UNITED NATIONS: Every 10 minutes last year, a woman somewhere in the world was killed by a person close to her, the United Nations said on Monday as it decried a lack of progress in the battle against femicide.

Some 50,000 women and girls were killed by intimate partners or family members in 2024, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and UN Women said in a report released to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

The report said 60 per cent of women killed around the world were murdered by partners or relatives, such as fathers, uncles, mothers, and brothers. For comparison, 11 percent of male murder victims were killed by someone close to them.

The 50,000 figure — based on data from 117 countries — breaks down to 137 women per day, or around one woman every 10 minutes, the report said.

The total is slightly lower than the figure reported in 2023, though it does not indicate an actual dec­r­e­ase, according to the rep­o­rt, as it stems largely from differences in data availability from country to country.

Femicide continues to claim tens of thousands of lives of women and girls each year, with no sign of improvement, and the “home continues to be the most dangerous place for women and girls in terms of the risk of homicide,” the study said.

No region of the world went without femicide cases, but Africa again had the largest number last year with around 22,000, the report said.

“Femicides don’t happen in isolation. They often sit on a continuum of violence that can start with controlling behavior, threats, and harassment — including online,” Sarah Hendricks, Director of UN Women’s Policy Division, said in a statement.

The report said technological development has exacerbated some kinds of violence against women and girls and created others, such as non-consensual image-sharing, doxxing, and deepfake videos.

“We need the implementation of laws that recognize how violence manifests across the lives of women and girls, both online and offline, and hold perpetrators to account well before it turns deadly,” said Hendricks.

Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2025