The term 'Feminicide' was first defined in by the South African feminist author Diana Elisabeth Hamilton Russel as 'the killing of women by men simply because they are women'. To qualify as a feminicide, the killing of a woman must necessarily be associated with motives related to her identity as a woman. Thus, a woman killed in a burglary or by a hit-and-run driver cannot de facto be considered a victim of feminicide.
The murderer is not necessarily a man. Types of Feminicide The term feminicide refers to two types of crime: intimate feminicide and non-intimate feminicide. The first one is committed by a spouse, ex-spouse or family member.
The second is committed by a stranger. The most frequently cited examples are the hundreds of women killed over many years in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, or the anti-feminist massacre at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal in However, the WHO recognises two 02 other categories of feminicide in addition to these: honour killing and dowry-related feminicide.
Honour killings are carried out by a male or female member of the victim's family or clan, when a woman is accused of having transgressed moral laws or traditions - committing adultery, having sexual relations or pregnancy outside marriage, or even having been raped - to protect the family's reputation. Dowry-related femicide is the killing of a woman by her in-laws upon marriage because of an insufficient dowry practised in India, for example.
Feminicide in Africa Overall, there is a lack of data and insufficient analysis on femicide in Africa. Beyond the need for and existence of recent, reliable, comprehensive data and sociological analysis on the issue, experts agree that the available statistics probably underestimate the extent of the phenomenon worldwide, including in Africa.
