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41. Several States provided statistical data on a variety of issues related to  gender-related killing or violence against women,8 including information from the criminal justice system or from population-based surveys on female victimization in relation to murder or other forms of violence. However, not all States recorded criminal justice data disaggregated by sex and the motivation of crimes was generally not recorded by responding States, except for those with specific legislation on hate crimes.

42. Data from different States suggested that men outnumbered women as victims of homicide and other forms of crime (Australia, Austria, Canada and Japan), but that women were more likely to be victims of intimate partner homicide (Australia, Canada, Denmark and Italy) and were disproportionately affected by domestic and/or sexual violence (Belgium, Germany and Slovenia).

43. Two States reported on specific studies on gender-related killing. In Mexico,  a joint report, prepared by a parliamentary commission, the national institute  of women, UN Women and the Colegio de México (an academic institution), analysed available official data on deaths of women with a view to identifying patterns of “femicidal violence”. The report concluded that, between 1985-2010, 36,606 women had been killed. In Australia, a research paper, published in 1999 and entitled “Femicide: the killing of women in Australia 1989-1998”, considered factors associated with the occurrence of femicide and found that, during the period under review, women in Australia were killed at an average annual rate of 1.4 per  100,000 population and men at an average annual rate of 2.4 per  100,000 population.

44. In Austria, while motivations of offenders were not recorded in the Electronic Justice Register, age, sex and nationality of a victim started to be recorded in the second half of 2011. In criminal proceedings conducted in 2012, 278,160 persons were recorded as victims of a criminal act. 135,431 thereof were male and  86,875 female; 55,584 victims were unknown or not recorded. Regarding the sex of the victims: 60.9 per cent were male and 39.1 per cent female. The number of male defendants in criminal proceedings in 2012 was higher than that of male victims of crime.

 45. In Belgium, a recent study indicated that 12.5 per cent of the respondents had experienced at least one act of violence by their partner or ex-partner in the last  12 months (14.9 per cent women and 10.5 per cent men). Sexual violence during the life disproportionately affected women (5.6 per cent female victims, compared to 0.8 per cent male victims). The vast majority of sexual abuse before age 18 was made by relatives or family members, especially for women.

46. While women in Canada were less at risk of homicide or attempted murder than men, the nature of violence against women was distinctively different from violence directed at men. Data collected in Canada for 2012 indicated that 63 per cent of the victims killed by a family member and 83 per cent of those killed by an intimate partner were female. Age also played an important role in intimate partner violence, with the likelihood of female victims of intimate partner violence  aged 15 to 24 years being eight times higher than males of the same age group. However, between 1991 and 2011, the rate of homicides against female spouses dropped by 46 per cent, while the rate of dating homicides against women fell by  65 per cent. Decreases were also recorded for attempted murder and physical assault of female intimate partners, according to police-reported trend data for the  years 2009 to 2011. In 2011, approximately 8,200 girls under the age of 12 were victims of violent crime, representing half of all child victims of violent crime. As with most crimes, males were most often identified as the perpetrator of violence against girls. In 2011, the rate of violence against female youth (between the ages of 12 and 17) was 8 per cent higher than the rate for male youth, partly reflecting girls’ higher risk of sexual violence. Between 2001 and 2011 at least 8 per cent of all murdered women aged 15 years and older were Aboriginal, double their representation in the Canadian population which was 4 per cent. Aboriginal females were found to have a homicide rate of almost seven times higher than  non-Aboriginal victims (5.4 per 100,000 compared to 0.8 per 100,000).

47. The numbers of homicide cases registered in Denmark, in the years 2012 and 2013 were 40 and 42 respectively. In 2008-2013, 16 decisions on killings and attempted killings regarding female victims were published in the Danish Weekly Law Reports and the Journal of Criminal Law. In five of the 16 cases the convicted person was in an intimate partner relationship or married to the victim. In four cases the victim and the convicted person had previously been in an intimate partner relationship. In two cases the victims were related to the convicted person. In  one case the killing was honour-related and in another case the motive was revenge for sexual assault. The last three cases concerned random victims.

48. Germany reported that forty per cent of women in the country had at some point become victims of physical or sexual violence. Twenty-five per cent of women had suffered physical or sexual violence by their partners at least once in their lives. Thirteen per cent had been a victim of sexual violence.

49. In Greece, criminal statistics showed that a significant percentage of murders of women were committed against elderly women during robberies. The percentage of murders of women from domestic violence was smaller, but not less significant. In most cases the perpetrator was the husband or partner, sometimes a relative. In these cases, almost all perpetrators of homicides against women were men.

50. In Italy, the greater part of violent acts against women (about 70 per cent) took place in the framework of family/emotional relationships.

51. Japan reported that the percentage of women among the victims of non-traffic penal code offences involving fatal/bodily damage in Japan had been stable at around 30 per cent over the last 10 years. However, the total number of victims killed was decreasing since 2003, including the number of female victims killed.

52. Peru reported that 609 women had been victims of the offence of “feminicide” between 2009 and 2013, of which 74.9 per cent were killed by a current or former intimate partner and 13.5 per cent by a family member. In 2013 alone, 131 cases and 151 attempts of “feminicide” were registered. However, only about 15 to 26 per cent of the cases were brought to the attention of the criminal justice system. Since the creation of the offence in 2011, there had been a steady increase in the number of cases entering the criminal justice system, with a total of 351 cases at various stages of the proceedings by 2013. The number of offenders in detention increased from  16 offenders in detention in 2012 to 57 in 2013, all of them male and only two of them sentenced. However, it was acknowledged that, in several cases, the penalties imposed on perpetrators were lower than the legal minimum of 15 years’ imprisonment and that in some cases existing alternatives to imprisonment were improperly applied. The amount of civil damages award to the victims varied widely (between 800 PEN and 50,000 PEN or approximately 290 USD and 17,900 USD) and was often not superior to 5,000 PEN or approximately 1,790 USD per case.

53. In Slovenia, police data suggested that in a high percentage of family violence cases, the victims were female (in 92 per cent of cases investigated by the police by  mid-2013). Annually, the police investigated about 2,100 cases of family violence. The number of cases was slowly decreasing after a peak in 2009. The data on crimes of murder and manslaughter committed within the family showed that the victims were predominately female. (In 2009 for example, 10 women were victims of murder or manslaughter within the family, out of 19, in 2012 8 women out of 13.)

54. Regarding data on murder, in Tunisia, the number of cases of murder  against women reached 42 cases in 2010, 34 cases in 2012 and 49 cases in the  first ten months of 2013.  55. In 2012 and 2013, in the State of Palestine 12 cases of murder were received by the Public Prosecution where the victim was a woman or a girl. Of the 98 cases of threats to kill a woman or a girl received by the public prosecution, 97 were deferred to court while 1 case was still under investigation.

https://www.unodc.org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/UNODC.CCPCJ.EG.8.2014.2-English.pdf