By Sarah Petty
Edited by Ignacia Baudrand and Johanne Jedig Wejse
“Every time a woman is killed, a man loses his daughter or a brother loses his sister, a man loses his aunt or a man loses his niece,” said Frank Mullane, Director of Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse (AAFDA).
Mullane speaks out about the prevalence and severity of domestic violence and femicide rates within Europe after both his sister and niece were murdered by their husband and father. Mullane shared his story through the federation and charity, ‘Women’s Aid’which looks to end domestic abuse against women and children.
“I was thrust into this sector eleven years ago when my sister and my [niece] were murdered by their husband and father,” said Mullane, further describing how, “There are two or more women murdered every week in England”.
According to Femicides Across Europe, edited by Shalva Weil, Consuelo Corradi and Marceline Naudi, “Femicide is the intentional killing of women and girls because of their gender…[and] are usually perpetrated by intimate partners… or family members…who are usually familiar males”.
In 2012, almost half (47%) of all women murdered worldwide were killed by an intimate partner or family member, compared with 6% of male homicide victims.
Mullane believes the pressure placed on the woman being abused is substantial. “It is possible for a human being to hold that dichotomy, if you like, in their mind of knowing that they are going to have to try and somehow leave but also knowing that they want to stand up for themselves,” explains Mullane.
“They don’t know where to go.”
The facts
Karen Melchior, member of the Renew Europe Group and the European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) said, “We need to stop looking at violence against women as just violence and we need to have better research.”
“The EU has an agency for gender equality and they collect a lot of data. But its mainly data through the EuroStat, a sort of statistical office, and for example with violence it depends on the crime statistics of the individual member states, which makes it both delayed and also incomplete,” explained Melchior.
The European Institute for Gender Equalityis an autonomous body but works within the framework of the EU to collect, analyse, process and then disseminate data and information on gender equality issue, whilst also seeking to make comparable and reliable information for users.
According to the European Agency on Fundamental Rights 2014 reporton violence against women, a telephone survey found in Denmark, 55 % of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence or threat from a partner or a non-partner since the age of fifteen.
“[This] report on violence against women made by the European Agency on Fundamental Rights back in 2014…showed that there is a lot of violence against women also in countries where we would have expected to have more gender equality,” said Melchior.
In 2017, there were reportedly 139 femicides across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, 46% killed by their current or former partners, according to The Femicide Census 2017.
“…we need to make sure that women feel empowered to leave abusive relationships and feel empowered to go to authorities if they feel threatened and know that they will get help,” said Melchior.
The importance of data collection and raising awareness
The European Observatory on Femicide is an advocacy initiative which is based on two thematic principles; to prevent femicide through creating Europe-Wide data collection systems to raise awareness and measure the extent of femicide and to create femicide reviews to identify the pitfalls when responding to violence against women.
Dr Marceline Naudi, Scientific Co-ordinator of the European Observatory on Femicide, stipulates that one of the issues surrounding femicide is the collection of information from the European Union as a whole.
“…one of the things we are trying to do to battle the issue of femicides is precisely to try to come up with some sort of comparative recording of femicides across European countries so that we can compare,” said Naudi.
“Whilst you can get the number of homicides of women, generally, you often can’t get the other information that is required to be able to call it a femicide, such as, who the perpetrator was, what was the relationship between them, the context, where the crime occurred, etc.”
Dr Marceline Naudi believes, “…data is scarce and it is often not comparable”.
The European Observatory on Femicide is setting up country research groups to begin collecting data, both quantitative and qualitative information and looking at femicide fatality reviews. There are currently research focal pointsin twenty-three countries including Denmark, France and Germany.
“Over the last few years, the EU in general have become more aware of this issue of femicide. So, the greater the awareness the more things are recorded,” said Naudi. Despite failing to record femicide data in the past, as awareness of the issue continues to grow, people are becoming more aware of what a femicide is and are more likely to classify it as such, explained Naudi.
“The aim of having data is not just to collect stuff, but in order to be able to prevent, so our ultimate aim is always prevention.”
The ratification of the Istanbul Convention
The Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention is aimed at acting against violence against women and domestic violence. Eleven member-states have yet to ratify the convention, including Bulgaria and the United Kingdom.
Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield, Vice-Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM), has worked closely to push member-states to ratify this convention, believing that “…the really important thing about the Istanbul Convention, it will have this lasting effect in all member-states with the same rules and same legislation implemented in every member-state.”
The Istanbul Conventionaims to prevent all forms of violence against women, and investigate allegations of violence and prosecute the perpetrators. The Convention also states that traditions, culture, or religion cannot be used as justification for acts of violence against women.
“We base our strategies and we base our sight on the same understanding of the situation, the same evaluation in every country… it’s really, really important.”
The Committee intends to counteract strategy and fundamentalist discourse about the Istanbul Convention and emphasises that the convention is about both fighting violence against women and changing gender ideology, says Delbos-Corfield.
Delbos-Corfield said, “…concretely, there hasn’t been enough ratifying of the convention so we can get this thing through”. However, she believes that the working group and overall Parliament has effectively defended against the gender issues and the conservative narrative backlash.
“We have indicators that are the same for everyone and we have to be able to compare that. So that’s a very important thing for the FEMM Committee and then with the European institutions.”