19.02.2021

​About 167 Women Killed by Someone They Knew Every Day in 2019: UN report

More than half of the approximately 110,000 women killed in 2019 died at the hands of intimate partners or family members, according to a report released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Some 60,000 were killed globally by someone they knew, the organization estimated. That works out to 167 per day -- nearly seven every hour. While the vast majority of homicide victims are men, women continue to pay the highest price as a result of gender inequality, discrimination and negative stereotypes, UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov said in a statement that accompanied the report. "They are also the most likely to be killed by intimate partners and family. Women in Africa and the Americas are most at risk of being killed by those they know, the data show. While the global rate of female homicide victims is about 1.6 per 100,000, it's 3.7 in Africa and 1.9 in the Americas. In Asia, it's 1.1, and in Europe, the lowest reported, it's 0.8. In absolute numbers, Asia had the most severe toll, with 24,000 women killed by a partner or family member in 2019. Nearly a third of women who have been in a relationship reported having experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of their partner, or a non-partner, according to a report by the World Health Organization (WHO). These killings, it added, do "not usually result from random or spontaneous acts, but rather from the culmination of prior gender-based violence. Jealousy and fear of abandonment are among the motives." They are shot, stoned, burned, buried alive, strangled, smothered, or stabbed to death with what the UN describes as "horrifying regularity", often in countries where the laws exempt the perpetrators from punishment.
​Credit: WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM