiciary; follow-up on specific cases to allow investigators and prosecutors to learn from their peers, a mechanism already in place in Argentina; a working group composed of various GPO dependencies to coordinate strategies; the establishment of a case monitoring system to follow the protocol’s application; the inclusion of gender-based violence as a specific criminal phenomenon in criminal analysis; and the inclusion of the application of the protocol in the prosecutors’ professional evaluation grid. In Argentina, as in other federal states, the challenge to apply the national protocol is even more complex since each provincial state has the autonomy to organise its own justice system. This implies a long process of involvement of the local GPO. Currently, almost five years after its approval, only half of the provinces have incorporated the national protocol into their practice. Federalism presents an additional challenge when femicides occur in the context of organised crime, prosecuted at the federal, not state, level. Avoiding investigative fragmentation requires strategies for coordination between federal and local authorities. With – and despite – the passing of the years, the LAMP has become a reference for judicial institutions in charge of the prosecution of femicides. The national adaptation processes have demonstrated that the LAMP has enough versatility to guarantee a robust and efficient prosecution of gender-based killings of women and, at the same time, to allow each country to build its own instrument based on its needs and legal culture. However, the willingness to adequately apply the LAMP’s guidelines will be decisive to ensure that cases of femicide are adequately prosecuted throughout the continent. The LAMP’s success story renders it attainable, even on other continents. Obviously, its suggested methods correspond to practices in jurisdictions with a continental European legal tradition and cannot necessarily be applied as such in common law countries. Nevertheless, the LAMP is essential in raising awareness regarding a phenomenon that is still under-considered and poorly understood, underprevented yet generally preventable in many countries, well beyond Latin America.

Notes 1 To date, 18 Latin American countries have criminalised gender-based killings of women, either as autonomous crimes or as an aggravating circumstance of homicide. National legislations indistinctly employ the term “femicide” (“femicidio” such as in Argentina, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Uruguay) or “feminicide” (“feminicidio” such as in Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, and Panama), independent of the distinction social science has given to the two concepts. For simplicity, this chapter will use the expression “femicide” to refer to gender-based killings of women in general, regardless of the terminology used in national criminal law. The LAMP used the Committee of Experts of the Follow-up Mechanism to the Belém do Pará Convention (MESECVI) definition on femicide: “the violent death of

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The Latin American Model Protocol women based on gender, whether it occurs within the family, a domestic partnership, or any other interpersonal relationship; in the community, by any person, or when it is perpetrated or tolerated by the state or its agents, by action or omission” (www.oas.org/es/mesecvi/docs/declaracionfemicidio-en.pdf). 2 The Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean registered 983 femicides in Mexico for 2019, positioning it as the second country with the highest number of femicides right after Brazil. The Observatory is part of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (https://oig.cepal. org/en/indicators/femicide-or-feminicide). 3 Suprema Corte de Justicia de México, Amparo en revisión 1284/2015, 13 de noviembre de 2019, ponencia del Ministro Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena. 4 Suprema Corte de Justicia de México, Amparo en revisión 554/2013, 23 de marzo de 2015, ponencia del Ministro Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena. 5 United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN Women, 2014. 6 Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, 27 January 2005, para. 38. 7 Especially the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH for its Spanish acronyms). 8 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, 7 March 2003. 9 ACtHR, 2009, para. 602. 12 ii and 18. In 2014, in a subsequent femicide case against Guatemala, the court considered “that the lack of due diligence in the investigation of the victim’s murder is closely related to the absence of specific norms or protocols for the investigation of cases of the gender-based murder of women and violence against women in general” (Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 2014, para. 210). 10 United Nations Development Fund of Women (UNIFEM), 2008. 11 LAMP’s bibliography offers a list of these protocols or manuals. 12 Nash Rojas et al., 2010. 13 Ministerio de Seguridad de la República de Argentina, 2013. 14 Fiscalía General de la República de El Salvador y Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos, 2012. 15 In 2013, the Spanish Federation of Human Rights Associations decided to separately publish their own document. This guide concentrates on the forensic aspect to femicide investigations. Ginés Santidrian et al., 2013. 16 The LAMP bibliography enumerates the list of the reviewed protocols (page 132). The drafting team was composed of: Camilo Bernal Sarmiento, a Colombian criminal lawyer; Miguel Lorente Acosta, a Spanish forensic medical doctor and professor at the University of Granada; and Carmen Rosa Villa and Françoise Roth, at that time, respectively, representative and regional gender adviser of OHCHR’s Regional Office for Central America. Mrs. Villa is a former Peruvian prosecutor. 17 After the meetings organised in Costa Rica, the country judicial power (poder judicial) officially validated the LAMP; see the press release: www.lainformacion.com/asuntos-sociales/costa-rica-valida-protocololatinoamericano-para-investigacion-de-femicidios_5V4QefJpXF0NapoeAW8cK3. 18 Around 200 people participated in the validation round. The complete list of participants can be found in LAMP Annex 5. 19 It is difficult to find at this date press articles covering the events. An example could be found in https:// amecopress.net/Nuevo-intento-para-evitar-la-impunidad-en-el-Feminicidio. 20 Conclusiones de la XXI Asamblea General Ordinaria de la Asociación Iberoamericana de Ministerios Públicos, Quito, Ecuador, 19 noviembre de 2013, available at www.aiamp.info/index.php/actas/ acta-de-la-primera-reunion-del-comite-ejecutivo-de-la-aiamp-2011–2. 21 See the UN press releases: https://acnudh.org/modelo-de-protocolo-de-investigacion-de-las-muertesviolentas-de-mujeres-ya-esta-disponible/ or www.oacnudh.org/onu-mujeres-y-oacnudh-hacen-un-llamado-para-acabar-con-el-femicidio. 22 This part reflects largely the experience gathered in the authors’ direct participation in LAMP adaptation processes, in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Uruguay. 23 To date, Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, some Mexican states, and Peru have adapted the LAMP. At time of this writing, the drafting process of the national protocol has been completed in Uruguay, El Salvador, and Colombia, pending the approval of the document by their respective general prosecutor. Other countries, such as Chile, have developed instruments before the LAMP’s publication. Interestingly, El Salvador followed a circle process. In 2012, the GPO published a protocol to investigate feminicide, which constituted one of the LAMP references. However, in 2019, the GPO decided to update this document in accordance with the LAMP. 24 Law 26,743 on gender identity. 25 “National protocol” is used here to broadly refer to the documents obtained from the LAMP adaptation, independently of their official title. Some have been called protocols and other guidelines.

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Françoise Roth et al. 2 6 Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 2009, para. 455. 27 Ibid., para. 258. 28 Cited in United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN Women, 2014, par. 208. 29 United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN Women, 2014, par. 171. 30 Ibid. 31 As the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes, and consequences emphasised in her report on gender-related killings of women where she analysed several contexts (UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, 23 May 2012). 32 United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN Women, 2014, para. 214. 33 www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-45883884. 34 See “Crimen de Diana Sacayán: condenaron a prisión perpetua a un hombre por homicidio agravado por odio a la identidad de género,” 18 de junio de 2018, www.fiscales.gob.ar/genero/crimen-de-diana-sacayancondenaron-a-prision-perpetua-a-un-hombre-por-homicidio-agravado-por-odio-a-la-identidad-de-genero. 35 In 2016, Lucía was drugged, repeatedly raped, and killed. The first instance tribunal rejected the femicide charges against the two men accused. 36 Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Causa P. 134.373-Q, 14 de mayo del 2021.

References Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. (27 January 2005). Report on Mexico under article 8 of the Optional Protocol to the Convention, and reply from the Government of Mexico. Fiscalía General de la República de El Salvador y Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos. (2012). Protocolo de actuación para la investigación del feminicidio. San Salvador, El Salvador. Ginés Santidrian, E., Mariño Menéndez, F., & Cartagena Pastor, J. M. (2013). Guía de recomendaciones para la investigación eficaz del crimen del feminicidio. Madrid: Federación de Asociaciones de Derechos Humanos de España; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. (7 March 2003). Situación de los Derechos de la Mujer en Ciudad Juárez, México: El derecho a no ser objeto de violencia y discriminación. Inter-American Court of Human Rights. (2009, November 6). González et al. (“Cotton Field”) vs. Mexico. Inter-American Court of Human Rights. (2014, May 19). Veliz Franco et al. vs. Guatemala. Ministerio de Seguridad de la República de Argentina. (2013). Guía de actuación para las fuerzas policiales y de seguridad federales para la investigación de femicidios en el lugar del hallazgo. Resolución 428/2013. Buenos Aires, Argentina. Nash Rojas, C., Mujica Torres, I., & Casas Becerra, L. (2010). Protocolo de actuación para operadores de justicia frente a la violencia contra las mujeres en le marco de las relaciones de pareja. Santiago de Chile: Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Derecho, Centro de Derechos Humanos. UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, i. c. (23 May 2012). Report. United Nations General Assembly. United Nations Development Fund of Women (UNIFEM). (2008). Propuesta de protocolo de actuación en la investigación del delito de homicidio desde la perspectiva del feminicidio. Mexico. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN Women. (2014). Latin American Model Protocol for the investigation of gender-related killings of women (femicide/feminicide). Panama: United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN Women.

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40 FEMICIDE AND THE “HEAT OF PASSION” CRIMINAL DOCTRINE Hava Dayan

This chapter focuses on the social construction of gender-based fatal violence – femicide – through the legal field. The legal field is a powerful social mechanism that not only reflects social reality but also plays a major role in the construction of social reality (Smart, 1989), including how femicide is represented. The law has the power to refute and disregard alternative academic and empirical discourses regarding this form of homicide. The law has the power to deny, exclude, and trivialise femicide and more so, implicitly encourage it, even if inadvertently so (Kelly and Radford, 1997: 19). Therefore, it is important to uncover and expose gender-based biases hidden beneath supposedly “neutral” laws and identify the gender-based consequences that such laws create (Levit and Verchick, 2006). Deconstructing the legal underpinnings perpetuating femicide, this chapter problematises a specific criminal doctrine, the “heat of passion” doctrine, and its dire consequences. As shown here, such a legal doctrine may, even if inadvertently, tolerate and even encourage intimate partner femicide (IPF). Women face a disproportionate risk of lethal victimisation at the hands of an intimate partner, given most victims are female intimate partners, not male intimate partners. Indeed, across the United States, IPF accounts for approximately 40% to 50% of femicide cases, compared to a relatively small proportion (5.9%) of intimate partner homicides involving male victims (Campbell et al., 2003: 1089; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime [UNODC], 2018). Most intimate partner homicide cases are, in fact, IPF cases, with women being killed by intimate partners (husbands, lovers, ex-husbands, or ex-lovers) more often than by any other type of perpetrator (Campbell et al., 2003; UNODC, 2019; Warner, 2010). These criminological patterns were echoed by a World Health Organization (WHO) report on violence, noting a stark gender asymmetry in male versus female violence against intimate partners globally (Garcia-Moreno, Watts, Jansen, Ellsberg, and Heise, 2002; R. P. Dobash and Dobash, 2012; UNODC, 2019). Demonstrating the structural judicial underpinnings that socially perpetuate and encourage IPF, this chapter shows how a criminal doctrine and its applied correlated case law rulings regarding criminal liability mitigation culminated in constructing a social reality that encourages femicide.

Fatal “Love” as a Lesser Crime: The American “Heat of Passion” Criminal Doctrine Women are rarely killed by women; most often, they are killed by men (R. E. Dobash, Dobash, Cavanagh, and Lewis, 2004; UNODC, 2019). Many women are killed by their intimate partners (Browne, Williams, and Dutton, 1999; Campbell, Glass, Sharps, Laughon, and Bloom, 2007; Serran DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-46

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and Firestone, 2004) when they expressly seek an end to their intimate relationship (Campbell et al., 2003; Dawson and Gartner, 1998; Hannawa, Spitzberg, Wiering, and Teranishi, 2006; Johnson and Hotton, 2003; Wilson and Daly, 1990, 1993). The link between a woman’s desire to separate and IPF has been repeatedly supported empirically and in practice (Campbell, 2003, 2007, 2012; Dayan, 2020). The period immediately after separation is the most dangerous: 50% to 70% of the killings occur when the partners live separately, and often they are committed after the woman has acted on her intention to separate (Ben Ze’ev and Goussinsky, 2008; Coss, 2006). Given the link between femicide and women’s desire to end an intimate relationship, researchers have pointed to the connection between sexual or romantic jealousy and IPF, which can occur among couples that are not separating (Campbell, 2012; Dawson, 2003; Horder, 1992; Rapaport, 1991). So pervasive and deep are the jealousy and behavioural patterns associated with the social construction of pure “love” that they are entangled and intertwined in the social assumptions underpinning criminal law. These underlying social assumptions about gender, love, sex, and violence lead to criminal doctrines that are allegedly neutral, transparent, and objective. Alas, these supposedly gender-neutral and objective criminal doctrines reflect social norms regarding sex and masculinity and play a major role in the construction of a socially discriminating gendered reality (Smart, 1989, 1995). Such a gender-discriminating social reality construed by law, may contribute, even if inadvertently, to the perpetuation and toleration of fatal gender-based violence (Kelly and Radford, 1997: 19). One such doctrine that seems to be gender-neutral yet plays a major role in the construction of gender-based lethal violence is the British doctrine of provocation assimilated in all exBritish colonial states, under which the subsequent American doctrine of heat of passion originated and flourished.

British Origins of the American Doctrine of Provocation The doctrine of provocation stems from 17th-century England (Horder, 1992) and was absorbed into criminal law in almost all countries governed by England in the 18th century (common law countries that were once British colonies, such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Scotland, India, Israel, Hong Kong, and the United States). The English doctrine perceived provocation by the victim as a factor instigating intense anger (Berman and Farrell, 2011: 1036–1037), which thereby diminished the moral guilt of the person accused of murder (Lee, 2003: 28; also see Chen, 2000). The doctrine of provocation is only applicable in the context of homicide and cannot be applied to other criminal offences (Horder, 1992; Kremnitzer and Levanon, 2009). In addition, it is important to stress that the doctrine of provocation is not a full criminal defence but only a partial defence, reducing the defendant’s criminal liability (Berman and Farrell, 2011; Kremnitzer and Levanon, 2009) and, consequently, enabling a conviction for manslaughter as opposed to murder (Brown, 1999; Kremnitzer and Levanon, 2009). English law in the 17th century recognised four circumstances in which provocation would be regarded as sufficient: (1) the victim gravely insulted the accused immediately before the killing; (2) the victim seriously injured a family member of the accused; (3) the victim had deprived an Englishman of his freedom, which is of utmost relevance to femicide; (4) the victim had committed adultery with the wife of the accused. Under early versions of the British doctrine, the circumstances of adultery with the wife of the accused could be regarded as a provocation – not the defendant’s wife but rather the killing of a man who committed adultery with the defendant’s wife – and, thus, could be criminally mitigated. In other words, the original provocation doctrine did not excuse a defendant who killed his wife upon discovering her adultery; instead, it excused the defendant only if he killed the man who committed adultery with his wife. This British conceptualisation of such circumstances interpreted the provocation of adultery and sexual jealousy as related to manly emotions, not to be justified but certainly to be excused (Horder, 1992). 444

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The English doctrine related to a husband’s observation of his wife in the act of adultery as sufficient provocation was, in fact, rooted in the socio-cultural assumption that married women were their husband’s property. This notion contributed to the gendered social belief that a wife’s infidelity is an extraordinary affront to her husband’s sense of self and manhood (Lee, 2003: 21). This last original British law category meriting the application of the provocation doctrine, wherein the victim had committed adultery with the wife of the accused, is the only category that did not involve violent behaviour on the part of the victim towards the defendant (Lee, 2003: 20). Furthermore, as this doctrine implies, this category of legally adequate provocation, a husband’s observation of his wife having sexual relations with another man, seems to apply explicitly to male defendants. During the 18th and 19th centuries in England, the rather explicit and rigid doctrine of provocation was expanded from the four enumerated circumstances to additional circumstances that juries deemed as warranting criminal mitigation. Those circumstances were not as concretely specified as the original doctrine. Instead, the rather enigmatic concept of the “reasonable man” was introduced for juries to consider in which circumstances any reasonable man would be provoked (Horder, 1992: 99–100). In this doctrinal expansion, all original provocation rigid categories were expanded, including the fourth category – that relating to criminal mitigation of a man who is provoked by his wife’s adultery – to include various additional circumstances (Horder, 1992: 88). In fact, this change in the doctrine of provocation legally translated the social way in which men see their female intimate partners as their property and merited criminal mitigation of the killing of an allegedly adulterous wife rather than only the man who committed adultery with the killer’s wife. The legal interpretation of the British provocation category related to adultery should not be equated with gender fairness and equality. Women could not resort to such a defence claim of provocation upon discovering their husband’s adultery because, until the 19th century, British women were not a legal entity but rather an extension of the property of their socially associated man (i.e. father or husband). As such, discriminatory socio-legal status followed suit, with women’s inability to file a police complaint when they were raped, battered, or assaulted. The landmark ruling in the socio-legal construction of femicide refers to an English precedent dating to the 17th century. As ruled in 1617 in the Manning case, a defendant’s criminal liability can be mitigated by the recognition of adultery as provocation (1617, 1 Vent. 158). The court held that, in such circumstances, it would be appropriate to mitigate the conviction from murder to manslaughter because the provocation was “sufficiently great” in the circumstances of adultery and, therefore, justifying a lesser conviction (1617, 1 Vent. 158–159; Horder, 1992: 39). The tying of the British doctrine of provocation to killing linked to adultery was further emphasised in a following ruling, wherein the judge referred to a man’s feelings of violent, fatal jealousy as a noble manly emotion (Regina v. Mawgridge, 1706). In this ruling, the court stated that “when a man is taken in adultery with another man’s wife, if the husband shall stab the adulterer, or knock out his brains, this is bare manslaughter: for jealousy is the rage of the man, and adultery is the highest invasion of property” (Regina v. Mawgridge, 1706; emphasis added). This ruling was later emphasised by Lord Justice Holt in 1707 in a subsequent ruling in the case of Regina v. Mawgridge, rejecting an assertion of provocation arising during a fight between two men and ruling that such provocation is not as grave as the provocation of adultery.

Femicide Under the Aegis of the American “Heat of Passion” Version of Provocation The Manning case (1617, 1 Vent. 158) and Regina v. Mawgridge (84 Eng. Rep. 1107, 1706). British precedents for constructing female adultery as grievous provocation were subsequently followed by the American provocation doctrine. A century later than the legal British precedents, the American provocation doctrine followed suit by legally linking love, sex, jealousy, and lethal violence in a 445

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prominent case in 1859: the Sickles case (Fontaine, 2012; Keetley, 2008). The Sickles case concerned a New York City congressman who was charged with shooting and killing Barton Key, the district attorney of New York, who had been having an affair with Sickles’ wife. The American court acquitted Sickles of the murder charge, ruling that he had suffered an instinctive temporary loss of control due to intense romantic jealousy that could not be controlled by reason and logic (Fontaine, 2012: 62; emphasis added). This ruling gave further impetus and criminal leeway to gendered fatal violence by gluing tighter the alleged socio-legal link between men’s “intense love and jealousy,” entitlement to behaviours of possessiveness and control over women, and the supposedly consequential, uncontrolled, emotion-based, fatally violent outburst. The problematic connection between the ideal of love and men’s deadly violence was thus officially and legally recognised. This 19th-century ruling created, both de jure and de facto, a hybrid legal doctrine designed to mitigate the criminal liability of men accused of murder in circumstances of possessiveness towards their female intimate partner. In the words of Sickles’ defence attorneys: “We propose to prove the passion, and the provocation which led to the passion” (Keetley, 2008: 284; emphasis added). Relying on both the British provocation doctrine and the heat of passion argument argued and ruled on in the Sickles case, this alleged objective and gender-neutral criminal ruling subsequently developed into the American criminal doctrine of provocation that referred to crimes committed in the heat of passion due to extreme mental or emotional disturbance (EMED). The American legal leniency towards criminal homicide as reflected in the development of the EMED doctrine led to a gross extension of the common law doctrine of provocation and greatly expanded the circumstances whereby defendants could assert legal claims to mitigate their criminal liability for the killing they committed (American Law Institute, 1980: 49–50). Reinforcing an expansive approach towards the applicability of legal doctrines that mitigate the defendant’s criminal liability for murder, over time, the American criminal doctrine of provocation drifted apart from its British roots. The American legal doctrine extended the mitigation offered by the traditional British doctrine of provocation by introducing the legal concepts of heat of passion and EMED, resulting in a more lenient legal approach to homicide that excluded many homicides from murder classification. Accordingly, only wilful, deliberate, and premeditated murder (and murder that occurred in the commission of or attempt to commit enumerated felonies) was regarded as the most grievous kind of killing, graded as first-degree murder with a correlative capital punishment (Wechsler, 1968). The main departure of American doctrine from its traditional British roots on this matter relates to the encompassing of emotional and mental circumstances that were not accepted as an adequate provocation in British common law (American Law Institute, 1980: 49), for which killers could not mitigate their criminal liability and were sent to the gallows. Contrary to the British legal doctrine, American legal scholars argued that an intentional homicide should be reduced from murder to manslaughter if it is committed under the influence of EMED for which there is a reasonable explanation or excuse (American Law Institute, 1980). This American legal framework of homicide focuses on judging the killing that the defendant perpetrated from a subjective, rather than an objective, point of view. In other words, these killings are not to be legally dealt with based on the crime and the killer’s deeds, nor the victim’s narrative. The killings are legally dealt with, mainly and ultimately, based on the killer’s subjective mental and emotional states. The expansion of the doctrine of provocation in line with the heat of passion and EMED conceptualisations is, in fact, embedded in the realm of human weaknesses, in the supposed sudden loss of control that is not to be praised but certainly understood and excused. As such, it represents a “concession to human weakness” (Dressler, 1982; Keetley, 2008). In other words, the gist of such legal mitigation is that “heat of passion reduces punishment because the actor is, unfortunately, like most humans” (Dressler, 1982: 756) – or, in other words, like most men (Howe, 2013). 446

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American legal transformations of homicide law display legal compassion for the killer. This legal compassion is ingrained in the fact that the legal “story” told in the court weighing the severity of the killing, in the absence of the victim he killed, “shall be determined from the viewpoint of a person in the actor’s situation under the circumstances as he believes them to be” (American Law Institute, 1980; emphasis added). This subjective, one-sided narrative is by no means a negligible legal departure. Legal frameworks that focus on the defendant’s subjective, individual psyche are known to treat their correlative sentences with leniency, which adds insult to injury for the dead victims (FridgootNetzer, 2008). About half of all US jurisdictions adopted the EMED criminal doctrine of provocation (Lee, 2003: 285) and accorded statutory recognition to the concept of heat of passion (and loss of emotional control) as a partial criminal defence in the context of this doctrine. Although the term “loss of emotional control” does not expressly appear in the EMED terminology, in practice, it developed in the interpretation of the concept of heat of passion, thereby replacing, in essence, the original concept of “honour” in the English doctrine of provocation (Berman and Farrell, 2011; Dressler, 1982; Horder, 1992; Rapaport, 1996). The British concept of honour developed in the 16th century and related to the social expectation that a man would protect his honour and retaliate in the face of an affront (Horder, 1992: 25–30). Such angry retaliation was perceived as a virtue of a man of honour, who deliberately responds with violence to an undervaluing or threat to his honour (Horder, 1992: 27, 38, 42). Under American legal adaptations of the doctrine of provocation, this early British concept of honour retaliation originally ingrained in the doctrine gave way to criminal mitigation for killings ensuing from loss of control rather than honour maintenance. The American expansion of the doctrine into circumstances of a defendant’s loss of control led to startling changes in the criminal doctrine of provocation. Under such changes, mitigation of criminal liability was not confined to the loss of control ensuing from provocation, and defendants’ criminal liability could be mitigated irrespective of the act of provocation. Further, under such a legal doctrine, an act of provocation is not necessary (Ramsey, 2010), provided an emotional or mental disturbance or both impaired the self-control of the accused. In fact, the American combination of provocation, heat of passion, and EMED affords a mitigated criminal liability for what otherwise would be a murder conviction. This almost exclusively subjective characteristic unrestrictedly extends the range of cases in which it can be applied (Berman and Farrell, 2011; Dressler, 1982; Lee, 2003). Consequently, the American doctrine of provocation in the heat of passion is highly forgiving towards IPF perpetrators. Such a doctrine applies a partial criminal defence for crimes committed under the influence of intense emotions (EMED), regardless of provocation immediately before the act of homicide (heat of passion), and enables a broad subjective component designed to remove the act of homicide from the scope of the offence of murder (Dressler, 1982; Lee, 2003). For example, even if there was no objective, factual adultery on the part of a female intimate partner, the defendant could subjectively believe that she did so to receive mitigation for the femicide he committed. Under such a doctrine, IPF is seen as a “lesser homicidal crime” because an IPF defendant claiming that he killed a woman in the heat of passion through alleged loss of control may be afforded mitigated criminal liability even when (1) there was no element of immediacy in terms of his discovery of the alleged adultery and his alleged loss of control (Lee, 2003: 34), (2) the woman he killed was no longer his current intimate partner (but rather his ex-intimate partner), and (3) the woman he killed had long been separated from him and involved with another man (Fournier, McDougall, and Dekker, 2012; Lee, 2003; Ramsey, 2010). Such judicial rulings have shifted away from the original British common law doctrine of provocation, and in fact, they are closer to doctrines relating to the mitigation of criminal liability in the context of the murder of women found in Islamic countries (Al-Hassan, 2021; Lee, 2003; Ramsey, 2010; Spatz, 1991). In many Islamic countries, provisions in the penal code mitigate or exempt a 447

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killer from punishment against the background of violation of the family’s honour (for example, Chapter 22 of Iranian criminal law). Similar lenient punishments due to criminal mitigation to the point of near-exoneration can be seen, such as in Article 340 of the Jordanian Penal Code, Article 334 of the Bahrain Penal Code, Article 237 of the Egypt Penal Code, Articles 153–154 of the Kuwait Penal Code, Article 562 of the Lebanon Penal Code, Article 418 of the Morocco Penal Code, Article 279 of the Algerian Penal Code, Article 375 of the Libyan Penal Code, Article 409 of the Iraq Penal Code, Article 232 of the Yemen Penal Code, and Articles 131–132 of the Sudan Penal Code. In practice, under the aegis of the heat of passion and its correlated alleged loss of control, American IPF perpetrators are entitled de jure and de facto, like in many Islamic countries, to unjust legal mitigation. The women they killed already rest too deep beneath the earth for us to hear their voices and take a stand against how state judicial apparatuses add insult to their injury. For example, in 2018, the Court of Appeals of Indiana (Johnson v. State of Indiana, 1989) rejected an appeal to reduce a voluntary manslaughter conviction regarding the appellant’s killing of his estranged wife, Keshia. Although the court of appeals justly rejected the appeal, by doing so, it reinstated the appellant’s legal mitigation of a murder conviction to voluntary manslaughter. Under Indiana penal code, voluntary manslaughter refers to the killing of a person knowingly or intentionally with the existence of “sudden heat.” Such sudden heat acts as a mitigating factor for what otherwise would be murder and its correlated sentence of death or life imprisonment without parole. The legal mitigation merited to the killer in this case casts profound doubts on the legal application of sudden heat claims in femicide circumstances. In fact, the case’s facts suggest that Keshia’s killing did not occur under sudden heat but rather prolonged and controlled “loss of control.” The case’s facts reveal longstanding domestic abuse in which Johnson was the offender and Keshia was the victim. The legal mitigation afforded to him is even more at odds, given a pursuant court’s nocontact order to protect Keshia from his ongoing violence. In fact, at the time of being killed, Keshia was no longer living with the killer. The domestic abuse sequelae consisted of Keshia’s repeated beatings, chokings, and killing threats perpetrated by Johnson. For example, a neighbour saw Johnson and Keshia arguing outside their apartment and heard Johnson threatening her, saying, “Bitch, get back in this house. . . . Get back in this house or I’m gonna kill you.” Similarly, a few months before Keshia was killed, her friend walked into her apartment to see her lying on the floor, being strangled by Johnson. A month before Keshia was killed, police officers who responded to a 911 call testified seeing Johnson standing across the street and noting physical marks on Keshia’s neck consistent with a choking incident. These abusive sequelae continued until her killing: Two days before her death, police were once again dispatched to Keshia’s apartment. Upon arrival, they saw Keshia was upset. She told them that Johnson pushed her, whereas his defence involved a claim that he was upset with her “for being out all night and for adultery.” Of relevance is the fact that while in jail for the circumstantial violation of his no-contact order, Johnson told his jail inmate that “he would kill his wife when he was released from jail.” True enough, one day after his release, a neighbour heard arguing in Keshia’s apartment. Later that day, her body was found in the apartment, and an autopsy found that she had been strangled and stabbed nine times. These post-mortem medical findings mirrored Johnson’s explanation to his jail inmate of how he killed Keisha. This tragic story of gendered fatal violence deeply problematises a legal claim of sudden heat for which a murder charge can merit mitigation to a much lesser conviction and its correlated sentence. Such killing seems less due to sudden heat and more as a premediated killing related to ongoing domestic abuse. Sadly, one might assume that the only words for which the jury might have accepted Johnson’s sudden heat claim were those he told the police officers dispatched to Keshia’s apartment two days before her killing expressing his anger at Keisha for “being out all night and for adultery.” 448

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Conclusion Scholars have pointed to the masculine cultural foundation of the doctrine of provocation as one that fosters and encourages qualities of materialism, aggression, and male jealousy (Browne et al., 1999; Coss, 2006; Horder, 1992; Lee, 2003; Ramsey, 2010). Furthermore, there is an apparent problematic moral foundation in a doctrine that displays tolerance and leniency towards violent behaviour in general and violence toward women in particular (Coss, 2006; Lee, 2003; Rapaport, 1996). Such a legalistic structure legitimises human weakness and emotional turbulence in relation to outbreaks of violence by men (Coss, 2006; Fournier et al., 2012; Horder, 1992). Alongside these important criticisms, it is necessary to add a socio-psychological, empirical, and concrete critique regarding the application of the legal presumption of loss of control (by which the criminal liability of the accused is mitigated) in IPF cases in the United States and many other countries. This is because the legal leniency or tolerance shown towards IPF killers stems not only from the social sublimation of violence in the context of love but also from the legal presumption regarding the killing of a female intimate partner supposedly due to a loss of control. This approach leads to the perception of femicide as a “rational” accident, analogous to a “hand which has slipped” (Lee, 2003: 80–83; also see Coss, 2006; Fournier et al., 2012; Horder, 1992) and, therefore, an act performed by virtue of a loss of control. Yet recent findings in the context of IPF suggest that killings of women do not occur in circumstances of emotional turmoil or momentary loss of control but rather knowingly and deliberately (Ben Ze’ev and Goussinsky, 2008: 110–114). To the contrary, Ben Ze’ev and Goussinsky reported that although the transformation into a killer occurs in an instant (from a legal perspective, prior to the murder), usually it is not sudden but rather the result of a dynamic of progress towards the act of femicide over weeks and months. This period is marked by prolonged emotions, such as jealousy, anger, anxiety, depression, and despair, that shape a powerful framework for the emotional perception of reality. In this emotional context, the idea of the woman’s killing matures, gains a sense of realism, and advances towards realisation. Thus, IPF should be framed as the climax of a dynamic process, culminating in psychological readiness such that there is no room for seeing it as local, unplanned violence that “accidentally” exceeded its boundaries (Ben Ze’ev and Goussinsky, 2008). In other words, even though the transformation into an IPF killer takes place in an instant, it typically is not sudden – after all, the killing itself is rarely a spontaneous act (Ben Ze’ev and Goussinsky, 2008). A critical review of how judicial apparatuses socially construct the reality of femicide results in problematising the mitigated criminal liability afforded to IPF perpetrators. Once we empirically substantiate that IPF is not the result of a loss of control – in Ben Ze’ev and Goussinsky’s (2008) words, “What may often seem to be loss of control is in fact the fruit of premeditation. The murderer had control over his ‘loss of control’” (p. 114; emphasis added) – it is extremely problematic, to say the very least, to continue applying a legal construction that mitigates the criminal liability of conscious and deliberate IPF perpetrators by applying the EMED defence. Furthermore, mitigating the criminal liability of IPF perpetrators is morally flawed because their criminal mitigation encourages tolerance of violent behaviour in general and gender-based violence specifically. Granting an exemption, mitigation, or forgiveness for IPF conducted under allegations of adultery on the side of the victim or because the woman desires to leave sends a hidden message, legally and morally legitimising the negation of the woman’s right to carry out autonomous personal choices (Coss, 2006; Ramsey, 2010; Saunders and Browne, 2000). In Rapaport’s (1996) words, “separation murder can be seen as the extreme of domestic tyranny – the refusal to acknowledge the independence of a woman from the will of her husband or lover at any price” (p. 1524, emphasis added). Even if the pattern of killing intimate partners was indeed characterised by a real and substantive loss of control, it is still worth asking whether it is proper and justified to apply a doctrine of mitigation of criminal liability in the circumstances of IPF (Lee, 2003: 235–245). To do so constructs a 449

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social reality that encourages patterns of violent behaviour and reinforces twisted ideas of love and possessiveness in the form of fatal gender-based violence (Horder, 1992: 186). It goes without saying, of course, that the mitigation of the criminal liability of IPF perpetrators is also inconsistent with the fundamental values ​​of the legal system in the United States (and other countries) in the context of gender equality related to criminal liability, because empirically most such mitigations are cases of men killing their female intimate partner, not women killing a male partner (Lee, 2003). Furthermore, such mitigation of criminal liability squarely negates the genderneutral value of life, given that most intimate partner homicide victims are women. Similar criticisms of these concealed ethical and moral concepts embedded in the doctrine of provocation have led to proposals to abolish the doctrine of provocation (Browne et al., 1999; Coss, 2006; Horder, 1992; Victorian Law Reform Commission, 2005) and its actual abolition in some jurisdictions: Australian states, including Victoria (in 2005), and Western Australia (in 2008); New Zealand (in 2009); the state of TExA in the United States (in 1994); and even England, the birthplace of the doctrine (in 2009; Ramsey, 2010). Reiterating aspects of femicide in how state apparatuses reinforce femicide, such abolitions of the “heat of passion” doctrine should be socio-legally and criminally emulated.

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41 STATE ACCOUNTABILITY AND FEMINICIDE Cecilia Menjívar and Leydy Diossa-Jiménez

Introduction This chapter examines what governments do through legislative actions and administrative strategies to protect women from violence. We base our observations on five countries of Central America – Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua – as they represent variation in responses within a region that presents important similarities, such as having some of the highest rates of gender-based violence (GBV hereafter) against women in the world (ECLAC, 2019). Over the years, Central American governments have responded by passing over 102 laws (combined) and creating specialised police units and courts to address violence and crimes against women. However, despite all these legislative and administrative actions, women continue to suffer egregious forms of violence and are killed every day. Considering this incongruity, we argue that generally, such governmental actions have been taken mostly in response to pressures from domestic women’s groups and the international community to align with gender mainstreaming1, more than from genuine efforts to protect women on the ground. At the same time, we recognise that laws to protect women from violence are a prerequisite for women’s protection. However, laws will fall short, as they have in the cases we examine here when the institutions in charge of implementing legal and administrative actions are unable or unwilling to do so and at times even create obstacles to policy implementation. Therefore, in this chapter, we underscore the critical role of the state and its institutions in these countries’ responses to GBV against women (Mackay, Kenny, and Chapell, 2010) and focus on obstacles that range from outright obstruction, faulty implementation, impunity, and impediments to access data on the killings of women. Although the extant scholarship mostly focuses on violence against women (VAW hereafter) in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, we include Nicaragua and Costa Rica to strengthen the scope of our analysis. Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador top the list of countries with the highest levels of feminicide2 in Latin America and the world. In 2017, El Salvador had the highest feminicide rates in the region, at 10.2 feminicides (per 100,000), followed by Honduras, with 5.1. Although Nicaragua and Costa Rica have lower rates and comparatively more comprehensive feminicide laws, current conservative movements have largely reversed the gains of the last decades. Thus, Nicaragua currently does not report feminicide cases to international organisations, and Costa Rica reported 0.5 per 100,000 in 2017 (ECLAC, 2018), including 3 feminicides where the victims were tourists or foreigners. The approval of the series of laws in Central America is part of a global trend promoted by a gender mainstreaming approach worldwide. But domestic pressures, in the form of women’s rights

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movements and mobilisations, also press governments to pass these laws. Domestic and international pressures reflect international organisations’ demands, such as those of the United Nations’ Fourth Conference on Women in Beijing in 1994, when the UN and signatory countries pledged to implement a platform of action to improve conditions for women in the next 15 years. The Beijing Resolution (UN, 1995, Article 9) included designing, implementing, and monitoring effective policies and programs. It highlighted the need for the involvement of civil society, “particularly women’s groups and networks and other non-governmental organisation” (UN, 1995, Article 20) in the effective implementation of the Platform for Action and to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against women (UN, 1995, Article 29). Additionally, the conference approved the Platform requiring “strong commitment on the part of governments” (UN, 1995, Article 5) as they have to promote and protect women’s human rights. The conference upheld the previous Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, 1979) while expanding the scope of its mandate to include grave violations of women’s rights, including “murder, torture, systematic rape, among others (Chapter I, Article 11). All the countries in this study participated and agreed to comply with the conference’s mandate. In her address to the convention, the first lady of El Salvador affirmed, “We believe that the final resolution . . . will provide the guidelines for governments, non-governmental organisations, and international organisations to create appropriate mechanisms for the enhancement of women’s condition and position within society” (El Salvador, 1995: 1). The president of Guatemala sent a message to comply with the Beijing Conference, although his administration included a caveat: According to the ethical, moral, legal, cultural criteria of the Guatemalan population, our delegation interprets the controversial gender concept only as female and male gender, that is, women and men. It recognizes the traditional family as the core of society and the dignity of motherhood. (Guatemala, 1995: 2–3) The government of Honduras expressed its continuous compliance with prior international agreements (e.g. women’s rights). “[We] express our interest and commitment to monitor and comply with the resolutions meaning from the IV world conference on women. At the international level, Honduras reaffirms its democratic inclination to adopt the international conventions and treaties” (Honduras, 1995: 3). The executive director of Nicaragua’s Institute for Women also expressed its adherence to the Platform for Action, noting that “it should reflect the meaning of new development based on principles of equality, concerning the differences and guarantees of a full exercise of the universal human rights of women and men” (Nicaragua, 1995: 2). Finally, even though Costa Rica already had one of the most advanced legislations regarding gender-based discrimination in the region, during the Platform declaration the delegates pointed to the several challenges that the law posed: “While legal instruments are relevant in themselves, more important is its effective harmonization with daily practice. For that, we have identified among the most important challenges: . . . prevent and combat the scourge of domestic violence” (Costa Rica, 1995: 3). All the countries therefore adhered to the declaration and expressed their commitment to the implementation of the convention. However, 25 years after declaring their commitment, women in the region continue to suffer from appalling forms of violence. The Beijing Conference defined VAW as an obstacle to equality, development, and peace (UN, 1995, Article 113) and included physical, sexual, or psychological violence – in particular murder – perpetrated by an individual, as well as those condoned by the state. The Platform stated that violence against women is exacerbated by social pressures, [by] women’s lack of access to legal information, aid or protection; the lack of laws [and the] failure to reform existing 454

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laws, or inadequate efforts on the public authorities to promote awareness of and enforce existing laws. (UN, 1995, Article 118) The most crucial contribution of the Beijing Conference was the plea for “governments and other actors to promote an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective” in all policies and programs, to analyse the differentiated effect on women and men (UN, 1995, Article 123). This mandate required signatory countries to exercise due diligence to prevent and investigate acts of VAW and to enact and reinforce legal sanctions in legislation to punish and redress the wrongs done to women. Additionally, the conference required signatory countries to adopt, implement, and review legislation for the effective elimination of VAW; provide women with mechanisms of justice, through national legislation; strengthen institutional channels to report acts of VAW; collect data, compile national statistics, and create training for judicial, legal, medical, and social personnel; and allocate resources within the government budget to mobilise community resources to the elimination of VAW. In 1997, the UN further promoted the gender mainstreaming framework by extending the mandate to all the policies and UN system programs to achieve gender equality (UN, 1997). The development of this capacity included the collection, evaluation, and exchange of gender-related information, statistics, and indicators and the monitoring of all relevant treaties to integrate the gender perspective. To facilitate gender mainstreaming, the UN integrated a follow-up and appraisal of global conferences urging agencies, states, and stakeholders to apply a gender perspective and adjust the implementation activities, including non-governmental organisations and state agencies engaged in the implementation of the UN conferences.

Background El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua are strategic cases to analyse feminicide laws. Latin America, as a region, has some of the highest levels of feminicide worldwide (GAR, 2022). For instance, 10 countries in Latin America are in the top 25 countries with the highest levels of feminicides in the world (GAR, 2022). Furthermore, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala are in the top four countries with more than six female homicides per 100,000 women. In addition to high levels of these crimes, Central American countries, generally, show low levels of prosecution. According to Honduras’ judicial system, between 2012 and 2018, there were 2,046 violent deaths of women in Honduras (ECLAC, 2018). Of those, 32 cases were recorded as feminicides by the justice system, and only 14 were prosecuted (0.7% completion rate) (UNAH, 2018). The gap between levels of violence and prosecution levels shows a picture of injustice for women victims of GBV in Central America. Following the international accords, between 1960 and 2018, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua approved 102 laws to prevent and prosecute VAW, and yet these laws have not translated into safer conditions for women. For instance, Guatemala had 26 VAW laws but recorded 1,961 feminicides between 2016 and 2018 (GGM, 2019), El Salvador had 10 laws and 1,228 feminicides, and Honduras had 12 laws and reported 1,509 feminicides between 2013 and 2017 (ECLAC, 2019). In these countries, the numbers have decreased slightly despite continued high levels of killings of women. Nicaragua and Costa Rica are more puzzling. Both countries have lower levels compared to other countries in the region; however, this might be due to underreporting, misclassifications, or complete disinterest in data collection. Nicaragua has seven comprehensive VAW laws and, despite agreeing to comply with mandates to maintain statistics of these crimes, has not reported feminicides cases consistently (Nicaragua, 2019). Costa Rica, with 47 VAW laws, reported 148 feminicides between 2013 and 20183. Thus, despite an abundance of legal provisions, VAW laws are ineffective in preventing GBV in Central America. 455

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Feminicide cases continue to appear in the news every day. A case from Honduras portraying the levels of violence, both physical and legal, that women experience every day is illustrative of the mismatch between the extensive laws in place and the violence women endure in the region. Sherill Hernandez was serving as regional chief of the Technical Agency for Criminal Investigation (TACI) of Honduras when she was found dead in 2018. According to initial reports from TACI, Sherill committed suicide; however, at the morgue doctors declared her death a homicide and not a suicide, as her body had evidence of suffocation. The marks under her chin made them conclude that the person who committed the crime was an expert (NYTEs 2019), which the Coroner’s Office maintained throughout the investigation. Ms. Hernandez had a relationship with her supervisor, who was “one of the last people to see her alive” (Criterio, 2018). After Ms. Hernandez’s death, the alleged perpetrator was transferred to an administrative job. In September 2019, the attorneygeneral of Honduras issued a statement concluding that Ms. Hernandez had committed suicide, even though the Coroner’s Office doctors never changed their expert statement on the reason for her death (CIPRODEH, 2020). Furthermore, due to the vague definition of feminicide in Honduras’s feminicide law, women’s murders often remain unresolved (CEDIJ, 2017). As the Hernandez case shows, even though cases are filed, perpetrators are often protected. This is true even when evidence is strong and expert testimony supports the need for prosecution in a court of law. The Hernandez case is not an exception. The deaths of Honduran women are largely underreported, but even when they are reported, they seldom see justice. Between 2016 and 2018, 1,239 women died of violent deaths (UNAH, 2019), 717 cases were reported as feminicides, 32 of those cases reached the Judicial System of Honduras, and only 14 were solved (CEDIJ, 2019).

State Responses With the approval of the Beijing Platform for Action, the five Central American countries in this chapter enacted the first set of legislation, adhered to the conference resolution, and subsequently passed national laws to protect women against violence. This first generation of laws, passed in the mid-’90s, incorporated extensive definitions of domestic violence, including physical, psychological, and sexual assault, among other types of violence, and “detailed the powers and responsibilities of the authorities (police, courts, and social services) (Macaulay, 2006: 104). However, little was done to typify VAW offences within the penal codes. Instead, most of the crimes in these new laws were assigned to civil and family courts where mediation or resolution were the primary administrative tools to address acts of VAW within the family. The first generation of VAW laws legitimised victims’ claims by assigning the state’s responsibility through court actions (Macaulay, 2006: 105). But the details of the legal procedures (or lack thereof) in non-penal courts diminished the gravity of VAW. These loopholes prompted the need for a new set of what became second-generation laws (Htun and Jensenius, 2020: 151) in the early 2000s. This new set of laws aimed to overcome the obstacles of the first generation, which focused exclusively on domestic and intrafamilial violence and to incorporate other forms of violence, including feminicide. In the following section, we focus on this second set of legislation that created provisions to recognise public and private forms of VAW, including its most egregious form, feminicide. These new efforts responded to international pressure and growing domestic groups demanding protection for women in each Central American country.

Legal Strategies Despite two domestic abuse laws (1997, 2006), it was only in l March 2013 that Honduras modified its penal code to incorporate feminicide as a crime (Honduras, 2013). Article 118A of the penal code 456

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described feminicide as a crime committed by a man or men to kill a woman because of her gender, with hatred for her condition as a woman, making it punishable with 30 to 40 years in prison. This initiative incorporated Article 118A on feminicide without connecting it to the penal code’s chapter on domestic violence, which weakened its punitive potential. Nicaragua approved Law 779 of 2012 (Comprehensive Law on Violence Against Women and Reforms to the Penal Code), the most comprehensive domestic violence and feminicide law in the region. This law stated that the prior regulations to stop gender-based violence have not obtained the results sought for the effective protection of women’s life, [making it] essential to enact a law that addresses this problem, classifying and sanctioning the different manifestations of violence against women. (Nicaragua, 2012, Preamble) The new law declared that the state must respond to VAW and protect their human rights and stipulated the actions it must undertake to guarantee women a life free of violence both publicly and in private (Article 3). The law explicitly included feminicide as a crime in which “a man, in the framework of unequal relationships of power between men and women, kills a woman either in public or private sphere” (Article 9). In 2008, Guatemala Approved Decree 22 (Law Against Femicide and Other Forms of Violence Against Women), which classified feminicide as violence against women (Guatemala, 2008) and described it as violent killings of women in the context of unequal power relations between women and men. The 2008 feminicide law became a fundamental instrument to delineate the state’s obligations and created exclusive jurisdiction to prosecute crimes against women. Most importantly, this law outlined a plan to transition from the non-regulatory nature of the law to regulation with specific mechanisms to prosecute feminicides and protect domestic violence victims. In 2011, El Salvador approved Decree 520, or the Special Comprehensive Law for a Life Free of Violence for Women (El Salvador, 2012). This is the first law that specifically included women’s right to live a life free of violence and discrimination. For the first time, a law declared that women had the right to physical, psychological, and moral integrity and equal protection before the law. It “presumes that the types and modalities of violence contemplated in the law originate from the unequal relationship of power or trust, in which the woman is at a disadvantage for men” (El Salvador, 2012, Article 7). Decree 520 classified feminicidal violence as an extreme form of gender violence against women and a violation of her human rights both in public and private settings. However, the decree lacked the procedures to investigate domestic violence or even feminicides. The law incorporated articles to include financial resources for domestic violence victims and make financial resources available to implement the law. This was more progressive than other laws in the region that lacked earmarked financial resources to sustain them. The Costa Rican legislature passed the Law of Criminalization of Violence against Women in 2007 (Costa Rica, 2007), which criminalises feminicide. Article 21 identifies feminicide as a violent physical crime, stating that “a prison sentence of 20–35 years will be imposed on anyone who kills a woman with whom they maintain a relation of matrimony, in a relation formally declared or not.” One of the main limitations of the feminicide laws in Costa Rica is that prosecutors must demonstrate a romantic relationship between the victim and the perpetrator. According to human rights attorney Larissa Arroyo, in Costa Rica this greatly reduces the number of feminicides. For example, our legislation typifies feminicide when there is a sentimental relationship involved and this is not necessarily the case, it occurs from hatred against a woman, whether there is a relationship or not.4 457

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Administrative Strategies In addition to passing laws, state efforts to respond to international and domestic pressures included other specialised initiatives, such as the creation of agencies to protect women and prosecute offenders who commit gender-based crimes. Some countries have created gender specialised units (unidades de género) as in the case of all Guatemalan ministries (2010) and Honduras (2010). Moreover, in 2017, El Salvador created the specialised jurisdiction for a life free of violence and free of discrimination against women, while Nicaragua created the specialised district courts to prosecute crimes against women. In 1998, Costa Rica created the National Institute for Women (Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres [INAMU]) to protect women from gender violence. Thus, as we discuss in the following paragraphs, the countries in this study have created protocols and procedures and have even restructured national agencies to protect the lives of women. However, these initiatives have proven ineffective at deterring, preventing, and prosecuting cases of violence against women. Since 1997, Honduran laws on GBV called for the creation of specialised jurisdictions in the courts (Honduras, 1997, Article 11); however, it took over two decades to create these units. In 2010, Agreement No. 4 established the “gender units” within the justice system. This agreement recognised the need to “mainstream the gender perspective in planning and management in the jurisdictional and administrative processes . . . to ensure greater access to justice” (CEDIJ, 2017). The implementation of this agreement fell short in the courts. As the National Plan Against Violence Against Women (2014–2022) shows, despite the creation of specialised courts to address VAW in 2010 (Honduras, 2010), greater access to justice is still pending (Honduras, 2014: 51). The classification of feminicide cases shows the failure to implement specialised gender units. Currently, the National Judicial System of Honduras is responsible for recording and prosecuting both domestic violence and feminicide cases, but the information recorded for the latter is particularly limited. The National Coroner’s Office of Honduras recorded 717 feminicides between 2016 and 2018, and during the same period, it reported 181 cases as “undetermined.” Only 32 of those cases were recorded as feminicide by the judicial system, and of those recorded, only 14 were sentenced or solved (CEDIJ, 2019). That is, on average, 239 women died due to feminicide every year, and only a fraction of these cases were transferred to the courts, let alone reaching prosecution. Nicaragua’s feminicide law called Law 779 (2012) was the most advanced legislation in the region; it specified that the prosecution of these crimes is governed by the principles and procedures of the penal code (Article 9). Feminicide cases were described broadly and subject to prosecution in regular courts. However, Regulatory Decree 42 (2014) incorporated previous mediation and returned VAW cases to family courts. Additionally, the definition of feminicide was more restrictive in the regulatory decree, applying it only to cases where the victim and perpetrator had a documented romantic relationship. Decree 42 had two effects on feminicide prosecution. On the one hand, because it emphasised prevention, family counselling within the community, and institutional family counselling, it delegated conflict resolutions to community-based organisations, even in cases of violent crimes that should be handled by legal authorities, making it difficult to trace and document “repeated manifestation of violence against the victim” (Article 9c). On the other hand, after Decree 42 went into effect, Nicaragua reported low levels of feminicide. Since crimes against women were narrowly defined, limiting them to those in which romantic relationships are documented, only these crimes are recorded as feminicide thus misclassifying many as homicides. The implementation of VAW and feminicide laws flooded Guatemala’s judicial courts with gender-based cases. In 2010, Guatemala created the specialised justice units (gender units). The Secretaría Presidencial de la Mujer (SEPREM, 2010) reported that even women victims of GBV who were under the judicial system’s protection were subjects of sexual violence. To solve the lack of prosecution, the courts created six accords (Guatemala, 2006, 2007) to establish the first instance criminal courts and guarantee the due process – appropriate means of detention – and successful 458

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sentencing of men accused of feminicide. Additionally, Guatemala created a Comprehensive Care System (Sistema de Atención Integral [SAI]) to support victims of GBV. But the courts continue to claim that the ineffectiveness in reducing VAW results from the overwhelming number of cases reported (UNHCR, 2015) and it being systematically under-resourced and financially constrained (Beck, 2021: 26). Thus, laws and institutions continue to look comprehensive on paper, but the practices do not follow through. The feminicide law of El Salvador (Decree 520–2011) included provisions for the creation of the specialised commission to guarantee the application of the law (Ley Especial Integral para una Vida Libre de Violencia Contra las Mujeres) and its related policies. However, the responsibilities, punishments, and prosecution procedures were left general and vague, underscoring mostly the symbolic character of the law. The regulations and guidelines were left for future legislative periods; therefore, a specialised commission was irrelevant because the functioning mechanisms had yet to be outlined in regulatory law. Despite the approval of a feminicide law, the lack of regulation undermined its implementation. After its approval, the feminicide law contained four reforms and an additional associated law – on specialised courts – and four postponements for the courts’ implementation. Even with 106 articles, the lack of regulation and the absence of specialised courts guidelines rendered the law ineffective in protecting women. The law required a specialised jurisdiction with trained judges and multidisciplinary professionals. Only until 2016, Decree 286 approved the creation of such courts, but the implementation had four consecutive deferments. In 2017 the specialised courts started case intake. As Judge Glenda Biares Escobar affirmed at the inauguration of her circuit, “the creation of these new courts means that we are fulfilling commitments that the state has ratified in international conventions.” Three years after they were established in 2019, the special courts collapsed, and the number of women being killed continued to rise; between 2011 and 2019, El Salvador reported 3,659 feminicide cases (ORMUSA, 2020). Costa Rica’s response to violence against women has been the most comprehensive in the region as its laws are aligned with international laws and protocols, but the lack of funding has prevented institutions from delivering on the legal promise. The National Institute for Women (Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres [INAMU]) was created in 1998 to provide research, technical knowledge, and policy recommendations in the interest of women. It was entrusted with the education and training of civil servants to deliver services and protect women’s lives, but a lack of funding – or, rather, misallocated funds – has undermined its mission. The institute has fallen short of delivering on its objectives. In the last decade, the INAMU has received 2% of the Fund for Social Development (FODESAF, 2020); however, much of its budget has been invested in administration and overhead, and a very small portion of its budget is assigned to serving women in need (Costa Rica, 2019: 28). Despite a wide variety of laws to protect women, Costa Rica has allocated these resources to administrative tasks and less on substantive line items in the budget, such as a program to protect and accompany women in their search for justice.

Women’s Groups’ Responses Women’s organisations in these countries have aligned with foreign NGOs (e.g. Las Dignas, Colectiva Feminista) to fight for women’s protection. We discuss the efforts of two women’s advocacy groups, one in Nicaragua and one in El Salvador, as examples of the mobilisation and responses to state inefficiencies in the region. In Nicaragua, the feminicide law (Decree 779–2012) faced national opposition. Thus, its approval was attributed to both international pressures (Htun and Weldon, 2011) and the progressive agenda of the women’s movement in revolutionary Nicaragua (Neumann, 2018). Years of efforts from grassroots organisations were paying off. Intimate partner violence diminished from 54.8% in the mid-1990s (Ellsberg et al., 1999) to 27.6% in the mid-2010s (Ellsberg et al., 2020), which could be 459

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due, in part, to data collection issues. However, opposition to the law from the Catholic Church and conservative groups led to two consecutive reforms of the law (Law 846–2013, Decree 42–2014). These two initiatives reversed the progress that Law 779 accomplished. As O’Brien and Walsh (2020) argue, Decree 42 was possible because of the ties between religious groups and the state (also Neumann, 2018). Conservatives, lawyers, and even judges supported the changes to Law 779. The proponents of the reform unanimously agreed to include mediation in the law, something that family unity advocates wanted but that the women’s movement publicly rejected. As feminist and women’s movement leader Azahálea Solis stated “the mediation mechanism does not work [to protect women against violence], it indulges and deliberately favours the perpetrators of the crime, therefore leaving the women defenceless” (Solís, 2013: 1). Along with a lack of implementation, conservative efforts led to a reform that incorporated mediation even if it was detrimental to women’s safety. In El Salvador, the feminicide law came into effect in response to demands from a coalition between international organisations advocating for gender equality and the mobilisation of Salvadoran women’s groups. The international pressure from the Beijing platform led to the approval of this law, forcing El Salvador to modify parts of its legal corpus to comply with international agreements. The Domestic Violence Bill (1996) was part of the first generation of VAW laws. During this period, the Red de Acción contra la Violencia de Género en El Salvador emerged as a leading network of women’s organisations in the country. As a regional network, they raised awareness through educational campaigns; joined efforts with the women’s group, Las Dignas, to launch the campaign “Nada Justifica la Violencia Sexual ¡Mi cuerpo se respeta!” (Guerrero, 2002: 39); and deployed research and support groups for gender violence victims. Women’s groups, such as La Colectiva Feminista, worked tirelessly for a life free of violence against women by providing shelter and education to women victims (Ríos, 2019).

Discussion/Conclusion We have underscored the critical role of the state and its institutions in responses to gender-based violence against women (Mackay et al., 2010), focusing on obstacles including outright obstruction, faulty implementation, and impediments to access data on the killings of women. Despite legal and administrative actions on the part of the five Central American countries’ governments to align their countries with international agreements, the region continues to experience high levels of gender violence and feminicide. The cases we present demonstrate that legal and administrative actions will be ineffective in combating GBV against women when these actions are taken in contexts of unchanged broader structural inequalities that harm women (e.g. access to land, education, and health) (Menjívar, 2011: 40). The five Central American countries responded with an array of laws and administrative actions, such as the creation of specialised courts and police units to a general push for gender mainstreaming by UN agencies in efforts to promote women’s rights and protection. These international pressures brought about several legal advances in the form of 102 laws and administrative innovations in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. For example, although Guatemala took extensive measures to develop a judicial system to prosecute VAW, it had little effect on the ground. Other countries in the region have not taken measures to revamp their judicial systems, but the results have been similar across the board. We argue, therefore, that these countries passed these laws and implemented actions mostly to satisfy international donor agencies, as these efforts remained deeply underfunded. Thus, on the ground, there was little compliance with international agreements that these countries promised to uphold, including the faulty collection of statistics on crimes against women.

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Women’s organisations have fought for the protection of women from violence, exerting pressure domestically on governments and aligning with foreign NGOs to fund their activities. It is their efforts that have resulted in the advancements Central American countries have in place for women’s protection. It is these grassroots efforts that will likely continue these efforts.

Notes 1 The main gender mainstreaming framework was developed in a mandate by the UN in 1997. The mandate’s goal was to achieve gender equality in all policies and programs sponsored by the UN system and its affiliate countries. 2 A note about terminology is necessary. “Femicide” refers to the killings of women because they are women (Radford, 1992). Following Lagarde (2010), we use “feminicide” to call attention to the state’s failures in protecting women from this violence. 3 Observatorio de Violencia de Género contra las Mujeres y Acceso a la Justicia, 2021. Retrieved on 10 June 2021: https://observatoriodegenero.poder-judicial.go.cr/index.php/soy-especialista-y-busco/estadisticas/ femicidio. 4 La Voz de Guanacaste. 17 August 2018. Andrea Rodríguez Valverde. “La Historia detrás de un intento de femicidio.” https://vozdeguanacaste.com/la-historia-detras-de-un-femicidio-frustrado.

References Beck, E. (2021). The Uneven Impacts of Violence against Women Reform in Guatemala: Intersecting Inequalities and the Patchwork State. Latin American Research Review, 56(1):20–35. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, CEDAW. (1979). Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. New York: United Nations. Centro Electrónico de Documentación e Información Judicial, CEDIJ. (2017). Estructura y Funcionamiento Jurisdicción y Competencia de Los Órganos Jurisdiccionales. Tegucigalpa: Poder Judicial. Centro Electrónico de Documentación e Información Judicial, CEDIJ. (2019). Boletín Nacional del Sistema Judicial de Honduras (2012–2018). Tegucigalpa: Cortes de Sentencia de Honduras. Centro de Investigación y Promoción de los Derechos, CIPRODEH. (2020). “Las dos muertes de la agente Sherill Hernández en Honduras.” Retrieved on June 4, 2021. Costa Rica. (1995). Beijing Declaration: Discurso de Alicia Fournier Vargas, Viceministra de la Presidencia. Costa Rica. (2007). Law 8589, Criminalization of Violence against Women. Costa Rica. (2019). Análisis del Presupuesto Ordinario. Ministerio de Haciencia. Secretaría Técnica de la Autoridad Presupuestaria (STAP), 2019. San José: INAMU. Criterio. (2018). “¿Qué se esconde detras la muerte de la jefa regional de la ATIC?” Retrieved on June 4, 2021. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC. (2018). “Femicide Statistics.” CEPALSTAT. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC. (2019). Anuario Estadístico de América Latina y El Caribe, 2018. Santiago: Naciones Unidas. El Salvador. (1995). Beijing Declaration: Address by first lady of the Nation, Mrs. Elizabeth A. De Calderón Sol. El Salvador. (2012). Decreto 520. Ley Especial Integral Para Una Vida Libre de Violencia Para Las Mujeres. Diario Oficial. 2011. No. 2, tomo 390. Ellsberg, M., Peña, R., Herrera, A., Liljestrand, J., and Winkvist, A. (1999). “Wife Abuse among Women of Childbearing Age in Nicaragua.” American Journal of Public Health 89 (2):241–44. Ellsberg, M., Ugarte, W., Ovince, J., Blackwell, A., and Quintanilla, M. (2020). “Long-Term Change in the Prevalence of Intimate Partner Violence: A 20-Year Follow-up Study in León, Nicaragua, 1995–2016.” BMJ Global Health 5 (4): e002339. Fondo de Desarrollo Social y Asignaciones Familiares, FODESAF. (2020). Presupuesto (2012–2020). Retrieved on June 2, 2021. Global Americans Report, GAR. (2022). Feminicide and International Women’s Rights, an epidemic of violence in Latin America, 2021. Retrieve on: June 8, 2021. https://theglobalamericans.org/reports/ femicide-international-womens-rights/ Grupo Guatemalteco de Mujeres, GGM. (2019). “Estadísticas 2017–2019.” Ciudad de Guatemala. Guatemala. (1995). Beijing Declaration: Mensaje del señor president constitucional de la República de Guatemala Licenciado Ramido de León Carpio a la IV Conferencia Mundial sobre la Mujer.

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Cecilia Menjívar and Leydy Diossa-Jiménez Guatemala. (2006). Acuerdo de la Corte Suprema #3–2006. Creación de Juzgados de Primera Instancia. Guatemala. (2007). Acuerdos de la Corte Suprema #44–2007, #3,4,6–2007 y #22–2007. Creación de Juzgados de Primera Instancia Penal. Guatemala. (2008). Decreto No. 22–2008. Ley contra el Femicidio y otras Formas de Violencia Contra la Mujer. Diario de Centro América. 2008. No. 27. Secretaría Presidencial de la Mujer, SEPREM. (2010). “Las Políticas Públicas y Equidad de Género en Guatemala 1985–2009.” Guerrero, E. (2002). Violencia contra las mujeres en América Latina y el Caribe Español 1990–2000: balance de una década. Santiago de Chile: UNIFEM. Honduras. (1995). Beijing Declaration: Mensaje de la señora vic presidenta de la república de Honduras, Licenciada Guadalupe Jerezano Mejía ante la IV Conferencia Mundial sobre la Mujer. Honduras. (1997). Decreto 132–1997. Ley Contra La Violencia Doméstica. Diario Oficial La Gaceta. No.8, tomo 414. Honduras. (2010). Acuerdo Para La Creación de Las “Unidades de Género.” Corte Suprema de Justicia de la República. Honduras. (2013). Decreto 23–2013. Reforma a los Artículos 27 y 321 del Decreto 144–83 Contentivo Del Código Penal. Diario Oficial La Gaceta. No.33, tomo 92. Honduras. (2014). Plan Nacional Contra La Violencia Hacia La Mujer 2014–2022. Tegucigalpa: INAMU. Htun, M., and Jensenius, F. (2020). Aspirational laws as weak institutions. Legislation to Combat violence against women in Mexico. In: Brinks, Daniel; Levitsky, Steven; and Murillo, Maria Victoria. The Politics of institutional weakness in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Htun, M., and Welson, L. (2011). “State Power, Religion, and Women’s Rights: A Comparative Analysis of Family Law.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 1 (18):145–65. Macaulay, F. (2006). Judicialising and (de) Criminalising Domestic Violence in Latin America. Social Policy and Society, Volume 5, Issue 1, January 2006:103–114. Mackay, F., Kenny, M., & Chappell, L. (2010). New institutionalism through a gender lens: Towards a feminist institutionalism? International Political Science Review, 31(5):573–588. Menjívar, C. (2011). Enduring Violence: Ladina Women’s Lives in Guatemala. Berkeley: University of California Press. Neumann, P. (2018). Transnational governance, local politics, and gender violence law in Nicaragua. Latin American Politics and Society, 60(2), 61–82. New York Times en Español, NYTEs. (2019). Retrieved on June 4th, 2020. “Es como si siempre hubiera alguien que quisiera matarte: los feminicidios en Honduras.” Nicaragua. (1995). Beijing Declaration: Intervención de María Auxiliadora Pérez de Matus, Directora Ejecutiva del Instituto Nicaragüense de la Mujer. Nicaragua. (2012). Ley Integral Contra La Violencia Hacia Las Mujeres y de Reformas a La Lay N. 641 “Código Penal”, Con Sus Reformas Incorporadas. Vol. Gaceta No. 19 de 2014. Nicaragua. (2019). Corte Suprema de Justicia. Anuario Estadístico de Violencia Año 2019. Managua: Dirección de Información y estadísticas. O’Brien, C., and Walsh, S. (2020). “Women’s Rights and Opposition: Explaining the Stunted Rise and Sudden Reversals of Progressive Violence against Women Policies in Contentious Contexts.” Journal of Latin American Studies 52 (1):107–131. Organización de Mujeres Salvadoreñas por la Paz, ORMUSA. (2020). Observatorio de violencia contra las mujeres. https://observatoriodeviolenciaormusa.org/ Radford, J. (1992). Introduction. In Radford, J., & Russell, D. E. (Eds.), Femicide: The politics of woman killing (pp. 3–12). New York: Twayne Publishers. Ríos, L. (2019). “For this group of feminists in El Salvador, change begins from the ground up.” International Women’s Media Foundation. Solís, A. (2013). “The Reform of Law 779 Sends Society a Very Negative Message.” Revista Envío, Universidad de Centro América, No. 388. United Nations, UN. (1995). Report of the Fourth World Conference on Women. Beijing, 4–15 September 1995. A/CONF.177/20/Rev.1 United Nations, UN. (1997). Gender Mainstreaming. Report of the Economic and Social Council for 1997. A/52/3, 18 September 1997. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR. (2015). Women on the Run. First-hand Accounts of Refugees Fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. Universidad Nacional de Honduras (UNAH). (2018). Boletín especial sobre muerte violenta de Mujeres. Universidad Nacional de Honduras, UNAH. (2019). Estadística sobre Asesinato Violento de Mujeres. Datos de la Oficina Nacional de Información Forense.

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PART 7

Social Responses to Femicide and Feminicide

42 COLONIAL FEMICIDE Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada Robyn Bourgeois

Introduction While internationally renowned for peacekeeping efforts during genocides in other countries, Canada has itself been indicted for committing genocide against Indigenous women and girls within its own borders. In 2019, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) – established by the government of Canada in 2015 in response to violence against First Nations, Inuit, and Métis women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, questioning, intersex, and asexual) people – concluded that the violence they heard about in their investigation “amounts to race-based genocide” (MMIWG Inquiry, 2019: 50) against Indigenous women and girls. This chapter unpacks Canada’s involvement in this Indigenous femicide. As a colonial nationstate whose existence depends on the theft and occupation of Indigenous lands achieved through domination over and elimination of Indigenous peoples, violence against Indigenous women and girls is endemic to Canadian society. As the original occupants of the lands illegally claimed by Canada, Indigenous peoples undermine the nation’s legitimacy and, as such, represent a threat its very existence. Consequently, Indigenous femicide plays a critical role in eliminating this threat and securing colonialism in Canada. Given this investment, the Canadian government makes minimal contributions to ending this violence, and these efforts are outlined in this chapter. At the same time, the National Inquiry into MMIWG is the outcome of more than 40 years of activism and organising led by Indigenous women and girls demanding justice for MMIWG and meaningful social change to protect them from this violence. This is also outlined in this work. The first section of this chapter exposes the scope of violence against Indigenous women and girls in Canada, followed by a discussion of the root causes of this violence. The resilience and resistance of Indigenous women and girls concerning MMIWG are outlined in the following sections, including a discussion of how the Canadian government has attempted to undermine these efforts. The final section addresses the National Inquiry into MMIWG and Canada’s official response.

A Femicidal Epidemic: Violence Against Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada While quantitative data is beneficial to understanding the scope of MMIWG in Canada, there are limits to how effective existing statistics capture this scope. Available statistics are derived primarily from data collected by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and other policing agencies.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-49

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Unfortunately, without standards for collecting race-based data, and the fact that some Indigenous peoples are white-passing and/or mixed-race where their Indigeneity might be obscured, these statistics likely underestimate the instances of violence experienced by Indigenous women and girls. Critics also point to the long history of Canadian police forces neglecting the violence experienced by Indigenous women and girls, including an unwillingness to file official reports and a tendency to explain deaths and disappearances as “misadventure” or “suicide” (Native Women’s Association of Canada [NWAC], 2009; Oppal, 2012). Moreover, given the role of these forces in enforcing colonial legislation against Indigenous peoples and the widespread practice of over-criminalising but underprotecting us (MMIWG Inquiry, 2019), Indigenous women and girls are unlikely to seek help from police. A second source of data is Statistics Canada, the national statistical collection agency. Again, the connection to Canada’s colonial government but also the colonial history of extractive research with Indigenous communities means that we are unlikely to participate in Statistics Canada research. Also, this organisation’s research makes use of the problematic data collected by police. The most comprehensive source of data might be that collected by activists and community organisations; however, Canadian governments have engaged with these groups minimally and, in the case of the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) discussed later in this chapter, have actively prevented them from collecting such data. While the limits of these statistics need to be acknowledged, they nonetheless mark a starting point for understanding the scope of violence against Indigenous women and girls in Canada – and they tell an extraordinarily violent story. Between 2013 and 2014, the RCMP conducted an operational overview of their files, revealing that between 1980 and 2012, there were 1,017 murdered Indigenous women and 164 missing Indigenous women (2014: 7). These findings make clear that Indigenous women are overrepresented when it comes to homicide. Despite representing about 4% of the Canadian population, Indigenous women represented 16% of female homicide cases between 1980 and 2012, making them on average 5.5 times more likely than non-Indigenous women to be murdered (RCMP, 2014: 9–10). Similarly, they represented 11.3% of missing females in Canada (RCMP, 2014: 8). Given the previously noted problems with police data, these findings likely underestimate this overrepresentation. The phenomenon of MMIWG is part of a broader pattern of violence experienced by Indigenous women and girls in Canada. For example, Statistics Canada’s 2014 General Social Survey (GSS) on Victimization found that Indigenous females reported rates of violent victimisation that were double Indigenous males and almost triple that of non-Indigenous females (Boyce, 2016:3). They reported experiencing physical assault at more than double the rate and sexual assault at more than triple the rate of non-Indigenous women (Boyce, 2016: 25). Significantly, when other risk factors were controlled, this study found that Indigenous identity remained a risk factor for victimisation for Indigenous females (Boyce, 2016: 3). A 2021 analysis of self-reported data from the 2018 Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces conducted by Statistics Canada found that six in ten Indigenous women reported experiencing intimate partner violence during their life, compared with four in ten for non-Indigenous women (Heidinger, 2021: 4). While all Indigenous women and girls are vulnerable to being targeted for violence, there are risk factors that increase vulnerability. For example, while violence occurs across the lifespan, evidence suggests that Indigenous girls and young women are particularly vulnerable. The previously discussed GSS on Victimization found that Indigenous women aged 15 to 24 reported victimisation rates at triple that of their non-Indigenous counterparts (Boyce, 2016: 9). Youth is directly connected to a second risk factor: involvement with the child welfare system (MMIWG Inquiry, 2019: 339). In addition to being placed in foster homes where abuse can happen, Indigenous children who are in the custody of the state are frequently left alone in hotels in urban centres. Left to fend for themselves, these young women and girls are targeted for violence. Fifteen-year-old Tina Fontaine, a young Saugkeeng First Nations woman whose 2014 murder in Winnipeg, Manitoba galvanised 466

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calls for the National Inquiry into MMIWG, was in this situation at the time of her death. Social and economic marginalisation (MMIWG Inquiry, 2019: 114–115), mental health issues (MMIWG Inquiry 2019: 425–426), addictions (Ontario Federation of Indian Friendship Centres, 2017: 6), intergenerational and multigenerational trauma (MMIWG Inquiry, 2019: 112–113), and disabilities (Gehl and Whittington-Walsh, 2016) have also been identified as risk factors associated with violence against Indigenous women and girls. Identifying as 2SLGBTQQIA also comes with heightened risks (MMIWG Inquiry, 2019:447).

Killer Colonialism: Understanding the Roots of MMIWG The roots of the violence and femicide experienced by Indigenous women and girls in Canada is colonialism, achieved through white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and other dominant interlocking social systems of oppression. Colonialism involves the illegal theft and occupation of Indigenous lands by white settler societies through genocide directed at Indigenous peoples. Colonialism is enabled through racism that establishes white supremacy and the right to claim and occupy Indigenous lands through the dehumanisation and elimination of Indigeneity and Indigenous peoples. Simultaneously, colonialism and racism are explicitly gendered and directed at securing heteropatriarchy. All of these are reinforced through other social systems of oppression, including economic exploitation and exclusion, ableism, ageism, and religious discrimination. Canada is a colonial nation-state whose historical and contemporary existence is secured through genocide perpetrated against Indigenous peoples. The land base that Canada claims has been stolen from Indigenous nations who have lived in relationship with this land from time immemorial. I say in relationship because Indigenous peoples don’t share a Western capitalist understanding of private property and land ownership; instead, land is understood as being a relative we live in harmony with, and this reciprocal relationship represents our claims to these lands (McAdam, 2015). While Indigenous nations negotiated treaties with settlers that provided for shared access to land in the spirit of peace, friendship, respect, and non-interference, these treaties have not been honoured. Simultaneously, colonial powers have negotiated fraudulent treaties with Indigenous nations through deception, coercion, and force. Both situations have facilitated Canada’s claims to Indigenous lands (Yellowhead Institute, 2019). In conjunction with this illegal land grab and occupation, Canada secured and maintains colonial social, economic, political, and legal control over sovereign Indigenous nations, of which there are upward of 50. This domination is enshrined in the federal Indian Act, in place since 1876, which attempts to control all aspects of Indigeneity in Canada, including who officially counts as Indigenous in this country. Canada’s control of Indigenous identity is fundamental to maintaining colonial control because it not only establishes who the nation is legally obligated to through existing treaties but also provides a mechanism for eliminating the number of Indigenous peoples. This elimination of Indigenous peoples has predominantly been pursued through Indigenous women. In addition to imposing patriliny on matrilineal Indigenous nations, the Indian Act has eliminated Indigenous women and their children through sex discriminatory provisions that exclude them from official recognition as “Indian” for marrying and/or procreating with someone who’s not Indian (MMIWG Inquiry, 2019: 249–252). The act also imposed colonial forms of governance that excluded Indigenous women until 1951 (Anderson, 2000: 65), hyper-criminalised them for prostitution (Bourgeois, 2018: 384), and enforced the removal of Indigenous children from our homes and communities into residential schools (MMIWG Inquiry, 2019:259). This discussion points to a fundamental truth about colonial domination in Canada: while made possible through anti-Indigenous racism and white supremacy, it’s also achieved through heteropatriarchy. While all Indigenous peoples are dehumanised for their race, this process is explicitly gendered. Collectively, Indigenous peoples are dominantly portrayed in colonial society as lazy, 467

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backwards, and dysfunctional – and, for these reasons, infantile and requiring colonial domination and oversight for their own good (MMIWG Inquiry, 2019). This dehumanisation is also explicitly gendered: while Indigenous males are portrayed and perceived as physical threats to white settlers that need to be eliminated (Starblanket and Hunt, 2020), Indigenous females are portrayed and perceived in their own racialised variant of the patriarchal “Madonna/whore” dichotomy: the Indian princess/squaw. Like the Madonna, the Indian princess is a chaste and morally superior Indigenous woman who sacrifices her community in support of white settler society. This is best exemplified by Disney’s bastardisation of the story of Pocahontas, which portrays her in this way instead of her lived reality which involved paedophilia and human trafficking at the hands of white men (Shilling, 2017). Her lived truth exemplifies the colonial stereotype of the squaw and the lived reality of most Indigenous women and girls as inherently sexually available and, consequently, violable (Bourgeois, 2015; MMIWG Inquiry, 2019). While there are many cases that exemplify how the Squaw stereotype is used to legitimate violence against Indigenous woman and girls, one of the most explicit examples is the Melfort rape case. In 2001, a 12-year-old Yellow Quill First Nations girl was gang-raped by three adult white men in Melfort, Saskatchewan (Buydens, 2005). In the trial of one of the perpetrators, defence council argued that because the Indigenous girl had been previously sexually assaulted, she was likely the aggressor and had instigated her own rape – and the judge ruled in favour of the accused based on the colonial belief in hypersexualised Indigenous femininity. At the time of the rape, the age of consent was 14, meaning that this girl was legally incapable of consenting to any sexual activity. Moreover, she was intoxicated and, under Canadian law, couldn’t provide consent. Despite being legally unable to consent, she was blamed for the rape because of previous sexual abuse and the false argument that children who experience such abuse are likely to become sexually aggressive in the aftermath. Research suggests, instead, that sexually abused children are more likely to exhibit inhibited interest in sexual activity (Buydens, 2005). This suggests that what distinguished this young girl from other sexually abused children was her Indigeneity and the colonial belief in the inherent hypersexuality of Indigenous women and girls. Again, the conflation of Indigenous femininity with sexual availability legitimises sexual violability and excuses violence perpetrated against Indigenous women and girls. In addition to sexuality, Indigenous women and their children have been targeted through motherhood. The birthing and rearing of federally recognised Indigenous children undermines the whole colonial project aimed at eliminating Indigenous claims to this land; consequently, destroying Indigenous families has long been a fundamental component of Canadian colonialism. As noted previously, the Indian Act took aim at Indigenous women and their children by imposing patriarchal lineages and sex discriminatory membership clauses. Moreover, portraying Indigenous women as unfit to parent their own children has long justified the forced removal of children from our families and communities. Between 1820 and 1996, this was primarily done through the Indian residential school system, with mandatory attendance for Indigenous children in church-run boarding schools where neglect and abuse were rampant (MMIWG Inquiry, 2019: 259–267). With mandatory attendance ending in 1951 and the subsequent closure of these schools, the child welfare system became the preferred state mechanism for removing Indigenous children from family and community (MMIWG Inquiry, 2019:339–343). An act of genocide (MMIWG Inquiry, 2019), these state apprehensions not only enforced assimilation but have also overexposed Indigenous women and children to all forms of violence. Indeed, the separation of Indigenous women and their children contributes directly and in myriad ways to the phenomenon of MMIWG. Indigenous mothers who have lost their children through residential schools and/or the child welfare system struggle with mental health issues and addictions that make them vulnerable to violence, as do Indigenous children who have survived these systems (MMIWG Inquiry, 2019: 339–340). In this and the previous section, I have outlined the scope of violence and femicide perpetrated against Indigenous women and girls in Canadian society, which, I argue, is the outcome of Canada’s 468

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existence as a colonial nation-state. While these discussions have highlighted some of Canada’s official responses, the following sections examine the nation’s engagement with Indigenous women’s activism and political organising, as well as the National Inquiry into MMIWG. These sections also outline Indigenous women’s resistance and resilience in the face of colonial femicide.

Warrior Women: Indigenous Resistance and Resilience Far from merely being victims, Indigenous women have always been at the forefront of social and political organising demanding justice and action for MMIWG. Indeed, while the National Inquiry into MMIWG will likely be heralded as a victory belonging to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government, this victory rightfully belongs to Indigenous women, their communities, and allies who, for more than 40 years, have demanded justice and formal state response to this violence. Grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing and being, they have mobilised using a multiplicity of strategies and tactics to demand change. This movement has operated at various socio-political levels – grassroots, provincial/territorial, national, and international – and employed politically savvy, decolonial techniques to resist colonialism – not only in terms of demonstrating how colonialism is responsible for this violence but also for navigating political engagement with the Canadian state that is structured by colonialism. This section offers an overview of these efforts. One of the first and oldest continuous movements demanding justice for MMIWG is the Missing Women’s Memorial March, hosted in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) community of Vancouver, British Columbia (BC), on Valentine’s Day (14 February) since 1991. While originating as a ceremonial healing walk organised by a family to honour their murdered loved one, it has become a rallying point for Vancouver’s Missing Women and MMIWG generally (Bourgeois, 2014). Between the late 1970s and 2002, at least 68 women disappeared from the DTES, a neighbourhood dominantly defined by abject poverty and criminality. Most of these women were Indigenous, and many were involved in the survival sex trade, struggling with mental health issues and/or disabilities, and/or stigmatised for addiction and substance use. Families, friends, and community members who attempted to report women missing were met, at best, with indifference and, at worst, outright dismissal and condemnation from police and community leadership (Oppal, 2012). This neglect by officials galvanised the organisers and the Missing Women’s Memorial March became not only a space to remember the Missing Women and all MMIWG but also a public demand for action and justice, with the event ending on the steps of police headquarters (when they were still located in the community). While serial killer Robert Pickton, arrested in 2002 and convicted in 2007, has been identified as the perpetrator in 26 of these cases and indicated in possibly 23 more, the cases of some of the missing women remain unresolved (Oppal, 2012), and women and girls continue to go missing and/or are murdered in the community, as do Indigenous women and girls across the country. For this reason, the Missing Women’s Memorial March continues to be held annually, with thousands of people flooding the streets of the DTES to remember, heal, and demand justice for MMIWG. Moreover, solidarity events are now held in communities across Canada on 14 February, including Toronto, Thunder Bay, and Edmonton. Another focal point for Indigenous resistance and resilience has been the deaths and disappearance of women and girls, almost all of whom are of Indigenous ancestry, along what is now painfully referred to as the Highway of Tears (HoT). Yellowhead Highway Sixteen connects communities across northern BC, and since the 1970s, at least 18 women and girls have disappeared or been murdered along this transportation artery, although Indigenous groups suggest the number is as high as 40 (McDiarmid, 2020). As with Vancouver’s Missing Women, a coordinated police response to these deaths and disappearances only began in 2005 after the disappearance of a white woman along the highway, leading many Indigenous people to conclude that 469

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racism played a role in this delayed response. In 2006, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs organised the HoT symposium, which brought Indigenous community members, police, and government officials together to discuss the deaths and disappearances, and the group made 33 recommendations to address this violence – almost none of which have been implemented (Highway of Tears Symposium, 2006). Families of MMIWG along the HoT have organised walks to memorialise their loved ones and to demand justice. Since 16-year-old Ramona Wilson was murdered in 1994, her mother Matilda and sister Brenda have organised an annual memorial walk for her along the HoT, now in its 27th year. Between 2006 and 2011, activists Gladys Radek and Bernie Williams, both of whom had family members disappear along the HoT, organised multiple walks demanding a public inquiry into MMIWG. Walk4Justice, as their group became known, completed their first walk in 2006 on Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert, BC. In 2008, they walked more than 4,000 km from Prince George to Ottawa to demand an inquiry directly from the federal government. They walked the HoT again in 2009, and between Kamloops, BC, and Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 2010. Finally, in 2011, they walked almost 5,000 km from Prince Rupert, BC, to Ottawa again to demand a national inquiry. While these walks are no longer occurring, both leaders continue to demand justice for MMIWG. In addition to 14 February, 4 October is another day devoted to remembering and demanding justice for MMIWG, thanks to Families of Sisters in Spirit. In partnership with NWAC, 4 October was established as a National Day of Remembrance and Action for MMIWG in 2006, the date tied to the death of Gladys Tolley, a Kitigan Zibi woman who was struck and killed by a police cruiser in 2001 (Needham, 2022). The main event happens annually on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on the steps of the House of Commons. As with 14 February and the Missing Women’s Memorial March, solidarity events are held in communities across the country.

Canada Versus the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) Alongside community-based grassroots organising, NWAC made MMIWG the focus of their national political work beginning in 2004. Established in 1974, NWAC is the only national political organisation representing the interests and needs of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit women in Canada. The group first raised the issue of MMIWG through international human rights mechanisms. In 2004, NWAC included MMIWG in their report to a UN special rapporteur investigating human rights violations against Indigenous peoples. They also partnered with Amnesty International to create the report Stolen Sisters: Discrimination and Violence Against Indigenous Women in Canada (2004), with past NWAC president Beverly Jacobs serving as lead researcher and writer. These strategies not only exposed the violence of MMIWG to the international community but also allowed for the framing of Canada’s role in this violence as constituting a violation of international human rights agreements to which the nation is party. Applying international political pressure on the Canadian government was not a new strategy for NWAC – they had used this in the late 1970s and early 1980s to force the federal government to address sex discriminatory clauses in the Indian Act (Bourgeois, 2014: 184). In 2005, the outgoing Liberal government of Prime Minister Paul Martin committed $5,000,000 over five years for NWAC to develop its’ Sisters in Spirit (SIS) initiative to address MMIWG. In addition to hosting the annual memorial, the SIS initiative included community outreach, the development of resources and educational content, delivering training on MMIWG with groups and, of course, political lobbying. A critical component of the initiative was research and the development of a national database on MMIWG. Data was collected through publicly available documents, such as media reports but also, in line with Indigenous ways of knowing and being, interviews conducted with families of MMIWG. Far from just being a list of names, the database tracked several hundred 470

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factors related to the deaths and disappearances in the hopes of identifying patterns related to this violence. In 2009, NWAC published its findings which showed clear patterns: • • •

•

Young Indigenous women under 30 represented over half of the 520 cases included in the database, suggesting that young Indigenous women are particularly vulnerable to this violence (p. 90). Many MMIWG were mothers (p. 91). British Columbia had the highest rate of MMIWG cases with 137, due in part to Vancouver’s Missing Women and the HoT. They were followed by Alberta (n = 85), Manitoba (n = 71), Saskatchewan (n = 59) and Ontario (n = 59) (p. 92). Forty-three per cent of murder cases remained open (p. 93).

A subsequent report released in 2010 suggested that perpetrators were both Indigenous and nonIndigenous (p. 30) and that Indigenous women were more likely than non-Indigenous women to be murdered by strangers (p. 29). They also concluded that more than half of murder cases remain unsolved (p. 27). Alongside data analysis, these reports included stories of MMIWG which document not only the violence these women and girls experienced but also many problematic police and judicial responses grounded in racism and sexism experienced by their families. As the original funding agreement came to an end, NWAC began negotiations for funding with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government – and this ignited a political war to suppress the organisation’s work. Infamously anti-Indigenous, Harper stated in a 2014 interview with CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, that MMIWG was not high on his government’s radar (CBC News Online, 2014). Despite beginning this process in advance of the end of the current funding agreement, NWAC’s efforts were thwarted by colonial bureaucracy. For example, their governmental contact person was changed 13 times, which required NWAC, each time, to start the process anew (Bourgeois, 2014:236). NWAC was also invited to attend public announcements under the auspices that they would receive funding, only to see the money go to existing government programs, such as policing with their presence framed as support for these colonial moves (Bourgeois, 2014: 236–237). These delays required NWAC to secure stopgap funding from the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality to continue their work (Bourgeois, 2014:236). In February 2011, nearly a year after the ending of NWAC’s SIS funding, the Harper government announced that the organisation would receive $1.89 million dollars over three years for a second phase of their work on MMIWG titled From Evidence to Action. In addition to a budget reduction of almost 40%, the agreement came with some disturbing provisions that attempted to undermine the organisation’s work. First, NWAC was no longer allowed to use the SIS title, effectively severing NWAC from the national and international reputation that the movement had gained in the five years of the initial agreement. This prohibition created tensions with family members of MMIWG who felt that NWAC had sold out to the government, and this resulted in the creation of a separate Families of SIS group (https://fsismmiw.wordpress.com/) led by Bridget Tolley, daughter of Gladys Tolley. Second, NWAC was prohibited from continuing work on their database, effectively eliminating evidence pertaining to the scope of this violence. Despite this prohibition, NWAC volunteers continued to enter data. As the From Evidence to Action funding agreement came to an end in 2014, NWAC again applied for funding from the government of Canada, and again, they were given the bureaucratic run-around. With no agreement reached prior to the end of current funding, NWAC had to lay off staff. When an agreement was finally reached for Project Peace, it came at a fraction of their previous budget, $750,000, representing an 85% reduction from their original budget (Jackson, 2015). Canada’s investment in colonial femicide is explicit here: In the face of epidemic violence against Indigenous women and girls, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government drastically reduced its 471

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spending in support of NWAC’s work on MMIWG and actively attempted to undermine its effectiveness. Instead of saving lives, his government moved to eliminate them.

Reclaiming Power and Place: The National Inquiry into MMIWG After a decade (2005–2015) of Harper’s Conservative government refusing to call an inquiry, one of the first acts of newly elected Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was to establish the National Inquiry into MMIWG on 8 December 2015. In Canada, inquiries are launched by the federal government to investigate “any matter connected with the good government of Canada or the conduct of any part of public business” (Inquiries Act, 1985). From the announcement until spring 2016, three federal ministers led pre-inquiry meetings to obtain input from Indigenous community members to determine the scope and structure of the inquiry. On 3 August 2017, the government appointed five Indigenous commissioners to oversee the process: Marion Buller (chief commissioner), Michèle Audette, Brian Eyolfson, Qajaq Robinson, and Marilyn Poitras (who would resign in 2017). The terms of reference mandated the inquiry to examine the systemic causes of all forms of violence against Indigenous women and girls in Canada and institutional policies and practices implemented in response to this violence (MMIWG Inquiry, 2017: 23). They were also tasked with making recommendations on “concrete and effective action that can be taken to remove systemic causes of violence and to increase the safety of Indigenous women and girls” and “ways to honour and commemorate” MMIWG (MMIWG Inquiry, 2017:23). Between September 2016 and October 2018, the inquiry completed their research, including conducting hearings to receive witness testimony. This process was overseen by the National and Regional Advisory Family Advisory Circle, with input from national Indigenous organisations, other Indigenous groups, and communities. In addition to putting families of MMIWG first, the process was intended to be trauma-informed and decolonising, including being organised around Indigenous ways of knowing and being. At the same time, it remained a formal legal process involving lawyers and methods of legal examination. Along with oral testimony, they received written submissions and examined existing research, policy, and legislation pertaining to MMIWG. The final report of the inquiry was released on 3 June 2019 and, as noted in the introduction, condemned Canada for its role in what it saw as genocide perpetrated against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. In its more than 1,200 pages, the report outlined how historical and ongoing colonialism in Canada – shaped simultaneously by white supremacy and heteropatriarchy – has and continues to put Indigenous women and girls at risk for all forms of violence. In addition to colonial institutions like the Indian Act, residential schools, and the child welfare system, the report identified poverty, health inequities (including mental health), and sexual exploitation (including human trafficking) as contributing factors. The report also identified 231 calls for justice organised to address the four pathways of genocide identified by the inquiry: (1) historical and intergenerational trauma, (2) social and economic marginalisation, (3) maintaining the status quo, and (4) ignoring the agency and expertise of Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. It would be more than two years before the federal government would officially respond to the Inquiry’s final report, delayed, it claimed, by the COVID-19 pandemic. On 10 June 2021, the government of Canada released a national action plan to address violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGTBQQIA+ people. The process was guided by a National Family and Survivors Circle and a core working group made up of co-chairs of the process’ subgroups representing First Nations, Métis, Inuit, 2SLGBTQQIA+, and urban Indigenous peoples, as well as one focused on dat dat,; representatives from two national Indigenous organisations, and federal and provincial/territorial government subgroups. In addition to the recommendations made by the Inquiry, the group considered 64 recommendations made in a report from Les Femme Michif Otipemisiwak, a group representing Métis women. Guided by principles that informed the inquiry (i.e. centring families 472

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and survivors, decolonisation, Indigenous human rights, Indigenous self-determination), the action plan identified several short-term priorities to pursue to meaningfully address violence against Indigenous women and girls. These include educational opportunities, addressing housing disparities, and substantive changes to health, justice, and child welfare systems. It also demands the creation of oversight bodies to track developments on short-term priorities. Critically, this action plan is to be treated as a living document that is “evergreen and adaptable so that changing needs can be incorporated” (National Action Plan, 2021). To date, little effort has been put into actualising the priorities outlined in this plan, leaving survivors and advocates disappointed and frustrated (Deer 2022).

Conclusion As a colonial nation-state dependent on the illegal theft and occupation of Indigenous lands, Indigenous genocide secures Canada’s existence by annihilating the original occupants with legitimate claims to their land base. Moreover, this violence reduces the number of Indigenous peoples that the government is legally and financially accountable to through existing treaty obligations. Indigenous femicide, as such, is indispensable to the colonial order of things in Canada – which is why the nation’s social systems and institutions enable, perpetuate, and normalise violence against Indigenous women and girls. While Canada has an action plan to address MMIWG, the effects will be limited if colonialism exists. For this reason, the only way to protect the lives of Indigenous women and girls is decolonisation now.

References Amnesty International. (2004). Stolen Sisters: Discrimination and Violence Against Indigenous Women in Canada. www.amnesty.ca/what-we-do/no-more-stolen-sisters/#:~:text=Amnesty%20International%20stands%20 in%20solidarity,more%20sisters%20from%20being%20stolen. Anderson, K. (2000). A Recognition of Being – Reconstructing Native Womanhood. Sumach Press. Bourgeois, R. (2018). Race, Space, and Prostitution: The Making of Settler-Colonial Canada. Canadian Journal of Women and the Law. 30 (3), 371–391. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjwl.30.3.002 Bourgeois, R. (2015). Colonial Exploitation: The Canadian State and the Trafficking of Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada. UCLA Law Review. 62 (2015): 1426–1461. Bourgeois, R. (2014). Warrior Women: Indigenous Women’s Anti-Violence Engagement with the Canadian State [unpublished thesis]. The University of Toronto. https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/68238/1/ Bourgeois_Robyn_S_201411_PhD_thesis.pdf Boyce, J. (2016). Victimization of Aboriginal people in Canada, 2014. Statistics Canada. https://www150.statcan. gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2016001/article/14631-eng.pdf. Buydens, N. (2005). “The Melfort” Rape and Children’s Rights: Why R. v Edmondson Matters to All Canadian Kids. Saskatchewan Notes, 4 (1), 1–4. https://policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/ saskatchewan-notes-melfort-rape-and-childrens-rights CBC News Online. (2014). Full Text of Peter Mansbridge’s Interview with Stephen Harper. www.cbc.ca/news/ politics/full-text-of-peter-mansbridge-s-interview-with-stephen-harper-1.2876934. Deer, K. (2022). ‘A national shame,’ say advocates about lack of progress on MMIWG action plan. CBC News, www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/mmiwg-action-plan-update-1.6476685. Gehl, L, and F. Whittington-Walsh. (2016). Indigenous women and girls with disabilities are bigger targets of sexual violence. Rabble. https://rabble.ca/anti-racism/indigenous-women-and-girls-disabilities-bigger-targetssexual-violence/ Heidinger, L. (2021). Intimate partner violence: Experiences of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit women in Canada, 2018. Statistics Canada. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2021001/article/00007-eng.htm. Highway of Tears Symposium (2006). Highway of Tears Symposium Recommendations Report. https://highwayoftears.org/resources/ Inquiries Act, R.S.C 1985, c. I-11, https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/i-11/page-1.html. Jackson, K. (2015). Stephen Harper’s Longest War: MMIWG. APTN News, www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/ stephen-harpers-longest-war-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women/. McAdam, S. (2015). Nationhood Interrupted: Revitalizing Nêhiyaw Legal Systems. Purich Press.

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Dr Robyn Bourgeois McDiarmid, J. (2020). Highway of Tears. Anchor Canada. MMIWG Inquiry. (2017). Our Women and Girls are Sacred: Interim Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/publication/interim-report/#:~:text=The%20 Interim%20Report%20outlines%20what,moving%20the%20National%20Inquiry%20forward. National Action Plan. (2021). Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA People National Action Plan: Ending Violence Against Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA People. https://mmiwg2splus-nationalactionplan.ca/. National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. (2019). Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Volume 1a. www. mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/. NWAC. (2009). Voices of Our Sisters in Spirit: A Report to Families and Communities, 2nd Edition. Native Women’s Association of Canada. Needham, F. (2022). After fighting for 20 years, Bridget Tolley gets an apology from the police, and government. APTN News. www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/after-fighting-for-20-years-bridget-tolley-gets-an-apologyfrom-police-government/ Ontario Federation of Indian Friendship Centres. (2017). Gwayakwaajimowin: Truth Telling – Police Responses to Sexual Violence in Urban Indigenous Communities. Ontario Federation of Indian Friendship Centres. Oppal, W. (2012). Forsaken: The Final Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry. https://missingwomen. library.uvic.ca/index.html%3Fp=30.html RCMP. (2014). Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women: A National Operational Overview. Government of Canada. www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/missing-and-murdered-aboriginal-women-national-operational-overview. Shilling, V. (2017). The True Story of Pocahontas: Historical Myths Versus Sad Reality. Indian Country Today. https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/true-story-pocahontas-historical-myths-versus-sad-reality Starblanket, G., and D. Hunt. (2020). Storying Violence: Unravelling Colonial Narratives in the Stanley Trial. ARP Books. Yellowhead Institute. (2019). Land Back – A Yellowhead Institute Red Paper. https://redpaper.yellowheadinstitute. org/

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43 WITNESSING ACROSS BORDERS Truth-Telling About Feminicides in México and the MMIWG2S in Canada and the US Cynthia Bejarano

Introduction Some memories never leave you. They lie deeply embedded in you, impelling you to recall unforgettable events, to tell truths, and to bear witness to the lessons taught by mothers of womxn1 and girls taken from them. In 2007, I witnessed an act of affection between Paula and Gwenda, two mothers from México and Canada who had lost daughters to gender-based violence. Paula Bonilla Flores is from Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, México. Her daughter, Maria Sagrario, went missing on 11 March 1998; her body was later found on 16 April of that same year. Paola met with Gwenda Yuzicappi, who is from the Standing Buffalo Dakota Nation in Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, Canada. Gwenda’s daughter, Amber Tara-Lynn, went missing on 15 July 2005, and authorities found her remains on 5 May 2008.2 Despite their national, cultural, and linguistic differences, they shared a private moment at a conference, where filmmaker Lourdes Portillo and I served as interpreters as they exchanged gifts and messages of encouragement. They embraced each other in an act of empathy and solidarity, in ways that only mothers who have endured so much can do.3 Their encounter urges us to consider the transnational and comparative dimensions of gender-based violence in North America, and the possibilities for relational ties across people. Based on scholarship and advocacy for the abolition of gender-based violence, this chapter describes several points. First, it offers a comparative analysis of violence against women of colour in México, the US, and Canada, with particular attention to disenfranchised Latinx womxn and Indigenous/First Nations womxn. While this chapter acknowledges the unique experiences of these womxn, and respects their individual voices and agency, it highlights the underlying commonalities of gender-based violence across nation-states. It supports the argument that settler-colonial nationstates, driven by neoliberal economic policies and ideologies of patriarchy and racial capitalism, devalue the bodies of womxn of colour for the purposes of controlling land, labour, and myriad forms of (re)production (García-Del Moral, 2018; Lucchesi and Echo-Hawk, 2018; Lavell-Harvard and Brant, 2016; Tuck and Yang, 2014; Dorries and Harjo, 2020; Stephen and Speed, 2021). Second, this chapter utilises the well-theorised notions of femicide (femicidio) (Monárrez Fragoso, 2009; Lagarde y De Los Ríos, 2010) and feminicide (feminicidio) (Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010), often interchangeably used in the context of gender-based violence in México and the Américas. I consider feminicide’s utility north of the US-México borderlands in Indigenous communities where a unique

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-50

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relationship with the settler-colonial nation-state makes women vulnerable to exploitation. In these colonised spaces, Indigenous womxn, like the Indigenous land base, are targeted by patriarchal white supremacist systems and structures that seek their elimination (García-Del Moral, 2018; Lucchesi and Echo-Hawk, 2018; Lavell-Harvard and Brant, 2016; Tuck and Yang, 2014; Dorries and Harjo, 2020; Stephen and Speed, 2021). Third, this chapter examines how the legal systems of Canada, the US, and México fail to safeguard the rights of disenfranchised womxn, which fosters cumulative institutional violence. Lastly, this chapter foregrounds Indigenous and Latinx womxn’s efforts to use epistemologies and methodologies such as testimonios, popular tribunals, and other mechanisms beyond state control to demand justice, equity, and accountability.

Similar yet Different: Contextualising Feminicide and MMIWG2S in North America Femicide and feminicide – and their Spanish translations, femicidio and feminicidio4 – are typically used to describe womxn and girls’ murders throughout Latin America, with analogues in what is widely known as MMIWG, or missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, as well as twospirit (MMIWG2S) victims, in Canada and the US. For the purposes of these arguments and the intersectional commonalities that both movements have, I will use the concepts of feminicide and MMIWG2S5 in this chapter. Violence against Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit individuals has traumatised Native and First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities for generations, but the modern iteration of these disappearances and murder now referred to as MMIWG2S garnered international attention in the 2010s6. Indigenous communities on and off First Nations reserves demanded attention to this gender-based violence, urging authorities to investigate the mounting number of cases. While the origin of this violence reflects the unique political contexts of each country, the commonalities of racism, colonialism, and patriarchy similarly constitute institutional violence that deserves analysis. These commonalities reflect what Stephen and Speed (2021) refer to as “ongoing colonial structures that generate and ideologically justify contemporary violences against indigenous women in the Americas” (p. 4). Canada, the US, and México’s failure to address racialised gendered violence (García-Del Moral, 2018; Stephen and Speed, 2021) that precedes disappearances and murders like misogyny, racial discrimination, sexual and familial violence, sexual assault and harassment, and sex trafficking all contribute to the MMIWG2S and feminicides. Scholars, community activists, and family members have drawn connections across settler-colonial boundaries regarding the causes and consequences of this gender-based violence. As Dorries and Harjo state, “settler colonialism is by nature a violent process, with settler-colonial violence often directed toward women” (2020: 211). Lavell-Harvard and Brant further state that “violence must be understood as a sociological phenomenon buried under layers of colonial abuses that continue to directly target Indigenous women and girls” (2016: 5). Stephen and Speed argue that “gendered violence has always been part of the genocidal and assimilationist projects of settler colonialism. The racial and gender logics that underpinned Native dispossession, slavery, and successive waves of labor exploitation are structuring logics inherent to those systems” (2021: 4). Extending these arguments is García-Del Moral (2018) who advocates for understanding feminicide as “an intersectional reconceptualization of femicide that takes into consideration the ongoing violent effects of coloniality” (p. 933), while bridging anti-colonial work with anti-feminicide work that resonates with MMIWG2S arguments. Families and communities have responded, recorded, and remembered the missing and murdered in meaningful ways through public platforms. Stakeholders everywhere might consider the points of convergence within these broadly similar tendencies in gender-based violence. That said, my intent is not to offer a simplistic comparison of these movements, or to flatten them by advocating for the need to synchronize their efforts. My 476

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point is, however, to bring these movements in conversation with each other, and to argue for the creation of spaces that are supportive of the anti-feminicide and MMIWG2S movements outside of government entities or commissions. I cite Lavell-Harvard and Brant’s poignant words here as they resonate with both movements in that “these are stories of our sisters, mothers, daughters, aunties, and grandmothers. We hear and read about our missing sisters in the venues that connect us across Turtle Island” (2016: 2). This is the common thread and message that I hope resonates with readers. How can we connect these movements across borders? I argue here that public forums for the families of feminicide and MMIWG2S are needed. Public forums allow families to share their truths outside of spaces controlled by nation-states with the goals of relational resistance7, public reckoning, and remembering. Spaces where families, activists, and human rights defenders can tell their truths offer a parallel and more robust public record to official reports. These public platforms, where testimonios are shared openly, rather than during government investigations, more holistically embody the injustices experienced by witness-survivors (Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010), the families left to testify, and witness-observers (Bejarano, 2020), those individuals observing and responding to this violence. Strengthening relational resistance (Bejarano and Hernández Sánchez, 2022) between movements, families, and others is vital if we want to end violence against women and girls.

Systems Without Justice: Feminicide in México and MMIWG2S in the US and Canada The scholarship on gender-based violence throughout Latin America is extensive and a rigorous analysis of it is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, for this chapter, I use my interpretation of feminicide, with Rosa-Linda Fregoso, which 1) recognises the murders of womxn and girls founded on a gender power structure; 2) recognises gender-based violence as both public and private implicating the state and individual perpetrators; 3) as encompassing widespread, systematic and everyday interpersonal violence, and systemic violence rooted in social, political, economic, and cultural inequalities; and finally 4) as recognising the axis of gender, racism and economic injustices locally and globally. It also follow’s Lagarde y de Los Ríos’ (same volume) understanding of feminicides as “crimes against humanity.” (Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010: 5) Feminicide (feminicidio) in México became a focal point of human rights groups in the mid1990s, in the wake of neoliberal reforms embodied by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Concurrently, feminicide gained widespread usage in the 1990s as womxn’s rights organisations contested the epidemic of gender-based violence and the failure of nation-states to prosecute the perpetrators. Although the anti-feminicide movement in northern México reached historical levels in 2009 with the Campo Algodonero ruling (OAS)8, this violence did not stop. In 2016, a report published by the Mexican Secretary of Government, the National Institute of Women, and United Nations Women, noted that between 1985 and 2014 47,178 women were killed in México. Of 9,581 murder cases between 2012 and 2016, only 1,887 were classified as feminicide despite 7,694 qualifying as such (Centro Para El Desarrollo Integral de la Mujer and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, 2018: 3). Violence in Mexico is underestimated by authorities and is often made invisible in Indigenous communities (García-Del Moral, 2018; Stephen and Speed, 2021; Crosby and Lykes, 2011; Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010). Gender-based violence against Indigenous womxn in North America exhibits similar patterns. Violence against Indigenous womxn and girls in Canada has a long history tied to settler-colonial 477

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expansion, the appropriation of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit lands, and management by the Canadian government. When the MMIWG and MMIWG2S caught international attention, it echoed the failure of the Mexican legal system to acknowledge it. Hence, the murder and disappearance of Indigenous women and girls similarly went unnoticed by white society and its institutions, even as victims’ families demanded attention to these tragedies. According to the National Inquiry9 into MMIWG2S, “in 2015, twenty four percent of homicide victims in Canada were Indigenous women . . . [and] are more likely to be murdered or missing than other women in Canada” (Dorries and Harjo, 2020: 212). MMIWG2S cases are often overlooked, ignored, underestimated, or dismissed. Similarly, in the US, violence against Indigenous women and girls goes largely unnoticed until the families and Native communities press officials to investigate. Since 2016, the US Urban Indian Health Institute identified 5,712 cases of reported MMIWG; only 116 had been included in the US Department of Justice database.10 This same report noted that 71 urban cities in the United States shared an alarming caseload of MMIWG cases (Lucchesi and Echo-Hawk, 2018). As a point of transnational comparison, MMIWG2S in the US and Canada, and feminicides in México are disproportionately experienced by the least economically and politically powerful communities of colour that face structural racism and marginalisation. MMIWG2S and anti-feminicide movements reveal a common cluster of characteristics across nation-states: failures in due process, institutional and systemic racism, racialised violence, gender discrimination and misogyny, victim discrediting and blaming, and lack of accountability. Examples of cumulative institutional violence include struggles with obtaining data and proper data collection on gender-based violence, as well as bureaucratic inertia and disorganisation, two emblematic traits of these governments when investigating MMIWG2S and feminicide that make tracking the number of missing and murdered extremely difficult. A lack of prosecutions and cooperation and overall responsiveness when communicating with families are also common as is aggregate data regarding race, ethnicity, and gender orientation, which are often inaccurate and incomplete (Hetoevėhotohke’e Lucchesi, 2019).11 In sum, legal inaction, systematic revictimisation, state impunity, and the lack of deep attention to these crimes reflect the dire effects of white-settler colonialism and its ideological permutations in the media, judicial institutions, and other areas of public life (Lavell-Harvard and Brant, 2016; García-Del Moral, 2018; Dorries and Harjo, 2020). It is not my intention to perpetuate the “damage-centered research” (Tuck, 2009) done onto Indigenous and communities of colour, but to demonstrate how these communities try to hold all of us accountable.12 Indigenous and Latinx communities are not “damaged” or “broken” as they are often described. Tuck’s (2009) work that calls out people who profit from these analyses of “damaged” or “pathologised” communities is right in challenging us all, as do Dorries and Harjo (2020) who make similarly salient arguments. Tuck urges us to consider desire-based frameworks “concerned with understanding complexity, contradiction, and the self-determination of lived lives” (2009: 416). Building from the notion that Indigenous and disenfranchised womxn are not simply victims, I now turn to the practices of testimonio, witnessing, and ceremony as strategies of resistance to gender-based violence.

Travelling Testimonios and Ceremony, Bridging Witnessing Across Borders Paula Bonilla Flores and Gwenda Yuzicappi met again in 2008 at the Missing Women: Decolonization, Third Wave Feminisms, and Indigenous People of Canada and México conference held at the First Nations University and the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. I travelled with Paula and Eva Arce, mothers from Ciudad Juárez whom I have worked with since 1998. Eva Arce’s daughter disappeared in 1998, and although she remains missing, Eva still holds out hope to find her.13 When Gwenda, Eva, and Paola met, the national borders between them fell away, as they 478

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spoke through translators about their daughters. As First Nations and Métis community members enveloped Paula and Eva with kindness and solidarity, I cried quietly when Paula and Gwenda embraced. I watched with reverence as First Nations elders blessed the opening ceremony as men drummed and sang. Later in the conference proceedings, a group of Indigenous women drummed and invited Paula and Eva to join them. Albeit different but familiar, I recalled teenage boys at Paula’s house in Juárez, also drumming to the sacred, and the memory of Sagrario, Paula’s daughter. With great moral authority, the mothers of MMIWG and feminicide victims spoke publicly and demanded justice at this gathering. Their journeys were akin to travelling testimonios across national boundaries, languages, and cultural landscapes. Each testimonio intersected with the other, starting something like “My name is ___ and I am the mother of ___ and my daughter went missing on___.” They did not use scripted words; they spoke from the heart. They spoke of poverty and the vulnerability it presents for Indigenous and brown womxn in locations where they were often preyed upon for profit or “because abusers, profiteers, and others can.” They spoke of the beauty and fullness of their daughters’ lives and their completeness before colonial violence and gender-based violence took them. They humanised their daughters. Testimonios have a long history as vehicles for truth-telling across Latin America (Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010; Crosby and Lykes, 2011). Testimonios tell stories of civil war, military dictatorships, and genocide, like the well-documented racialised and colonial violence that fueled the genocide against Indigenous people (Crosby and Lykes, 2011) across the Américas. At the Canadian gathering in 2008, I witnessed the convergence of Latin American testimonial work with Indigenous narratives of everyday survivance14 and resistance to white-settler colonialism and gender-based violence. The nuance between these movements faded as mothers wove together their tapestries of relational resistance.15 The “shared frameworks for understanding issues of violence and gender justice for Indigenous [and Latinx] women across settler-imposed borders” (Stephen and Speed, 2021: 10) was evident as their solidarity to each other grew. Mothers’ testimonios as witness-survivors (Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010) are as important as the cumulative life story told of their disappeared or murdered daughter. Witnessing the transformations of mothers as witness-survivors and then mothers as witness-observers are shared in intimate truthtelling settings (Bejarano, 2020). Through testimonios, they speak as family members and as witnesssurvivors when they “say their names” together.16 These collective testimonios form an epistemology on MMIWG2S and feminicide by validating and affirming their truth-telling. Testimonios offer intersectional analyses that recentre the victim, the witness-survivor (Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010) or even witness-observer’s (Bejarano, 2020) positionalities. Their experiences offer more insight into cumulative institutional violence.

Local Access to the People’s Permanent Tribunal Having known Paula Bonilla Flores since 1998 and having met with Gwenda Yuzicappi on more than one occasion, I imagined a joint people’s permanent tribunal (PPT) to address the MMIWG2S and the anti-feminicide movement. Families of the disappeared and murdered continue to search for answers, and state officials continue to gloss over demands for justice. Considering this impunity, public platforms created by these communities offer hope for families to air their grievances and to tell their truths. They also hold the public accountable for working to address human rights atrocities.17 That said, there is no perfect space or place in which families and their advocates can receive complete justice. Initiated through the international human rights system and the Russell Court, PPTs work “for the people” offering truth-telling spaces beyond the state to expose systemic patterns of violence. Although there are no legal remedies in this tribunal, it was “built around an international network of experts, social actors and scholars from several countries of Europe, South America, 479

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Asia, and Africa recognized for their independence and competence.”18 It provides a platform to denounce human rights atrocities and works directly with people in local organisations and human rights groups.19 PPTs offer reconciliation and legal remedy suggestions, but are most salient for individuals to feel seen, heard, and believed. Unlike truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) geared towards post-conflict societies (Hayer, 2011), PPTs can focus on a specific geopolitical, sociocultural, and socio-economic calamity that can focus on the by-products of genocide and settlercolonialism. They can also focus on large-scale, systemic, and structural issues where culpability is dispersed across multiple locations. In 2014, I served as a PPT judge for the Feminicidios y Violencias contra la Mujer hearing, which was one of seven audiences of the Free Trade, Violence, Impunity, and Peoples’ Rights in México (2011–2014). The PPT took place at the Teatro de Cámara Fernando Saavedra, a local performing arts theatre in Chihuahua City, Chihuahua, Mexico. Over two days, five judges heard testimonios from feminicide victims’ families and from families of disappeared or murdered womxn and men and stories of sexual harassment, rape, and exile from womxn. One person shared witnessing the mass murder of indigenous people in Creel, Chihuahua, by cartel members, while another testified on the murder of human rights defenders. A group of trans sex workers travelled from Mexico City to northern Mexico, to have their stories of abuse, harassment and workers’ rights recorded. Each testimonialista/witness-survivor demanded justice and elicited great emotion from the audience, which listened intently to what unfolded before them.20 This speaks to the “politics of listening” (Otto, 2017), the responsibility to remember and convey the messages heard by witness-observers beyond the PPT. One woman’s sister who is still missing testified, stating, “Que se escuche más allá de la frontera” (Let [their stories] be heard beyond the border). These public platforms have the power to pronounce feminicides and MMIWG2S as “crimes against humanity” (Lagarde y De Los Ríos, 2010: xv). The Feminicidios y Violencias contra la Mujer hearing identified human rights and institutional violence and offered remedies to the Mexican government to end all violence. Like other PPTs and alternate ways of bearing witness and memorialising, this PPT created spaces for ceremony and remembering for families. “Ceremony provides an occasion to recognize trauma publicly, to mourn together, and to denounce current and past atrocities in solidarity with others” (Bejarano, 2020: 196). In these settings, testimonialistas/witnesssurvivors can feel “a sense of empowerment and relief ” despite the emotional challenges of sharing (Otto, 2017: 233). When speaking of testifiers (Otto, 2017) at two women’s tribunals in Phnom Penh and Sarajevo, Otto shared, “their testimonies disrupted the single stories of victimhood that the criminal trial elicits and rely upon” (2017: 238). Not without criticism, PPTs have no legally binding ruling. They are ephemeral events, yet they offer what governments cannot: an opportunity at the grassroots level to share about the complete life of the victim and the greater impact of that murder or disappearance. When speaking of PPTs, Otto claims, “[T]hey are patently political projects, designed to inform public opinion and promote activism, so their formal legal legitimacy is not the point” (2017: 23). I recognise that PPTs end as quickly as they begin, much like other human rights regimes that are critiqued. Sherene Razack (2007) asks if these public platforms and people involved are, “stealing the pain of others” (Otto, 2017: 229; Crosby and Lykes, 2011), or as Otto asks whether they engage “in a process of consumption that confirms my [meaning Otto’s] own humanity” (2017: 229). These are thoughts to contemplate. I agree with Crosby and Lykes that “empathy is a slippery concept” (2011: 474) requiring transparency and reflexivity to ask, “[I]s my involvement genuine and does it work toward something tangible, something beyond the idea of awareness and justice, and toward relational resistance across borders”? (Bejarano and Hernández Sánchez, 2022). Similarly, Tuck and Young point to academe’s “eliciting pain stories from communities that are not White, not wealthy, and not straight . . . [and] telling and retelling narratives of pain as troubling, both for its voyeurism and for its consumptive implacability” (2014: 5). I hope our interventions are purposeful and transparent. 480

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Wilson’s (2008) book, Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods offers lessons for us all in beginning conversations across borders. Feminicide and MMIWG2S cases are unique in each local context, yet they share overlapping threads and perspectives that we can all learn from. Wilson writes about the role of humility and relational accountability meaning “methodology needs to be based in a community context (be relational) and has to demonstrate respect, reciprocity, and responsibility (be accountable as it is put into action)” (2008: 99). Connecting movements across borders would foster large-scale action against this violence.

Beyond Borders and Consciousness-Raising: Abolishing Feminicide and MMIWG2S The continuity of our work as activists, scholars, and advocates across international borders is necessary for relational resistance (Bejarano and Hernández Sánchez, 2022). Indigenous and Brown womxn are “mobilizing against violence in ways that do not rely solely on action from the same settler state that promotes and sanctions this violence” (Dorries and Harjo, 2020: 211), which underscores working together towards imagining justice outside of prescribed settler state frameworks of “justice.” In Canada, after more than a generation of pressure to investigate the broad crimes of genocide against First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities, particularly the legacy of the residential schools, the national government admitted guilt and agreed to a multi-billion-dollar fund for reparations.21 Similar efforts were required to bring the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission to fruition in Canada. It took years of activism to implore Canada to sign the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. With this backdrop of active denial, passive resistance, and reluctant admissions of guilt, we understand why First Nations families have remained adamant about responding to this violence. Meanwhile, the US still struggles to acknowledge its systematic failure to address genderbased violence against Indigenous womxn, girls, and non-binary people. Caught between the global campaigns to stop feminicide in México in the south and Canada’s slow admission of guilt for its treatment of Indigenous peoples, claims of exceptionalism and colour blindness dominate discussions about racialised violence in the US. After years of this violence and neglect, it took the nomination of the first Native US Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, to broach this violence with her creation of a Missing and Murdered Unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs22. In the anti-feminicide and MMIWG2S movements, there are overlapping embodied experiences with violence. Racialised and historically colonised bodies across manmade borders experience violence that at its edges, resemble each other despite their marked differences. Indigenous people in Canada and the US have a specific legal relationship with the settler-colonial state, while colonial violence is still felt in México and across the Américas (Stephen and Speed, 2021). There are broad similarities across these communities in that they suffer routine systemic violence, colonial violence (García-Del Moral, 2018; Stephen and Speed, 2021), and cumulative institutional violence. People anticipate and expect this violence, as their bodies remember and register the harm done to their relatives. As new generations experience feminicide and MMIWG2S, transnational conversations and collective action are imperative. Imagine a PPT where the MMIWG2S and the anti-feminicide movements come together in conversation to share their travelling testimonios, therefore creating spaces for transactivism, transfeminism, and transolidarity to stop the MMIWG2S and feminicides. Imagine community meetings against MMIWG2S in the US and Canada working with observatories to end feminicide in México, to magnify their messages across multiple platforms. Indeed, some of these conversations across borders have begun, but how do we sustain them? Testimonios anchor communities to the MMIWG2S and anti-feminicide movements in ways legal doctrine and the rule of law cannot. Mothers’ 481

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testimonios and others guide these movements. Remember, “let these stories be heard beyond the border,” said a feminicide victim’s sister. We will remember.

Acknowledgements I thank Paula Bonilla Flores, Eva Arce, and Gwenda Yuzicappi for inspiring this work. I also thank Fatima Oliveros for her assistance, Jeff Shepherd for his thoughtful insight, and the blind reviewers who improved this work.

Notes 1 I will use the term womxn in this chapter to recognise Indigenous and Brown womxn’s experiences impacted by feminicide, disappearance, and murder and to acknowledge transwomen and two-spirit individuals who were also victims. My use of “womxn” reflects an intersectional lens that creates space for inclusivity. 2 I met Gwenda Yuzicappi at the Feminicide = Sanctioned Murder conference at Stanford University in 2007. At the time, she was still searching for her daughter. Gwenda’s testimonial can be found in the Native Women’s Association’s report “Voices of Our Sisters in Spirit” (www.nwac-hq.org/en/documents/Voiceso fOurSistersInSPirit_2ndEdition_March2009.pdf, 2009). 3 In 2009, I served as a committee member/moderator for the Feminicide = Sanctioned Murder conference and Free Trade, Violence, Impunity, and People. I escorted Paula Bonilla Flores and Eva Arce to the conference. 4 In Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Américas (Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010), Marcela Lagarde y De Los Rios offers a detailed analysis of femicidio/femicide and feminicidio/feminicide. Crediting Diana Russell and Jill Radford (1992), Lagarde y De Los Rios tracks how the term femicide was translated into Spanish and how she contributed to the understanding of feminicides as “crimes against humanity” (Lagarde y De Los Rios, 2010: xv). There are rich discussions regarding the use of femicide, feminicide, and femicidio in this collection. See also the work of Julia Monárrez Fragoso (2009) and Paulina Garcia del Moral (2018). I use the concept feminicide (Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010), as it incorporates an intersectional analysis to discuss violence against womxn. 5 I use the MMIWG2S (missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit) reference to be inclusive of transgendered womxn that also disappeared or were murdered. I also use the term “Indigenous,” although I recognise and honour the terms that womxn may use for themselves, such as as Native American, American Indian, Aboriginal, First Nations women, First Nations womxn, and other preferences. 6 A detailed discussion and contextualisation of MMIWG2S in Canada is found in the multi-volume Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (2019) at www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report. 7 Relational resistance refers to friendships across borders transformed by radical violence that form transborder social networks. They work, “as sites of relational resistance and collective rage [bearing] witness to human rights violations with radical love” (Bejarano and Hernandez, 2022, p. 22), which is relevant to the radical love and collective rage that individuals experience in the MMIWG2S and anti-feminicide movements. 8 See the Inter-American Court of Human Rights case of González et al. (“Cotton Field”) v. Mexico Judgment of 16 November 2009 (www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_205_ing.pdf). 9 See Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (2019) at www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report. 10 The US Urban Indian Health Institute compiled data from the US Department of Justice and their federal Missing Persons database, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and US state and local law enforcement agencies to identify the total number of MMIWG in the US (www.uihi.org/resources/ missingand-murdered-indigenous-women-girls). 11 Indigenous and Mexican activists and scholars have worked to record accurate numbers of the murdered and missing across North America. For example, the original list of feminicides in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, gathered by Esther Chavez Cano, the founding director of Casa Amiga, the first rape crisis shelter in Ciudad Juárez, is found at New Mexico State University. Scholar Julia Monárrez Fragoso has maintained her own list since 1994 (2009). Others like Annita Hetoevėhotohke’e Lucchesi, who founded the Sovereign Bodies Institute, tracks the missing and murdered in the U.S. and Canada; in 2019, expanded their data to include all Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people (www.sovereign-bodies.org/mmiw-database). 12 As someone raised in a colonia (a community with little to no infrastructure) in the US-Mexico border region, I understand pathologised poverty and violence. I also recognise my middle-class and privileged

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Witnessing Across Borders capital as an academic who crosses borders. I use my positionality as a Brown womxn to check my privilege when discussing these communities, including when I co-founded Amigos de las Mujeres de Juárez, an activist group working on-the-ground from 2001 to 2010. 13 See Fregoso and Bejarano’s (2010) Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Américas to read Eva Arce’s testimonio. 14 Gerald Vizenor’s (1998) survivance (as cited in Tuck, 2009), “means a native sense of presence, the motion of sovereignty and the will to resist dominance. Survivance is not just survival but also resistance, not heroic or tragic, but the tease of tradition, and my sense of survivance outwits dominance and victimry” (1998: 93). 15 Bejarano and Hernandez Sanchez, 2022. 16 I echo Kimberlé Crenshaw’s insistence for us to “say her name” when referencing black women killed or who are missing in the US. Her TED Talk titled “The Urgency of Intersectionality” emphasises creating spaces specifically for women of colour impacted by extreme forms of violence (www.ted.com/talks/ kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality?language=en). 17 Truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) are difficult to access but remain necessary for monitoring human rights. Visits from UN special rapporteurs on violence against women document violence and offer human rights tools to keep nation-states accountable for addressing crimes against womxn and girls. Human rights protocols and conventions are important; however, UN delegates do not maintain a local or even national presence where MMIWG2S or feminicides are rooted. Supranational entities like the InterAmerican Human Rights System are institutions needed to address cases of MMIWG2S and feminicide in North America as is human rights discourse at the international level. It takes years, however, to access these entities for any long-term resolution. 18 http://permanentpeoplestribunal.org/?lang=en. 19 Different countries’ human rights organisations and other groups petition the PPT to have trials heard, and then work with local volunteers and victims to record victims’ testimonios. The PPT headquarters in Rome, Italy, will identify a country, and within a year, several different tribunals take place focusing on different HR violations (http://permanentpeoplestribunal.org/?lang=en). 20 Read the final hearing of the Free Trade, Violence, Impunity, and Peoples’ Rights in Mexico (2011–2014) tribunal report, which summarised each individual hearing, including Feminicidio y Violencia contra la Mujer (Feminicide and Violence Against Women) that took place on September 23 and 24, 2014, referenced in this work (http://permanentpeoplestribunal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/FINALVERDICTMEXICO.pdf). 21 The last residential schools closed in the 1990s, and soon thereafter, First Nations peoples began demanding an account and recognition of the trauma students had endured. During the early 2000s, groups forced Canada to investigate the violent legacies of these schools, and in 2006, Canada approved this settlement and implemented its provisions in 2007. The Canadian government officially “apologised” for the schools in 2008. See Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement 2006 (www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/110 0100015576/1571581687074#sect1). This agreement fostered the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1450124405592/1529106060525), which spent several years surveying reserves and First Nations and Métis communities and released its findings in a 2015 report. The multi-volume report is found at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba (https://nctr.ca/records/reports). When Canada released its TRC findings, it established the National Inquiry into MMIWG in 2015 (www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/timeline/) and then, in 2019, published Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report). Canada also signed onto the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2016, nine years after the UN ratified it. In 2021, Canada passed the UNDRIP Act to implement the DRIP in Canada (www.canada.ca/ en/department-justice/news/2021/12/government-of-canada-advances-implementation-of-the-unitednations-declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples-act.html). 22 Since 2021, the unit is in the Bureau of Indian Affairs – Office of Justice Services (BIA-OJS). Prior to serving as US Secretary of the Interior, Deb Halland worked to implement Savanna’s Act and the Not Invisible Act in 2019 to better train law enforcement on handling crimes against Native women and to make reporting easier for families of missing and murdered Native peoples (www.doi.gov/news/ secretary-haaland-creates-new-missing-murdered-unit-pursue-justice-missing-or-murdered-american).

References Bejarano, C. (2020). Memory of Struggle in Ciudad Juárez: Mothers’ Resistance and Transborder Activism in the Case of the Campo Algodonero. In Noriega, C. A., Belcher W.L., & Villaseñor Black, C. (Eds.), Autobiography without Apology: The Personal Essay in Chicanx and Latinx Studies. (pp. 255-270). UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press.

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Cynthia Bejarano Bejarano, C., & Hernández Sánchez, M. E. (2022). Geographies of Friendship and Embodiments of Radical Violence, Collective Rage, and Radical Love at the US–Mexico Border’s Paso del Norte region. Gender, Place & Culture, 1-23. Centro Para El Desarrollo Integral de la Mujer & Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. (2018). Alternative Report on Violence against Women in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, México. Ninth Periodic Report of México. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Crenshaw, K. (2016, October). The Urgency of Intersectionality [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted. com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality?languag3e=en Crosby, A., & Lykes, M. B. (2011). Mayan Women Survivors Speak: The Gendered Relations of Truth-Telling in Postwar Guatemala. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 5(3), 456-476. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijtj/ ijr017 Dorries, H., & Harjo, L. (2020). Beyond Safety: Refusing Colonial Violence Through Indigenous Feminist Planning. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 40(2), 210-219. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X19894382 Free Trade, Violence, Impunity and Peoples’ Right in Mexico (2011-2014). Permanent People’s Tribunal. FINALVERDICTMEXICO.pdf (permanentpeoplestribunal.org) Fregoso, R. L., & Bejarano, C. (Eds.). (2010). Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americás. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822392644 García-Del Moral, P. (2018). The Murders of Indigenous Women in Canada as Feminicides: Toward a Decolonial Intersectional Reconceptualization of Feminicide. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 43(4), 929-954. https://doi.org/10.1086/696692 Hayer, P. B. (2011). Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions (2nd ed.). Routledge. Hetoevėhotohke’e Lucchesi, A. (2019). Mapping geographies of Canadian colonial occupation: pathway analysis of murdered indigenous women and girls. Gender, Place & Culture, 26(6), 868-887 https://doi.org/10.1 080/0966369X.2018.1553864 Lagarde y De Los Ríos, M. (2010). Feminist Keys for Understanding Feminicide: Theorical, Political, and Legal Construction. In Fregoso, R. L., & Bejarano, C. Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americás. (pp. xi-xvi). Duke University Press. Lavell-Harvard, M. D., & Brant, J. (Eds.). (2016). Forever Loved: Exposing the Hidden Crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada. Demeter Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1rrd8g6 Lucchesi, A., & Echo-Hawk, A. (2018). Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Urban Indian Health Institute. https://www.uihi.org/resources/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-girls/ Monárrez Fragoso, J. E. (2009). Trama de una Injusticia: Feminicidio Sexual Sistemático en Ciudad Juárez. El Colegio de la Frontera Norte; Miguel Ángel Porrúa. Otto, D. (2017). Beyond legal justice: Some personal reflections on people’s tribunals, listening and responsibility. London Review of International Law, 5(2), 225-249. https://doi.org/10.1093/lril/lrx007 People’s Permanent Tribunal. (2015). Retrieved from http://permanentpeoplestribunal.org/?lang=en. Razack, S. H. (2007). Stealing the Pain of Others: Reflections on Canadian Humanitarian Responses. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 29(4), 375-394. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714410701454198 Russell, D. E. H., & Radford J. (Eds.). (1992). Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing. Twayne Publishers. Stephen, L., & Speed, S. (Eds.). (2021). Indigenous Women and Violence: Feminist Activist Research in Heightened States of Injustice. University of Arizona Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1ghv4mj Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities. Harvard Educational Review, 79(3), 409–428. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.79.3.n0016675661t3n15 Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2014). R-Words: Refusing Research. In D. Paris & M. T. Winn (Eds.), Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities. SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781544329611 Vizenor, G. (1998). Fugitive Poses: Native American Indian Sense of Absence and Presence. University of Nebraska Press. U.S. Department of the Interior. (2021, April 1). Secretary Haaland Creates New Missing & Murdered Unit to Pursue Justice for Missing or Murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives [Press release]. (https://www.doi.gov/news/ secretary-haaland-creates-new-missing-murdered-unit-pursue-justice-missing-or-murdered-american). Wilson, S. (2008). Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Fernwood Publishing.

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44 NORTH AMERICAN NECROPOLITICS AND GENDER On Black Lives Matter and Black Femicide Shatema Threadcraft At this historical moment, the body around which blacks can most easily organise and rally members to the cause of racial justice is a dead one. Contemporary racial politics focuses on the necropolitics of black death and relatedly on the important work of exposing the state’s efforts to assure its citizens it has produced the “right kind” of dead. This chapter considers how the Black Lives Matter movement has brought together strategies employed in an earlier US necropolitical struggle, the antilynching campaign, with technological innovations to successfully challenge the state’s narrative of black death, as well as the success of this movement in comparison to the struggle against femicide at the Mexico – United States border that preceded it. While I recognise and celebrate this success, I also argue that any focus on the slain body privileges how cis men die, how young men die, and how able-bodied blacks die, over all other black dead. Black women are subjected to disproportionate sexual assault, community violence, and public sexual aggression. White power intersects with the black female body to produce its preferred forms of racialised feminine embodiment – the assaulted and terrorised body – but when held in comparison to how power intersects with the black male body, far more rarely does it produce a dead black female body. Considering the attention given to the dead body in contemporary racial politics, then, we must decide how black politics can and should be reformulated in light of the existence of gendered power intersections. It is crucial for those concerned with the status of black women to reckon with the centrality of necropolitics on the contemporary political stage. This necropolitical movement, if it is not made to be properly intersectional, may ultimately do little to change how state power intersects with the black female body or to stop black femicide.

Sex Worker, Narco, Thug: Resisting Contemporary North American Necropolitics In recent years, protests against police murder of unarmed black men have brought long-running conversations within black communities to the forefront of mainstream politics. To take one notable example, after the Black Lives Matter movement brought considerable pressure to bear on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, criminal justice reform topped her racial justice platform (Hillary for America, 2016). Clinton acknowledged the existence of implicit racial bias and promised to

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-51

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commit a billion dollars to police training programs and new research. Her deputy millennial vote director, Jamira Burley, explicitly credited Black Lives Matter for this shift (Beckett and Lartey, 2016). Finally, the nation, and not simply blacks, had begun to question how state power intersects with the black body. Critically in all of this discussion, a media-savvy group of protesters began to convince others of their understanding of the meaning of the dead bodies the state produced. The Black Lives Matter movement has benefited from the rise of “black Twitter” and the fact that many members of that community concur with the meaning Black Lives Matter assigns to the bodies of the dead. While the state asserts the bodies are those of thugs deserving death, black Twitter, like Black Lives Matter, identifies the dead as the product of the disproportionate and illegitimate use of police force. But the movement also depends on the ability of each dead body to resonate with the wider black community, and all black bodies do not produce equal outrage. It is thus not clear how the movement can respond to existing hierarchies and prejudices in the wider black community regarding the meaning of the living, which holds fast to bodies even in death. Mbembe examines the importance of the politics of death in the exercise of power in his article “Necropolitics” (2003). He argues that “the ultimate expression of sovereignty resides, to a large degree, in the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die” (p. 11). This power is particularly salient in the control and management of subject peoples and marginalised populations. “Hence,” he explains, “to kill or to allow to live constitute the limits of sovereignty, its fundamental attributes. To exercise sovereignty is to exercise control over mortality” (pp. 11–12). Mbembe’s analysis of the politics of death considers how necropower intersects with a generic body, but it is silent on how the phenomenon intersects with male and female bodies, respectively. Melissa Wright, in her examination of gendered necropolitics at the Mexico – United States border (2011), grapples with Mbembe’s important question. She argues, first, that the politics of gender and the politics of death go hand in hand and, second, that states often play a decisive role in assigning meaning to the bodies of the dead in the successful operation of necropower. That is, states engage in efforts to convince those within their borders that the proper body for the subjects in question is, in fact, a deceased body. Wright helpfully draws attention to the fact that the successful operation of necropower requires the work of assigning meaning to the bodies of the dead. The state expends effort and uses its resources to define how the subject lived and therefore what the subject was, thereby labelling a given subject as deserving of death – as a subject whose proper embodiment is as a deceased body. In the Mexican case, Wright probes, state officials did so both with the death the state itself produced and with the deaths it failed to stop, assigning subjects the labels of “sex worker” and “narcos” and thereby legitimising their deaths. As dead bodies piled up in Ciudad Juárez, the question of what they represented became a contested one. The state asserted that the female dead were sex workers and the male dead were involved in the drug trade. In both cases the dead bodies were not cause for alarm and were even cause for celebration – these deaths were evidence of a strong state. Mexican activists concerned about the female dead challenged the state’s claims that all dead women were sex workers, but in this they confronted the strong association between working women and “working women” – that is, between female workers and sex workers. Because of the tendency to see any woman in public as a “public woman,” state officials could readily explain the women’s deaths as a kind of public cleansing that rid the body politic of their contamination and helped to restore the moral and political balance of society. Indeed, possessing a dead body in public indicted the subject as a sex worker. Officials also asserted that keeping women at home would keep them safe – and here ceded any role for the state itself in protecting them. Activists countered that the murdered women were not sex workers – not that there was anything wrong with that – but were good daughters who worked in factories to support their families, and therefore, lethal violence against them was evidence of a severely weakened, if not failed, state. They mounted this challenge, however, largely without the benefit of social media and smartphones. 486

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In comparison to struggles between the state and activists over meaning around femicide and narcoviolence, the Black Lives Matter campaign has been more successful in challenging the state’s preferred meaning regarding the bodies of the dead. It has been able to do this due in part due to the rise of black Twitter and in part as an outcome of its ability to blend new technology with strategies deployed in an older US necropolitical campaign, the antilynching campaign. #Black Live Matter has, whether consciously or not, used technology to redeploy many of the strategies employed by the United States’ most iconic necropolitical warrior, Ida B. Wells.

From the Antilynching Campaign to Black Lives Matter Wells’s pioneering necropolitical activism lives on in the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement in three very important ways. First, in challenging the meaning assigned to the bodies of the black dead in her time, Wells (1991) outlined the excuses white supremacists offered for why they murdered blacks, thereby troubling the meaning assigned to the bodies of the dead. She asked her readers to recall that white supremacists had first asserted the lynched black dead were race rioters. When that was proved false, they claimed that the dead were “negro dominators” who wanted to subordinate whites politically. Finally, the murderers and their apologists hit on the accusation of rape. With “rapist” attached to the dead black body, the subject’s status as dead was legitimised, and those who had killed the subject were shielded from criticism. Second, Wells called out “the malicious and untruthful white press” for its role in perpetuating lynching by circulating false stereotypes of black people. Finally, she documented the actual circumstances of lynching to present a story far different from the narrative those in power circulated. The murders were much harder to justify once she had compiled evidence of blacks lynched for infractions such as stealing chickens and “sassing” whites. The Black Lives Matter campaign and those sympathetic to its cause have made use of all these strategies. Alicia Garza first uttered and disseminated the phrase “black lives matter” in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the murder of Trayvon Martin. A massive social media campaign led to the eventual arrest and prosecution – though sadly not the conviction – of Zimmerman after police initially failed to arrest him. Without social media, there would be no Black Lives Matter. Black Twitter may itself represent a virtual black counterpublic, rising again after a period of decline, as noted by Michael C. Dawson (1994). The contemporary necropolitical struggle has had the good fortune to arise in a cultural context in which a higher percentage of blacks use Twitter (26% of all black Internet users, as compared to 14% of whites [Duggan and Brenner, 2013]); use Twitter more times per day than whites (Jones, 2013); and arguably use Twitter far better than all other groups. On the last point, André Brock (2012) notes that “Black Twitter came to online prominence through creative use of Twitter’s hashtag function and subsequent domination of Twitter’s ‘trending topics’ ” (p. 545). He explains, “Twitter’s discourse conventions, ubiquity, and social features encouraged increased Black participation; Black Twitter is Twitter’s mediation of Black cultural discourse, or ‘signifyin’ ” (p. 530). Blacks’ exceptional use of Twitter has allowed black counterdiscourse on a variety of topics to register consistently within mainstream discourse, including blacks’ longstanding counterdiscourse regarding police brutality and lethal state violence against blacks. Black Twitter has been so successful at driving the conversation that the mainstream media has often been forced to respond. Whereas Wells took aim at the attempts of white supremacists and the mainstream press to attach the meaning “rapist” to the body of the black dead in the Jim Crow era, the current black necropolitical insurgency has set its sights on the mark “thug” as a justification for death. Rashad Robinson, executive director of Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organisation, summed up the problem and why it is such an important front in the current necropolitical contests: “These young people have their bodies criminalized even after death” (quoted in Lewis, 2014). 487

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The campaign has taken on the malicious stereotypes regarding blacks circulated by the mainstream press. Yesha Callahan (2014a) wrote in The Root, for example, that after Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman, Trayvon “was depicted as a gold-grill-wearing, weed-smoking teenager in the photos used by the media,” but there “were no photos of Trayvon . . . being just your average happy teen, which his family members said he was.” Callahan reported the creation of the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown in response. Twitter users who adopted the hashtag posted photos of themselves in formal wear, military uniforms, and graduation gowns alongside photos where they wore clothing associated with “urban” youth. The campaign posed the question: “If police gunned me down, what photo of me would the media circulate after my death?” The campaign drew nearly 2,000 responses to the hashtag. Another hashtag campaign followed John Eligon’s New York Times profile of Michael Brown. Eligon (2014) wrote, “Michael Brown, 18, due to be buried on Monday, was no angel, with public records and interviews with friends and family revealing both problems and promise in his young life.” Callahan’s (2014b) response to the article is emblematic of the outrage it evoked on social media: What the f –– k is wrong with the New York Times? I’ll tell you what’s wrong: In most mainstream media, victims of color continue to be victimised and criminalised even in death. As I read the article, my anger rose – not only as a parent of a young black man but also because just two weeks ago I wrote a blog post about #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, which discussed the imagery the media choose to use when it comes to black men. And this New York Times article is clearly a prime example of that. Eligon’s article birthed the hashtag #NoAngel, which got three thousand mentions in less than a day and forced Times editor Margaret Sullivan to admit that Eligon’s piece was not “ideal” and that “ ‘no angel’ was a blunder” (quoted in Waldman, 2014). Online activism against media representations have also led to questions regarding how the press portrays white perpetrators of mass violence. The Washington Post’s Janell Ross (2016) called out a clear double standard in reporting on the armed seizure of a national wildlife refuge by Cliven Bundy and his followers. Her own newspaper was calling them “occupiers,” while the New York Times opted for “armed activists” and “militia men.” Not a single media outlet, Ross pointed out, used terms like “insurrection,” “revolt,” or “terrorist.” But Ross could not imagine these words being avoided if “armed black Americans took possession of a federal or state courthouse.” When black Americans protested police violence and injustice, they were “lumped in with criminals and looters” and “described as ‘thugs.’ ” US necropolitical activists have thus gone further than their Mexican counterparts, who did not challenge the status of sex workers as a justification for death, instead asserting that the women were not in fact sex workers. Even if the word thug successfully attaches to the body of the slain, activists in the US context have worked to ensure that this meaning is no longer sufficient to mark the line between he who lives and he who must die. Jamelle Bouie (2014) has gone so far as to assert, “The word ‘thug’ has become an ‘accepted way of calling somebody the N-word.’ ” If the mark “thug” legitimises death and “thug” simply means “black,” all black bodies are marked for death, their deaths pre-legitimised. Finally, like Wells, activists have collected and shared data about the actual circumstances of each death at the hands of police in order to advance their own necropolitical narrative. Lists of all the reasons blacks can be killed often circulate on social media platforms to make the larger point that it is blackness itself that makes one worthy of death in the United States. Mapping Police Violence (Sinyangwe, 2016) tracks the number of blacks killed by police each month, compares the percentage of those who were unarmed to that of white unarmed victims, and documents blacks’ greater 488

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likelihood of being killed by police in a given month. The website also presents statistics demonstrating that blacks’ greater likelihood of dying at the hands of police is unconnected to higher crime rates. The activists have thus made great strides by adapting Wells’s strategies to the social media age.

When and Why We Should Say Her Name There are potential problems, however, with centring the politics of death and the body in black politics. As I have stated elsewhere (Threadcraft, 2016), female embodiment heightens the risk that any given subject’s dead body will go unrecognised. Those concerned with violence against black women, including the members of the #SayHerName campaign, have pointed out that women’s deaths receive less attention and activism, as do the deaths of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people of colour. This lack of recognition raises the question whether joining in the struggles surrounding the politics of death is the best approach to bringing attention to the problematic ways state power intersects with the black female body. Even if it is, I would argue that we must take seriously the significant distinctions between homicide and femicide and how they affect an intersectional approach to confronting black femicide. If activists concede to centring the politics of death in black politics, they will have to find ways to overcome the challenges presented by the public/private divide and how that divide deprives their cause of a key resource the Black Lives Matter activists have been able to mobilise to great effect: witnessing. Much of the extraordinary guerrilla power of Black Lives Matter in the face of the much more powerful meaning-making apparatus of the US state has come from the ability to transmit images of the slaughter. Yet femicide is overwhelmingly an unwitnessed private-sphere crime that does not lend itself to being captured in the same way. What can stand in the place of this public spectacle? What would motivate people to rally around the bodies of our black female dead? I do not want to suggest that Black Lives Matter activists are unaware of the issues I raise here. The Black Lives Matter movement is committed to black women and is trans-affirming (Black Lives Matter, 2016). The organising aims of the movement for black lives are radically comprehensive, calling for nothing less than the total transformation of American society (Kelley, 2016). But while the movement’s goals are long-term and ambitious, its success depends on others accepting and disseminating its preferred narrative regarding the overreach of state power and pushing for change in light of it. Observers have noted that although the movement was founded by queer women of colour and many of the movement’s most prominent activists identify as queer, black communities around the country have shown differing levels of concern based on the gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity of the slain (West, 2016). Thus, the movement struggles with the ways that the communities to whom it appeals evince different levels of concern that map onto existing social hierarchies vis-à-vis violence, including lethal violence against black men, black women, black trans men, and black trans women. In this struggle, it has confronted the hierarchies of social status that contribute to how people respond to murder. So blacks face the problem not only of relative white indifference to black death but also of black men and women caring less about murdered black women, of cis blacks caring less about slain trans blacks, and so on (Richie, 2012). The activists who launched the #SayHerName campaign, like those in the broader Black Lives Matter movement, attempt to intervene at the level of socially accepted meanings given to the bodies of the dead, but they have struggled to bring the names of Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, Tanisha Anderson, and other women murdered by police to the same level of attention and resonance as the names of Martin, Gray, Castile, Sterling, and Brown. Black women are at a disadvantage in trying to win recognition by arguing that the same thing that happens to black men happens to them, as far fewer black women than black men are killed by police. If those concerned with how power acts on the black female body want to keep the focus on the state and state violence in a way that is genderinclusive, they cannot focus exclusively on death and the production of dead bodies. If activists want 489

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to keep the focus on death, on the other hand, they must heed earlier feminist critiques regarding mainstream liberalism’s blind spots and biases that regard the state as the only dangerous force in a woman’s life. That is, if they are going to take part in the politics of death, they cannot privilege the state as the death-distributing mechanism, because often the state is not the biggest threat of violence in a woman’s life. #SayHerName activists attempt to enter the discussion around the politics of death and at the same time broaden the conversation regarding how power intersects with the black body. In Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality against Black Women (Crenshaw and Ritchie, 2015), Kimberlé Crenshaw writes, “Although Black women are routinely killed, raped, and beaten by the police, their experiences are rarely foregrounded in popular understandings of police brutality.” Ritchie adds, “Black women are all too often unseen in the national conversation about racial profiling, police brutality, and lethal force.” The report’s name seizes the moment of concern with lethal police force, but Crenshaw and Ritchie immediately broaden the discussion to drive attention to the problem of violence against black women. Ritchie points out that the report also pushes open the frame to include other forms and contexts of police violence such as sexual assault by police, police abuse of pregnant women, profiling and abusive treatment of lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming Black women, and police brutality in the context of responses to violence – which bring Black women’s experiences into even sharper focus. But the entry point Crenshaw and Ritchie have chosen may put them in a bind. If activists must emphasise the similarities between black men’s and black women’s experiences over their differences to get others to care about what happens to women at all, and thus join in struggles within this variant of the politics of death, then they risk not having the right kind of resources devoted to ending the things police disproportionately do to black women. Here, the scope of the problem is enormous. Police sexual misconduct is the second largest category of reported police misconduct after police brutality. It is also a hidden crime. Identified cases are understood to be only “the tip of the iceberg,” and police sexual misconduct is thus quite possibly the largest category of police misconduct. Scholars (Stinson et al., 2015) report that “the sexual nature of these offenses and the absence of official data have hampered the study of the phenomenon.” An Associated Press investigation of US law enforcement sexual misconduct found about a thousand officers in six years had lost their badges “for rape, sodomy and other sexual assault,” possession of child pornography, and sexual misconduct, “such as propositioning citizens or having consensual but prohibited on-duty intercourse” (Sedensky and Merchant, 2015). These thousand cases are “unquestionably an undercount” because many states, including California and New York, “have no statewide system to decertify officers for misconduct.” This misconduct disproportionately affects women of colour. Chagmion Antoine (2016) points out that “racial profiling also takes gender-specific forms that often lead to sexual assault.” Antoine cites a report by the United Nations Human Rights Committee (Ritchie and Mogul, 2007) which found that “women of color experience particular impacts of current law enforcement policies and practices across the U.S.,” including “arbitrary stops, strip searches, and detentions” and “extortion schemes” in which “officers routinely demand sexual acts in exchange for leniency.” Likewise, both childbirth and mothering “while Black” leads to “more frequent allegations of child abuse and neglect against Black women.” Thus, if resources are funnelled solely to ending the lethal use of force by police, it may do little to change how this form of state power intersects with the black female body. Homicide masquerades as a general, sex-blind phenomenon covering all murder, but in some ways the androcentrism of the term is warranted. Men are disproportionately victims of murder. The 490

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US Department of Justice (Cooper and Smith, 2011: 3) reports that between 1980 and 2008, men were 77% of murder victims. Men and women are killed in different ways, by different people, with men more likely to be killed in what are quite literally more “spectacular” circumstances, in ways that are public and in view (Bonn, 2015). Their deaths are therefore more likely to be witnessed – and, in the 21st century, filmed. Understood as disruptions to the public order, these deaths are also more likely to be perceived as part of a problem that society should devote collective resources to solving. Finally, men are much more likely to be killed during concurrent illegal activity: they were 90% of drug-related and 95% of gang-related homicides between 1980 and 2008. Again, these are the kinds of deaths that register as threats to the public order. Considering that black men are more likely to be killed, to be in a public space when killed, and to be killed during criminal activity, they are also far more likely to be killed by police and, today, to be killed by police on tape. Femicide is a different phenomenon. Only 23% of those murdered are women, and these women are not killed in the same contexts that men are, nor are they killed by the same people. They represent 63% of those killed by intimates and 81.7% of those killed in sex-related murders. Women are therefore killed in what is defined to be the private sphere. They are also likely to be killed during an argument, not during the commission of a felony. Women are killed in private without witness, or their deaths are witnessed only by politically voiceless minors. They are killed in the home, the space long considered a man’s castle. Their deaths are unlikely to register as threats to the public order. Their deaths are unlikely to register at all. This does not necessarily mean that those concerned about the lives of black women have to abandon the politics of death. The bodies of black female dead are being produced. The black female dead are also being produced, and produced at a rate as impressive as the most arresting Black Lives Matter statistics. This is the case because, although murder is something of a male problem, it is also a black problem in the United States, with blacks six times more likely to be murdered than whites. In fact, black women are killed at higher rates than white men and have been for decades (Miller, 2014). Black women make up a disproportionate percentage of those who are slain in the course of domestic and intimate partner violence, and police disproportionately profile, sexually assault, and arrest black female victims of domestic violence. And while it may be alarmingly true that a black man is killed by police, security guards, police moonlighting as security guards, and other vigilantes every 28 hours, it is also true that every 21 hours, a black woman is killed by her intimate partner (Eisen-Martin, 2013; Lee, 2014; Violence Policy Center, 2015). This means that if those who are concerned with the status of black women agree to take part in necropolitics, this necropolitics cannot continue to privilege spectacular public murders at the hands of state agents. That approach will not stem the production of dead black female bodies. The reader might reasonably ask, is not the above a black-on-black crime deflection? No, it is not. First, the problem of impunity is a major factor here, much as it is for lethal police violence. That is not the case with black homicides and the crimes leading up to them, all of which are severely punished by the state. Intimate partner murder is the most predictable form of murder, and the perpetrator often escalates his abuse in ways that go unpunished until the final lethal act of violence. Experts have found that if prior acts of violence are evaluated using a “lethality index,” it is possible to determine whether or not someone will ultimately murder his partner (Women’s Justice Center, 2010). These deaths, then, are the result of police (and prosecutorial and judicial) inaction in response to violence against black women. As the United Nations Human Rights Committee noted, often black female victims of domestic violence are punished themselves, either by being arrested or by having their children taken away, decreasing the likelihood that they will ask for help when they experience violence (Ritchie and Mogul, 2007). They are punished because someone has enacted violence against them. This is, to be clear, a problem of state failure, not of black male deviance, whose solution lies in state building and in confronting the problems of racialised, uneven development. Carolyn M. West 491

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(2004) notes that it is “African American couples who are young, undereducated, impoverished, [and] unemployed urban dwellers” who are most likely to be both the victims and the perpetrators of intimate partner violence – an indication that the economic and social disadvantage of black Americans is what puts them at risk of participation in this violence (pp. 1487–1489). Disproportionate black intimate partner femicide, then, is a complex problem at the intersection of black community and police relations, and it must be considered in the context of both police physical and sexual violence against blacks and the ongoing reluctance of state agencies to prevent forms of violence that involve a man and his woman in his castle and do not threaten the public order. There is the problem, as well, of relying on police officers to end intimate partner violence, given police officers’ own documented greater likelihood of domestic and intimate partner abuse and therefore their greater willingness to condone the abuse of intimate partners. There are also larger problems of unemployment and underemployment, as well as gun control.

On Making the Private Public One potential solution to the problem that a lack of spectacle presents in rallying people to act against femicide may be to draw attention to how the private can become public. Feminists long involved with the issue of violence against women and girls have pointed out, first, that most mass shootings are actually instances of domestic and intimate partner violence: 57% of mass shootings between January 2009 and June 2014 involved a perpetrator killing female intimates and their children, 70% of mass shooting incidents occurred at home, and 42% involved a current or former intimate partner (Jeltsen, 2015). Second, they noted that those who went on to commit acts of random public violence – what we generally think of as terrorism – had first practised by terrorising the women and children around them (Shifman and Tillet, 2015). In the wake of Omar Mateen’s mass murder at Pulse, an Orlando LGBT nightclub and onetime community safe space, Chemaly (2016) not only wrote about Mateen’s history of intimate partner violence but also reported that “while the world watched in horror as news poured out of Orlando, a man in New Mexico was arrested in the fatal shooting deaths of his wife and four daughters.” This move is strategically brilliant, as terror is a problem to which we are completely comfortable devoting considerable resources. Feminists bringing attention to the links between domestic violence and intimate partner violence and “public terror” can help drive more resources towards solving the problem of femicide. The #SayHerName campaign might consider how it could join with or make strategic alliances with efforts to connect intimate partner violence and terror to direct more resources to the problem of the black female dead. Of course, this approach is not without drawbacks, given the racialised nature of the war on terror. For that reason, the feminists who seek to link intimate partner violence and terror might also benefit from the coalition I suggest and from discussions with pioneering intersectional feminists, such as Crenshaw, as they, too, foray into the complex waters of the politics of death in North America.

References Antoine, C. (2016, May 4). The color of lawlessness: Sexual abuse by police, nationwide. Women Under Siege. www. womenundersiegeproject.org/blog/entry/the-color-of-lawlessness-sexual-abuse-by-police-nationwide Beckett, L., & Lartey, J. (2016, July 25). How Hillary Clinton is campaigning on race and crime: “She must own her role.”The Guardian. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/25/hillary-clinton-race-crime-justice-reform Black Lives Matter. (2016). Guiding principles. Retrieved from http://blacklivesmatter.com/guiding-principles Bonn, S. A. (2015, October 12). White females are rarely murder victims or perpetrators: The reality of gender, race, and homicide. Psychology Today. www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wicked-deeds/201510/ white-females-are-rarely-murder-victims-or-perpetrators

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Rolling Stone. www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/in-orlando-as-usual-domestic-violence-was-ignored-red-flag-90139 Cooper, A., & Smith, E.L. (2011). Homicide trends in the United States, 1980–2008. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf Crenshaw, K., & Ritchie, A.J. (2015). Say her name: Resisting police brutality against Black women. African American Policy Forum and Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies. www.aapf.org/_files/ugd/62e 126_9223ee35c2694ac3bd3f2171504ca3f7.pdf Dawson, M.C. (1994). A black counterpublic? Economic earthquakes, racial agenda(s), and black politics. Public Culture 7(1), 195–223. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-7-1-195 Duggan, M., & Brenner, J. (2013). The demographics of social media users – 2012. Internet and American Life Project, Pew Research Center. www.pewresearch.org/internet/2013/02/14/the-demographics-of-socialmedia-users-2012/ Eisen-Martin, T. (2013). We charge genocide again! A curriculum for “Operation Ghetto Storm: Report on the 2012 extrajudicial killings of 313 black people by police, security guards and vigilantes.” Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. https://indypendent.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/we-charge-genocideFINAL.pdf Eligon, J. (2014, August 24). Michael Brown spent last weeks grappling with problems and promise. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/us/michael-brown-spent-last-weeks-grappling-with-lifesmysteries.html Hillary for America. (2016). Racial justice: America’s long struggle with race is far from finished. Retrieved November 9, 2016, from http://hillaryclinton.com/issues/racial-justice Jeltsen, M. (2015, August 25). We’re missing the big picture on mass shootings. Huffington Post. www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mass-shootings-domestic-violence-women_us_55d3806ce4b07addcb44542a Jones, F. (2013, July 17). Is Twitter the Underground Railroad of activism? 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New York University Press. Ritchie, A.J., & Mogul, J.L. (2007, December). In the shadows of the War on Terror: Persistent police brutality and abuse of people of color in the United States. UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cerd/docs/ngos/usa/USHRN15.pdf. Ross, J. (2016, January 3). Why aren’t we calling the Oregon occupiers “terrorists”? Washington Post. www. washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/03/why-arent-we-calling-the-oregon-militia-terrorists/ Sedensky, M., & N. Merchant. (2015, November 1). Investigation reveals about one thousand police officers lost jobs over sexual misconduct. The Guardian. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/01/ police-sexual-assault-investigation Shifman, P., & Tillet, S. (2015, February 3). To stop violence, start at home. The New York Times. http:// nytimes.com/2015/02/03/opinion/to-stop-violence-start-at-home.html Sinyangwe, S. (2016). Compare Police Departments. 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45 FEMICIDE, DIGITAL ACTIVISM, AND THE #NIUNAMENOS MOVEMENT IN ARGENTINA Francesca Belotti, Francesca Comunello, and Consuelo Corradi

Introduction Femicide has gained traction in feminist movements worldwide as a compelling keyword, capable of exposing the brutality of violence against women and its systemic roots (Taylor and Jasinski, 2011; Corradi et al., 2016). Especially in Latin America, the Spanish term feminicidio has served as a resonant and radical frame that encapsulates the political meaning of the systematic killing of women and sheds light on the violations of their human rights (Monárrez-Fragoso, 2008; García del Moral, 2015). Activists use this concept to denounce all forms of gender-based violence and raise awareness about its misogynist grounds and socio-cultural normalisation (Lagarde, 2008; Hernández-Garcìa and Coutiño-Osorio, 2016). The Argentinian #NiUnaMenos is an example of a movement that coalesced around the fight against femicide as a political priority. Between 2008 and 2015, the Adriana Marisel Zambrano Observatory recorded a total of 2,094 femicides in the country, with one woman dying every 30 hours (Asociación Civil La Casa del Encuentro, 2020). In 2015, in response to a string of brutal killings of women and girls, a group of women activists and journalists convened a multitudinous march on Twitter, under the aegis of the famous hashtag that ended up naming the movement itself. The call went viral across all media settings and, on 3 June, it drove hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women, into the streets of Buenos Aires. Mobilisations extended to other Latin American countries that same year and were repeated in those that followed even beyond Latin America – in Spain and Italy (Palmeiro, 2020). As mobilisations swelled, the Argentinian movement changed shape and composition, upscaling from a small collective based in Buenos Aires to a nationwide network animated by autonomous but coordinated local groups, and further reaching an international decentralised organisation (Belotti et al., 2021). In this process, it has gradually aggregated feminist organisations and scholars while expanding the gender-related disputes (such as legalising abortion or balancing the gender pay gap) to be captured under #NiUnaMenos as “the mother tag” (Kim, 2017). Building on studies on digital activism and hashtag feminism, in this chapter we analyse the Twitter conversations carrying the hashtag #NiUnaMenos that were produced in Argentina in 2015, 2016, and 2017 during the marches. The results account for how much and in what way femicide was discussed online over those three years, thus capturing the transformative scope of the movement and the power of femicide as a mobilising keyword to bring the issue of gender-based violence to the foreground.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-52

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Digital Activism and Hashtag Feminism In the last decade, the role of digital media in grassroots mobilisations has grown since activists increasingly turn to these platforms to organise protests, discuss relevant issues, and promote their ideas with other citizens. Contemporary large-scale mobilisations follow the logic of connective action, which is defined as a participatory process “based on personalised content sharing across media networks” (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012: 739), where digital media play the role of organising agents. They provide a communicative environment where individuals engage in self-directed communication through chosen (online) channels (i.e. the “mass self-communication logic,” Castells, 2009). Indeed, “[f]rom its original emphasis on reaching out to a mass audience, the movement has shifted to stimulate mass citizen participation by making the best of the interactive capacity offered by the Internet” (Castells, 2009: 237). Following this perspective, we do not consider online activism as less valuable and less authentic than offline mobilisations (see, for instance, Morozov, 2011) but rather value how activists seamlessly move across physical and digital platforms, thus inhabiting these latter as “additional environments” (boyd, 2011) for their grassroots politics. The online and offline activities for social change are therefore mutually shaped (Vaccari et al., 2015), in that the former intertwine with and have consequences on the latter, and vice versa (Treré and Barranquero, 2018). In particular, social media has proven to be effective for activists to achieve practical and communicative goals, as well as to build collective identity (Gerbaudo and Treré, 2015) and propagate the emotions attached to the mobilisation itself (Castells, 2012; Gravante, 2016). This is particularly evident when it comes to women’s protests, in that these platforms have enabled an actual transnational networked feminism (Fotopoulou, 2016), mainly based on collective actions against gender-based violence (Kurian et al., 2015). Even in Latin America, Internet-based communication technology has been increasingly adopted by grassroots movements, with social media, in particular, serving for organising protest actions, spreading ideas, and elaborating collective identities (Caballero and Gravante, 2017; Trerè and Magallanes-Blanco, 2015). Throughout the region, a growing number of feminist and women’s groups have gradually appropriated these platforms, combining online and offline activities (Laudano, 2016). Latin American women with different political views get involved in online politics that redefine both female corporeality and technological infrastructures by sharing personal experiences and creating situated, durable chains of affection (Lobato and Gonzalez, 2020). More specifically, in Argentina, the first women’s groups relied on emails, electronic conferences, and information distribution lists to discuss gender-related topics (Rosales and Rímaro, 2009). Later, they resorted to blogs for criticising the patriarchal system, weaving thematic campaigns, and enhancing offline actions until they appropriated social media to organise and network mobilisations and to testify and denounce gender-based violence (Laudano, 2018). Recently, activists in Argentina have even re-signified the datafication proper to the neoliberal model in a political vein (i.e. data activism), by collecting data on gender-based violence from the ground up and creating a national index of sexist violence (Chenou and Cepeda-Másmela, 2019). Research on social media activism has looked at several platforms, including Facebook and, more recently, Instagram, but it has devoted major attention to Twitter, where the concept of hashtag activism gained its popularity. Hashtag activism has been defined as “fighting for or supporting a cause with the use of hashtags . . . to raise awareness of an issue and encourage debate via social media” (Tombleson and Wolf, 2017: 15). More specifically, hashtag feminism refers to “the use of online platforms and their hashtag feature to counter or condemn discrimination, violence and sexual assault against women” (Myles, 2019: 509). The hashtag might be an empowering tool for voiceless women (Loza, 2016) when it is used to draw women together online, who feel politically united as they rally around it (Chen et al., 2018). Hashtags function both as a way to elaborate and express collective identities for movement participants and as a “public protest or agenda-building

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event with impact on public discourse beyond Twitter” (Barker-Plummer and Barker-Plummer, 2017: 3). Hashtag feminism refers to the media and political practice of both shedding light on specific issues related to violence against women (Clark-Parsons, 2021) and promoting new discourses and interpretative frameworks on this phenomenon (Barker-Plummer and Barker-Plummer, 2017) by thematising women’s concerns and experiences through effective hashtags (Myles, 2019). Similar to the dynamics that characterise other recent hashtag-driven movements, such as #YesAllWomen or #MeToo (Barker-Plummer and Barker-Plummer, 2017; Boyle, 2019), the #NiUnaMenos hashtag has enabled a growing and diverse set of women to discursively interconnect personal experiences of violence and amplify the problem’s resonance as a broader societal issue, which acquired collective value and visibility, well beyond social media environments (Belotti et al., 2021). Our study reconstructs this process by following the hashtag and investigating how much and how femicide was discussed on Twitter during the mobilisations of the movement’s first three years.

Methods In the context of a quali-quantitative research design, we collected a total of 292,700 tweets. We chose Twitter firstly because it is the platform that launched the hashtag (mainly used as a Twitter feature in 2015). In those years, it was the second most used social media platform in the country after Facebook, with an impressive increase in penetration (from 15% in 2015 to 47% in 2017: see We Are Social, 2015, 2016, 2017). At the time, violence against women and gender equity were the most important gender issues discussed on this platform in Argentina, mainly by government officials, representatives from civil society, news media outlets, and international organisations which pointed to gender-related public policies and/or disseminated relevant information (Batista et al., 2017). Moreover, Twitter is widely recognised by media and internet scholars as a privileged arena for research on large-scale conversations about political issues because it can capture how ideas spread on and beyond social media, broadening mainstream media’s public opinion (Bruns, 2019). We selected all tweets with the hashtag #NiUnaMenos produced in Spanish within the Buenos Aires time zone. The presence of the hashtag #NiUnaMenos helped to narrow down the dataset according to our research objectives. The Buenos Aires time zone allowed us to limit the conversations to Argentina (after removing the small minority of tweets produced in bordering Spanishspeaking countries whenever geographic information was available). We also selected the tweets based on a specific time frame: the day of the march and the two preceding days for the first three years of the movement (2015, 2016, and 2017). This was the moment of greatest intensity of social media activity that would allow us to capture the organisation and construction of the offline event, as well as the increasing adhesion to the cause across the three years (instead of mapping the instantaneous effects of the post-mobilisation for every single year). For each year, we performed an automated analysis of activity metrics (Weller et al., 2014): tweet flow variation over time, user activity and influence, and hashtag dissemination via retweet and URL. The @users were also analysed to identify the most retweeted and mentioned ones as a proxy of their influence. Then, we selected and coded the most popular tweets (including 0.01% of the most retweeted or well-liked – using the little heart icon – in each year) to cluster them into descriptive themes (Braun and Clarke, 2006). The thematic analysis allowed us to characterise the conversations and identify patterns and prevailing topics of discussion, as well as the communicative goals and style of the most popular tweets. This analysis was also informed by our involvement in these events. One of us was physically present in all three marches. In 2017, another also followed the live conversations. As we were immersed in the effervescent milieu on the topic, we were able to capture the emotional tone of the Twitter conversations beyond literal references.

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Analysis of Twitter Conversations Over Time In this section, we illustrate to what extent and in what terms conversations driven by #NiUnaMenos refer to gender-based violence and femicide, and how they evolve in the first three years of the movement. Consistent with widely accepted practice among researchers (Bruns, 2019), users’ @names are not anonymised in the tweets we report, and their profile and post data were gathered from Twitter without expressing personal consent since users are aware that their tweets and accounts are publicly visible.

Activity Metrics: Tweet Flow Over Time, User Activity, and Tweet Popularity Consistent with social media scholarship (Weller et al., 2014) and to highlight how the Twitter conversations driven by the #NiUnaMenos hashtag evolved during the three years, we discuss some Twitter basic activity metrics: tweet distribution over time, user activity and influence, tweet popularity. First, tweet distribution over time contributes to an understanding of the relation between Twitter conversations and the moment of the marches. Second, the focus on users might be considered as a “proxy” for user engagement with hashtag conversations. Third, tweet popularity contributed to selecting the tweets for qualitative analysis. As synthesised in Table 45.1, the hashtag #NiUnaMenos reached its highest popularity in 2015, when the number of both tweets and accounts using the hashtag at least once almost doubled in comparison to that recorded in the two following years. A similar pattern can be found in the number of users. This further mirrors participation in the mobilisations: according to major national newspapers, in 2015, there were between 250,000 and 300,000 people in Buenos Aires alone (and another 400,000 or so gathered in 120 other cities across the country), while in 2016 there were about 200,000 and in 2017 about 150,000. Research on the role of Twitter in protest events has shown that the platform is often used as a real-time communication tool, for organisational purposes, for eye-witness communication, and for gaining public visibility (Bruns, 2019). Consistently, in the three years, most tweets were produced on 3 June (the day of the march), allowing people to enact their engagement online while they were also engaged in the physical realm. However, in 2015, a significant amount of Twitter activity took place during the entire day, with a relevant peak in the evening preceding the march and very low activity during the other days. In 2017, Twitter activity is confined to the hours of the march (about 39,000 tweets – i.e. more than half of the whole yearly set of tweets is produced between 4:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m.), while no significant peak is registered in the evening before. Twitter activity in 2016 is halfway between the two years (it is high on 3 June, with a slight peak the night before). Therefore, the “live-tweeting” activities prevailed in the three years, but in 2015 (which is the “launch” year of #Niunamenos) users were far more involved in promoting the hashtag and the movement, in broader terms, also tweeting in preparation for the march. While the total number of users producing at least one tweet in the dataset is much higher in 2015 than in the following years, user metrics follow similar patterns during the covered period. In 2015, Table 45.1  Number of Tweets and Unique Users over the Years 2015

2016

2017

Tweets

158.625

Unique users

67.342

69.241 (43,65% of the amount in 2015) 31.560 (46,86% of the users in 2015)

64.834 (40,87% of the amount in 2015) 29.437 (43,71% of the users in 2015)

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on average, each user-contributed 2.36 tweets, the most active contributed almost 1% of the entire database, while the most active 1% of users (n = 672) account for about 15.25% of all tweets. Those we defined as “occasional” contributors to the conversation (producing 1 or 2 tweets) account for 79.13% of total users. In 2016 and 2017, the overall trends are similar: we just recorded a slight increase in “occasional” users and a limited decrease in the share of tweets produced by the most active 1% of users. These data only show a slight prevalence of the most active users, who generally “dominate” Twitter conversations related to socio-politically sensitive topics, by producing an overarching share of the tweets (Bruns and Stieglitz, 2014). It is a pattern of distributed communication, not concentrated around a few users (as is generally the case in datasets related to popular culture). It shows both that the movement is “leaderless” and that most users experienced moderate levels of engagement with the hashtag (with no or very few users showing extremely high levels of engagement). Even the presence of an official account of the movement (@NiUnaMenos_) does not significantly modify such a pattern. We also highlighted the most mentioned and retweeted accounts in the three years. The most mentioned accounts in 2015 were @NiUnaMenos_, @CFKArgentina (Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, by that time the president of Argentina), @elcosodelapizza (a satirical account), and @todonoticias (a press agency). For 2016 these were @C5N (an Argentinian mainstream TV channel), @natijota (a journalist with many followers), and @NiUnaMenos_. The user @fenomenoide (a feminist illustrator) was the most mentioned in 2017, followed by @MalenaMassa (a party councilwoman), and @CFKArgentina (who, by 2017, had left her presidential role). The accounts @ NiUnaMenos_ and @CFKArgentina appear among the three most mentioned accounts for two years, while other top influential accounts include journalists, media outlets or public figures, all having a large follower base. Overall, celebrities (public figures, accounts related to people that are well-known even outside Twitter), Twitter celebrities (accounts with a very high number of followers, belonging to people that are not well-known outside Twitter), and media outlets were the most mentioned and retweeted among the users actively contributing to the hashtag, which is consistent with the higher number of followers they usually have. Nevertheless, also “common users” with no large follower base appear in the broader list of the 100 most mentioned users. This is consistent with overall patterns of influence on Twitter (which include writing effective and timely tweets, and relying on the platform’s structural features), as well as with the leaderless nature of the movement. “Common users” can become highly influential, depending on the kind of contribution they provide to the conversation. Finally, we observed that the share of retweets in the dataset (58% in 2015 and 66% in 2016, for instance) is consistent with previous research (Bruns and Stieglitz, 2014), which shows a higher rate of retweets (ranging from 40% to 60%) in datasets related to political mobilisations than in those related to simple political discussion. Such a high share of retweets is usually rooted in a “process of collaborative curation of information on the hashtag topic through gate watching” (Bruns and Stieglitz, 2014: 80), aimed at spreading the word. This interpretation applies to users contributing to the #NiUnaMenos conversations, who built a shared understanding of the movement’s goals and the related issues (i.e. content curation) while expanding the movement’s boundaries and raising awareness about gender-based violence (i.e. spreading the word).

From Femicide to Gender-Based Violence, and Vice Versa The qualitative analysis of the most popular tweets allowed us to characterise and compare the #NiUnaMenos-driven conversations year after year. In 2015, when the #NiUnaMenos was launched, violence against women gained unprecedented visibility in that it was discussed at the same time as a private, “proximity” issue and a public matter of democracy. Differently from expected, organisational exchanges and informational data about femicides found little space among the most popular tweets. Rather, Twitter conversations shed light on 499

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the capillarity of the problem in everyday life, reminding people that gender-based violence affects the women they care about and manifests itself in various forms (e.g. verbal and physical abuse), including unhealthy love within domestic/intimate relationships. @SentiteTocada: For me, for you, for your mother, your sister, your aunt, your cousin. For being able to go out in the street without worrying. @belisamacedo: Violence disguised as love. It is the disguise they like to use to conquer you and destroy you physically and psychologically. On the other hand, Twitter conversations discussed the cultural roots of gender-based violence and demanded responses from institutions to counter it as a broad civic issue. A tweet by @ReniRossi, for example, denounced the cultural mandate of femininity according to which living with the fear of being raped or killed is due to the mere fact of being a woman. A tweet by @GusSastre, conversely, questioned masculinity and stated that the exercise of violence does not define a man as such, but quite the opposite. Other tweets denounced politicians’ accountability for bad or lacking public policy (although without bringing them into the discussion through direct @mention). @marianoheller: I strongly repudiate all those who had the key to do something these years [and didn’t do it but] get on the march with cynicism and hypocrisy. All of this reveals how femicide triggered a process of raising awareness about the cultural and social implications of gender-based violence that point to the political scope of the problem. This is why the tweets disseminated by @NiUnaMenos_ appealed to broad public accountability, demanding the state’s commitment to eradicate gender-based violence through five concrete actions: (1) the implementation of a national plan of action to counter gender-based violence; (2) a supportive judicial mechanism, free legal defence, and trained personnel to register the victims’ accusations; (3) an official registry of victims, to monitor the problem and design public policies accordingly; (4) the implementation of Comprehensive Sex Education at all educational levels; and (5) electronic monitoring of the perpetrators. These claims were also spread by media outlets’ accounts which, live from the marches on the physical squares, tweeted the public reading of the movement’s official document or some interviews with its main spokespersons. For instance, a tweet from the mainstream TV channel El Tgoarece reported an interview with activists from Buenos Aires, just before the march started, thus catapulting Twitter users into the streets of the city and branching the excitement of the march’s pre-departure in the online realm. Also, the actress @grisici tweeted directly from the square as a practice of situated live reportage, sarcastically denouncing “the violent guys” she knew, who were hypocritically marching “with the #NiUnaMenos sign.” Likewise, @balfederico and @elcosodelapizza commented directly from there, saying that it was “exciting to see a country united for such a noble cause,” that it was “nice” and “admirable” to see so many people united against femicide. This celebratory tone about the massiveness of the mobilisation refers to both online and offline mobilisation. @Despouyl, for instance, commented on the photo of Plaza de Mayo (Buenos Aires’ main square) full of people with a brief “Impressive when society speaks,” referring to the physically massive engagement, whereas @bbcmundo provocatively asked, “Why are half a million people tweeting #NiUnaMenos?” to acknowledge the digital massive engagement. Overall, the first year of #NiUnaMenos was characterised by a strong emotional component framing gender-based violence as a broader social, cultural, and political problem that escalates to its most brutal forms, such as femicide. This characterisation persisted in 2016, when popular tweets continued to emphasise the wider issue of gender-based violence and its different manifestations in women’s daily lives and to question the cultural mandate of femininity and masculinity. 500

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@La12tuittera: Hitting a woman does not make you more manly. Violence leaves marks, not seeing them leaves femicides. [They say] That if you’re wearing tight clothes, if you’re out too late. That if you @natijota: hang out with a boy. That if you were talking to strangers in chat rooms. [Then, you asked for it.] However, 2016 shows some differences in tone and content. While popular tweets encouraging and/or celebrating participation in the march were fewer than in 2015, tweets mentioning data about the number of femicide victims registered in the last year increased. This second year, Twitter conversations leverage the indignation generated by the brutality of femicide instead of celebrating the magnitude of the movement. @AlgunaCornuda: 275 women murdered in one year, today Argentina says #NiUnaMenos 317 children this year were left without a mother. We [men and women] @flor_vigna: are different and complementary. Let’s love each other and not let it happen again. Therefore, in 2016 some of the characteristics of the 2015 conversations settled, but new features appeared that revealed harder-hitting contents and blunt tones. Twitter conversations driven by #NiUnaMenos directly describe the cruelty and severity of known femicide cases without euphemisms. This feature was consolidated in 2017 when online exchanges cut to the chase and seemed to express “This is how things are!” when talking about femicide. The problem no longer needs to be explained or made visible but rather to be measured and recognised in its cruelty. Indeed, many of the most popular tweets of this third year carried the hashtag #VivasNosQueremos (We Want Ourselves Alive) to reinforce users’ positioning against the killing of women. There was less reference to the different forms of violence suffered by women and, when present, their lethal implications were always in evidence. This catapulted femicide to the centre of online discourses, thus ensuring it the same visibility that the broader discussion of gender-based violence had gained in previous years. [So] the length of my skirt does not define the length of my life. @MissInchapable: @UNICEFargentina: We say enough femicides, enough gender-based violence. We shout #NiUnaMenos #VivasNosQueremos The personalisation and proximity of gender-based violence took on the names and faces of femicide victims. The tweets named the women killed, giving them a story, just like the famous Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo (a human rights organisation aimed at finding the children who disappeared during the Argentinian military dictatorship) do in their weekly rounds when naming and remembering the desaparecidos/desaparecidas. @princesaboluda2: Today Micaela, tomorrow you or me. #NiUnaMenos #VivasNosQueremos Jimena Hernandez, 11 years old. Raped and drowned in her school swimming @fenomenoide: pool. A religious school, of course. Therefore, the appeal to emotions that have characterised Twitter conversations since the beginning exceeded the denunciation of gender-based violence in 2017 to make the cruelty of femicides visible by humanising the deaths. @NicoGede_: Aracelli in Olavarria. Man, this lass was full of life. 501

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In this third year, gender-based violence was more clearly anchored to its lethality by the focus on femicide. Moreover, the private dimension of femicide was transcended and intertwined with its public, political implications through strong terms and dry or sarcastic phrases aimed at denouncing the status quo without mincing words. @riojavioleta: They murder us. Then they discover us, they find us, we show up. You know, [we are] capricious!

Conclusions Over the past two decades, the word “femicide” has proven capable of mobilising women against violence. In countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, Italy, Spain, and South Korea, among others, femicide has been the slogan used by movements to make the phenomenon visible, draw public attention, and engage political institutions and governments in combating and preventing violence against women and girls. This chapter has detailed the development of #NiUnaMenos in Argentina, one of the most important cases of such mobilisation, over three years (2015–2017). The rate of femicides in the country was particularly high, but a movement was born to fight the reality of this crime thanks to a fertile, local tradition of women’s grassroots organisations. The latter effectively appropriated femicide as a political keyword: women brutally deprived of their life for being women may elicit strong emotions of dismay, anger, pity, and sorrow and can be received in many cultural contexts, which take up the theme and assign it local traits. At the same time, women’s organisations resorted to social media as additional political environments, leveraging the intense use of these platforms by the population. As with other social movements, social media have certainly given a particular strength to this mobilisation, transforming a small collective in Buenos Aires, which had been active for years on this issue, into a nationally relevant network, which later expanded to Latin America and beyond. Dissemination of the word femicide requires fertile ground, often provided by the existence of a movement of women activists (who may be organised or sometimes even spontaneous) that presses for it to be used, and the sensitivity of the media in collecting and propagating the underlying theme (Bandelli and Corradi, 2021). These two factors are simultaneously present in the Argentinian case, where digital media has worked not only as tools to organise mobilisations and spread ideas but as a place for the elaboration of a collective sense of “we” by women activists participating in the movement, who define who they are and what they stand for (Gerbaudo and Trerè, 2015). Twitter provided a sounding board for femicide cases: the collected tweets present these cases as a threat to the social order, not just to individual victims. It is a qualitative shift, not just concerning the increasing intensity of the message, which happened immediately in 2015, when femicide was presented and perceived as a collective problem. This also affected the “we,” understood as a large and heterogeneous network that no longer accepts the prevailing macho culture. This shift from the individual to the collective – from the threat to individual victims to the threat to the social order – is maintained in the following years, with the tweets’ tone becoming blunter. Once gender-based violence as a social problem that affects everyone is injected into the public debate (in 2015), discussion on Twitter narrowly addresses its most heinous form (especially in 2017), with victims’ humanisation and crimes’ quantification working as counter-narratives that pierce the private dimension of the phenomenon and make it publicly relevant. This chapter has highlighted the interplay between the mobilising and transformative power of femicide, the awareness-raising scope of the #NiUnaMenos movement, and the constitutive nature of online activism against gender-based violence. The movement actors, slogans, and arenas, as well as the political opportunity, combined to start the fire. To better support this entanglement between online and offline activism empirically, future research on digital feminism should accompany the analysis of Twitter conversations with ethnographic activities aimed at investigating what happens in 502

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physical environments, in the encounters between bodies, to map out how and what is discussed to thematise the problem of gender-based violence in the national and international political agenda. In addition, it would be interesting to include an intersectional focus – as we acknowledge that is missing in our analysis – to unveil whether and how other differential factors (e.g. ethnicity, age) influence the awareness of the problem. Finally, a gendered analysis of Twitter users might provide interesting insights about whether and how women, men, gender-nonconforming folks, trans/travesti women differently participate in the conversations.

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46 DISSIDENT MEMORIES Feminicide, Memorialisation, and the Fight Against State Cruelty Elva F. Orozco Mendoza

Introduction In 1999, the landscape of Ciudad Juárez began to change when a group of mothers launched a cross campaign to protest the rise of feminicides in the city. Paula Bonilla Flores, mother of Maria Sagrario González, a maquiladora worker murdered in 2018, spearheaded this initiative by painting a black cross on a lamppost outside the police station where she attempted to file a disappearance report the day her daughter went missing. She painted the cross to shame the local public officials who refused to implement a coordinated search to find her daughter because, according to them, “Sagrario eloped with her boyfriend” (Bonilla and Pedroza, 2009). Police officers did nothing to locate Sagrario. Instead, they told Paula to go home and wait for her daughter. Sadly, the young woman’s corpse turned up days later. Since then, the mothers’ cross campaign has been a reminder of the government’s indifference towards feminicide victims. Feminicide crimes have been a persistent concern for feminist groups in northern Mexico since 1993. That year, human rights activist Esther Chávez-Cano began the task of gathering journalistic records on gender-based violence in Juárez as poor women joined the maquiladora1 labour force in greater numbers. Initiatives like this eventually revealed a series of crimes that activists and scholars today classify as feminicides – “[an] extreme form of violence against women, which results from the violation of their human rights both in public and private spheres” (Lagarde, 2007: 153). Feminicide crimes followed a similar pattern. Women and girls suddenly disappeared and turned up dead weeks or months later. Human rights organisation such as Red Mesa de Mujeres replicated Chávez-Cano’s initiative of documenting feminicide crimes. To date, this organisation reports nearly 1,500 feminicides committed in Juárez between 1993 and 2015 (Ecos del Desierto, n.d.). The victims’ age, class, and race vary, but most were young and poor and bore the mark of racialisation (Segato, 2016). The authorities’ response to feminicide crimes has been consistently neglectful. When the victims’ families asked for their support to locate their missing daughters, local and state officials (1) dismissed their concerns under the assumption that the missing women ran away with their boyfriends, (2) questioned the victims’ moral values, (3) ignored requests for professional investigations, and (4) blamed the victims for their own deaths. Government officials at the three levels of government – local, state, and federal – lied to the families who demanded justice, threatened them, and used government resources to silence them. It did not matter what political party ran the government apparatus. Public officials from the most popular political parties – National Action Party (PAN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) – failed to designate adequate resources to investigate

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-53

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who killed the victims and why. Instead, their main course of action has been to deny that feminicide crimes constitute a significant problem. Public officials have discredited the victims, arguing that their murder resulted from their own actions. By contrast, the victims’ mothers began a life-long fight for justice. These mothers found support from local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (Pérez García, 2005). However, Paula Flores and her daughter Guillermina González formed Voces Sin Eco, the first mothers’ organisation created in 1998. Two other organisations began operating in 2001 and 2002, respectively. These were Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa (NHRC) and Justicia para Nuestras Hijas (JPNH) (Pérez García, 2005). These organisations launched several initiatives to demand truth and justice. One of the most notorious is Voces Sin Eco’s cross campaign. This campaign included painting black crosses on a pink background on the city’s electric poles (Ecos del Desierto, n.d.). Guillermina González came up with this initiative to alert other women of the danger they faced in Juárez and to protest the authorities’ lack of response to feminicides (Ecos del Desierto, n.d.). While Voces disbanded in 2001 due to a lack of resources, the cross campaign outlived the organisation. In fact, over the years, the cross campaign has become the most emblematic symbol of the fight against feminicide and the mothers’ pursuit of justice. In this chapter, I ask the following questions: How does the mothers’ cross campaign preserve the memory of feminicide victims in Ciudad Juárez and beyond? What memory (or memories) does this campaign authorise, and for what purposes and effects? What is the relationship between justice and the mothers’ cross campaign as a memorialising practice? This chapter discusses the mother’s cross campaign in Ciudad Juárez as a dissident memorialising practice that exposes the cruelty of the patriarchal, neoliberal state. This dissident memorialising practice counters ongoing attempts to forcibly disappear feminicide victims and their families from our present and future memory. I illustrate the dissident character of the mothers’ cross campaign by drawing on Rita Segato’s conception of impunity as a “pedagogy of (state) cruelty” – an enunciative act that targets women’s power and agency (Segato, 2018).2 I argue that the mothers’ cross campaign upends neoliberal, patriarchal cruelty by offering an alternative response to feminicide crimes that materialises an ethos of life, care, and responsibility for vulnerable women. Accordingly, this chapter expands existing scholarship on feminicide and memory studies by theorising the mother’s cross campaign as a form of “mnemonic justice:” a modality of justice that preserves the victims’ memory while combatting the negative stereotypes spread by state authorities. I develop this argument in four sections. In section one, I discuss Ciudad Juárez as a geography of violence: an abject locality where poor, racialised women – and men – face violent removal, destruction, erasure, or disappearance. I offer this analysis by drawing on Flores’ claim that the mothers’ cross campaign reminds women of the danger they constantly face in Juárez. Next, I turn to Segato’s discussion of impunity as a pedagogy of cruelty to illustrate the state’s complicity in feminicide crimes. The third section posits the mother’s cross campaign as a dissident memorialising practice that challenges the patriarchal state’s attempt to forcibly disappear present and future memories of feminicide victims. I conclude this chapter by arguing that the spatial memorialisation of feminicide victims in Juárez constitutes mnemonic justice understood as the ability to counter the erasure of feminicide victims from the collective memory resulting from the successful articulation of the mothers’ cross campaign.

Manufacturing Feminicide One of the two central aims of the mothers’ cross campaign is raising awareness about feminicide. As Flores explains, members of her organisation wanted women who saw the crosses to know that feminicides were real and that it could happen to them (Ecos del Desierto, n.d.). What makes Ciudad Juárez such a dangerous place for poor and racialised women? How did a seemingly prosperous 506

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city become the world’s capital of feminicide, as is often depicted in the media? Frantz Fanon (1963) reminds us that colonial oppression has a spatial dimension. The colonial rule operates through compartmentalisation, spatial divisions of labour, and the erasure of native space. Spatial divisions help to separate settlers from colonised peoples, masters from the enslaved, and citizens from subjugated and dehumanised folk. Fanon explains how the colonist sector is built to last, whereas the “ ‘native’ quarters is a disreputable place inhabited by disreputable people. You are born anywhere . . . you die anywhere from anything. It’s a world with no space” (1963, 4). Fanon’s insights regarding the spatial dimension of colonisation help us evaluate Juárez’s disposition to manufacturing feminicidal violence not because Juárez is a colonised city – although one could argue that it is – but because he shows the process through which settlers appropriated land and reconfigured material and social space to subjugate millions of people. Although Fanon’s concern was colonial and capitalist domination, we can extend his analysis to neoliberalism – today’s dominant rationality (Brown, 2015). As I explain here, several factors converge to make Juárez a geography of violence. These include adopting a neoliberal mindset (inside the government, the corporate sector, and some parts of the population), geographical proximity to the United States, booming illicit economies, and a patriarchal (misogynist) government structure. I discuss these factors in the next section and explain why Juárez became a perilous terrain for poor, racialised, and marginalised women.

Neoliberalism and the Profitability of Violence The decisive moment to understand contemporary Ciudad Juárez was 1982, when former president Miguel de la Madrid ended the economic model based on the protection of the domestic industry and adopted an export economy (Meyer Cossio, 2018). Previously, Mexico sought diverse pathways to promote economic growth, including liberalism, import substitution industrialisation (ISI), and neoliberalism (Skidmore et al., 2013). In 1994, neoliberalism gained even more terrain under Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who pushed for the approval and implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The shift from a model based on protectionism to a market economy required a de-industrialisation process, acquiring foreign debt, eliminating tariffs, and privatising the public sector. However, the disparity between the US and Mexican economies was so vast that entire industries disappeared as foreign capital took over the economy, eliminating traditional occupations and peoples (Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010; Paley 2014). These macroeconomic shifts impacted Juárez’s economy, which was often depicted as an example of “economic modernization and [successful] development” (Berndt, 2018: 342). The city’s incorporation into global markets began in 1965 with the Border Industrialisation Program (BIP) (Berndt, 2018). The maquiladora system became BIP’s most important symbol. Maquiladoras helped depict northern Mexico as a developed region. This image of economic prosperity grew even more with NAFTA. As a result, Juárez looked modern, dynamic, skilled, and affluent compared to southern cities. However, the maquiladora system produced massive inequality and poverty reflected in the shantytowns built on the city’s outskirts. These shantytowns lacked adequate public lights, paved roads, and safe housing. Despite plentiful employment, workers received low wages and no benefits in exchange for jobs that required repetitive manual tasks. Women constituted the main labour force of the maquiladora industry (Chávez-Cano, 2010; Segato, 2018). For Sayak Valencia (2014), NAFTA’s implementation “marked the kick-off toward a vertiginous and uneven trip toward the unknown” (131). Neoliberal economic policy and NAFTA produced what she denominates as “gore capitalism” – a form of capitalism whereby a hyper-consumerist culture transforms violence into a commodity (Valencia and Pluecker, 2018). “Gore” is a term used for films “characterized by extreme, brutal violence” (Valencia and Pluecker, 2018: 19). By adding the 507

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word “gore” to “capitalism,” Valencia draws attention to extreme forms of violence resulting from a desire to consume and participate in the global market. She writes, “[G]ore capitalism” refers to the undisguised and unjustified bloodshed that is the price the Third World pays for adhering to the increasingly demanding logic of capitalism. It also refers to the many instances of dismembering and disembowelment, often tied up with organised crime, gender, and the predatory uses of bodies. (19–20) Under gore capitalism, violence becomes a commodity to be sold and bought like any other commodity. Violence constitutes a catalyst for prestige, wealth, and power. Human beings become surplus-generating bodies through violence. If in classical Marxist frameworks, surplus labour generates value to be appropriated by the capitalist class, under conditions of gore capitalism, violence and terror perform this function. Violence is a currency that pays for goods and a form of empowerment. Thus, a murderous economy rather than long-term prosperity and well-being became the hallmark of NAFTA. This agreement changed the geography of border cities like Tijuana and Juárez by “creating a dystopic landscape where a semiotics of economic, social, symbolic, and existential violence is legible even within architecture” (Valencia, 2014: 131). Juárez’s landscape exhibits a sharp contrast between the modern industrial corridor with high-tech maquiladoras and abandoned/destroyed houses, desolated handicrafts markets, improvised shantytowns, and gated communities. Neoliberalism introduced a new values system whereby the export industry became the primary economic entity to be nurtured, protected, and developed at all costs. Under neoliberal economics, everything is subordinate to the market, including all forms of life, land, natural resources, local and national governments, and organised crime (Brown, 2015). Instead of lifting vulnerable workers out of precarious existence, neoliberalism sank them further into precarity. Poor and racialised women became susceptible targets as violence became the new mechanism of profit accumulation, prestige, and power, which adds substance to Flores’ claim that Juárez is a dangerous place for women.

Violent, Illegal Economies While the aforementioned analysis suggests that the boundaries between licit and illicit economies collapsed under predatory neoliberalism, organised crime also plays a crucial role in creating the topography of violence that vulnerable groups in Juárez experience every day. Mexico’s geographical proximity to the US represents an opportunity for illicit businesses seeking access to the lucrative northern market. In this vein, Molly Molloy (2013) notes how “[p]ower in Mexico works as a system of arrangements between government, business, and narcotrafficking.” Molloy further claims that organised crime generates vast amounts of money that are then “funnel[ed] into government and legitimate businesses” (Molloy, 2013; Valencia and Pluecker, 2018). This arrangement allows the maquiladora industry to coexist harmoniously with organised crime units and the illicit drug economy. In contrast, impoverished and racialised groups fall victim to the violence deployed by the government, businesses, and narcotrafficking (Molloy, 2013). Maquiladora managers have free range to exploit workers, many of whom are women, whereas narcotrafficking groups often recruit these workers as consumers for their substances or as cheap/slave labour. Immigration and the drug trade have also generated a highly lucrative parallel economy. Undocumented migrants from all over the world seeking to enter the US face incredible hardship at the border. Black and Brown migrants are frequently targeted for robbery, blackmail, and even enslavement as they move along the migrant trail (Correa Cabrera, 2017; Gonzales, 2013; Meyer Cossio, 2018). This lucrative economy has turned Mexico into a violent corridor (Molloy, 2013). Similarly, the drug trade increasingly controls entire neighbourhoods and cities such as Tijuana, Guerrero, 508

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or Ciudad Juárez, leaving vast destruction on its path (Aguayo and Dayan, 2018; Molloy, 2013; Thompson, 2017). These phenomena add substance to Flores’ claim that poor women – and other vulnerable groups – find themselves constantly exposed to deadly violence. The collusion between neoliberal violence, narcotrafficking, and the government makes Juárez an abject locality where vulnerable groups face violent removal, erasure, and forced disappearance. The mothers’ cross campaign thus constitutes an attempt to raise awareness about the economy and topography of death installed in Juárez. It is the organisation’s unique and powerful attempt to remind vulnerable women about the daily challenges they confront. However, the mothers’ cross campaign also functions as a permanent protest against local, state, and federal authorities for failing to investigate feminicides crimes and call those responsible for committing them accountable. In a further section, I discuss the mothers’ cross campaign as a dissident memorialising practice. However, before doing so, I turn to Segato’s discussion of impunity as a pedagogy of (state) cruelty to better understand the meaning of this term and the structural indifference towards victims and their families.

Impunity as a Pedagogy of (State) Cruelty The previous section provided historical and geographical context to Flores’ claim that the mothers’ cross campaign raises awareness about Juárez’s feminicides. This section discusses the notion of impunity to give historical and theoretical context to the second aim of the mothers’ cross campaign: to protest state impunity. For scholars and activists alike, impunity from the law and feminicide go hand in hand (Herrera, 2015; McCormick, 2018; Paley, 2014). For sociologist Down Paley (2017), impunity at the highest levels of government is why kidnapping and killing can happen on a massive scale and almost always go unpunished. The widespread interest in this phenomenon raises this question: what is impunity, and how is it connected to feminicides? Common-sense definitions describe impunity as a failure or an omission. Impunity occurs when police authorities, public ministries, judges, majors, and the federal executive branch remain passive or do nothing to investigate, prosecute, and judge feminicides. This common-sense definition resonates with Louis Joinet’s (1997) description, which defines impunity as the impossibility, de jure or de facto, of bringing the perpetrators of human rights violations to account whether in criminal, civil, administrative, or disciplinary proceedings since they are not subject to any inquiry that might lead to them being accused, arrested, tried and, if found guilty, convicted. (17) While Joinet’s definition coincides with common-sense perceptions, it does not capture testimonies offered by the victims’ mothers, who, in addition to denouncing the authorities’ inaction, also report being attacked by them. Political Scientist Yuri Herrera (2015) also describes impunity as an omission. But he adds that the justice system works optimally for some people, whereas it is virtually unattainable for others. In contrast, Paley (2014) argues that impunity entails active protection given to armed groups that deploy violence. The latter definitions of impunity find empirical support in testimonies from the victims’ mothers after many years of fighting for justice. For example, in the digital memorial Ecos del Desierto, Soledad Aguilar Peralta, mother of Cecilia Cobarrubias Aguilar, murdered in 1995, recounts how the local police destroyed critical evidence that could have helped identify her daughter’s aggressor(s). This evidence included skin and hair found underneath Cecilia’s nails after the police recovered her body. Yet the police never investigated this evidence. On the contrary, they manipulated it and eventually lost it. Public officials lied to the family to justify their actions and even threatened them. This 509

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testimony confirms Paley’s claim that state authorities actively protect culprits. Still, Paley’s definition does not fully explain why public officials use their positions to attack the victims’ families. Herrera’s claim that the justice system functions selectively also have support in the mothers’ testimonies. For example, Irma Monreal Jaime, mother of Esmeralda Herrera Monreal, murdered in 2001, states categorically that most feminicide victims are poor women. The rate of impunity in these cases surpasses 98% (Ecos del Desierto, n.d.; Segato, 2018). These figures confirm that poor and racialised women live in complete neglect, whereas a select few enjoy legal protections. The selective nature of justice is even more evident for Indigenous and Black women who experience violence throughout their lives. As Manuela Picq (2018) confirms, “justice systems fail indigenous women [because] they were not designed to protect them in the first place” (62). Picq’s insight echoes Flores’ claim that public officials do not hear, let alone protect, poor women. But the problem is also that the state not only does not protect poor and racialised women but also deploys extreme violence against them. This violence is not just a product of corruption and “bad” governments but occurs by structural design, as I discuss next. Unlike most definitions of impunity, Segato (2018) argues that: gender-based violence does not occur due to impunity. Rather, gender-based violence is the very display of impunity, a public demonstration of masculine untouchability. In Juárez, impunity is a public deposition that the mafias are untouchable and possess jurisdictional sovereignty over this border town. (51) I interpret Segato’s words as saying that impunity constitutes a public admission that extreme-gender violence occurs by (political/institutional) design. Thus, state authorities protect perpetrators not only because of widespread corruption but because extreme gender violence is a state function. Segato’s quote attributes extreme gender violence to the mafias. However, one must not forget that modern republican states operate like and with the mafias (Molloy, 2013; Valencia and Pluecker, 2018). Segato’s discussion of impunity is part of an extended analysis of pedagogies of cruelty – acts and practices that teach, adjust, and program people to transform all forms of life into inanimate things (2018, 13) – and masculinity. Her analysis is indebted to Anibal Quijano’s (2000) notion of the coloniality of power, a term he coined to designate structures of power, domination, and control violently imposed during the colonisation of the Americas, but which outlived the decolonisation wars fought in the 1800s. Segato draws from the framework of intersectionality developed by Black feminist thought and Quijano’s notion of coloniality to explain the rise of extreme gender violence in the Americas. By doing so, she adds to Quijano’s work a sophisticated understanding of modern-colonial gender oppression that supplements forms of domination based on racial and labour classifications. Segato understands patriarchy as a historical formation that takes different forms in different geographies. In the Americas, pre-conquest societies practised low-intensity patriarchy where men enjoyed more prestige and authority. However, women participated in political decision-making and enjoyed autonomy and authority in specific domains. Colonists altered these gender roles by introducing a lethal high-intensity patriarchy. This patriarchy both produces and practises the masculine mandate, a socio-historical configuration that incites men to extract a tribute from women (through violence) in order to prove their manliness to their peers. This masculine mandate has two central axes: i) a vertical relationship between the aggressor and his victim from which he extracts a (masculinity) tribute, and ii) a horizontal relationship between members of the masculine brotherhood. Here, violence functions in an expressive way; namely, it uses women’s bodies as a blank slate to communicate absolute dominion over “the body-territory, that is, of the body as an index of territory” (2018, 51). 510

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The modern republican states that emerged after the decolonisation wars inherited not only an institutional structure built around high-intensity modern-colonial patriarchy but also became its most faithful protectors. As Segato (2018) writes, “the state’s history is the history of patriarchy, and the state’s DNA is patriarchal” (21). Extreme gender violence, of which feminicide is its crudest manifestation, is the outcome of a high-intensity patriarchal structure that is also the structure of modern republican states and the mafia structure. The criollo elites who built modern republican states instituted a sharp division of space that confined women to the private sphere, a space colonised by men under high-intensity patriarchy, and deprived them of their political voice. For this reason, Segato states that femi(ni)cide3 is a crimen de poder (a crime of power) rooted in the masculine mandate. It is a form of expressive violence that displays an extraordinary capacity for cruelty to convey its seemingly supreme and incontestable character while silencing women. Following this discussion, we can conclude that modern republican states not only protect perpetrators of human rights violations (Paley’s claim) via a justice system that operates selectively (Herrera’s claim) but that they also enact extreme gender violence as the masculine mandate is part of their DNA. As Segato states, “understanding the history of patriarchy is to comprehend the history of the state and the public sphere” (2016, 619). It is not a coincidence that public officials (primarily men) fail to consider extreme gender violence as a “real” problem to be addressed but also mobilise state resources to destroy evidence that might contradict this view. This is also why authorities use the state apparatus to attack the families who demand justice for their daughters, as the very notion of gender justice goes against the state’s patriarchal structure. This discussion suggests that state institutions are, by design, violent towards women. How does the cross campaign counter state impunity? The following section addresses this question.

The Spatial Memorialisation of Victims Women’s groups in Juárez have since long fought against impunity (Bejarano, 2002; Fregoso, 2006; Monárrez Fragoso, 2018; Orozco Mendoza, 2019). These groups have organised mass protests, sit-ins, national and international caravans, public demonstrations, art installations, and many more activities to condemn feminicide (Castaneda Salgado, 2016; Fregoso, 2006; Ruiz, 2019). The mothers’ cross campaign is part of these initiatives. In March 1999, members of Voces Sin Eco announced the cross campaign to the general public in a one-page flyer. The flyer asked Juárez’s residents to join the campaign by painting black crosses on pink backgrounds throughout the city (Ecos del Desierto, n.d.). According to the flyer, the pink colour represents womanhood, whereas the black cross represents mourning. Besides alerting women about feminicide and sustaining a permanent protest campaign against impunity, the cross campaign called for the recognition of women’s right to life and justice and respect for their humanity. To this day, the mothers’ cross campaign represents the most potent and enduring symbol of the fight to end state impunity in the borderlands (Fregoso, 2006). This campaign memorialises the victims of feminicide publicly, resisting government officials’ attempts to forcibly disappear them from the collective memory. Rosa Linda Fregoso (2006) explains the cross as a memory marker. She writes, The cross itself is a physical marker of memory – it materializes and personifies the victims of feminicide, giving their deaths a presence. Crosses serve as embodiments of “memory,” and . . . make visible the “process of giving meaning to the past”; they remind viewers, witnesses, interlocutors of the terror and sexual violences inflicted on each of the victims. (123) The mothers’ cross campaign is a dissident memorialising practice because it refuses to let the official “truth” prevail. This official truth negates feminicides by depicting them as crímenes de pasión 511

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(passion crimes) or portraying them as by-products of narco-violence. Another silencing strategy is the elimination of women who fight for justice. This fate happened to Marisela Escobedo, an antifeminicide activist murdered in Juárez in 2010, while staging a permanent vigil in front of the state capitol in Chihuahua City to demand justice for her daughter Rubí Frayre Escobedo, murdered in 2008 (Orozco Mendoza, 2019). The mothers’ cross campaign is a dissident memorialisation practice because of the mothers’ willingness to continue demanding justice despite facing constant threats and violent attacks (Ecos del Desierto, n.d.). Anti-feminicide activists supported the mothers’ cross campaign by making black and pink crosses of different sizes and designs to represent female deaths. These crosses show the victims’ names or the word “justice.” Anti-feminicide activists also amplified the mothers’ cross campaign by commissioning two large cross-monuments in 2001 after Juárez’s authorities found eight corpses in Campo Algodonero. The cross monuments lie one in Ciudad Juárez nearby the Santa Fe International Bridge and the other at the Plaza Hidalgo in front of the state capitol in Chihuahua City. Both monuments display the struggle’s central demand: ¡Ni Una Mas! (Not One More). Both are painted in pink dyes to illustrate the gendered character of the crimes and support the mothers’ demand for justice. These cross monuments preserve the memory of feminicide victims against government officials’ insistence on forgetting. They demand onlookers to join the fight against injustice. For this reason, activist Irma Campos (2002) stated that the monuments will only be removed “the day when every single feminicide case is solved.” Over the years, the victims’ mothers and activists have filled Juárez with black and pink crosses, which onlookers can see displayed on electric poles, business facades, street walls, and many other public places. This ongoing display of crosses mirrors the massive and systematic character of extreme gender violence in the city, making it difficult to ignore. Against the government’s attempt to erase extreme gender violence from public discourses (Fregoso, 2006), the mothers respond by filling the city with black and pink crosses that give the victims’ deaths a presence and inscribe them in the city’s landscape. The mothers’ cross campaign invites onlookers to reflect on the broader effects of gender-based violence and the magnitude of their loss. Therefore, the mothers’ cross campaign is a permanent indictment of the political, economic, and illicit powers that reproduce feminicides. Since 1999, the city’s inhabitants began to witness a memorialisation process created from the ground up. As a dissident form of memorialisation, the mothers’ cross campaign authorises the voices and stories of marginalised, silenced, and suppressed women. Fregoso has drawn attention to the role of “religious-based morality evident in political protest on the U.S./Mexico border” (2006, 123). In her view, while these religious-inspired politics mobilises symbols and rituals from Mexican Catholic traditions to challenge institutional oppression, she also claims that the cross bears multiple and often contradictory meanings (2006, 125). In my view, however, the primary role of the cross is to denounce state impunity. This campaign stresses how the state’s refusal to recognise women’s right to life and justice leaves them with the only recourse to divine justice. In other words, the black cross suggests that for gender justice to exist, contemporary socio-political structures (the state and society’s commitment to high-intensity modern patriarchy) must end. The mother’s cross campaign also raises awareness about women’s humanity and their right to live without violence (Ecos del Desierto, n.d.). This aim denaturalises extreme gender violence and refuses the instrumentalisation of their bodies. Much has been made about how the mothers’ idealised depiction of their daughters as innocent victims aims to challenge the state’s attempt to stigmatise and criminalise them (Fregoso, 2006). Another possible interpretation is that the victims’ mothers memorialised their daughters’ lives to show that these women were loved, admired, and valued. The mothers drew attention to their daughters’ personalities, hobbies, and aspirations to highlight their humanity and worth. By so doing, the mothers’ cross campaign functions as a counter-pedagogy

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of (state) cruelty that calls for solidarity, identification, and care. This counter-pedagogy of (state) cruelty assumes responsibility for vulnerable women and personalises their suffering – seeing it as our own – so we can add our voices to the families’ exigency for justice. The mothers’ cross campaign invites onlookers to imagine a different future where social, economic, political, romantic, and human relations are defined by care and reciprocity.

Conclusion This chapter discussed the mothers’ cross campaign in Juárez as a dissident memorialising practice. This campaign counters government officials’ attempts to forcibly disappear the present and future memory of feminicide victims while insisting that we recognise the reality of feminicide and its larger impact. To date, the mothers’ cross campaign remains the most potent symbol of the ongoing fight against feminicide and the quest for justice. At the time of this writing, feminist struggles against feminicide in Juárez continue. Women’s groups have spent decades fighting for justice. Yet for most victims’ families, justice has not been achieved. Does this mean that the mothers’ cross campaign failed? The structural character of feminicide – that is, the high-intensity, modern-colonial patriarchy and the masculine mandate that constitute the essence of modern states in the Americas – suggests that justice is not on the immediate horizon. Even if it were, it is hard to believe that the families would accept the state’s top-down approach as justice. As Lewis Gordon (2020) explains, when conceived under the framework of the modern Eurocentric state, justice might not be enough (34). He states, it could very well be that the only justice that could be offered by any legal system will be in terms of its models of authority. The achievement of justice could, in other words, be an unjust situation for many people. (38) While the victims’ families have yet to see justice in their daughter’s cases, mnemonic justice is a form of justice they have achieved. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (MWD) (n.d.), the word “mnemonic” means “assisting or intended to assist memory.” The MWD further explains that “the word mnemonic derives from the Greek mnēmōn (“mindful”), which itself comes from the verb mimnēskesthai, meaning “to remember.” (In classical mythology, Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses, is the goddess of memory).” I understand mnemonic justice as the successful articulation of a mothers’ cross campaign that effectively blocks the power of state agents “in producing truth through denials, silences and erasures” about feminicidal violence (Fregoso, 2006: 123). Mnemonic justice in Juárez helps cement a memory of the present where we understand feminicidal violence primarily as state made. This mnemonic justice produced from the ground up tells us that juridico-political justice does not exhaust the meaning of justice, which remains a debt that both state and society owe to the victims. Exposing institutional violence and redressing it belongs to the mothers’ bottom up version of justice and is also a collective responsibility.

Notes 1 Maquiladoras are foreign-owned assembly plants where low-paid workers assemble imported supplies into export products. 2 All references to this text are the author’s translation. 3 I use the term “feminicide” rather than “femicide,” following Mexican feminists who have reworked Diana Russell and Gil Radford’s concept of femicide. Since Segato uses “femicide,” I use “femi(ni)cide” when discussing her work.

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References Aguayo, S., & Dayán, J. (2018). El yugo zeta. Norte de Coahuila, 2010–2011. El Colegio de México. Bejarano, C. L. (2002). Las super madres de Latino America: Transforming motherhood by challenging violence in Mexico, Argentina, and El Salvador. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 23(1), 126–150. https:// doi.org/10.1353/fro.2002.0002 Berndt, C. (2018). Global factory, supply chains and spatial divisions of labor at the Mexico-US Border. In Werner, M., Peck, J., Lave, R., & Christophers, B. (Eds.) Doreen Massey: Critical dialogues (pp. 341–354). Agenda Publishing. Bonilla, R., & Pedroza, J. R. (2009). La Carta. IMCINE- Huapanguero Volador Films. www.cultureunplugged. com/play/2859/La-Carta Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (1st ed.). Zone Books. Campos, I. (2002). Comunicado Éxodo por La Vida: ¡Ni Una Mas! Chihuahua City. Castañeda Salgado, M. P. (2016). Feminicide in Mexico: An approach through academic, activist and artistic work. Current Sociology, 64(7), 1054–1070. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392116637894 Chávez-Cano, E. (2010). Construyendo Caminos y Esperanzas. Casa Amiga. Correa Cabrera, G. (2017). Los Zetas Inc: Criminal corporations, Energy and Civil War in Mexico. Ecos del Desierto (n.d.). Ecos del desierto. Centro para el desarrollo integral de la mujer, A.C. http://ecosdeldesierto.org Fanon, F. (1963). The Wretched of the Earth. Groove Press. Fregoso, R. L. (2006). We want them alive!: The politics and culture of human rights. Social Identities, 12(2), 109–138. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630600583296 Fregoso, R. L., & Bejarano, C. (2010). Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas. Duke. Gonzales, A. (2013). Reform Without Justice: Latino Migrant Politics and the Homeland Security State (1st ed.). Oxford. Gordon, L. R. (2020). Freedom, justice, and Decolonization (1st ed.). Routledge. Herrera, Y. (2015). El Sentido de la Omisión. Sobre la impunidad en el México Contemporáneo. Política Común, 7. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/pc/12322227.0007.005?view=text;rgn=main Joinet, L. (1997). Question of the Impunity of Perpetrators of Human Rights Violations (Civil and Political): Revised Final Report. Sub-Commission Decision 1996/119. Geneva. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/245520?ln=en Lagarde, M. (2013). Por los derechos humanos de las mujeres: la ley general de acceso de las mujeres a una vida libre de violencia. Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, 49(200). https://doi.org/10.22201/fcpys. 2448492xe.2007.200.42568 McCormick, G. (2018). The act of disappearing in Mexico. The Mexico Institute. Wilson Centre. www.wilsoncenter.org/article/the-act-disappearing-mexico Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Mnemonic. Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mnemonic. Accessed July 2022. Meyer Cossio, L. (2018). ¿Cómo llegamos aquí? Una historia del poder en México. Cursera. www.coursera.org/ learn/historia-de-mexico Molloy, M. (2013). The Mexican undead: Toward a new history of the “drug war” killing fields. Small Wars Journal. https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-mexican-undead-toward-a-new-history-of-the-“drugwar”-killing-fields Monárrez Fragoso, Julia. (2018). Feminicide: Impunity for the perpetrators and injustice for the victims. In Carrington, K., Hogg R., Scott, J., & Sozzo, M. (Eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South (pp. 913–929). Palgrave Macmillan. Orozco Mendoza, E. F. (2019). Las madres de chihuahua: Maternal activism, public disclosure, and the politics of visibility. New Political Science, 41(2), 211–233. https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2019.1595290 Paley, D. (2014). Drug War Capitalism. AK Press. Pérez García, M. E. (2005). Las organizaciones no gubernamentales en Ciudad Juárez y su lucha contra la violencia de Género. Noesis Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades 15(28), 147–167. Picq, M. L. (2018). Vernacular Sovereignties: Indigenous Women Challenging World Politics. Arizona. Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power and eurocentrism in Latin America. International Sociology, 15(2), 215–232. https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580900015002005 Ruiz, S. (2019). Redressing injustice: Las madres de las desaparecidas’ fight against feminicide in ciudad juárez. Epistemological others, Languages, Literatures, Exchanges and Societies (EOLLES) in Groupe De Recherche Identités et Cultures (GRIC), 1–18. Segato, R. L. (2016). Patriarchy from margin to center: Discipline, territoriality, and cruelty in the apocalyptic phase of capital. South Atlantic Quarterly, 115(3), 615–624. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-3608675

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Dissident Memories Segato, R. L. (2018). Contra-pedagogias de la crueldad. Prometeo Libros. Skidmore, T. E., Smith, P. H., & Green, J. N. (2013). Modern Latin America (8th ed.). Oxford. Thompson G. (2017). How the U.S. triggered a massacre in Mexico. Propublica. www.propublica.org/article/ allende-zetas-cartel-massacre-and-the-us-dea Valencia S. (2014). NAFTA: Capitalismo gore and the femicide machine. www.scapegoatjournal.org/docs/06/ Scapegoat_06_Valencia_NAFTA%20Capitalismo%20Gore.pdf Valencia, S., & Pluecker, J. (2018). Gore Capitalism (Semiotext(e)/Intervention Series). Cambridge.

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PART 8

Where to Go from Here in Research, Policy, and Practice

47 LATIN AMERICAN STANDARDISATION OF DATA ON FEMINICIDE Silvana Fumega and María Esther Cervantes

Introduction In this chapter, we introduce the challenges of identifying, collecting, registering, and comparing feminicide data in Latin America, to explore how the Latin American Open Data Initiative (ILDA) created a participatory action-research methodology for the creation of a feminicide data standard. We do this by thinking through its evolution using concepts from the participatory policy-making and capacity-building literature. This literature allows us to recognise the valuable ways in which ILDA, civil society and government partners have contributed to the different versions of the standard. To conclude, we examine some of the best practices identified in several of the countries that are involved in this project. Amid increased awareness of the effects of violence against women, which resulted in some social and political changes in Latin America, ILDA created a participatory action-research strategy to contribute to the standardisation of feminicide data. Since 2018, ILDA works as an organisation committed to research to understand how data will serve the inclusive development1 of our societies. In this chapter, we will explore the context in which ILDA identified the need for the standardisation of feminicide data, which is a core project in the gender and inclusion strategic line of work. In this chapter, we demonstrate how think tanks and/or civil society organisations, such as ILDA, can contribute to participatory policy-making. In Latin America, two terms are used to define the violent death of women due to their gender: femicide and feminicide. The term femicide, coined by feminist Diane Russell (Radford and Russell, 1992) in the 1970s, is used to emphasise how the causes of homicides of women are often different from those of men, as, in some cases, women are killed because of their gender. To further apply the term femicide to a Latin American context, Mexican anthropologist Marcela Lagarde (2006) coined the term feminicide to convey the role of the state in the murders of women due to their gender, centring particularly on the role of state impunity. For this chapter, we use the term feminicide to convey both terms. We follow the definition proposed in Article 2 of the Mechanism of the Convention of Belém do Pará (MESECVI). This definition allows the consideration of several forms of violence that can ultimately lead to the violent death of women for gender reasons. In recent years, the proliferation of women’s movements has successfully centred feminicide in the global and national arenas. For Latin America, Szczepańska (2020) finds that the rise of the #NiUnaMenos movement, which originated in Argentina, has managed to unite various heterogeneous

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-55

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organisations under one umbrella and has created space, both physical and virtual, for discussion about different aspects related to gender and sexuality. To fully understand the context in which a feminicide occurs, it is necessary to consider genderrelated violence as a whole. Walsh and Menjívar (2016) identify several factors by which structural inequality translates into unequal access to safety and justice, these factors can arise from political violence and state terror, symbolic violence, and gender-based violence. Macaulay (2006) argues that since the 2000s, Latin American states’ responses to domestic violence have undergone a significant shift, specifically by increasing their judicialisation and criminalisation. The criminalisation of domestic violence identified by Macaulay (2006) has ultimately led to the criminalisation of feminicide. Smutt (2019) found that to date, 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries have passed laws or amended their penal codes to include the criminalisation of feminicide, a progress that has been gradual since 2007. However, despite these advances, there is not a homogenous classification of feminicide across the region. In each of the countries’ legislation, the term is defined slightly differently, which also results in a wide diversity2 of the modes of crime contemplated by each country. This lack of a common definition throughout the region complicates the accurate measuring and comparison of feminicide data. Most legal definitions consider the context of intimate violence as the main typification of feminicide, and many of the discrepancies in definitions are context-based. For example, some countries in the region – particularly Mexico and countries in Central America – are deeply embedded in the context of organised crime, and legislations are trying to consider this context when identifying the violent murder of women as feminicide. Incháustegui Romero et al.’s (2012) research on feminicide cases in Mexico, found that the murders of women are less likely to vary than those of men. However, this has changed over time as a result of the war on drugs, which has resulted in the militarisation of public security and a widespread presence of violence, while domestic violence has remained consistent and rising. A report from Data Cívica (2019) finds that these two factors in combination result in increased numbers of murders of women in Mexico. These discrepancies in how feminicide is defined in the region create challenges for counting, registering, identifying, and creating public policies around the prevention of feminicide.

The Challenge of Making Feminicide Visible After identifying the context in which feminicide data is being identified, collected, and registered by states in Latin America and the Caribbean, ILDA decided to undertake a research project to standardise official feminicide data in the region. Despite the increased public awareness of feminicide in the region, as well as the increased number of laws to criminalise it, ILDA identified that little progress has been made in terms of homogenising data collection processes across the region. That resulted in the launch of the Regional Standardisation of Feminicide Data project in 2017, with the support of the International Development Research Center (IDRC) and the Avina Foundation. In the second iteration, the project also received support from the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). This project aims to better understand feminicide data in Latin America and the Caribbean by analysing how the data is constructed, the variables considered, the methodology used and, finally, the level of access that each government provides to the data. ILDA designed an action-research methodology to assess the problem, understand how working with data could contribute to creating innovative solutions, and offer recommendations to governments in the region. The project built on the efforts of organisations such as the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Gender Equality Observatory, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who had already made progress towards standardisation by creating the “Latin American Model Protocol for the

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Investigation of Homicides of Women by Gender” (Bogotá Protocol).3 The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has also identified the challenges that a lack of standardisation of methodologies to count feminicide in Latin America bring to joint regional efforts. Smutt (2019) identified some complications, such as the lack of harmonisation in the typification of circumstances that characterise the crime as feminicide, scattered information across institutions, lack of comparable data, under registration of cases, and a lack of data quality. In addition to the concerns identified by Smutt (2019) for the UNDP, ILDA (Fumega et al., 2018) identified other weaknesses in the region, such as misuse of the term and lack of accurate media coverage. As well as the need to understand data standardisation processes as iterative and requiring constant review, while mindful of the ethics of data management to avoid re-victimising victims and their families. To address these challenges, ILDA launched the feminicide data standardisation project. Fumega et al. (2018) describe a data standard as a guiding methodological document that is used to identify, record, and update the information of interest to be included in a database. Data standards require technical criteria, as well as the specification of variables and codes for all observations. Fumega et al. (2018) argue that a data standard enables civil society, policy-makers, and activists to understand and speak the same language while collecting and analysing data and to disseminate conclusions that are comparable and accurate.

Participatory Standardisation Processes: Beyond a Single Worldview ILDA set out to create a participatory action-research strategy based on the creation of a feminicide data standard. The first participatory activity was a workshop in Abrelatam 2017 in Costa Rica. Abrelatam is an “unconference” co-organised by ILDA and multiple partners in which people from diverse sectors, such as civil society, academia, private enterprises, government, and citizens participate in discussions on issues related to open data4 in the Latin American context. ILDA’s work co-organising Abrelatam and using it as a platform to workshop ideas follows what Hurlbert and Gupta (2015) call the “nature of learning” by providing spaces for social engagement, which facilitates interaction, collaboration, and organisation in networks of interdependent stakeholders (Hurlbert and Gupta, 2015: 102). Abrelatam Costa Rica provided an opportunity for stakeholders to share experiences, ideas, and ways of knowing that led to innovations that were the base for the first iteration of the feminicide data standard. Many of the workshop participants were gender equality activists, public servants working in justice and security, and academics and technology experts from several Latin American countries. In this workshop, participants discussed that the lack of access to all the data necessary for accurately assessing the situation was one of the biggest challenges in the understanding of feminicide. Participants discussed that to have better quality data for feminicide, strong data production tools were needed. However, tools were not enough, participants also identified a need for data collection protocols, as well as for publication and use. Besides creating these protocols, participants argued that the protocols had to be updated constantly and agreed that it was vital to standardise a series of common variables (minimum dataset) that would enable interoperability, cooperation, and/or comparison between different jurisdictions. The discussions around the importance of standardised data collection are particularly relevant when social problems are considered unstructured. Hurlbert and Gupta (2015) describe structured problems as those “where there is substantive agreement on norms, principles, ends and goals surrounding a policy problem and agreement on the knowledge inherent in solving the problem” (p. 101). In the case of feminicide, there is not a complete agreement on the norms and principles that make the murder of a woman a feminicide, although there have been advances in the region because

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of changes in public perception of feminicide as explored in the introduction. Given the perception of feminicide as an unstructured problem and a lack of agreement on norms and principles, one of the first tasks in the creation of ILDA’s feminicide data standard was mapping the definitions and legal typologies of feminicide in Latin America and the Caribbean. The advances in the legal definition of feminicide across the region demonstrate a public awareness of the problem, which is the first step in starting participatory public policy-making. According to Michels and De Graaf (2010), participation has several functions in democracy, starting with the educative function, in which civic skills are increased by participating in public decision-making. Secondly, the integrative function contributes to citizens feeling they are being part of a community. When a feminicide happens in the domestic sphere, as most do, it can become a matter of public interest when brought out into the public sphere through events such as the #NiUnaMenos movement. Despite an increase in public interest in feminicide as a public problem, civil society or research organisations such as ILDA can play a central role in participatory public policy-making processes. One of the roles of civil society organisations in participatory public policy-making is concerned with raising awareness about the issues at stake, helping citizens and communities to organise themselves, and advocating for more participatory policy-making (Rietbergen-McCracken, 2017: 2). ILDA’s work on the standardisation of feminicide data can be understood from the lens of several key concepts in the participatory policy-making literature.

Implementing Participatory Action-Research for Feminicide Data Standardisation In the process through which the data standard was created, we identify that the standard went through several stages of what is known as the ladder of participation, based on Arnstein’s (2019) model. There are three main stages identified, with several steps in between each stage: nonparticipation, degrees of tokenism, and degrees of citizen power. We identify that ILDA’s work started at certain degrees of tokenism since the work relied on consultation and information sharing initially but has evolved into the degrees of the citizen power stage by establishing different partnerships, particularly as the project advances. In this section, we will describe the process and its intersection with each stage of participatory public policy-making we identified. Here we build on the work of Minckas et al. (2020), who have reviewed several programs preventing violence against women and girls. They do this by using a matrix that combines Rifkin and Kangere’s (2002) continuum of participation and Freire’s (2021) steps of consciousness, with the aims of illustrating “how increasingly meaningful participation contributes to higher levels of critical thinking and engagement in constructive action, with community mobilization at the furthest end of the two axes” (Minckas et al., 2020: 3). The exercise by Minckas et al. (2020) allows us to position ILDA’s work with similar initiatives and understand how this project also contributes to developing capacities to think critically about the social conditions that contribute to violence and involving individuals in making decisions about policy. Given the technical nature of data standards, it is necessary to keep in mind that communities that know complex social issues such as feminicide cannot be left out of standardisation processes. Reflecting on some challenges of standardisation, Brandusescu et al. (2020) propose three dimensions for inclusive-by-design framework: (1) including multiple perspectives in the design process, (2) considering multiple users, their contexts, and their different needs in standard-setting, and (3) being explicit about roles and relationships during implementation. This brings us back to the continuum of participation, which considers that a participatory tool such as ILDA’s feminicide data standard must go through several stages to become truly participatory. 522

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Information-Sharing and Consultation Stages The information-sharing stage of the continuum of participation (Rifkin and Kangere, 2002) or the informing stage of Arnstein’s (2019) ladder of participation considers the moment in which it becomes important to give the public information about the complex social problems to facilitate their involvement in decision-making processes. The initial version of the standard included feedback from participants at the previously mentioned first workshop in Costa Rica and from an extended network of specialists in different areas that were added to the design of this tool. The next step in the ladder of participation is the consultation stage, which Arnstein (2019) defines as inviting citizens’ opinions through frequently used methods, such as surveys, neighbourhood meetings, and public hearings. Arnstein’s (2019) perspective comes from a traditional understanding of participatory policy-making that considers governments as the central actor in the creation of these participatory programs. In this case, a civil society organisation, ILDA, was the key player allowing a diverse range of stakeholders, including government officials, to come together and participate in the initial design of the standard. ILDA’s objective at this stage was to validate the viability of the use of ILDA’s feminicide data standard with practitioners whose work is to identify and register feminicide, such as people with experience in judicial data and statistics, operators, and analysts of the justice system. In 2018, ILDA organised two workshops, in Uruguay and Argentina. Partners in the organisation of these workshops were the Open Justice Program of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights of the Nation in Argentina and the Technical Subdirectorate for Gender Policies of the Ministry of the Interior in Uruguay. These workshops were essential to identify several priorities for ILDA to consider in the implementation of the standard5: infrastructure, communication, institutional coordination, ethical uses of data, and capacity-building. They were also key to understanding other tools that were necessary for effective implementation of the standard, such as the “Guide to Protocolise Feminicide Identification Processes.”6 The guide was created to support government officials who are tasked with the compilation and identification of feminicide by providing a protocol with a common methodology to reduce the complexity of identifying an event that depends on several legal and empirical variables. ILDA’s research demonstrated that, in many cases, the process of identifying feminicide was done artisanally. This means that government officials or judicial agents tasked with collecting this information were considering personal criteria rather than a unified criterion that would allow for sharing, comparing, and analysing data. Having identified this lack of unified criteria, ILDA also realised, after the two initial workshops in Argentina and Uruguay, that a gender perspective was lacking for the judicial agents who are responsible for identifying and counting instances of feminicide. This resulted in the undercounting of feminicide cases. To avoid this and building on work done by the Prosecutor’s Office of the Province of Buenos Aires, the guide provided four key indicators which allow identifying when the murder of a woman was most likely feminicide. Those indicators are the following: the previous relationship between victim and victimiser, sexual violence, viciousness in violence and the existence of previous complaints. Being able to identify and share these indicators with those in charge of identifying and registering feminicide is essential to the stage of information-sharing and contributes to widening public awareness and understanding of these complex problems.

Iteration Stage The lessons learned in these first stages of the feminicide data standard project resulted in a second iteration, supported by the IADB, aiming to expand the implementation of the standard to more Latin American and Caribbean countries: Honduras, Jamaica, Panamá, Ecuador, and Paraguay. In 523

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Figure 47.1 This flowchart created by Datasketch (2019) condenses the information found on the “Guide to Protocolise Feminicide Identification Processes” for easy reference.

this second iteration, other tools were also created to improve government officials’ workshops and to address some of the key needs to effectively discuss standardisation of data on feminicide. In this sense, activities related to the information-sharing stage were the creation of a flowchart7 (Figure 47.1) and a trivia8 meant for laypeople. This was done in collaboration with the Colombian organisation Datasketch. The flowchart condenses the information found on the “Guide to Protocolise Feminicide Identification Processes,” and it has a similar purpose to it, which is to identify which variables are present in the instance of the murder of a woman, which will indicate if it is a feminicide. The trivia contains several questions about definitions and other data related to feminicide in Latin America and the Caribbean, to contribute to building social awareness about feminicide among the general population. These two elements – trivia and flowchart – allow government officials to better identify their gaps in data production and the lack of a gender approach, particularly in the security forces and judiciary. After all these workshops were carried out in several countries in the region, Fumega and Fallas (in press) identified several key lessons for the potential implementation of the standard in these countries. The first finding highlights the importance of avoiding the creation of standards from a single perspective. This finding has allowed ILDA, during the years 2019 and 2020, to analyse more carefully the discrepancies between the definition of feminicide in each of the participating countries. Fumega and Fallas (in press) found that in Honduras many of the feminicides occur in the context of organised crime. This gives less relative weight to feminicide in the context of intimate violence that ILDA had centred in the first iteration of the standard. Another relevant finding is the importance of differences in judicial traditions in each country. For example, Jamaica does not have a legal definition of feminicide. Their common law tradition has many requirements which prevent the legal definition to be formally added to their regulations. Collaborating with countries in different contexts allows ILDA to broaden the perspectives that are being incorporated into a standardised definition of feminicide. The current version of the standard can be situated in the collaboration or partnership stage of participatory methods. This stage considers the moments in which planning and decision-making responsibilities are shared through joint structures, such as policy boards and planning committees (Arnstein, 2019: 31). Collaborating with several stakeholders in the next steps of the project is important to ILDA because it allows for the work to transform and expand by incorporating the perspectives of other individuals and organisations. The work done in Honduras, Jamaica, Panama, Ecuador, and Paraguay has allowed policy-makers in each country and other stakeholders to review and give feedback to the standard. One of Fumega and Fallas’ (in press) findings indicates that it is important to consider the level of involvement and participation of civil society and human rights organisations in the definition of feminicide in national statistics. Building spaces for these collaborations results in significant betterment to the feminicide statistical data registry systems. Additionally, to make these collaborations work, all partners involved in any part of the process of identifying, registering, and making public policy about feminicide must receive training that 524

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reinforces the importance of maintaining a gender perspective lens across all the data collection processes. While not the focus of this chapter, it is worth noting that the process of identifying, registering, and counting feminicide often depends on rudimentary police reports, which then are turned into police files or judicial cases. Fagerlund (2020) studied the association between gender and police response to domestic violence in Finland. While the context is widely different to that of Latin America and the Caribbean, some of the findings of this study point to the importance of engaging in gender perspective training in every step of identifying, registering, and making public policy. The lack of gender perspective can result in what D’Ignazio and Klein (2020) call missing data, which they define as data that are neglected to be prioritised, collected, and maintained, despite their relevance to the well-being of large groups of people. Missing data results in the undercounting or mislabelling of an event that leads or could lead to feminicide. In Finland, Fagerlund (2020) found instances of missing data in several key variables of official and automatic police records. When police officers fill out questionnaires after domestic violence callouts, they tend to use only dichotomous gender variables (female/male), which exclude transgender, unknown gender, or other genders of the victims or perpetrators. Similarly, the records of the type of violence depend only on the observations and initial questioning of the parties involved at the scene. Fagerlund (2020) explains that some violent acts could not be defined as mild or severe and were recorded as “other physical violence,” which also resulted in exclusions from the analysis. This has an impact on the record of sexual violence or attempted sexual violence, which is not immediately visible to the police responders. Some countries in Latin America, such as Argentina and Brazil, have implemented women’s police stations to facilitate access to justice and prevent gender violence (Carrington et al., 2020). These stations usually differ from traditional police models by incorporating interdisciplinary teams to provide services in policing, legal support, counselling, housing, and financial advice to help address the multidimensional problems that survivors of domestic and sexual violence typically experience. While these efforts do not necessarily equate with gender perspective training for all justice and police operatives, they provide an attempt to better approach the issue of responses to domestic violence. Carrington et al. (2020) found that a limitation with their study of these stations was that they could not access the necessary data – rates of intimate female partner homicide by locality – needed to demonstrate the effectiveness of women’s police stations by comparing locations with women’s police stations to those that had none. Expanding these kinds of missing data is an issue that ILDA hopes the standardisation of feminicide data contributes to. With examples from Finland, Argentina, and Brazil, it is important to remember how evidence-based interventions are translated into cultural contexts (Parker et al., 2020), to identify what measures are acceptable to all partners and how to increase the implementation of promising community-based participatory research (CBPR) practices.

Multi-stakeholder Commitment Stage As explained throughout this chapter, ILDA’s work on the standardisation of feminicide data has been constantly evolving as a response to the amount of information and context-specific findings obtained through advances in the work done in different countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Currently, ILDA is expanding its work on the standardisation of feminicide data in collaboration with the Data + Feminism Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Feminicidio Uruguay. Throughout November 2020, in commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, ILDA, Data + Feminism Lab, and Feminicidio Uruguay hosted a series of talks and workshops titled Data Against Feminicide9 to promote a community of practice 525

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with activists and researchers working on the topic of feminicide. These workshops allowed ILDA to continue its capacity building objectives and publicize the work done on the standardisation of the feminicide data project. Ika and Donnelly (2017) identify several conditions that contribute to the success of capacity building projects which include multi-stakeholder commitment, collaboration, alignment, and adaptation. The multi-stakeholder commitment condition shows the importance of not only one project champion but, instead, multiple project champions, all playing a unique role in the success of the project. This condition supersedes the specificities of ILDA’s data standardisation project, but it reflects the complex contexts in which the identification, registration, and standardisation of feminicide occur. By creating spaces in which activists, researchers, and practitioners come together to present individual projects, identify common interests, and create common future strategies, each project is strengthened by the lessons learned and shared by others who are participants in this emerging community. Despite using two different frameworks to evaluate citizen participation, the collaboration condition identified by Ika and Donnelly (2017), which refers to the coordination, quality, and ability of team members to work together to achieve the project objective, fits the partnership rung of Arnstein’s (2019) ladder of participation. This rung is where we identify that the feminicide data standard enters the degrees of the citizen power stage, bringing together like-minded projects and people to foster partnerships between activists, researchers, government officials and others working on feminicide-related projects in these workshops. To close our analysis of the feminicide data standardisation project through the lens of participatory public policy-making and capacity building literature, we identify that the project is currently in the early stages of Arnstein’s (2019) citizen power stage, and ILDA will continue to work with partners to make projects that result from these successful collaborations in the future. By carving spaces in which partners of the action-research strategy can use the tools developed by ILDA as part of this project, we expect the tools to be constantly changing as ILDA identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the standard and works to incorporate the lessons learned from each collaboration. Using the framework of Minckas et al.’s (2020) evaluation of programs to prevent violence against women and girls, we place ILDA’s current efforts on the standardisation of feminicide data in the critical consciousness–empowerment axis based on Minckas et al.’s (2020) evaluation. In this axis, Minckas et al. (2020) identify that “communities hold the knowledge of their social inequalities to build a collective response to their problems, and they need a space to enable reflection and the technical or financial support to turn it into action” (p. 8).

Lessons Learned in Participating Countries In the time ILDA has spent in the ideation and implementation of the different strands of standardisation of the feminicide data project, several best practices in the countries in which the project has been implemented have been identified. We highlight particularly some of the strategies and programs implemented in Panama and Ecuador, as they are the most advanced in their implementation. In Panama, there has been an inter-institutional effort led by the National Integrated Criminal Statistics System to coordinate the collection and unification of data on feminicides from five different official sources. They have managed to unify an Excel database of up to 44 quantitative and qualitative variables to analyse the phenomenon of feminicide (Fumega and Fallas, in press). These efforts still require significant and constant training, particularly in terms of every entity acting with a gender perspective. However, this example shows the potential feasibility of the standardisation of feminicide data. 526

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In Ecuador, the Statistical Strengthening Group of Security and Justice Indicators has been collecting data related to the violent death of women from all judicial sources. They engage in a process of verification, validation, analysis, and consolidation in the matrix of feminicides that is reviewed and updated weekly. This work shows that the standardisation of feminicide data is feasible, but it requires political will and the involvement of specialised actors, as well as a wider community of organisations working on the prevention of violence against women. The results from the work done in Honduras, Jamaica, Panama, Ecuador, and Paraguay as part of the second iteration of the standard give ILDA more context of the challenges faced by government authorities, policy-makers, researchers, and activists working on feminicide.

Conclusion This chapter has focused on ILDA’s participatory action-research strategy that led to the creation of a feminicide data standard as a response to the lack of homogenisation in data collection across the region. We have analysed the evolution of this project’s two iterations through a participatory policymaking and capacity-building lens and identified some of the best practices in the field. There are many opportunities to improve ILDA’s data standard of feminicide through collaboration with multiple partners across the region. As we have explained across this chapter, ILDA did not build the standard by itself, imposing a dominant view of a complex social problem. Instead, there has been an effort to interact with several stakeholders, mobilising their ways of knowing and providing the support that is necessary to transform ideas into action. In this same line, Data Against Feminicide is another clear example of reaching to actors and organisations to support an incipient community of practice, to keep the connections between the activists, researchers, and other experts working in the field. The experience of standardisation in the case of feminicide data shows that far from being a technical process, it is an exercise that allows us to rethink the production of data and its use, as well as the existing problems with gender biases. ILDA will work on all these aspects as well as it will keep promoting and supporting the emerging community of practice in Latin America and other regions. There is still a long road ahead in terms of the quality of the data, governance arrangements, and in particular, potential uses. However, these basic steps that we have taken so far bring us closer to understanding the current situation and to thinking about evidence-based policies to combat this complex problem.

Notes 1 We follow van Gent’s (2017) definition of inclusive development: the equitable sharing of the benefits of growth and related distribution of well-being in society across divides within societies, across income groups, genders, ethnicities, religions, religious groups, and others. 2 Fumega, S., & Fallas, H. (in press). Feminicidio en América Latina y el Caribe: una ruta hacia la estandarización de los datos. 3 United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Latin American Model Protocol for the Investigation of Homicides of Women by Gender. 4 We follow the Open Data Handbook’s definition of open data: open data is data that can be freely used, reused, and redistributed by anyone – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share alike. 5 For more details, see Fumega, S., Rodriguez, G., & Scrollini, F. (2018). Nuevos Estándares para la Publicación de Datos de Justicia y Violencia de Género. In S. Elena (ed.), Justicia Abierta: aportes para una agenda en construcción (pp. 283–292). Ediciones Saij. 6 Silvana Fumega. (2019). Guía para protocolizar procesos de identificación de femicidios para su posterior registro. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1659629 7 https://datasketch.github.io/ilda-flujograma. 8 https://datasketch.github.io/ilda-trivia. 9 https://datoscontrafeminicidio.net.

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References Arnstein, S. R. (2019). A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Planning Association, 85(1), 24–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2018.1559388 Brandusescu, A., Canares, M., & Fumega, S. (2020, August 21). Open data standards design behind closed doors? Latin American Open Data Initiative. https://idatosabiertos.org/en/diseno-de-estandares-dedatos-abiertos-a-puertas-cerradas/ Carrington, K., Guala, N., Puyol, M. V., & Sozzo, M. (2020). How women’s police stations empower women, widen access to justice and prevent gender violence. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 9(1), 42–67. https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.v9i1.1494 D’Ignazio, C., & Klein, L. F. (2020). Data feminism. MIT Press. Data Cívica (2019). Claves para entender y prevenir los asesinatos de mujeres en México. https://datacivica. org/assets/ pdf/claves-paraentender-y-prevenir-los-asesinatos-de-mujeres-en-mexico. pdf. Datasketch. (2019). ¿Qué sabes del femicidio y por qué debería importarte? [Trivia]. https://datasketch.github.io/ilda-trivia/ Datasketch. (2020). Guía para protocolizar procesos de identificación de femicidios [Flowchart]. https://datasketch. github.io/ilda-flujograma/ Fagerlund, M. (2020). Gender and police response to domestic violence. Police Practice and Research, 22(1), 90–108. https://doi.org/10.1080/15614263.2020.1749622 Freire, P. (2021). Education for critical consciousness. Bloomsbury Academic. Fumega, S. (2019). Guía para protocolizar procesos de identificación de femicidios para su posterior registro. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1659629 Fumega, S., & Fallas, H. (in press). Feminicidio en América Latina y el Caribe: una ruta hacia la estandarización de los datos. Inter-American Development Bank. Fumega, S., Rodriguez, G., & Scrollini, F. (2018). Nuevos estándares para la publicación de datos de justicia y violencia de género. In S. Elena (Ed.), Justicia Abierta: aportes para una agenda en construcción (pp. 283–292). Ediciones Saij. Hurlbert, M., & Gupta, J. (2015). The split ladder of participation: A diagnostic, strategic, and evaluation tool to assess when participation is necessary. Environmental Science & Policy, 50, 100–113. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.envsci.2015.01.011 Ika, L. A., & Donnelly, J. (2017). Success conditions for international development capacity building projects. International Journal of Project Management, 35(1), 44–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2016.10.005 Incháustegui Romero, T., López, M. P., & Echarri, C. (2012). Violencia feminicida en México: Características, tendencias y nuevas expresiones en las entidades federativas, 1985–2010. ONU Mujeres. Lagarde, M. (2006). Del femicidio al feminicidio. Desde el Jardín de Freud, 0(6), 216‑225. Macaulay, F. (2006). Judicialising and (de) criminalising domestic violence in Latin America. 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Parker, M., Wallerstein, N., Duran, B., Magarati, M., Burgess, E., Sanchez-Youngman, S., & Koegel, P. (2020). Engage for equity: Development of community-based participatory research tools. Health Education & Behavior, 47(3), 359–371. https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198120921188 Radford, J., & Russell, D. E. H. (1992). Femicide: The politics of woman killing. Open University Press. Rietbergen-McCracken, J. (2017) Participatory policymaking. World Alliance for Citizen Participation. Rifkin, S. B., & Kangere, M. (2002). What is participation? In S. Hartley (Ed.), Community-based rehabilitation (CBR) as a participatory strategy in Africa (pp. 37–49). Cornell University. Smutt, M. (2019). Uso de la evidencia en las políticas públicas de género y seguridad ciudadana. Reunión de especialistas en la medición de femicidio/feminicidio en América Latina y el caribe. PNUD. Santiago de Chile. Szczepańska, D. (2020). The power of mass mobilisation: Argentina’s struggle for the legalisation of abortion. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 39(5), 567–581. https://doi.org/10.1111/blar.13042 Van Gent, S. (2017) Beyond buzzwords: What is Inclusive Development? ASC, Leiden. Walsh, S. D., & Menjívar, C. (2016). Impunity and multisided violence in the lives of Latin American women: El Salvador in comparative perspective. Current Sociology, 64(4), 586–602. https://doi. org/10.1177/0011392116640474

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48 HUMAN-CENTRED COMPUTING AND FEMINICIDE COUNTERDATA PRODUCTION Catherine D’Ignazio

In 2018, I came across the work of María Salguero. Since 2016, Salguero has spent two to four hours a day scanning news reports in Mexico to log feminicides on her map and in her database. Glowing and well-deserved articles in the popular press recount Salguero’s story as if she were the only person doing this work. However, there are in fact more than 150 groups around the world working to challenge feminicide and gender-based killings by painstakingly scanning news reports and social media feeds, talking with families and friends of loved ones, and logging details of people’s murders into digital maps, spreadsheets, and databases. While many of these groups have been formed in the past five years, they follow in a pre-digital activist tradition started by individuals like Esther Chávez Cano in Ciudad Juárez and groups like Comuna Mujer of Montevideo’s Centro Comunal Zonal 9 in Uruguay. These projects used fax machines, newspaper clippings, and handwritten accounting ledgers about feminicides to build a case for protest, policy change, memorialisation, and justice. In the book Data Feminism, Lauren Klein and I frame data about feminicide as missing data – the state and its institutions systematically ignore the phenomenon, neglect to count and register cases, and often neglect to conceptualise gender-based violence in such a way that it could even be counted precisely (D’Ignazio and Klein, 2020). And thus, it does not count. When the state and its institutions fail to collect important information, other civil society actors are increasingly stepping into those data gaps and collecting their own counterdata. Since 2019, I have been working on a collaborative research and participatory design project called Data Against Feminicide to learn more about activist counterdata practices around feminicide: Why do activists begin their monitoring projects? What sources do they use for information? What software do they use to log feminicide and gender-based killings? What categories do they use to classify cases in their databases and why? What challenges do they face in collecting, analysing, and using the data they produce? The goal of our work is to, first, understand feminicide counterdata collection practices and, second, to design digital tools and data-driven systems to aid feminist groups and movements in their existing work to combat gender-based violence in diverse contexts. At the same time, our team wants to build explicitly feminist technologies that do not replicate the extractive, colonial harms of big tech. To this end, this chapter introduces concepts from data feminism and feminist human-computer interaction (HCI) and outlines what we have learned to date from participatory design sessions and interviews with 21 counterdata activist groups about their information practices, including the challenges they face and their creative ideas for addressing them using digital technologies. Drawing from our findings, the chapter describes the two tools our project has built through a participatory, DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-56

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co-design process. This is a first step towards outlining an agenda for how activists and technologists may work together on designing tools to aid in the prevention and eradication of gender-based killings such as feminicide, MMIWG2S, and LGBTQ+ murders.

Human-Computer Interaction and Gender-Based Violence Human-computer interaction (HCI) is a subfield of computer science in which researchers study how people use digital systems, and they design novel interactive technologies to meet the needs of individuals and groups. It is an academic field that encompasses the study and design of what is typically called user experience design (UX) in industry. In recent years, the term “human-centred computing” (HCC) has been advanced as a more holistic term to encompass not only the study and design of technologies themselves, but a more comprehensive analysis of the people and the environments in which technologies are used. While our research draws from the more expansive and grounded framing of HCC, we build on a great deal of prior work in HCI, specifically in regard to feminist HCI and work on gender-based violence in HCI. Feminist HCI, a framework originally elaborated by Shaowen Bardzell, draws from feminist theory to suggest key qualities that can challenge heteropatriarchal approaches to computing and contribute to more liberatory design practices (Bardzell, 2010). Bardzell’s qualities of feminist HCI include pluralism, participation, advocacy, ecology, embodiment, and self-disclosure, and these directly informed the development of the data feminism principles discussed in the next section. While there is a good amount deal of HCI work about the design of technologies to prevent gender-based violence related to women, sex workers, and/or LGBTQ+ people (Dimond et al., 2013; Scheuerman, Branham and Hamidi, 2018; Starks, Dillahunt and Haimson, 2019), there are few studies in HCI that address the topic of feminicide specifically. Reviewing social media practices of Native American advocates on Twitter, Vigil-Hayes et al. found that #MMIW – the hashtag for “missing and murdered Indigenous women” – was highly circulated in this community (VigilHayes et al., 2017). In response to high rates of feminicide in Brazil, Silveira et al. designed a web application to aid Brazilian women in abusive relationships to seek support (Silveira, dos Santos and da Maia, 2018). Strohmeyer et al. worked with sex workers facing violence and murder around the use of digital technology in memorialisation practices (Strohmayer et al., 2020). Our work extends this prior work and contributes to understanding the computing needs of civil society organisations engaging in counterdata collection about feminicide.

Data Feminism and the Design of Feminicide Counterdata Production Tools In the book Data Feminism, Lauren Klein and I introduce seven principles that describe how to integrate an intersectional feminist lens into data science (D’Ignazio and Klein, 2020). The first two principles of data feminism – examine power and challenge power – are particularly relevant for characterising the current socio-technical context for feminicide data collection. In describing the first, Klein and I articulate the concept of “missing data” – that is, data that are neglected to be prioritised, collected, and maintained, despite their relevance to the well-being of significant groups of people (D’Ignazio and Klein, 2020). As described, feminicide data constitute an important case of missing data. When the state and its institutions fail to collect or make available important information, civil society actors are increasingly stepping into those data gaps and collecting their own data in order to challenge power, the second principle of data feminism. This practice can be characterised as counterdata collection and may be undertaken by journalists, non-profit organisations, librarians, activists, citizens, and other groups (Currie et al., 2016; Gray, Lämmerhirt and Bounegru, 2016; Alvarado García, Young and Dombrowski, 2017; Meng and DiSalvo, 2018). As we describe in this chapter, 530

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activists and civil society groups are increasingly organising counterdata efforts to collect the feminicide data that states and institutions neglect. These counterdata production practices mount an explicit challenge to the data practices (collection, analysis, deployment, visualisation, ethics, values) of mainstream, well-resourced “counting institutions,” such as governments and corporations. This chapter describes one part of the Data Against Feminicide project which relates to designing data collection tools and technologies in collaboration with activists and civil society groups. The principles of data feminism have served as a guide in the following ways to initiate the project, build relationships, and navigate ethical issues related to missing data and counterdata: •

• • •

• •

•

Examine power – Attend to the ways that feminicide data are missing, insufficient, and neglected by authorities. Attend to how the media perpetuate harmful stereotypes and data gaps. Challenge power – Design tools to support counterdata collection so that activists may improve, streamline, and multiply their abilities to use data to challenge powerful institutions. Elevate emotion and embodiment – Attend to ways that interactive technologies may aid storytelling and data visualisation to gather public attention about feminicide. Rethink binaries and hierarchies – Push back against all data systems that code gender as a binary. Centre the counterdata collection efforts of Indigenous women, Black women, lowincome women, and/or LGBTQ+ people. De-centre the Global North – its tools, technologies, and colonising computing assumptions. Embrace pluralism – Design counterdata collection tools in collaboration, coalition, and solidarity with the people already doing the work. Use participatory methods. Consider context – Design tools that support variation in how groups define and classify feminicide across diverse geographic, media, and intersectional contexts. Recognise the deeply grounded expertise activists carry in detecting and verifying feminicide cases in their locales. Make labour visible – Design tools to ease the emotional and physical labour of counterdata collection and support existing activist workflows. Recognise and support the care work that is at the centre of counterdata collection towards justice.

Methods This work forms part of a larger project called Data Against Feminicide, led by me; Silvana Fumega, research director at the Iniciativa Latinoamericana por los Datos Abiertos (ILDA); and Helena Suárez Val, founder of Feminicidio Uruguay. We have counted on a partnership with Rahul Bhargava, professor at Northeastern University. Student research assistants from the Data + Feminism Lab at MIT have made essential contributions to this work, including Isadora Cruxên, Amelia Dogan, Mariel García-Montes, Angeles Martinez Cuba, Wonyoung So, Harini Suresh, and Thuận Tran. When I say “we” and “our,” this is the group of researchers and practitioners that I am referring to.

Qualitative Research We began by creating a spreadsheet of civil society groups who collect or have collected data about feminicide and gender-based killing, building off a list of groups published by Suárez Val.1 This spreadsheet now encompasses more than 150 data collection efforts, primarily focused in Latin America around the topic of feminicide, but also encompassing North America, Europe and a handful of groups in Africa, Australia and Asia. Most groups monitor feminicide but some monitor LGBTQ+ killings; missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people; and/or specific types of feminicide, for example Black women killed in police violence in the US. In line with rethink binaries and hierarchies, it was important to include groups that monitor specific types of 531

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racialised feminicide and/or other forms of gender-based violence, because these violences are intertwined with feminicide through intersecting forms of domination including cis-hetero-patriarchy, white supremacy, and colonialism. In parallel with researching counterdata groups between September 2019 and August 2021, we conducted semi-structured interviews with a total of 37 participants directly involved in the 21 projects listed in Table 48.1, primarily based in the Americas. The interviews aimed to understand the workflow, data collection process, and conceptual categories through which activists identified and documented feminicide and gender-based killings, as well as their reflections on lessons learned from their monitoring work. The interviews were conducted in activists’ native languages and lasted between 75 and 127 minutes. We recorded, transcribed, and analysed the interviews using the qualitative data analysis software NVivo. Table 48.1  Summary of Interviews, Co-design Partners and Pilot Partners Project

Country

Project Focus

Year Started Project Status

★ Mumalá

Argentina

Femicides, missing women, LGBTQ+ hate crimes Femicides Feminicides Feminicides & LGBTIQ+ violence

2015

Active

2012 2015 2020

Active Active Active

Feminicides LGBT+ violence Feminicides Femicides

2014 2016 2018 2017

Paused Ended Ended Active

Femicides

2017

Active

Femicides

2019

Active

Feminicides

2016

Active

Feminicides Feminicides, missing women and sexual abuse Feminicides and missing women Feminicides MMIWG2S/P

2018 2011

Active Active

2015

Active

2010 2015

Active Active

2015

Active

2016 2018 2015 2019

Active Active Active Active

★ Mujeres de Negro Rosario Ahora que sí nos ven Mundo Sur

Argentina Argentina Based in Argentina, compiles data across Latin America Cuántas Más Bolivia data_labe Brazil Uma por Uma Brazil Canadian Femicide Observatory Canada for Justice and Accountability Alianza Feminista para el Ecuador Mapeo de los Femi(ni)cidios en Ecuador Femicide Count Kenya Puerto Kenya Rico Yo te nombro: El mapa de los Mexico feminicidios en México Manuela Ramos Foundation Peru Seguimiento de Casos PR Puerto Rico Observatorio de Equidad de Género Feminicidio.net ★ Sovereign Bodies Institute (SBI) ★ Small nonprofit organization ★☆ Women Count USA ★ Black Femicide US ★☆ Feminicidio Uruguay Utopix

Puerto Rico

Spain Based in United States, Monitors the Americas United States Black women and girls killed by police violence United States Femicides United States Femicides of Black women Uruguay Feminicides Venezuela Femicides

☆ = Co-design partner for ideation prior to and during tool development 2021–22. ★ = Participated in co-design sessions to pilot our interactive tools in Spring 2021.

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Participatory Design Process and Pilot In parallel with the interviews and qualitative data analysis, we began a participatory design process in June 2020 with two co-design partners: Helena Suárez Val of Feminicidio Uruguay (also one of the principal investigators of the Data Against Feminicide project) and Dawn Wilcox of Women Count USA. Participatory design aims to work directly with end users as domain experts at every stage of the technology design and development process (Simonsen and Robertson, 2013). We ran six co-design sessions with them between June 2020 and Feb 2021, in which we used interactive prototyping and brainstorming tools to generate ideas for technologies which would support activists to monitor feminicide. From these sessions, two tools emerged which are described in more detail in the final section. Our team developed and built the first version of the tools from December 2020 to March 2021 and then piloted them starting in March 2021. For the pilot, we wanted to test both the Spanish and English language version of the tools, so we recruited groups from Argentina and Uruguay and the United States (see Table 48.1). Groups participating in the pilot filled out a weekly survey and participated in two 2-hour focus groups over a period of two months.

Findings and Design Implications In this section, I outline a selection of our findings from the qualitative analysis as they pertain to design implications for future technologies to support counterdata collection about feminicide. All groups face missing data due to state and media negligence, inaction, and bias. Groups monitoring violence against Black women, Indigenous women, and/or LGBTQ+ people face more challenges in learning about new cases and acquiring information. Missing data constituted a motivating factor for most groups to start their own data collection efforts. For example, the Observatorio de Equidad de Género in Puerto Rico was founded after Kilómetro 0 authored a report showing that police data were undercounting feminicides by 27% (Avilés and Rodríguez Reyes, 2019). Activists from the United States, Puerto Rico, Spain, and Brazil described how official data was often absent, incomplete, or inaccurate due to undercounting and underreporting. In Brazil, Uma por Uma documented dozens of cases of murdered women that were not legally classified as feminicides due to how police and judicial officials interpreted the law. Problems with missing data did not stem only from state inaction and negligence. They also arose from media coverage of gender-related killings. For most groups, news media is a primary source of information for finding cases of feminicide; however, all groups noted the missing data and biases endemic to media reporting on the topic. News articles tended to provide scant relevant information on killed people and to reinforce stereotypes and prejudices about women and minoritised groups. Our interviews with activists focusing on MMIWG2S, Black women and girls killed by police violence, and LGBT+ violence demonstrated how murdered people at the intersection of multiple forces of oppression were particularly at risk of not being considered newsworthy at all or else being misgendered, misidentified, stigmatised, and blamed for the violence they suffered. These findings resonate with existing literature on feminicide monitoring (Madrigal et al., 2019; Abinanti et al., 2020) and illustrate how the state and the media interact to reinforce processes of marginalisation and violence.

Design Implications •

Feminicide case detection systems that scan news media could be useful to civil society groups. However, designers need to be aware that news media significantly under-report feminicides of minoritised groups and rural areas, promulgate harmful stereotypes, often do not report on race 533

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•

•

or Indigenous status, and contain many errors and thus cannot be treated as any kind of ground truth. For activists monitoring Indigenous, Afro-descended, and LGBTQ+ violence, it may be more effective to design case reporting systems that draw from social media or private groups, enable crowdsourced reports, and/or support communication with families and friends of murdered people to find cases for their databases. Activists are experts at detecting and accounting for missing data in their local information contexts.

All groups are simultaneously working to characterise feminicide as a structural problem while also memorialising and honouring individual killed women, two-spirit people, and LGBTQ+ people. While the goal of collecting counterdata about feminicide was most often directed at characterising it as a structural and macro-level problem, none of the groups were solely concerned with numbers. An interviewee from Fundación ALDEA stated, “This information is not just data or statistics – there are deaths behind it, there are lives behind it.” Activists did not want to reduce a person to their death but to remember them as full people. Several activists discussed the importance of including images of the person directly in their databases, even though images of the person in life can be hard to find and involve long searches on social media or working directly with families. Groups often did this additional work as a way of countering the media’s visual portrayal of cases with grisly images or mug shots, a tendency that one interviewee described as “dehumanising by design.” A number of groups use these portrait images in social media posts intended to memorialise the killed person and draw attention to the issue. Activists pursued various memorialisation strategies beyond images. These included video memorials (Women Count USA), multimedia web pages (Cuántas Más, Uma por Uma), large printed portrait images for marches (small non-profit in the US, Alianza para el Mapeo de Femicidios desde la Sociedad Civil), and even a theatre play for families that reimagined their daughters back into the world. For Uma por Uma, careful and humanising storytelling was a way to restore dignity to a person who has been wronged: “you have a well-treated text, well cared for, with dignity, so that the memory of this woman will be preserved as it should be and justice will be done.”

Design Implications •

•

Develop or adapt storytelling platforms and data visualisations that support activist motivations to memorialise and humanise victims. These can function as evocative ways to draw public attention to both the aggregate toll of loss and the individual people and the communities they left behind. Design ways for activists to share and learn from each other’s creative strategies for memorialisation and public attention-gathering.

All groups face resource constraints in terms of time, money, mental health burden and emotional labour. Activist counterdata efforts originated from individuals (6), from feminist and/or political collectives (6), from non-profit organisations (6), from academia (1), and from data journalism (2). It is important to note that even in individually led efforts, leaders often collaborated with communities through crowdsourcing and occasional volunteers, so no efforts were 100% individual. All of the groups that we interviewed faced significant resource constraints. The majority were volunteer-led efforts with no funding source, though some were supported by small grants or crowdfunding. Across all projects, activists noted how counterdata work was time-intensive and also emotionally challenging because of the continuous exposure to violence. Fomenting networks of solidarity 534

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was one way in which activists sought to mitigate this toll. Team members working on Uma por Uma, for instance, developed ties internally, supporting one another and fostering a sense of collective purpose. Many groups were embedded in domestic and transnational collaborative networks of solidarity and knowledge sharing. An interviewee from SBI described her desire to be in touch with other groups to “build that sisterhood, and to commiserate about, you know, how challenging and exhausting this is.” At the same time, activists saw the emotional labour of caring for murdered people’s lives, stories, and families as an essential part of seeking justice for their wrongful death. At one point in the participatory design process, when we discussed attempting the full automation of detecting and logging cases of feminicide, our co-design partner pushed back and described the importance of her emotional labour of witnessing and caring for the people she logged in her database.

Design Implications •

•

•

•

Because of resource constraints and volunteer turnover, any technology developed for/with counterdata activists should be free, easily maintainable, and easy to learn by newcomers with low to medium levels of digital literacy. Because of the highly collaborative nature of counterdata collection work, all systems should be designed for collaboration, though consideration may be given to a hierarchy of user roles (e.g. project owner, information verifier, volunteer, submit a crowdsourced tip). Feminicide case detection or case following systems can seek to reduce the number of nonrelevant violent results that counterdata activists are exposed to and need to filter manually. This can reduce time spent and the emotional burden of the work. Interactive technologies and events could support information sharing across groups in order to combat the isolation and mental health challenges of doing the work alone

Groups have different taxonomies and classification schema depending on their diverse contexts. The fields and categories collected for each database varied, depending on the scope and objectives of each project, but there are some commonalities. Projects collected as few as four fields and up to 300 fields for each case in their databases. All datasets contained identifying information about the murdered person, which might include name, age, and occupation. Less frequently collected fields include information about race/ethnicity, tribal identity, and number of children. The majority of data schema collect information about the perpetrator and the crime – for example, name, age, and occupation of the perpetrator, as well as relationship to the victim. Some activists collected fields that no other group collected, reflecting their different intersectional missions. For example, data_labe logged whether a person was gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. Mumalá had a specific category for lesbicides. SBI had a field to indicate whether an Indigenous woman was murdered within 50 miles of extractive industries. Finally, for projects like Uma por Uma and Seguimiento de Casos that follow cases through the judicial system, their schemas had a number of fields relating to case status and sentencing. All activists articulated that their data schema is dynamic – it undergoes changes as they learn about international feminicide data protocols or as they learn more about the individual cases, the issue of gender-related violence, and dialogue with families, law enforcement, media, and other activists. Activist typologies of feminicide often intentionally did not correspond to legal definitions in their country – partly due to the fact that where feminicide laws exist, they are often narrowly focused on intimate partner violence. Part of the purpose of collecting counterdata is to count and classify differently in order to build a political case for expanded definitions and conceptualisations of the problem. But this doesn’t mean activists wholly invent definitions. Some activists follow existing international protocol – for example, many mentioned the UN model protocol (Bernal Sarmiento 535

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et al., 2014). Dawn noted that she follows scholarship in criminology and gender-related killing in order to inform her classification. And Annita emphasised that SBI responds to any family requests to track different variables that they deem important. Additionally, activists share their typologies and influence each other. Carmen shifted her classification from asesinato (murder) to feminicidio based on conversations with Observatorio de Equidad de Género, and Dawn began collecting information on tribal status based on her friendship with Annita.

Design Implications •

•

Because activists use varying definitions of feminicide over time and/or monitor specific types of gender-based violence, counterdata collection technologies should support, not hinder or seek to unify, this contextual, intersectional, and temporal variation in classification. That said, many activists expressed interest in data standards so that their data might be used in a broader, comparative context. Designs can try to navigate the balance between allowing localisation and variation, while offering “default” settings that draw from standardisation efforts.

The Data Against Feminicide Tools Drawing from these findings and design implications, in this section I describe the two tools we developed in our participatory design process and piloted in spring 2021. First, I want to highlight an early-stage design decision that we made: we decided to work collaboratively with activists and value their contextual knowledge, labour, and expertise in monitoring feminicide in their geographies. While our team could have designed the One Big Automated Feminicide Observatory of the World and installed it on a server at MIT, based in the US, this exercise would likely have (1) perpetuated significant instances of erasure and exacerbated missing data due to lack of context and (2) diverted resources and attention from localised and grounded activist efforts to distant efforts based in the Global North. Thanks to the activist perspective on our leadership team, as well as literature on feminicide, we understood that the best way to combat missing data is to value the expertise of counterdata collectors, based in communities, who are already doing the work. This decision aligns with the data feminism principles to consider context, elevate emotion, and embodiment and make labour visible.

The Data Against Feminicide Highlighter The Data Against Feminicide Highlighter is a browser extension for the Chrome browser. As activists read news articles about feminicide or gender-based killing, the extension auto-highlights names, places, dates, and numbers with different highlighting colours. Counterdata activists can also put in custom words to highlight. The Highlighter has a link to Open Database, which activists can customise to open their own database or spreadsheet for easy copy-pasting between the browser and the spreadsheet. The idea for the Highlighter emerged from an early participatory design session with our research team and our co-design partners where we were discussing how activists may scan between 3 and 50 news articles about a particular case in order to find all of the fields for their database. Activists move back and forth, copying and pasting between the browser/news article and their databases. Drawing on the design implications outlined, the goal of the Highlighter is to reduce activists’ overall time spent scanning violent news articles by visually highlighting the key pieces of information they are seeking for their databases. During the pilot, groups also suggested many useful additions to the Highlighter that we have now implemented, including the ability to email an article to a colleague to support collaboration and a feature for highlighting custom words in a different colour. 536

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Figure 48.1 Screenshot of the Data Against Feminicide Highlighter, a browser extension for the Chrome browser.

The Data Against Feminicide Email Alerts System The Data Against Feminicide Email Alerts System supports activists to detect new cases of feminicide and gender-based violence and/or follow the development of prior cases as they are reported on in the news media. To get started, activists set up a counterdata project in a particular geography. Similar to Google Alerts, activists configure a search query for finding news media articles related to feminicide or gender-based killing, choose their geography of interest, and pick the frequency with which they wish to receive email alerts. While many groups we interviewed had attempted to use Google Alerts to find cases, most had stopped because the search results were too broad, the system returned cases from outside their geography of interest, and/or the system repeated a single case or article many times over, making it hard to distinguish between new and old information. Thus, some 537

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key differences between DAF Email Alerts and Google Alerts are as follows: (1) While Google does not reveal its sources and has clear omissions around local and regional news sources, as well as blogs, DAF Email Alerts is more transparent. Activists have the list of sources are scanned for each project and can add new media sources to the scan. (2) DAF Email Alerts filters all news articles through a machine learning classifier that has been trained to predict whether the article is a case of feminicide or not. (3) DAF Email Alerts groups articles that are related to the same case, facilitating activist scanning. For example, as depicted in Figure 48.2, there are six articles from different news outlets about the same case of a feminicide in Artigas.

Figure 48.2 Screenshot of the Data Against Feminicide Highlighter, a browser extension for the Chrome browser.

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Figure 48.3  Sample email alert delivered from the Data Against Feminicide Email Alerts System.

The idea for the Data Against Feminicide Email Alerts System arose out of a very early brainstorm between me, Silvana Fumega, and Helena Suárez Val, the three co-leaders of the initiative. As we ran early co-design sessions, we iterated on the idea of an improved Google Alerts system and discussed everything from full automation (the system would monitor the media, extract relevant information from articles, and put all results into a database) to partial automation (the system surfaces alerts and the activist chooses which are relevant for her database). Based on the design implications about the importance of emotional labour and the idea that activists are experts in their local monitoring contexts, we stayed with partial automation. The overall goal of the system is to reduce activists’ time spent searching for new cases and to reduce the emotional burden of reading violent news articles which are not relevant for their databases. One important issue that surfaced in the pilot related to the findings and design implications around the challenges faced by groups that specifically monitor violence against Black women, 539

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Indigenous women, two-spirit people, and/or LGBTQ+ people. During the pilot, the DAF Email Alerts system proved to work fairly well for groups monitoring feminicide generally. Groups in both the United States and Argentina stated that they were regularly discovering new cases through the email alerts. However, the system struggled to distinguish cases of MMIWG2S and Black women killed in police violence. As described, these groups face more missing data and underreporting in the news media. Additionally, news articles often do not report the race or tribal status of a killed person, and they often misgender trans people, so it is difficult to try to distinguish articles based on language that is either absent or incorrect. To address these challenges, we have extended the pilot with two partners and are experimenting with developing custom datasets and training custom machine-learning models for each group to better detect the cases that they are interested in. This is in line with our commitment to the data feminism principle of rethinking binaries and hierarchies. While our team has created these two specific tools, we see many more opportunities for technology design to meet the needs of civil society groups, so these tool descriptions may serve as inspiration for how a feminist approach combined with the findings and design implications may be realised in concrete designs to address feminicide counterdata collectors’ computing needs.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have introduced how feminicide data can be conceived as missing data and how feminicide activists are increasingly stepping into those data gaps to undertake feminist counterdata production. More than 150 groups around the world are undertaking this work, which demonstrates a growing need for digital tools and technologies that support and sustain counterdata computing. By characterising findings and design implications from qualitative interviews with these groups, I have outlined opportunities for activists and technologists to work together to support feminicide counterdata science. I presented the Data Against Feminicide tools as concrete examples of how the principles of data feminism and the design implications from our research may be realised in the design of interactive technologies. Rather than replicate the extractivism, technosolutionism, and colonialism baked into conventional technology design and data science, this chapter calls for an explicitly intersectional feminist approach to data and technology design in the service of justice and liberation. This constitutes a data science grounded restoration – of rights, life, living and vitality – and transformation – towards the world where gender violence has been eliminated.

Note 1  https://feminicidiouruguay.net/otros-sitios.

References Abinanti, A., Cavaliere, A., Nulph, A., George, B., Lucchesi, A., Madrid, M., Fisher, A., Ruecker, T., Preciado, V., Smith, J. and Balandran, G. (2020) A Year 1 Project Report on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirit People of Northern California. National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. Alvarado García, A., Young, A. L. and Dombrowski, L. (2017) ‘On Making Data Actionable: How Activists Use Imperfect Data to Foster Social Change for Human Rights Violations in Mexico’, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 1(CSCW), p. 19:1–19:19. doi: 10.1145/3134654. Avilés, L. A. and Rodríguez Reyes, L. E. (2019) La Persistencia de la Indolencia: Feminicidios en Puerto Rico 2014–18. San Juan, Puerto Rico: Proyecto Matria & Kilómetro, p. 64. Bardzell, S. (2010) ‘Feminist HCI: Taking Stock and Outlining an Agenda for Design’, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York, NY, USA: ACM (CHI ’10), pp. 1301–1310. doi: 10.1145/1753326.1753521.

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Human-Centred Computing and Feminicide Counterdata Production Bernal Sarmiento, C., Acosta, M. L., Roth, F., & Zambrano, M. (2014) Modelo de Protocolo Latinoamericano de Investigación de las Muertes Violentas de Mujeres Por Razones de Género (femicidio/feminicidio). ONU Mujeres; OACNUDH. Currie, M., Paris, B. S., Pasquetto, I., & Pierre, J. (2016) ‘The conundrum of Police Officer-Involved Homicides: Counter-Data in Los Angeles County’, Big Data & Society, 3(2), p. 2053951716663566. doi: 10.1177/2053951716663566. D’Ignazio, C. and Klein, L. F. (2020) Data feminism. The MIT Press (Strong ideas series). Dimond, J. P., Dye, M., LaRose, D., & Bruckman, A. S. (2013) ‘Hollaback! the role of storytelling online in a social movement organization’, in Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery (CSCW ’13), pp. 477–490. doi: 10.1145/2441776.2441831. Gray, J., Lämmerhirt, D. and Bounegru, L. (2016) Changing What Counts: How Can Citizen-Generated and Civil Society Data Be Used as an Advocacy Tool to Change Official Data Collection? SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 2742871. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.2742871. Madrigal, S., Ramírez, I. R., Salguero, M., & Val, H. S. (2019) ‘Monitoring, recording, and mapping feminicide – experiences from Mexico and Uruguay’, in Hemblade, H. and Gabriel, H. (eds) Femicide Volume XII: Living Victims of Femicide. XII. Vienna: Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS), pp. 67–73. http://femicide-watch.org/sites/default/files/Femicide%20XII_0.pdf#page=73. Meng, A. and DiSalvo, C. (2018) ‘Grassroots Resource Mobilization through Counter-Data Action’, Big Data & Society, 5(2), p. 205395171879686. doi: 10.1177/2053951718796862. Scheuerman, M. K., Branham, S. M. and Hamidi, F. (2018) ‘Safe Spaces and Safe Places: Unpacking Technology-Mediated Experiences of Safety and Harm with Transgender People’, Proceedings of the ACM on HumanComputer Interaction, 2(CSCW), p. 155:1–155:27. doi: 10.1145/3274424. Silveira, G. B., dos Santos, D. S. and da Maia, G. F. (2018) ‘Estamos Juntas: Expert System to Support the Identification and Denunciation of Violence against Women’, in Proceedings of the XIV Brazilian Symposium on Information Systems. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery (SBSI’18), pp. 1–9. doi: 10.1145/3229345.3229381. Simonsen, J. and Robertson, T. (2013) Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design. Routledge (Routledge international handbooks). Starks, D. L., Dillahunt, T. and Haimson, O. L. (2019) ‘Designing Technology to Support Safety for Transgender Women & Non-Binary People of Color’, in Companion Publication of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2019 Companion. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery (DIS ’19 Companion), pp. 289–294. doi: 10.1145/3301019.3323898. Strohmayer, A., Meissner, J. L., Wilson, A., Charlton, S., & McIntyre, L. (2020) ‘ “We Come together as one . . . and Hope for Solidarity to live on”: On Designing Technologies for Activism and the Commemoration of Lost Lives’, in Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery (DIS ’20), pp. 87–100. doi: 10.1145/3357236.3395452. Vigil-Hayes, M., Duarte, M., Parkhurst, N. D., & Belding, E. (2017) ‘#Indigenous: Tracking the Connective Actions of Native American Advocates on Twitter’, in Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. CSCW ’17: Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, Portland Oregon USA: ACM, pp. 1387–1399. doi: 10.1145/2998181.2998194.

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49 MALE PERPETRATORS’ ACCOUNTS OF INTIMATE FEMICIDE A Global Systematic Review Dabney P. Evans, Martín Hernán Di Marco, Subasri Narasimhan, Melanie E. Maino Vieytes, Autumn Curran, and Mia S. White

Background Intimate femicide, the gender-based killing of a woman by a current or past intimate partner, is an extreme form of intimate partner violence (IPV) and a distinct type of intimate partner homicide (IPH). While femicide is frequently used interchangeably with IPH the terms are used differently across state governments, international organisations, and researchers (UNODC, 2019). Despite a clearer delineation between these terms being needed, the data suggest that most female homicides are femicides. Of the 87,000 women murdered worldwide in 2017, more than half (58%) were femicides committed by intimate partners or family members making intimate femicide the most common form of the phenomena (UNODC, 2018, 2019). Globally, at least one in seven homicides and more than a third of female homicides are intimate femicides, suggesting that neither cultural nor socio-economic context is a significant determinant in this phenomenon in the presence of a global patriarchy (Duff, Nampweya, and Tree, 2020; Stöckl et al., 2013). By definition, gender plays a role in femicide perpetration. While intimate femicide perpetrators may be of any gender, males are far more likely to be perpetrators than females (Spencer and Stith, 2020). Gender-based power imbalances in relationships are predictive of IPH (Spencer and Stith, 2020). Thus, male-perpetrated intimate femicide is a gendered phenomenon rooted in gender norms and expectations (Campbell et al., 2007; Corradi, et al., 2016; Smith et al., 1998; UNODC, 2019; Weizmann-Heneliu et al., 2012). Yet one of the most important drivers of intimate femicide – namely, male perpetrators – remains understudied (Di Marco and Evans, 2020). Theories and explanations of intimate femicide perpetration span over 50 years. Frye (1957) described four narrative typologies used by femicide perpetrators to explain their behaviour: the hero, the revenger, the victim, and the professional. This work was followed by Scott and Lyman (1968) who described, from a sociological perspective, four excuses – appeal to accidents, defeasibility, biological drives, and scapegoating. More recently, resource theory has posited that in the context of heterosexual relationships, when a woman’s resources (e.g., education, income, job security) are greater than that of a man’s, violence may shrink the apparent status difference (Atkinson et al., 2005; Campbell et al., 2007). Against this backdrop, men’s inability to meet patriarchal societal expectations leads to an increased risk of intimate femicide (Campbell et al., 2007). General 542

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202332-57

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recidivism and justice system involvement correlate with intimate femicide (Dobash et al., 2004; Dobash, et al., 2009; Lien and Lorentzen, 2019); a study of the Canadian Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System found that before committing femicide, 76% of male intimate femicide offenders had prior contact with mental health or carceral systems (Eke et al., 2011). Prior offences, including a history of relationship violence, and substance abuse, particularly alcohol abuse, are risk factors for extreme relationship violence and IPH (Dobash et al., 2009; Dobash and Dobash, 2015: 26; Fals-Stewart et al., 2003). Most work on femicide perpetrators has been based on secondary analysis of documents like police reports, medical examiner reports, and psychological assessments. These analyses have identified some perpetration risk factors and psychosocial characteristics (WeizmannHenelius et al., 2012). Additionally, a small group of publications examined perpetration through qualitative methodologies (Harden et al., 2019; Graham et al., 2020; Kivisto, 2015). Prior reviews on intimate femicide have explored theoretical models of IPH perpetration (Campbell et al., 2007) and demographics, motivations and psychiatric characteristics (Kivisto, 2015) providing adequate grounding for an in-depth examination of perpetrators’ perspectives. Subjective narratives from perpetrators have been examined in a group of important studies (Adshead et al., 2015; Dobash and Dobash, 2015; Johnson and Hearn, 2001). Hearn’s work is the foundation for considering subjective narratives, including perpetrators’ denials, justifications and rationalisations (Hearn, 1998: 107–108). Likewise, Dobash and Dobash observed practices of deflection and lack of remorse and empathy, noting that such individuals pose a risk to future partners (Dobash and Dobash, 2015: 85–91). Harden, Spencer, and Stith recently synthesised studies that included qualitative interviews with victims of attempted IPH, family or friends of victims, and perpetrators of attempted or completed IPH. While this review highlighted the need to bring perpetrator analyses to the forefront of femicide discussion, a key theme was female-perpetrated IPH as a form of self-defence (Harden et al., 2019; Spencer and Stith, 2020); we believe self-defence to be fundamentally different to the motives of male-perpetrated intimate femicide. To date, no review has aggregated data on the insider perspective of male-perpetrated intimate femicide. The purpose of this systematic review was to synthesise the published evidence on intimate femicide perpetration with a focus on the perspectives of male perpetrators, including their sense-making.

Methodology The review was global in nature and focused exclusively on male-perpetrated intimate femicide; peer-reviewed studies of any design type were included as were analyses of primary and secondary data, published during any time, in any discipline, and written in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework was used to conduct this review and included the following components: records from database searching, duplicate removal, abstract screening for relevance, full-text eligibility assessment, qualitative and quantitative data extraction, and synthesis. In May 2021, we executed a comprehensive search of ten databases including: PubMed, Embase, PsycInfo, Web of Science Core Collection, KCI-Korean Journal Index, Russian Science Citation Index, SciELO Citation, Scopus, African Index Medicus, and Latin American and Caribbean System on Health Sciences Information. We searched using a combination of concepts and keywords. Search concepts included any of the following terms: homicide, murder, femicide, feminicide, honour killing, honor killing, spousal homicide, spouse homicide, perpetration, partner homicide, partner murder, partner kill* or domestic homicide combined with the “AND” Boolean operator alongside sexual partner, spouse, husband, wife, domestic partner, abuser, partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, victimiser, lover, perpetrator, partner violence, IPV, or IPH. Searches were limited to published articles, articles in press, or reviews in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. Our multilingual team reviewed articles based on language fluency. 543

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Figure 49.1  PRISMA diagram for male-perpetrated intimate partner femicide. Note: *Databases included: PubMed, Embase, PsychInfo, Web of Science Core Collection, KCI-Korean Journal Index, Russian Science Citation Index, SciELO Citation, Scopus, African Index Medicus, and Latin-American and Caribbean System on Health Sciences Information. Source: Page MJ, McKenzie JE, Bossuyt PM, Boutron I, Hoffmann TC, Mulrow CD, et al. The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ 2021;372:n711; doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n71.

Our search was delimited to peer-reviewed literature, and thus grey literature and dissertations were excluded. There were no limits on publication date. Our searches resulted in the identification of 7,304 records. After the removal of 3,031 duplicate records, 4,273 records were included in the initial title and abstract review. Two authors independently assessed all titles and abstracts for inclusion. Publications focused exclusively on IPV, nonfatal or attempted femicide, and the perspectives of victims or survivors were excluded at this stage. Inclusion discordance and review criteria refinement were resolved by consensus in team discussions; following these discussions, the first or second author included or excluded articles. After this process, 112 articles were forwarded for full-text review. The full-text review followed the same process to determine eligibility for extraction. Here, we focused on the primary perspectives of perpetrators. Articles excluded at this stage were those where the killing was not an intimate femicide (e.g., honour killings), individuals apart from the female intimate partner were killed (e.g., cases of murder-suicide or familicide), or the article did not include analysis of the perspective of intimate femicide perpetrators. The decision to exclude honour killings was grounded in the fact that most honour killings are perpetrated by family members (e.g., fathers) and not intimate partners. After reviewing the full text of these articles, we viewed honour killings to be a tangibly different phenomenon. Likewise, at this stage we chose to focus exclusively on single-victim femicides in keeping with our emphasis on the female victim–male 544

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perpetrator dyad. Ultimately, we extracted information from fourteen (n = 14) articles. Two authors extracted data independently from each article. Extracted information included language of the publication, publication year, theoretical foundation, the purpose of the research, country and setting, data source (primary or secondary), methodology (qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods), domains of inquiry, data collection instrument, population, sampling technique, sample size, methodological challenges, analytical approach, and main results.

Results Using qualitative content synthesis, we identified the use of terminology and theories, as well as common themes across studies – namely, perpetrator biographical and predisposing factors, selfnarratives, and sense-making within papers. The 14 papers we examined were published between 1980 and 2021. All 14 papers were published in English despite robust work on femicide in the Latin American region; apart from Asia, all regions of the world were represented.

Intimate Femicide Terminology and Theories Femicide is a relatively new concept; as its study has evolved, debates over the definition continue (UNODC, 2019). Among the studies, terminology was inconsistent. Six papers explicitly used the term “femicide,” including some with descriptive qualifiers (e.g., intimate femicide, or intimate partner femicide) (Di Marco and Evans, 2020; Goussinsky and Yassour-Borochowitz, 2012; Johnson et al., 2017; Mathews et al., 2011 & 2015; Podreka, 2019). Other terms included conjugal violence, intimate partner homicide, intimate partner murder, men who killed their wives or girlfriends, passion killing, spouse killing, spouse homicide, and uxoricide. Seven articles used only one of the aforementioned terms, while the other half used multiple terms within their studies. Bach (1980) used language that relied on outdated notions of gender and sex whereas other papers were consistent with more recent conceptualisations of gender equality. While Stout (1993) used the term “intimate femicide” early on, all other authors publishing between 1993 and 2010 used the term “intimate partner homicide” (Adams, 2009; Dobash, et al., 2009; Elisha et al., 2010). In 2011 a discernible shift in terminology took place with most authors publishing after that time using the terms “femicide” or “intimate femicide” (Di Marco and Evans, 2020; Goussinsky and YassourBorochowitz, 2012; Johnson et al., 2017; Mathews, 2011 & 2015; Podreka, 2019). Studies theoretically grounded their work in two major categories: (1) gender and power and (2) psychology or social development. Most employed theories describing power relative to gender hierarchy, including patriarchy, hegemonic masculinities, male sexual proprietariness, and male dominance. These theories assert that intimate femicide is explained through male-female power imbalances, where men hold power and take actions to maintain dominance over women (Campbell et al., 2003). Dobash et al. (2009) used a feminist perspective to explain contextual and situational factors for both intimate relationships and femicide drawing on gender and power theory. Psychological and social development theories explained femicide through childhood victimisation or experiential learning. Notably both fields attend to the effects of early childhood experiences on later behaviour. Adams (2009) employed the social learning theory of IPV, which asserts that violence is learned behaviour modelled by parents and subsequently reinforced by social endorsement of male dominance within relationships. Several studies (n = 4) linked insecure parental relationships to the extreme attachment perpetrators felt to their intimate partners (Adams, 2009; Elisha et al., 2010; Mathews et al., 2011 & 2015). Several studies described volatile, violent, unpredictable, or neglectful relationships with mothers as creating early negative attitudes towards women, which ultimately extended to perpetrators’ adult relationships with their female partners (Adams, 2009; DiMarco and Evans, 2020; Elisha et al., 2010, Mathews et al., 2011 & 2015). Notably absent from 545

Table 49.1  Fourteen Articles on Male-Perpetrated Intimate Femicide, Including Perpetrators’ Perspectives, by Year Authors

Country

Discipline

Data Type/Source

Method

Sampling Approach (n = # males)

1980

Bach

Greece, Germany, England, French Polynesia, USA

Psychology/ sociology

Mixed methods

Unspecified (n = 38)

1993

Stout

USA

Criminology

Qualitative

Simple random sampling (n = 23)

2009 2009

Adams Dobash et al.

USA UK

Criminology Criminology

Qualitative Quantitative

Purposive sampling (n = 31) Multiple strategies (n = 104)

2010

Elisha et al.

Israel

Criminology

Qualitative

Purposive sampling (n = 15)

2011

Dobash & Dobash

UK

Qualitative

2011

Mathews, Jewkes & Abrahams Goussinsky & YassourBorochowitz Dilmon & Timor

South Africa

Qualitative

Systematic sampling after a specified number (n = 104) Purposive sampling (n = 20)

Israel

Criminology/ sociology Psychology/ sociology Criminology

Primary/unstructured individual interviews, unspecified group interviews, and questionnaires Primary and secondary/semistructured interviews and case files Primary/structured interviews Secondary/semi-structured interviews and case files Primary and secondary/semistructured interviews and court verdicts Secondary/case files

Qualitative

Purposive sampling (n = 18)

Israel

Criminology

Qualitative

Unspecified sampling (n = 12)

Qualitative

Purposive sampling (n = 20)

Mixed methods Qualitative

Purposive sampling (n = 68) Unspecified sampling (n = 24)

Qualitative

Purposive sampling (n = 12)

Qualitative

Purposive sampling (n = 10)

2012

2014 2015

South Africa

Criminology

2019

Matthews, Jewkes & Abrahams Johnson et al.

Australia

Criminology

2019

Podreka

Slovenia

2020

Di Marco & Evans

Argentina

Psychology/ sociology Criminology

2020

Duff, Nampweya & Tree

Namibia

Violence studies

Primary/semi-structured interviews Primary/semi-structured interviews Primary/semi-structured interviews Primary/semi-structured interviews Secondary/unspecified interviews and questionnaires Secondary/case files Primary/unstructured interviews Primary/semi-structured interviews

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546

Year

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the studies included in this review were theories from the disciplines of criminology and masculinity studies. Of the 14 publications reviewed, only three discussed perpetrator typologies; the concept of the perpetrator perceiving himself as a victim was present in eight of the studies (Dilmon and Timor, 2014; Di Marco and Evans, 2020; Duff et al., 2020; Elisha et al., 2010; Goussinsky and YassourBorochowitz, 2012; Johnson et al., 2017; Mathews et al., 2011 & 2015).

Methodological Approaches Most of the articles in this review utilised qualitative approaches (N = 11) from primary sources (N = 10), all in incarcerated settings (N = 14). Most authors collected data through semi-structured interviews (N = 8). Only two papers utilised unstructured formats; Di Marco and Evans (2020) relied on a one-time interview, while Bach (1980) employed an unstructured individual interview followed by a semi-structured group interview in a prison therapy support group. Interviews across multiple papers covered four broad dimensions of inquiry: (1) perpetrator’s biographical background (childhood and adolescent adverse experiences, social trajectories, social network, meaningful events); (2) descriptions of the relationship between the perpetrator and victim; (3) circumstances of the femicide, including social and emotional experiences; and (4) narrative explanations, justifications, and rationalisations. Appraisal of the analyses in qualitative studies revealed three main techniques: inductive analysis (n = 5) (Adams, 2009; Dilmon and Timor, 2014; Di Marco and Evans, 2020; Mathews et al., 2011, 2015), phenomenological analysis (n = 3) (Dilmon and Timor, 2014; Duff et al., 2020; Elisha et al., 2010), and content analysis (n = 2) (Dobash and Dobash, 2011; Goussinsky and YassourBorochowitz, 2012; Podreka, 2019). One study in our review employed descriptive statistics (Johnson et al., 2017) and one used bivariate analyses of association (e.g., odds ratios, chi-square goodness of fit statistics) (Dobash et al., 2009).

Emergent Themes Common themes were present in intimate femicide perpetrators’ accounts and remained relatively constant across studies.

Biographical and Predisposing Factors Biographical factors were examined in nearly a third of the included studies (Adams, 2009; Dilmon and Timor, 2014; Dobash et al., 2009; Duff et al., 2020). Dilmon and Timor (2014) aptly described how crises – in this case the act of intimate femicide – necessitated a “radical reinterpretation of the significance of past events or characters in one’s biography” (p. 1130). By contrast, Di Marco and Evans (2020) found that intimate femicides are not always interpreted as biographical turning points by perpetrators themselves. Past biographical experiences were seen as influencing the present and future. Likewise, Dobash et al. (2009) pointed out how explanations for murder were frequently attributed to the perpetrator’s biography. Notably, there is significant overlap between the predisposing factors for IPV and intimate femicide, including substance abuse, mental illness, and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). The most salient biographical factor among perpetrators were traumatic or troubling childhood experiences. These experiences include abandonment, neglect, physical abuse, parental rejection, lack of supervision, disrupted caretaking, and prior contact with criminal justice or other social systems (Adams, 2009; Dobash et al., 2009; Elisha et al., 2010). Adams (2009) quantified these experiences finding that half of femicide perpetrators in their study had experienced child abuse at the hands of one or both parents, 55% had witnessed violence between their parents, and 42% 547

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reported that their parents had divorced or permanently separated during their childhood; one-third had grown up without their father or a father figure. One perpetrator shared, “[M]aybe because of my father, we was so scared and mentally beaten” (Adams, 2009: 224). Dobash et al. (2009) noted the cumulative effects of such experiences and their contribution to femicide perpetration risk. Several studies noted how adverse childhood experiences contributed to attitudes towards women and related violent behaviours. Adams (2009) and others noted generalised misogyny among perpetrators as well as hypermasculinity. Lack of emotional control and poor problem-solving skills were also observed as contributing factors (Dobash et al., 2009; Duff et al., 2020).

Self-Narratives The presentation of self was a crucial domain in most reviewed papers (n = 8). Three main aspects emerged: childhood experiences, identity, and notions of masculinity. Perpetrators’ upbringings stood out in narratives. In some papers, perpetrators’ life stories were analysed not for biography but as a neutralisation tactic. Adams (2009) indicated that some men attributed their “toughness” to their abusive fathers and emulated this violent conduct. Dilmon (2014), Duff (2020) and Di Marco and Evans (2020) found that some perpetrators explained the femicide by referencing their “macho” upbringing and the patriarchal nature of society. Several authors indicated that self-narratives were not only shaped by biographical experiences but perpetrators’ desire to be seen as benevolent men, by presenting themselves as situational victims or explicitly talking about their “good nature” (Adams, 2009; Goussinsky and Yassour-Borochowitz, 2012; Stout, 1993). The management of perpetrators’ identities was a frequent subject of inquiry. As Goussinsky and Yassour-Borochowitz (2012) noted, some perpetrators did not consider themselves “violent men” with one perpetrator stating, “[I]t wasn’t under my control at all . . . it was like somebody else. Not me” (p. 560). Di Marco and Evans (2020) augmented capturing how perpetrators distanced themselves from violence and/or the femicide, portraying themselves positively or as “normal” during the interviews, but described themselves as in an “exceptional state” during the femicide; Dilmon and Timor (2014) shared a similar finding. Notions of masculinity and “being a man” was a theme across nearly half (n = 6) of papers (Di Marco and Evans, 2020; Duff et al., 2020; Goussinsky and Yassour-Borochowitz, 2012; Mathews et al., 2011, 2015; Podreka, 2019). Abandonment, control, punishment, and superiority appear in most of the papers (n = 8), linked to perpetrators’ sense of masculinity and self-worth. Mathews et al. (2011), Di Marco and Evans (2020), and Duff et al. (2020) pointed out that perpetrators’ presentations of themselves as strong men were linked to their stories about defending honour, power struggles, and coercive control. Mathews (2011) concluded that these hypermasculine “breadwinner” presentations were associated with an increased emotional vulnerability. Perpetrators also noted how submissive behaviours by female partners early in the relationship made feel them “like men”; later non-normative gender behaviours resulted in deadly repercussions. “Beating and cheating” was an acceptable way to respond to a woman’s behaviour when it was viewed as a provocation (Duff et al., 2020: 11–12; Mathews et al., 2011). One perpetrator shared, “My former wife is guilty for everything. If she has behaved as a wife should behave, everything would have been alright. . . . In many countries, adulteress, like my wife is, would be stoned to death” (Podreka, 2019: 20).

Sense-Making Sense-making is the process of ascribing meaning by employing available symbolic resources to the femicide. This was focal to most studies as a way for perpetrators to explain the crime. Three domains of sense-making emerged: perpetrators rationalised the femicide and deflected responsibility, viewed themselves as the victim while vilifying the actual victim, and adhered to strict gender norms. 548

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The papers showed a consistent array of rationalisations for femicide. The main narratives included (1) describing a crisis, where they were provoked by their partner and, therefore, femicide was an act of self-defence; (2) presenting the femicide as a punishment for some action by their partner; (3) stating that the crime was a spontaneous consequence of uncontrolled rage; (4) accepting responsibility for their violent actions, but not for the femicide; (5) indicating that killing was a way to overcome their sense of helplessness and regain control of their lives; and (6) explaining that the event was accidental (Adams, 2009; Bach, 1980; Dilmon and Timor, 2014; Di Marco and Evans, 2020; Duff et al., 2020; Elisha et al., 2010; Stout, 1993). One perpetrator illustrated, She went to the bedroom and started to pack her things, while I began to feel more and more threatened. My anxiety was increased, all my body was shaking. I’ve seen her as a threat, as someone who’s hurting me and can kill me. I’ve seen her as someone who came to take my life, and I strangled her. (Elisha et al., 2010: 507) Responsibility, or lack thereof, was another element of sense-making. Lack of agency was used to explain the crime and to structure the story, by referencing “losing control” or “snapping” (Di Marco and Evans, 2020; Mathews et al., 2011). Perpetrators routinely presented themselves as victims across several studies (n = 6). However, the source of their victimisation varied – either the perpetrator’s partner or other external forces (unemployment, alcohol, etc.) (Duff et al., 2020; Di Marco and Evans, 2020; Dilmon and Timor, 2014). Violent punishment of female partners was viewed as a “logical” response to perpetrators’ feelings of victimisation (Di Marco and Evans, 2020; Elisha et al., 2010; Mathews et al., 2011). Two studies cited socio-cultural differences. Duff et al. (2020) mentioned that some men used witchcraft as a culturally acceptable explanation for the crime. Another study indicated that interviewees referenced Argentinean anti-femicide movements as a contextual explanation for their action while one participant used a soccer analogy to defer responsibility, “You look back at this and you just can’t understand how such a thing happened. It’s like a fight in a soccer match: it’s sudden, nobody knows how it started and it’s disastrous” (Di Marco and Evans, 2020: 13) Additionally, perpetrators used victim vilification to further distance themselves from the femicide, by portraying their partners negatively (Duff et al., 2020). Only Di Marco and Evans (2020) showed men “erased” the victims from the narratives. The practical results of these neutralisation narratives included normalising violent behaviour (Dilmon and Timor, 2014), neutralising or minimising one’s actions (Di Marco and Evans, 2020), and distancing oneself from the femicide (Goussinsky and Yassour-Borochowitz, 2012). These papers coincide with sense-making attempts to achieve redemption, or to deny or reduce culpability. Gendered identities and norms were another salient theme in the accounts. Possessiveness, objectification, and the inability to meet unrealistic relationship expectations were all routes taken within the sense-making process (Bach, 1980; Di Marco and Evans, 2020; Mathews et al., 2015). The desire for control was a consistent topic in several studies (Dobash et al., 2009; Elisha et al., 2010; Podreka, 2019). Underlying notions of femininity and masculinity were directly linked to the storytelling: if the hopes of the abuser failed to be met, the victim would merit a penalty, an extreme consequence being death. One participant stated, My friends used to tell me that beating her is the only way to show her how to respect you, don’t let her answer you back, she will get used to it and see you as weak. A little beating once in a while doesn’t hurt. (Duff et al., 2020: 4950) Two disagreements stand out in the papers. First, the definitions of and findings about premeditation differed between the studies. For instance, Goussinsky and Yassour-Borochowitz (2012) 549

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pointed out that most men planned the crime in advance, while other studies found that most of the femicides occurred spontaneously, although prior violence was often present in the relationship (Di Marco and Evans, 2020; Duff et al., 2020; Elisha et al., 2010). Second, jealousy was interpreted differently in the studies. Stout (1993), Dobash et al. (2009), Mathews et al. (2015), among others, stated that mistrust and fear of losing female partners resulted in controlling behaviour and, ultimately, femicide. However, Goussinsky and Yassour-Borochowitz indicated that profound despair was the primary emotion of concern (2012: 561).

Discussion and Conclusions We synthesised 14 papers on the perspectives of male perpetrators of intimate femicide, including their sense-making. Papers spanned 11 countries representing all regions of the world except Asia; papers primarily employed qualitative interviews and were drawn from non-representative incarcerated samples. Notably all 14 papers were published in English despite robust work on femicide in the Latin American region; this finding highlights a bias towards the English language in academic publishing and the need for open-access publications in languages other than English, as well as support for scholars from low- and middle-income countries. In addition, increased dialogue between academics and anti-femicide activists would strengthen the study of femicide with implications for practice and policy. The terms employed to refer to the intentional killing of a woman by her former or current partner varied greatly across studies. The variability in terminology highlights the need for clearly defined unifying language so that researchers and advocates can accurately describe various types of femicide with nuance to measure and compare across studies. Precise terminology which clarifies the relationship between the perpetrator and victim (e.g., intimate femicide) adds necessary nuance. As in other reviews, authors utilised gender and power theories, and psychological or social development theories underscoring the predominance of these conceptual framings in the study of IPV broadly and femicide specifically (Harden et al., 2019; Campbell, 2007). All theories focused on individual or interpersonal interactions while none focused on engagement with formal social systems (e.g., carceral systems) or structural factors. This indicates a greater need to understand both the intergenerational and societal/social transmission of violence. Possibly because of the qualitative methodologies employed, papers included theoretical references as a broad frame but did not ground analysis in those theories. Likewise, the relative absence of criminological and masculinities theories is noteworthy. This absence was striking given that many of the papers appeared in criminology journals. Given that femicide has been criminalised in many contexts and that most perpetrators are male, scholars in these fields are well positioned to contribute knowledge to the study of femicide. Papers emphasised the need to understand perpetrator rationalisations to address femicide as a gendered social phenomenon. The management of identity and responsibility was a significant feature of the narratives. Sense-making and self-narratives were consistent across studies. Sense-making involved two simultaneous processes; first, perpetrators distanced themselves from the intimate femicide, and second, they presented themselves as victims, even blaming their partners. An additional paradox was how perpetrators could both commit femicide and, at the same time, present themselves as not being “violent men.” Here, perpetrators were engaging in neutralisation, the management of personal identity, harkening the social legitimation of violence. Abandonment, betrayal, control, and punishment appeared in most research indicating how the phenomenon itself is experienced similarly by perpetrators across settings – namely, notions of hegemonic masculinity (Kimmel, 2017). Hence, male perpetrators of femicide perpetrators are not merely individual bad actors; instead, they are a manifestation of a global patriarchy that poses mortal threats to their female partners. Across studies two aspects emerged. Male perpetrators managed their identities by deflecting blame for the femicide to external factors, and perpetrators’ perspectives and narratives about their 550

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lives, the femicide, and the victim were consistent across studies. These observations underscore the fact that femicide is present worldwide as evidenced by the growing availability of femicide data. Indeed, the phenomenon appears universal in nature – likely as a result of the global patriarchy. While cultural particularities and contextual nuances may exist, just two papers presented such factors as explaining femicide (Di Marco and Evans, 2020; Duff et al., 2020). Attention to contextual particularities without obscuring commonalities across settings is among the tasks that interdisciplinary researchers must undertake in future femicide research. Femicides occur in several different scenarios including single and multiple victims perpetrated by intimate, non-intimate, and unknown perpetrators. This work focused exclusively on studies of single-victim intimate femicide – namely, female victim–male perpetrator dyads; as a result, other intimate femicide gender dyads and non-intimate partner femicides were excluded. While female victim–male perpetrator dyads are the most common type of intimate femicide this dyad may differ fundamentally from other gender dyads, such as same-sex or gender non-binary couples. Thus, additional work is needed to understand alternate dyadic structures. Likewise, non-intimate-partner femicides, like honour killings perpetrated by family members and gang-related femicides, warrant examination. While grounded in the same system of patriarchy as intimate femicide we viewed these femicides as including additional layers of interpersonal and community relationships not necessarily present in intimate femicides. Likewise, we limited our research to single-victim femicides; murder-suicides and familicides were excluded from this work, though both also merit examination independently and together with single-victim femicides. Because we were focused on perpetrators perspectives, we excluded papers that did not include perpetrators’ accounts; however, many papers included demographic and psychological profiles of perpetrators, and these profiles could be quantitatively synthesised adding additional insights into what is known about femicide perpetrators. Finally, the papers we reviewed all included samples of incarcerated perpetrators who had completed a femicide. Additional work among perpetrators who were not charged, convicted, or incarcerated and perpetrators who attempted but did not complete femicide may add additional insights. This review highlights the importance of and heretofore absences in work focusing on intimate femicide perpetrator’s perspectives across diverse methodologies and disciplines. As perpetrators are the main drivers of femicide, information about their risk factors, motivations, and rationalisations is necessary for effective policy and programmatic intervention to prevent dangerous behaviours by men and actions to save women’s lives.

Acknowledgements The authors wish to acknowledge the victims of femicide whose lives should be remembered and centred. The authors are grateful to the family members and friends of victims, activists, advocates, and researchers who work tirelessly to ensure that femicide deaths are prevented in the future.

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50 CHANGING MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS OF FEMICIDE AS PRIMARY PREVENTION Jordan Fairbairn, Ciara Boyd, Yasmin Jiwani and Myrna Dawson Introduction When reporting femicide, mainstream news media (“the media”) are increasingly recognised as both information sources and active participants in social change. Researchers and advocates globally are increasingly vocal about the invisibility, trivialisation, and/or misrepresentation of femicide in the media (see Comas-d’Argemir, 2015; Jilozian and Abrahamyan, 2016) and have demonstrated that media coverage of femicide in its larger context is racialised, gendered, and classed. Media representations matter. Femicide is neither inevitable nor excusable, though the mainstream media often represents it as such. As Garcia-Del Moral (2014) argues, representations are a technology of violence. This chapter explores existing research on media representations of femicide, with the goal of increasing the media’s capacity to operate as a primary prevention tool. Primary prevention aims to prevent violence before it occurs, in contrast to secondary prevention and tertiary prevention, which focus on immediate responses and long-term care related to experiences of violence (Dahlberg and Krug, 2006). While we are focusing on media representations of femicide specifically, these findings apply to violence against women and girls (VAWG) more broadly. We argue that, if connected to evidence-based material, media coverage can operate as a form of primary prevention by providing public education about VAWG as a social problem, a human rights violation, and a public health crisis. However, in analysing research on media coverage of femicide, we see that coverage typically relies on narratives that reflect a dominant template (Kitzinger, 2000) that restricts the media’s potential to operate as a site of prevention. Templates work as short-hand devices, aiming to animate powerful narratives and organise information and make it intelligible to audiences (Kitzinger, 2000). At present, however, this dominant template does not accurately depict the structural forces shaping femicide. Through a review of international literature, this chapter finds that the dominant media template of femicide renders social structures such as patriarchy, racism, and colonisation invisible and enacts symbolic violence by presenting femicide as natural and inevitable and as the result of individually driven circumstances. We argue that research, advocacy, and journalist education must work to disrupt this template – to directly challenge the myths and omissions present in existing coverage. In Western contexts, in particular, these interventions must include resisting constructions of “worthy” and “unworthy” women and girls that result in othering femicide victims from racialised, immigrant, Indigenous, and/or religious communities and shifting practices to cover femicide as a public health crisis and as human rights violations, with a focus on increasing calls for community and state responsibility. 554

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The first part of this chapter explores current femicide media templates as symbolic violence and analyses prior literature to demonstrate what is currently known about media reporting of femicide. Here, we discuss research retrieved using the Omni search tool using keyword combinations related to (1) femicide (also feminicide/femicidio/feminicidio, domestic/intimate partner homicide/violence, violence against women, and gender-based violence), (2) media (also news and journalist), and (3) prevention (also education). We draw from research published in English from across the globe including Australia, Botswana, Canada, Hong Kong, Mexico, Turkey, and the United States, among other regions. The second part of this chapter considers past and future efforts to change femicide media coverage. We first focus on the work of various non-governmental and grassroots organisations and highlight promising strategies for change. Recognising the need for large-scale, intersectional, and global analyses of news representations of femicide, we then synthesise research and policy recommendations to explore how to move forward and what is needed to increase media potential for prevention work.

The Femicide Media Template The media use templates to create narratives and guide the way the public understands femicide. According to Kitzinger (2000: 61), these templates serve as rhetorical shorthand, helping journalists and audiences to make sense of fresh news stories. They are instrumental in shaping narratives around particular social problems, guiding public discussion not only about the past, but also the present and the future. Templates are defined by their status as received wisdom and unchanging nature (Kitzinger, 2000). Media templates can enact symbolic and discursive violence by reproducing and perpetuating socially constructed, unequal gender relations (Jiwani, 2009; Özer, 2019). Drawn from Pierre Bourdieu’s work, symbolic violence shows how repeated stereotypical media representations of historically marginalised people maintain and normalise societal power structures and inequality, thus operating as a form of violence (Glennie, 2018; Swartz, 1997). In representing femicide, the media landscape enacts symbolic violence by (1) positioning victims as culpable for the violence they experience, (2) commodifying or naturalising women’s deaths using racialised categorisations, (3) identifying which women are considered “grievable” (Butler, 2006) or worthy of being mourned, and (4) allowing the state to maintain limited involvement in addressing the conditions that contributed to the colonial, racialised, and gendered patterns of femicide (Stillman, 2007; Jiwani, 2009). For Indigenous and racialised women in particular, this symbolic violence perpetuates a poisonous acceptance of these bodies as inherently at risk. There is a significant body of American research on media coverage of femicide; however, the relative lack of research focusing on countries beyond the United States makes it difficult to compare reporting across countries. Nonetheless, we can synthesise existing research while highlighting the international work to identify key elements of the existing media template for femicide. This process demonstrates how the template restricts our understanding of femicide either as an individualised, isolated incident that is largely the responsibility of victims or as a cultural issue involving racialised Others (i.e. non-Western cultural communities; see Jiwani, 2009; Shier and Shor, 2016).

Victim-Blaming Media coverage of femicide and other forms of VAWG frequently engages in victim-blaming, suggesting that victims are responsible for their deaths and/or that the perpetrator’s actions were somehow justifiable (Bagai and Faimau, 2021, Bullock and Cubert, 2002; Jiwani, 2009; Meyers, 1996; 555

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Taylor, 2009; for exceptions, see McManus and Dorfman, 2005; Morgan and Politoff, 2012). For example, Bagai and Faimau (2021) found that news reporting in Botswana consistently degrades victims while representing them as blameworthy and found no instances where blame was placed on male perpetrators. These perpetrator-justification/victim-blaming patterns occur globally in news coverage, including in Canada (Fairbairn and Dawson, 2013); Ghana (Owusu-Addo, Owusu-Addo, Antoh, Sarpong, Obeng-Okrah, and Annan, 2018), Hong Kong (Leung, 2019), Italy (Gius and Lalli, 2014), Latin America (Montiel Valle and Martin, 2021; Pröll and Magin, 2022), Romania (Balica, Marinescu, and Balica, 2020), Turkey (Korteweg and Yurdakul, 2009), and the United States (Bullock and Cubert, 2002; Meyers, 1996; Taylor, 2009). Victim-blaming occurs directly (e.g. using negative language to refer to the victim) and indirectly (e.g. using sympathetic language to refer to the perpetrator) (Taylor, 2009). Research also suggests that, in cases where the femicide was perpetrated by a woman, victim-blaming was rare (Taylor, 2009). Victim-blaming patterns in the media are also racialised (Meyers, 1996; Jiwani, 2009; Chagnon, 2018). For example, Jiwani (2009) found that media reporting of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada portrays female victims as responsible for the violence by presenting an “us versus them” dichotomy. Here, victims are framed in a way that criminalises the representation of Indigenous identity and presents them as “demanding,” leading to an impression of blameworthiness (p. 9). Furthermore, the language surrounding victims is most evidently negative when discussing white males as the perpetrators (Jiwani, 2009). Gilchrist’s (2010) Canadian findings are similar, as Indigenous individuals are not seen as “newsworthy” and are depicted in a way that exemplifies stereotypes and promotes victim-blaming (p. 12). Researchers have similarly observed patterns of male and white supremacy in media reporting of VAWG in the United States where Black victims are seen as less newsworthy than white victims (Meyers, 1996). In news coverage, victim’s socioeconomic status and occupation intersect with gender and race in ways that may further stigmatise them (e.g. women working in the sex trade; see Jiwani and Young, 2006) or humanise them (e.g. women working as teachers or healthcare providers) (Slakoff and Fradella, 2019). While victim-blaming is common in media reporting of femicide, it is not inevitable. In Australia, Morgan and Politoff (2012) found that just 3% of articles describe victims in a negative tone and, in the United States, McManus and Dorfman (2005) found that less than 4% of articles blame female victims. Research from Canada and Spain shows that victim-blaming has decreased over time (Fairbairn and Dawson, 2013) and that media coverage now frequently represents femicide as a public problem (Comas-d’Argemir, 2015), demonstrating that the nature of news coverage can be shifted.

Misrepresenting Femicide as an Isolated Event Victim-blaming may contribute to sensationalised media coverage, which leads to misrepresentations of femicide (Bagai and Faimau, 2021; Morgan and Politoff, 2012). Media coverage frequently portrays femicide as an individual issue (Bouzerdan and Whitten-Woodring, 2018; Hernández, 2018) by, for example, focusing solely on the perpetrator’s mental health (Shier and Shor, 2016). By covering femicide as an individual incident, the media ignore the reality that VAWG is an ongoing societal issue rooted in patriarchal beliefs and help to maintain gender myths, stereotypes, and discrimination (Bullock and Cubert, 2002). Furthermore, negative representations of victims are shaped by patriarchal, racist, and colonial ideologies embedded in societal institutions such as the media (Bagai and Faimau, 2021; Montiel Valle and Martin, 2021). The tendency to misrepresent femicide as an isolated event may be connected to the sources journalists use to gather information. Research from Canada, Hong Kong, Australia, Mexico, and the United States reveals that media over-rely on police and other criminal justice officials as sources of information and frequently fail to gather information from VAWG experts or advocates (Fairbairn 556

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and Dawson, 2013; Garcia-Del Moral, 2014; Hernández, 2018; Morgan and Politoff, 2012; Taylor, 2009). While using the police as a source of information may be beneficial in terms of ease of access, this reliance may prevent journalists from connecting femicides to other instances of VAWG because police typically only provide details about specific incidents (Chagnon, 2018). Moreover, a reliance on criminal justice sources may prevent the inclusion of important public health and social services information. In fact, Morgan and Politoff (2012) find that, in Australia, only 2% of newspaper articles cite victim services information, such as crisis and support phone numbers. In the United States, researchers observed reporting differences when journalists used “domestic violence advocates as sources, quoted friends or family giving advice to others in domestic violence situations, and/or included contact information for local domestic violence shelters” (Gillespie, Richards, Givens, and Smith, 2013: 225). Beyond providing this additional information, these articles more frequently linked the femicide to criminal justice system failures. Thus, changing sourcing practices is a key aspect of broadening femicide media coverage to capture trends across femicide cases and contexts and to encourage social and political responses to femicide.

Femicide as a Cultural Issue In Western contexts, one aspect of the dominant media template that frequently strays from the isolated event coverage is in cases involving racialised, immigrant, and/or religious communities. Here, femicide is presented as based on cultural traditions that privilege men and treat women as maleowned property, and patriarchy is taken up only as an aspect of non-Western cultural communities to position these groups as Others (Jiwani, 2009; Shier and Shor, 2016). In Canada, media coverage involving Muslim perpetrators often refers to femicides as honour killings, which Shier and Shor (2016) argue deflects attention from how patriarchy shapes male entitlement and control over female family members. For example, media coverage of a so-called high-profile honour killing focuses extensively on recent immigration to Canada (Mason, 2015), making the family’s cultural background a primary focus and failing to connect the killings of four women and girls to the broader issue of VAWG (Jiwani, 2014b). Chagnon (2018) argues that Western media typically link VAWG to culture when it occurs in Islamic societies, which, consequently, “contributes to a racist cultural climate, which view[s] Islamic societies as culturally backward” (p. 495). In these instances, the victims are framed as innocent women held in the clutches of a barbaric culture – in other words, death by culture (Grewal, 2009; Zine, 2009).

Increasing the Media’s Role in Primary Prevention Disrupting the Template While templates often seem natural or inevitable, they are in fact constructed through various mediated processes (Kitzinger, 2000). Thus, they can be disrupted. Intervention in femicide media representation requires resisting constructions of “worthy” and “unworthy” victims (Stillman, 2007; Jiwani, 2009). This is inexorably linked to challenging “the missing white girl syndrome” of mainstream media, which typically involves extensive coverage of missing young women who are taken up in media as “damsels in distress” through their whiteness, class status, and/or other social variables (Stillman, 2007). Transnational activist work, as Stillman (2007) explains, attempts to “resist media narratives that naturalise the deaths of certain ‘kinds’ of women (e.g. poor, non-white, precariously employed), while commodifying others” (p. 493). In our quest to expand the boundaries of societal empathy, Stillman argues that the first step should be diagnostic, to name the problem. Then, once there is shared vocabulary for recognising mass-mediated constructions of “worthy” and “unworthy” victims, we can turn our attention to proactive solutions (Stillman, 2007). 557

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A second strategy for shifting the media template is to tell stories (Stillman, 2007). This involves expanding the boundaries of societal empathy and drawing lessons from the theatre community to reappropriate symbolic social space (Stillman, 2007). In the United States, one example of such a strategy is the #SayHerName campaign launched by the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) and Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies (CISPS), which spotlights “the ofteninvisible names and stories of women and girls who have been victimized by racist police violence, and provides support to their families” (AAPF, para. 1). This work aligns with Stillman’s objective to imagine each life as “equally worthy of narration and protection,” intertwined with larger political and structural resistance at the intersections of race, class, and gender oppression (p. 497). However, resisting missing white girl syndrome by increasing stories of racialised bodies and those victims otherwise deemed “unworthy” is not without its challenges and runs the risk of representing victims as only their harms. As Stillman explains, One must think carefully about how to represent marginalised victims in life rather than simply embalming them in death, helping audiences to move beyond the dogma that poor, non-white women’s bodies can only gain public visibility once they have been gruesomely violated. (p. 496) This work, as Stillman argues, must be rooted in systemic solutions and built on the expertise from survivors’ voices: What we need is a different way of constructing “news” altogether, one that acknowledges the social roots of gender-based violence and respects survivors’ rights to speak for themselves in the mainstream media, whenever possible not as tokens of suffering used to peddle newspapers, but as knowledge-bearers and agents of social change. (p. 497; see also Tuck, 2009) In the remaining sections, we consider prior attempts to shift existing media templates, focusing on the efforts of various non-governmental and grassroots organisations, and then map out research and policy pathways for future work.

Grassroots and Advocacy Work There are many instances of grassroots mobilisation against the mainstream templates used to report VAWG, and numerous organisations have focused on creating guides targeting journalists reporting on VAWG. These have been published in regions including the United States (Chicago Task Force on Violence Against Girls and Young Women, 2012; Starr, 2008), Canada (Bordon, 2000; Femifesto, 2013), Scotland (Zero Tolerance, 2018), and South Africa (Makombe, 2009). While these listed guides generally focus on reporting on VAWG more broadly (e.g. domestic violence, sexual assault), a number of guides have been developed in Latin America specifically for journalists reporting on femicide (e.g. Arroyo, Rivera, and Ramos, 2021). Knowing how the media works, how news organisations are structured, and how to respond to journalists is a critical foundation for making such interventions. For example, in an effort to draw attention to a particular case involving the murder of a young 14-year-old South Asian woman, Reena Virk, one Canadian organisation used their knowledge of media routines by identifying news holes and then plugging in their messages to fill the lack of information (Bordon, 2000). Advocate tactical interventions such as these are critical and can help to direct public focus to the systemic issues that perpetuate violence. In the United States, Ryan, Anastario, and DaCunha 558

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(2006) worked with the Rhode Island Coalition against Domestic Violence (RICADV) on a longitudinal initiative to increase organisational capacity to have a news media presence and engage journalists. Through initiatives such as focus groups with reporters to understand their knowledge of intimate partner violence (IPV), hiring a media liaison, establishing a media caucus, and running public education campaigns, the organisation became the primary background news source for IPV, and local news reports of these events, previously framed as unpredictable private tragedies, shifted to more frequently frame these homicides as social problems warranting public intervention (Ryan et al., 2006). While the creation of media reporting toolkits may have been underway prior to the mid-2000s, the proliferation of the internet and, consequently, social media allows for a massively expanded audience, broader information dissemination, and global collaboration. An example to this end is the Journalism Initiative on Gender-Based Violence, created by the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL) at Rutgers University in the United States. This initiative brought together more than 100 journalists and media experts worldwide “to identify gaps in existing guidelines on gender-based violence reporting” (Dharmaraj, 2021: 5). These consultations led to the creation of Silences and Omissions: A Media Guide for Covering Gender-Based Violence, which is aimed at “journalists, schools of journalism, media trainers, gender and media studies researchers and educations, and NGO communications specialists working with the media on issues of gender-based violence” (Dharmaraj, 2021: 5). The guide includes “evidence-based analyses of media coverage; examples of best practices; case studies; personal essays from journalists reporting on gender-based violence and survivors; a resource list aimed at helping journalists identify a wider range of experts, and ideas for future coverage” (Dharmaraj, 2021: 5). This global initiative represents an important step in efforts to change the media template in at least two significant ways. First, its recommendations and resources go beyond individual journalists to target the educators and institutions that train journalists and, thus, influence the dominant media template at a more structural level. Second, this approach explicitly draws upon international human rights standards and strives to shift the media template to include a human rights perspective. For example, the second of the six key recommendations put forward is to “offer a human rights perspective to put gender-based violence stories in context and address root causes, as well as issues of accountability and redress” (p. 5).

Research and Policy Pathways Scholarship on femicide media reporting points to a number of key areas to expand research and develop policy initiatives. First, there is a need to diversify the research produced on news coverage of femicide by supporting and highlighting research from outside the United States (Estes and Webber, 2021) and gathering data from various regions representing a range of socio-economic classes, rural and isolated regions, Indigenous and racialised communities, and languages (O’Gara, 2014; Gerrits, 2019; Seely and Riffe, 2021). In building a global research body, research should continually critically examine how femicide media reporting aligns with the epidemiological data on the issue (Owusu-Addo et al., 2018). Work is needed to consider how gender, race and ethnicity, religion, class, and sexual orientation intersect in the news construction of femicide, in particular to further explore the representation of deaths labelled honour killings (Vatandoost, 2012) and to explore how alternative discourses and contesting frames challenge the dominant perspective (Jiwani, 2014a). Second, femicide media research should continue to expand focus from the media content to the media creators and the environment in which they operate. Specifically, more knowledge is needed about the presence and nature of reporting differences in relation to journalist attributes, such as gender, attitudes, and level of education around IPV and femicide (Bouzerdan and Whitten-Woodring, 2018). Beyond journalists’ individual attributes, research should strive to understand how the social 559

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and political context of news environments impacts reporters (Morgan and Simons, 2018) and how news organisation practices around sources, framing, editorial processes, and support for journalists in covering femicide take place in various contexts globally (Cullen, O’Brien, and Corcoran, 2019). Scholars have also suggested comparing police reports with media coverage to analyse how the information transformed from a report to an article (Mercer, 2019) and critically analysing the over-reliance on police as news sources in general (Fairbairn and Dawson, 2013), including specific consideration on how the police themselves approach femicide communications (Gerrits, 2019). Third, there are calls to examine how femicide is reported across different media, including television and social media, to understand the overlap and interaction between different forms (Gillespie et al., 2013; Cullen et al., 2019; Easteal, Holland, Breen, Vaughan, and Sutherland, 2019; Estes and Webber, 2021; Leung, 2019; Lee and Wong, 2020). Research should also compare a broader range of newspapers/news types (Kamaya, 2018; Lloyd and Ramon, 2017) and a wider timeframe (Mercer, 2019; Taylor, 2009; Vatandoost, 2012) to explore how patterns change over time (Fairbairn and Dawson, 2013). In particular, social media presents opportunities to contextualise coverage and to provide an important reframing or counternarrative to official news coverage (Easteal et al., 2019; Fairbairn, 2020). A final area identified to further research on femicide media reporting is to connect research to policy change through action-research, where researchers engage journalists, survivors, and/or community organisations through the news construction process (Ryan et al., 2006; Fairbairn and Dawson, 2013; Gillespie et al., 2013; Lloyd and Ramon, 2017; Hernández, 2018). Researchers may look to gather insights from journalists about reporting choices, how news sources are found, the language chosen to describe victims and perpetrators, and attitudes and practices around including broader context on femicide and IPV. Additionally, research can explore the role that advocacy plays in journalistic interpretations of femicide (Gillespie et al., 2013; Lloyd and Ramon, 2017), including the potential for news coverage to raise awareness about support services available to victims (Owusu-Addo et al., 2018). We see here that femicide media reporting scholarship offers valuable direction to build an empirical picture of global media coverage and identify what needs to change. Building on this, there is also a need to explore how these changes might occur – what policies and practices might be implemented to shift the dominant template in femicide media reporting to increase media potential as a primary prevention tool? The most frequently discussed area for policy and practice change in research on femicide media reporting is targeted training and education for journalists. As a starting point, this training and resource development should include education around (1) how femicide and IPV are social problems rather than individual issues alone (Fairbairn and Dawson, 2013); (2) eliminating harmful language frequently observed in VAWG reporting, such as sexualised language, sanitised language, and euphemisms (Branch, 2019); and (3) how implicit messages (e.g. victim-blaming through asking “why” questions about the homicide) manifest in reporting (Easteal, Blatchford, Holland, and Sutherland, 2021; Hernández, 2018). Additional policy changes recommended include having a designated VAWG reporter (Easteal et al., 2021) and developing reporting recommendations for femicide-suicide cases specifically, given the frequency of femicides that are followed by perpetrator suicide and the numerous suicide reporting guidelines that exist but may not be used with femicide-suicides (Richards, Gillespie, and Smith, 2014). In terms of mobilising media for public health messaging, O’Gara (2014) identifies a specific need for health communication practitioners to work with rural community news editors and influential community members to include messaging that is relevant to community culture and can overcome challenges such as the often-taboo nature of discussing IPV. This speaks to the importance of action-research discussed earlier and stresses the need for media interventions to be locally situated and sensitive to community needs and context in developing informative and effective messaging. 560

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Conclusion The dominant media template of femicide renders social structures such as patriarchy, racism, and colonisation invisible and enacts symbolic violence by legitimating femicide as somehow natural and inevitable and as the result of individually driven circumstances. Despite feminist advocate efforts to intervene in this coverage in recent decades, this template has held strong, and thus, people look to this template to categorise femicide when it occurs. Nonetheless, there are changes underway in recent years, driven in large part by challenges from community and advocacy organisations that work with victims of IPV, and by the collaborative efforts of select journalism initiatives. Changes are also due to the introduction of new technologies, most particularly social media platforms that have been used as tactical tools to interrupt and disrupt dominant interpretations of femicide. Increasing the capacity of the media to act as a primary prevention tool requires work to disrupt the template – to directly challenge the myths and omissions present in existing coverage. Current media practices need to shift to cover femicides as human rights violations, with a focus on increasing perceptions of government responsibility (Bouzerdan and Whitten-Woodring, 2018). Shifting the news template requires enabling and encouraging journalists to diversify news sources (Fairbairn and Dawson, 2013; Kamaya, 2018) and incentivising news organisations to go beyond reporting of individual femicides and publish feature stories and opinion pieces (Easteal et al., 2021). While powerful and often invisible media templates are not “inevitably self-perpetuating” (Kitzinger, 2000: 74), templates are created and maintained by power relations, journalist strategy and decision-making, and audience reception and attitudes (Kitzinger, 2000) and can be challenged and shifted. In addition to deconstructing harmful media templates, mobilising media as a tool of primary prevention must involve shifting and remaking the template. In this way, it may be possible to minimise the symbolic violence involved in reporting of femicide and other forms of VAWG and increase media potential as a tool of primary prevention.

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564

INDEX

Note: Page numbers in italic indicate a figure or map and page numbers in bold indicate a table or box on the corresponding page. abandonment of a woman or girl 166 abduction 166, 336, 362, 372, 390 abolition 481–482 Aboriginal women 42, 54, 143; see also Indigenous people abortion 311–318 accessibility 10 accountability see state accountability achievements 100–101 action 17–22, 18 activism, data 103–112 activism, digital 495–503 activity metrics 498–499, 498 adaptation 436–439 administrative strategies 458–459 advocacy work 558–559 affect 109–110 affordances 24–26, 25 Afghanistan 129–137 Africa see South Africa; sub-Saharan Africa age: Canada 164; Turkey 269, 269; United Kingdom 282 Ahmed, Shafilea 335–337 allies 122–124, 345, 469 anti-feminist mentalities 133 antilynching campaign 487–489 archaeology: through epistemic worlds 18; of knowledge 17–26; as method 19 Argentina 12–13, 94–100, 106, 115, 116–118, 495–503 armed conflict 360–361 armed conflict femicide 360–369 Australia 40–42, 140–147, 302–306, 555–557 autonomy 402–403, 403

biographical factors 547–548 Black femicide 162, 236, 485–492 Black Lives Matter 485–492 Black women and girls 34, 42; Brazil 156–157; Canada 162–163; and data activism 104–108; and human-centred computing 531, 532, 532–533, 539–540; and legislation 415; and memorialisation 510; North America 162–163, 292, 485, 489–491; South Africa 242, 351, 354; and systems of power 82; United Kingdom 289–290; United States 292 blame see victim-blaming bodies: and systemic sexual feminicide 321–330; violent and disposable 73–76 borders 475–482 boundaries 73–76 boundary object 17, 22–23 Brazil 30–35, 150–157, 151, 366–367, 380–381, 533 bureaucracy 218, 355, 391, 471, 478 Canada 8–9, 160–168, 465–473, 475–482; and colonialism 64–67; femigenocide 346–348; and the global political economy 34–35; and a global social ecological model 40–42; intimate femicide/ intimate partner femicide 302–305; and media representations 555–558; statistics 347–348 Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability (CFOJA) 161–167 capitalism 323–325 carceral discourses 312, 317–318 carceral feminism/carceral state feminism 312–313, 314–315, 318 carceral roots of population control 315 case illustrations: mass shootings/murders targeting women driven by MRA/Incel ideology 43–45,

565

Index 45; Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women 40–41; patterns of femicide 33–35 case law 54–56 causes 120 CDWA see Counting Dead Women Australia census: Census of India 191, 193; CDWA femicide census (Canada) 140, 144–147; Femicide Census (UK) 279–286; Law Enforcement Census (Mexico) 206, 208 ceremony 478–479 CFOJA see Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability change: ethos of 110–111; systemic 119–120 children: homicides 240–241; negligent homicides of 194; see also infanticide China 311–318 Ciudad Juárez 202–203, 325–326 Colombia 114–118, 426–427 colonialism 60–67, 321–330, 465–473 Colonial/Modern Gender System (Lugones) 321, 323–326, 329 community led solutions 144–147 completeness, data 97–98 computing see human-centred computing consciousness-raising 481–482 consequences 120 consultation 523 contexts/contextualisation 12, 107–108, 120; Georgia 185–188; North America 476–477; Palestinian society 219–221; Russia 226 continuities and discontinuities 380–387 coordination 437–440; and data collection 96–97 counterdata science 529–530; data against feminicide tools 536–540, 537–539; data feminism and design of feminicide counterdata science tools 530–531; design implications 533–536; humancomputer interaction and gender-based violence 530; methods 531–532, 532; participatory design process and pilot 533 Counting Dead Women Australia (CDWA) 140–141, 144–147 country of birth 141–143, 282–283 COVID-19 pandemic 4–5; and intimate femicide 305–306 crimes, hate 382–383 criminalisation 311–318; of gender-based killings 412–413 criminal structures 372, 375–376, 378 criminological, the 21 cruelty see state cruelty culturally diverse women 143 culture: cultural definitions of femicide 333–334; femicide as a cultural issue 557; India 195–196 data 11, 91–102, 93–94, 103–112, 519–527; against feminicide tools 536–540, 537–539; analysis 117; Australia 141; Canada 161–162; data feminism 530–531; Europe 174–175, 175; gaps 143–147;

Georgia 183–184; Mexico 206–209, 208–209; Russian Federation 226–233, 230–231; sources 91–102; sub-Saharan Africa 247–248, 248; Turkey 273–275; see also counterdata science definitions: boundary object 22; data collection 56; data activism practices against feminicide 105; data feminism 105; femicide 5–6, 19–22, 29, 33, 51, 53, 56, 114–117; feminicide 5–6, 19–22, 96–97; mass shootings 44 deprivation of liberty 166, 183 design: of feminicide counterdata science tools 530–531; implications 536; participatory design process 533 digital activism 495–503; against feminicide 105 discontinuities see continuities and discontinuities disposable bodies 354; production of 73–76 disposable spaces 73–76 disposal of a woman or girl 33, 60, 73–76, 166, 325, 353–354 dispossessed lives 322 dissident memories 505–513 diversity 412–415 doctrine of provocation 444–445 documenting 4–5, 119–123; Afghanistan 134–136; armed conflict femicide 367–369; Canada 161–167; and colonialism 64–67; and data activism 105–111; femigenocide 347–348; and human-centred computing 532–533; Latin America 434–435, 438–439; Mexico 383–384; North America 161–167, 383–384, 487–488; sub-Saharan Africa 259–260; Turkey 266–273 domestic courts 422–426, 428 domestic violence: armed conflict femicide 361–362; Australia 140–145; Brazil 150–151; Canada 161–162; Europe 170–171, 174–176; Georgia 187; and the global political economy 33–35; India 192–193, 196–197; intimate femicide/intimate partner femicide 305; Latin America 520, 525; and media representations 557–559; North America 161–162, 491–492; Palestine/Palestinian society 214–215, 219; Russian Federation 225–228; South Africa 236–237; and state accountability 454–460; sub-Saharan Africa 256–257; Turkey 266, 272–273 dowry deaths 191–198 economic poverty 134 economies 508–509 eldercides 241; see also murder El Salvador 372–378 email alerts system 537–540, 538–539 emotional burden 120–122 emotional toll 99–100 enforcement: of IHRL 423–425; non-enforcement of the law 134 epistemic worlds 18–22 ethics 108–109

566

Index ethnicity/ethnic groups: Afghanistan 133; Canada 162–164; and the global political economy 33–35; India 197–198; and intersectionality 52–55; Palestine/Palestinian society 215; United Kingdom 282–283; United States 289, 293 ethos of change 110–111 Europe 170–178 European Observatory on Femicide (EOF) 170, 174, 176, 178; history of 172; thematic groups of 172–173 excessive violence 167 extended families 133, 215, 241 extremist movements 43–44 extremist violence 80–86 familicide 44 families 133, 215, 241; Palestinian society 216, 217–218, 220–221; with patriarchal structures 133 fatal “love” 443–446 femicide 3–6; Afghanistan 129–137; Argentina 495–503; armed conflict 360–369; Australia 140–147; Canada 160–168, 465–473; and colonialism 60–67; data sources and challenges 91–102; Europe 170–178; femigenocide as a specific type of 344–345; femigenocide as a subtype of 343–344; Georgia 181–189; a global archaeology of knowledge 17–26; and the global political economy 29–36; a global social ecological model 40–46; guiding frameworks 7–10; and the “heat of passion” criminal doctrine 443–450; “honour”-based 332–340; India 191–198; and intersectionality 50–57; and legislation 411–418; media representations 554–561; Mexico 381–382; North America 160–168, 381–382, 443–450, 465–473, 485–492; observatories and watches 114–124; Palestinian society 214–222; prevalence and characteristics 6–7; Russian Federation 225–233; South Africa 236–243; and space 70–77; sub-Saharan Africa 246–260; and systems of power 80–86; and transnational law 422–428; Turkey 264–275; United Kingdom 278–286; United States 288–293, 443–450; and war 390–404 Femicide Census 279–286, 281 femicide map project 267 Femicid.net 228–229 femigenocide 342–348 feminicide 3–6; Brazil 150–157; Canada 475–482; and colonialism 60–67, 321–330; counterdata science 529–540; data activism 103–112; data sources and challenges 91–102; El Salvador 372–378; and a global archaeology of knowledge 17–26; guiding frameworks 7–10; Latin America 519–527; and legislation 411–418; and memorialisation 505–513; Mexico 201–210, 380–387, 475–482; observatories and watches 114–124; prevalence and characteristics 6–7; South Africa 351–358; and space 70–77; and state

accountability 453–461; United States 475–482; and war 390–404 feminism 311–318; anti-feminist mentalities 133; data feminism 530–531; feminist geographical approach 71–73; hashtag feminism 496–497; transfeminisms 385–386 field courts 134–135, 137n1 firearm homicide 288, 292 firearms 362–363 foeticide 191–198 former partners see partners/former partners friction 25–26 friends 216, 217–218 gang-related violence 372–378 gender 80–86, 485–492; gendered dimensions of mass shootings 43 gender-based/gender-related killings 33, 123; Afghanistan 131; armed conflict femicide 368; diversity in 412–415; Georgia 183; and humancentred computing 529–532, 536–537; India 191; Latin America 433–440; and legislation 411–415; male perpetrators’ accounts 542; Mexico 203; see also femicide; feminicide gender-based motives and indicators 165, 187, 273, 425 gender-based/gender violence 32, 499–502; Afghanistan 135–136; in conflict 361–362; and human-computer interaction 530; invisible 376 genocide 64–66; femigenocide 342–348; genocidalfemi(ni)cidal state 395–402, 396–402 geography: Canada 164–165; feminist 72–73; rights according to 383–384 Georgia 181–189 globalisation 32 global level 8–9, 306–307; colonisation 326–329, 326–327, 328; global archaeology of knowledge 17–26; global patterns in honour crimes 197; global political economy 29–36; global social ecological model 40–46; global systematic review of male perpetrators’ accounts 542–551 grassroots work 558–559 hashtag feminism 496–497 hate crimes 382–383 “heat of passion” criminal doctrine 443–450 help systems 225, 228 high bureaucracy 218 highlighter 536–537, 537 homicides: of Black women 289–290; of children 194, 240–241; firearm 292; of Indigenous women 290–291; partner 192–193; see also murder “honour”-based femicide 332–340 honour crimes 197; see also honour killings honour killings 132–134, 191–198, 334–335 human-centred computing 529–530; data against feminicide tools 536–540, 537–539; data feminism and design of feminicide counterdata

567

Index science tools 530–531; design implications 533–536; human-computer interaction and gender-based violence 530; methods 531–532, 532; participatory design process and pilot 533 human-computer interaction (HCI) 530 humanisation 355–358, 356 human rights movement 7, 10

justice-seeking 390–392; the genocidal-femi(ni)cidal state 395–402; Kurdistan 393–404; self-defence and autonomy 402–403; and transnational struggle 403–404; and war 392–404

IHRL see international human rights law illegal economies 508–509 immediate level 177 imperialism 323–325 impunity: culture of 131–132; as a pedagogy of (state) cruelty 509–511 inaction 50–51, 218 incels see involuntary celibates India 191–198, 311–318 indicators 165, 185–188, 267–273, 368–369 Indigenous people: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women 42, 54, 143; Canada 162–163; Mexico 62–64; Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) 470–472; resistance and resilience 469–470; United States 290–291; see also Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls individual level 31, 122, 176 infanticide 193–194 information-sharing 523 information sources 218–219, 554 initiatives 5–7, 20–21; armed conflict femicide 368–369; Canada 161–162; and data sources 92, 94–98, 100–101; and legislation 415–416; and memorialisation 505–506; and state accountability 458–460; Turkey 264–265 instigated suicide 135–136 institutional level 19–20, 56, 177, 218, 415 interdisciplinary lens 9–10 international courts 129, 329, 423–425, 428 international human rights law (IHRL) 422–426, 434–436 international law 54–56; approaches 423–425 intersectionality 50–57, 80–86; and Indigenous women in Mexico 62–64; Turkey 273–275 interventions 193–195, 278–279, 292–293, 312–313, 390–392, 557–560 intimate/intimate partner femicide 142, 301–307, 542–551; South Africa 241–242; Turkey 272–273; United Kingdom 284–285; United States 291–293 investigation 433–440 invisibility 382–383; invisible gender violence 376 involuntary celibates (incels) 43–45, 45, 81–85 Israel 61–62, 115, 117–118, 120–121, 214–222 iteration 523–525, 524 jealousy 186–187 juridical type femigenocide 342–346; see also femigenocide justice: systems without 477–478; unofficial forms of 134

killing, method of: Canada 165–167; United Kingdom 283 knowledge, archaeology of 17–26 Kurdistan 275, 390–383; femi(ni)cide as a war concept in 393–395, 394; and the genocidalfemi(ni)cidal state 395–402; self-defence and autonomy 402–403; and transnational struggle 403–404 LAMP see Latin American Model Protocol for the Investigation of Gender-Related Killings of Women (Femicide/Feminicide) landmark cases 55, 131, 425–427 Latin America 433–440, 519–527; variety in femicide/feminicide laws 414–415 Latin American Model Protocol for the Investigation of Gender-Related Killings of Women (Femicide/ Feminicide) (LAMP) 433–434; adaptation to different Latin American countries 435–436; elaboration process 434–435, 439–440; relevant content as complemented by national adaptation processes 436–439 law/legislation 21, 411–418; Brazil 151–157; case law 54–56; El Salvador 372–373; Georgia 181–182; international human rights law (IHRL) 422–426, 434–436; international law 54–56; law enforcement institutions 216–217, 221; legal context 155, 220–221, 428; legal definitions 411–412; legal frameworks 182–183, 226, 315, 434, 446–447; legal protections 220, 510; legal responses 12, 411–421, 422–432, 433–442, 443–450, 453–461; legal strategies 456–457; legal systems 203–206, 205, 206, 293, 422–424; Mexico 203–204; non-enforcement of 134; Russian Federation 225–227; soft law 425–427; and state accountability 454–458; transnational law 422–428; United Kingdom 278–279 LGBTQ+ 35, 40, 42, 120; Brazil 153; Canada 465, 467, 472; and data activism 111; and data sources 97, 102; and femigenocide 347; and humancentred computing 530–534, 540; Mexico 207, 383; North America 207, 291, 383, 465, 467, 472, 492; and transnational law 426; United States 291 liberty, deprivation of 166, 183 linguistically diverse women 143 literature review 130, 215–216 lived experience 41–43 local level 8–9; local access to the people’s permanent tribunal 479–481; local patterns in honour crimes 197 location of femicides 30, 283–284 love: fatal “love” as a lesser crime 443–446

568

Index male perpetrators, accounts of 542–551; see also perpetrators mapping 72–74, 267, 327 maras 375–376 masculinity/masculinities: masculine violent criminal structures 375–376; mass shootings and femicide as extension of 82–84; threatened 81–82; violated 376 mass shootings/murders: driven by MRA/Incel ideology 43–45, 45; as familicide 44; gendered dimensions of 43; and masculinity 82–84; misogynistic 43–44; Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women 40–41; and whiteness 82–84 materiality 24 measuring tools 173–174 media 108–109, 554–561; Palestinian society 215–220 memorialisation 505–513 men’s rights activists (MRAs) 43–45, 45 method of killing: Canada 165–167; United Kingdom 283 methods and methodologies 11, 108–109, 117–123, 497; armed conflict femicides 363–365; human-centred computing 531–532, 532; male perpetrators’ accounts of intimate femicide 543–545, 544, 547; Palestinian society 216–217; Russian Federation 229; sub-Saharan Africa 247–248, 248; systemic sexual feminicide 322 Mexico 201–210, 380–387, 475–482; Indigenous women 62–64 migration 32 minoritised groups 80–85, 533 minority status 267, 272 misogyny: intersection of white supremacy and 84–85; misogynistic mass shootings 43–44 misrepresentation 556–557; see also representations Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) 40–41, 465–473; national inquiry into 346–347, 472–473; roots of 467–469; and twospirit (MMIWG2S) victims 475–482, 530, 532, 533, 540 missing girls 193–194 MMIWG2S see under Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Model Protocol see Latin American Model Protocol for the Investigation of Gender-Related Killings of Women monitoring 118–121; Afghanistan 136–137; and armed conflict femicide 363–364, 367–368; Georgia 183–184, 188; and humancentred computing 532–536, 539–540; and intersectionality 55–56; and state accountability 454–455 motives/motivations: Canada 165; Georgia 185–188; intimate femicide 303–304; Turkey 270–271, 270, 273 MRAs see men’s rights activities multi-stakeholder commitment 525–526

murder: diversity in 412–415; dowry murders 192–193; driven by MRA/Incel ideology 43–45, 45; infanticide 193–194; loss of legal protection for murdered women 220; Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls 40–41, 346–347; negligent homicides of girl children/female infanticide 194; partner homicides 192–193; see also dowry deaths; foeticide; honour killings; mass shootings/murders “narcos” 485–487 National Homicide Monitoring Program (NHMP) 141 National Minimum Dataset 141–142 national policy/strategy 94, 173, 195, 203, 242, 278 Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) 470–472 necropolitics 353–354, 485–492 negligence, systemic 218 negligent homicides of girl children 194 neoliberalism 507–508 networks 122–123 #NiUnaMenos 495–503 nodes 105–112 non-enforcement of the law 134 non-intimate femicide 241–242 normative frameworks 203–206, 205, 206 North America 476–477, 485–492; see also Canada; Mexico; United States observatories 114–124, 115–116 Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) 215; see also Palestine/Palestinian society “overkill” 167, 283 Palestine/Palestinian society 61–62, 66, 214–222 Panama 116–119, 116, 121, 524–527 participatory design process 533 participatory action-research 522 participatory standardisation processes 521–522 partner homicides 192–193, 291–292, 542–545 partners/former partners, targeting of 83–84 patriarchy/patriarchal structures 85, 133, 137, 288, 343, 374–375, 392, 511 pedagogy of (state) cruelty 509–511 people’s permanent tribunal (PPT) 479–481 perpetrators 542–551; Russian Federation 232–233; Turkey 268, 268; United Kingdom 280–282, 281 place 107–108, 472–473 Poland 116, 117–119, 121 policy 13, 44, 54–56; Australian 140; media representations 559–560; population control 313–316; reforms 119–120; sex-selective abortion 312–313, 316; sub-Saharan Africa 259–260 political economy 29–36 politics: necropolitics 353–354; political meanings 411–412; post-mortem 385–386 population control 311–318

569

Index porosity 24 positionality 41 post-mortem politics 385–386 poverty see economic poverty power 472–473; see also systems of power practice 13, 44; sub-Saharan Africa 259–260 predisposing factors 547–548 pre-incident processes 271, 271 prevalence studies 94, 225–228 prevention 554–561; gaps 144–147; Mexico 203–206, 205, 206; qualitative data in 98–99; United States 292–293 previous violence perpetrated against the victim 165–166 profitability of violence 507–508 prostitution see sex work feminicide protests 35–36, 393–394, 402–403; Argentina 496–498; and memorialisation 509–512; Mexico 385–386; North America 385–386, 485–488; South Africa 236–238, 242–243 provocation, doctrine of 444–448 Public Defender’s Office of Georgia 181, 183–184, 187–188 public institutions 55, 97, 218, 417, 440 public responses 242–243 qualitative data and research: armed conflict femicide 367–368; Europe 176–177; femicide prevention 98–99; findings in published scholarly articles 249–257; human-centred computing 531–532, 532 quantitative data and research 105, 123, 173–175, 175, 465, 497, 543; in published scholarly articles 249–257 race 80–86; Canada 164 racialised women and girls 162–163 reflection 92, 117–123 reforms, policy 117, 119–120 relationship: Canada 164; Turkey 268, 268; United Kingdom 280–282, 281 religions see world religions representations 554–561 research 13; armed conflict femicide 367–368; goals 94; media representations 559–560; participatory action-research 522; sub-Saharan Africa 259–260; see also qualitative data and research; quantitative data and research resilience 13, 176, 197, 465, 469–470 resistance: and contemporary North American necropolitics 485–487; Indigenous 469–470; trans 385–386 response: to armed conflict femicides 368–369; state 456–459; women’s groups 459–460 revenge 186–187 revictimisation 382–383 rights according to geography 383–384

risk assessment 176–177, 293, 304–305 risk factors 98–99, 142–143, 291–293, 305–307, 466–467 risk profiles 238, 241–242 Russian Federation 225–233 sanction 203–206, 205, 206 #SayHerName campaign 351–358, 489–492 security 377 self-defence 402–403, 403 self-narratives 548 sense-making 548–550 separation: Canada 166–167; United Kingdom 284–285 sex industry 285–286 sex ratio 194–195 sex-related motives and indicators 165 sex-selective abortion (SSA) 311–318 sexual violence 361–362 sex workers 485–487 Sex Worker’s Education and Advocacy Task Force (SWEAT) 351–358 sex work feminicide 351–358 shooting, death by 135 shootings see mass shootings/murders social, the 20 social death, trans 384–385 social ecological model 40–46 social responses 12–13 social understandings: 154–157 societal level 177 socio-spatial scripts 70–77 soft law 425–427 solidarity 122–123 South Africa 236–243, 237, 351–358 space 70–77, 107–108 Spain 114, 117, 119, 121–122 spatial memorialisation 511–513 standardisation 519–527; and data collection 96–97 state accountability 453–461; Turkey 266–267 state cruelty 505–513 state responses 242–243 statistics/statistical data, 21; armed conflict femicides 365–367, 366–367; Canada 347–348; Mexico 206–209, 208–209; Russian Federation 226–228 stoning, death by 135 studies: Russian Federation 226–228; South Africa 237–241; sub-Saharan Africa 247–248, 248, 249–257, 258; United Kingdom 279–286, 281 sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) 246–247; discussion 258–259; methods 247–248, 248; recommendations 259–260; results 248–258, 249–257 subtypes 12 suicide, instigated 135–136 systemic changes 119–120 systemic negligence 218

570

Index systemic sexual feminicide 321–330 systems of power 80–86 systems without justice 477–478 targeting: minoritised groups 84; partners/former partners 83–84; women 82–83 templates, media 555, 557–558 temporal variations 280, 536 territories 321–330 testimonios 476–482 theory/the theoretical 10, 22, 44, 70–77, 545–547, 546 “thug” 485–488 time 106–107; temporal variations 280, 536 topology 24–25 Torres Strait Islander women 143 tradition 195–196 transdisciplinarity 9–10 transfeminicide 380–387 transfeminisms 385–386 transnational law 422–428 transnational struggle 403–404 trans resistance 385–386 trans social death 384–385 trends 114–117; Georgia 184 trial 337–339 truth-telling 475–482 Turkey 265; data gaps and intersectionality 273–275; descriptive examination of femicides 267–273, 267–271; gender-based motives 273; numbers 264–266; state accountability 266–267 typologies 303–304 tweet flow over time 498–499, 498 tweet popularity 498–499, 498 Twitter 498–502, 498 2SLGBTQQIA+ 35, 40, 42, 120; Brazil 153; Canada 465, 467, 472; and data activism 111; and data sources 97, 102; and femigenocide 347; and human-centred computing 530–534, 540; Mexico 207, 383; North America 207, 291, 383, 465,

467, 472, 492; and transnational law 426; United States 291 United Kingdom 278–286; origins of the American doctrine of provocation 444–445 United States 288–293, 443–450, 475–482 unofficial forms of justice 134 user activity 498–499, 498 victim-blaming 555–556 violated masculinities 376 violence see armed conflict femicide; domestic violence; excessive violence; extremist violence; gang-related violence; gender-based violence; gender violence; previous violence perpetrated against the victim; sexual violence; war violence, economic 508–509 violence, profitability of 507–508 violence against Indigenous women and girls 465–467; see also Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls violent bodies, production of 73–76 violent spaces 73–76 visibility 520–521 war 390–392; and the genocidal-femi(ni)cidal state 395–402; Kurdistan 393–404; self-defence and autonomy 402–403; and transnational struggle 403–404 watches 114–124, 115–116 whiteness 81–82; mass shootings and femicide as an extension of 82–84 white supremacy 84–85 “windows of opportunity” 118–119 witnessing 475–482 women’s groups 459–460 women’s rights 130–131 world religions 11 worldview 521–522

571