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Recently, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) disclosed that 50,000 women and girls were killed by intimate partners or family members in 2024 globally. In marking the 2025 International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the 2025 femicide brief from the UNODC and UN Women confirms that femicide continues to take the lives of tens of thousands of women and girls worldwide, with no sign of real progress.
According to the report, 137 women and girls were killed every day by intimate partners or family members in 2024. It also revealed that 83,000 women and girls were killed intentionally last year. Out of this figure, 60 per cent—or 50,000 women and girls—were killed at the hands of intimate partners or family members. This means that one woman or girl is killed by a partner or family member almost every 10 minutes. However, 11 per cent of male homicides were perpetrated by intimate partners or family members during the same year.
The acting Executive Director of UNODC, John Brandolino, observed that “the home remains a dangerous and sometimes lethal place for too many women and girls around the world. The 2025 femicide brief provides a stark reminder of the need for better prevention strategies and criminal justice responses to femicide, ones that account for the conditions that propagate this extreme form of violence. In the same vein, the Director of UN Women Policy Division, Sarah Hendricks, said “femicides don’t happen in isolation. They often sit on a continuum of violence that can start with controlling behaviour, threats, and harassment, including online.”
According to Hendricks, “the United Nation’s 16 Days campaign this year underscores that digital violence often doesn’t stay online. It can escalate offline and, in the worst cases, contribute to lethal harm, including femicide. Every woman and girl has the right to be safe in every part of her life, and that requires systems that intervene early. To prevent these killings, we need the implementation of laws that recognize how violence manifests across women and girls’ lives, both online and offline, and hold perpetrators to account well before it turns deadly.”
Instructively, the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator of the United Nations in Nigeria, Mohammed Fall, has also warned against the rising online abuse of women, which is one of the most dangerous forms of gender-based violence. Fall, who spoke in Abuja at an event to mark the 2025 edition of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, observed that the world is witnessing a new frontier of harm. He noted that “violence against women is not new. Its shape is changing. It has entered our screens, conversations and digital spaces where we work, learn and live.”
Although femicide is a global problem, it varies from one region to another. However, the highest rate of femicide by an intimate partner/family member, according to 2025 femicide report, was in Africa (3 per 100,000 female population), followed by the Americas (1.5), Oceania (1.4), Asia (0.7) and Europe (0.5). In 2023, Africa had the highest rate of intimate partner and family related femicide globally. In 2022, Nigeria reported 401 deaths of women due to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). However, recent data from the DOHS femicide Dashboard indicated 135 femicide incidents with 149 deaths in 2024. There are fears that there is significant increase in femicide in 2025 compared to the previous year.
There are many factors fuelling femicide in Nigeria. The patriarchal social norms and beliefs that women are subordinate often lead to unequal power dynamics which can justify violence against women. Nigeria is said to lack a specific femicide law. Therefore, prosecuting gender-motivated killings as general homicides exposes this weakness in legal enforcement. Moreover, the implementation of the federal Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) (VAPP) Act is not uniformly applied in all the states. The police dismissal of some sexual gender-based violence as a family affair may have emboldened the perpetrators to do more.
We loathe and condemn the rising cases of femicide across the world and call for global action against the menace. At the same time, we urge the federal and state governments to enact specific laws to tackle femide in the country. Considering the rising cases of femicide across the country, we call for enhanced funding of programmes to end violence against women and girls. The education of girls must be prioritised.
Let government address all barriers that hinder girls’ education. The government, religious and community leaders must champion the economic empowerment of women, as this would enhance their freedoms and opportunities. Nigerian women should be safe and free from discrimination, harassment and violence.
Therefore, we align with the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, that “violence against women and girls is a violation of human rights. It is never acceptable. It is never tolerable. It is never inevitable. And it must end.” The federal government should factor women and girls in its national development.
