UN Transcripts — https://transcripts.un.org/ru/asset/k13/k13yqj44ob
Beyond Legislation: Preventing Femicide Through Integrated Policy Action (CSW70 Side Event) — 10 March 2026
Language: en
Automatically generated transcript — may contain errors. Not an official United Nations record.

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Belgium · Minister [0:01]:

Good afternoon everyone. Welcome for being here it's quite hot.

So if it's too hot, maybe we can open the door. But let's see because I feel a little bit of fresh air. So I think there is. Maybe it's in my mind, but you feel it. Okay.

If it's too hot, please raise your hand and we can find a solution. But it's maybe not the easiest room, but it was the only room that was available for a topic that's extremely important. And thank you, thank you very much for being here. Together with the co host, my colleague, Minister of Moldova. We really hope that you're going to have an interesting session with very inspiring experts and speakers.

We will also have a Q and A session, but I would like to do the introduction before starting this event. And I would like to start with a short story about Maria. When she met her partner. Actually everything felt right at first sight because they were in love. But slowly things began to change.

The commons became degrading. He controlled who she saw, how she dressed and how she spent her money. He tracked her with whereabouts with a GPS tracker and she withdraw from some friends and family. And the warning signs were there and Maria decided she wanted to leave. But she never made it out of the door.

Maria's story is fictional, but the pattern is painful real. And stories like her unfold every day in every region of the world. Every year, tens of thousands of women and girls are killed simply because they are a woman. In 2024 alone, an estimated 83,000 women and girls were intentionally killed, and most of them by an intimate partner or family member. But not all.

Femicide is the most extreme manifestation of gender based violence and a grave violation of human rights. It is rooted in gender inequality, discrimination and harmful social norms. It's rarely sudden, but often the final step in a long chain of abuse. A chain that we have the responsibility and the ability to break. Several countries have taken important legislative steps.

Recognizing femicide in law helps make the problem visible, strengthen accountability and improve data collection. In 2023, Belgium adopted legislation addressing femicide, providing a framework to prevent and combat femicides, gender related killings and the violence that precedes them. Under our new criminal code, killings committed with discriminatory motives, including gender related motives, constitute an aggravating circumstance. Our approach is firmly anchored in the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence. We are honoured to co organize this side event with Moldova, which has also strengthened its legal framework and introduced femicide as a concept in Its criminal code legislation provides an essential foundation, but prevention also requires implementation, early risk detection and strong institutional cooperation.

This site event therefore aims to go beyond legislation to exchange experiences, identify effective strategies and strengthen collaboration to prevent femicides and better protect women and girls. The question is no longer whether we should act, the question is how we act to prevent femicides and safeguard the rights and lives of women and girls. Because behind every statistic there is a life like Maria's. I look forward to a very forward looking discussion and I now give the word to you.


Moderator [4:18]:

Thank you. Thank you so much Minister for these powerful words, introductory remarks and for renewing also your commitment to addressing gender based violence. And many thanks for the organization of such an important event. I think that your presence here is a witness of the importance of our discussions today. As you mentioned, the Minister's laws, legislative frameworks are a very good and important starting point, but they are not enough.

Preventing femicide requires coordinated policies, effective institutions, reliable data, strong cooperation among sectors, and I think that today's discussion is a great opportunity to explore ways on how to move forward. We are fortunate, ladies and gentlemen, Excellencies, to have with us an outstanding panel of speakers with extensive expertise on this issue. They all have very rich and impressive professional backgrounds. Due to time constraints, I will only highlight a few key elements from their very rich biographies. If I may start.

We are honored of course, to welcome Minister Natalia Plugaro, Minister of Labor and Social Protection of the Republic of Moldova. Minister has more than 15 years of experience working on sustainable development, gender equality, youth empowerment. You have extensive experience at UN level where you coordinated several programs on democratic resilience, sexual and reproductive health and rights and other fields. Our second speaker is Dr. Pacili Toledo Vazquez, member of UN CEDAW Committee and co Chair of the Working Group on Gender Based Violence, violence against women. Dr. Toledo is a legal scholar specializing in women's human rights and legal responses to femicide, particularly in Latin America.

She has extensive expertise with international organizations. We are also joined by Dr. James Rollins, Assistant professor of Sociology at Durham University in uk. His research focuses, among others, on domestic homicide and domestic abuse related deaths by suicide, as well as systems for reviewing homicide cases and strengthening coordinated responses. And also we are pleased to welcome Ms. Lee Tandeter, a policy Specialist on ending violence against women at the UN Women's Regional Office for the Americas and the Caribbean, a lawyer specializing in international public law and human rights with extensive expertise working on policies addressing violence against women across the region. Now, with such a distinguished group of speakers, I'M sure we'll have very rich discussions.

A kind reminder that we have a set amount of time. So I would be most grateful if we all kept within the allotted time if I can now invite Minister Plugar to begin our conversation. Minister, Moldova, as it was mentioned, recently amended the criminal law, introducing femicide as a legal concept. Could you please share with us, Minister, what were the political considerations and the policy objectives that guided this choice? And how does this fit into, I would say, broader and integrated strategy to prevent femicide?

Please, Minister, thank you.


Republic of Moldova · Minister of Labor and Social Protection · Natalia Plugaro [8:15]:

I hope it's working. Yeah. Thank you and greetings to everyone. It's such a pleasure to co host this event with the government of Belgium.

It is such an important topic. The decision of the Republic of Moldova to amend the penal code and introduce the femicide was really driven by really persistence and systemic nature of violence against women and domestic violence. And it was a really deliberate political decision to make that shift from treating the level violence against women as isolated criminal act to recognizing it as the most extreme manifestation of structural partner of gender based violence. There were like several factors that, you know, coincided together that helped the country to take this bold decision that came together as a puzzle at that time. It was two years ago when it happened, and the first one it was a strong political will.

And I cannot say and go ahead without actually mentioning the people who were behind this political decision and the three ladies that are also here today representing the Moldovan delegation. And this is the Deputy speaker of the Moldovan Parliament, Madame German, who is sitting here, the Member of Parliament, Marina Morozovo, and Vero, the director of the national Gender based Violence Agency. So you see strong political women leaders behind that decision, who led the process. We of course had a strong support from the civil society organization. But then also a tragic case.

It was a real case of a mother, Ana Maria. She was a young woman from a village from Moldova. There was a case that deeply shocked Moldovan society and became really a turning point in the national conversation on gender based killings. One of the important key driver in our reform was the work of the the Domestic Homicide Review Commission. And this is the commission was established back in 2022.

It is an independent inter institutional mechanism that really review each case in depth in order to identify risk factors, different gaps in institutional intervention and the actions or inactions of competent authorities. And what was revealing by that commission is that in many cases, the victims had already been in contact with the state institutions, including police or social protection services. However, risks were not identified or assessed enough or Protective measures were not sufficient. And the interesting thing is that while we're having all the international evidences about the link of protective or lack of protective measures and femicide, what I think was important is to have national evidences so we can prove it and we can use it as an advocacy tool. And then the available data, I think collection of data was really important as a strong argument.

We were seeing the increased number of reported cases, which was good in a way, because it showed also trust in different institutions at the same time, administrative offenses remained at a very high level, and while criminal offenses rose sharply, still, you know, the number of femicide was quite, quite big in Moldova. So collectively, like all this, you know, the data that we are producing, the political will, you know, the really tragic cases, this situation reinforced the political conclusion that violence was still escalating to fatal levels and that preventive legislative and institutional measures were not intervening early enough. So what we did then is, was in 2024, like two years ago, the femicide was introduced for the first time in the law on domestic violence and was voted by parliament and led by our great political leader and the deputy speaker.

It was a turning point for the country because it was recognized the femicide was explicitly written in the law on domestic violence, and it was defined as an act of violence against women and girls, resulting in the death of the victim as a consequence of intentional homicide, intentional serious bodily injury or harm to health, or the victim's suicide when instigated or facilitated. And then after that. So I think there was a kind of, you know, the first bold step. And then in a year, in 2025, building on that already existing foundation, we adopted a broader package of legislative amendments that really strengthened the criminal law framework. And through these amendments already, the femicide was introduced in the criminal code.

And more than that, additional new criminal offenses were established, including forced marriage, including acts of persecution, and most importantly, also digital violence. So digital violence is recognized in the Moldovan legislation as. As a distinctive form of violence. So I think it was a combination of factors, to answer your question, that, you know, facilitated that. And of course, now is the will be the time and happy to discuss, you know, how we implement and what other measures we put in place for prevention of femicide.

Thank you.


Moderator [14:46]:

Thank you. Thank you so much, Minister. Indeed, we understand a combination of factors that started with strong political will as a starting point. And thank you so much for taking us through the process of your country. If I can Turn now to Dr. Toledo Vasquez and let's move to Latin America.

In Latin America, we know that many countries have introduced specific criminal law provisions on femicide. Could you please share with us what insights do these reforms offer about the role of criminal law within a broader strategy to address femicide? And what do they reveal about the challenges of assessing prevention and the need for complementary structural measures?


CEDAW · CEDAW Member; Co-Chair WG on GBV · Patsili Toledo Vázquez [15:35]:

Well, thank you so much. And thank you in the first place for this invitation that I believe this.

So such an interesting discussion. So, yes, next year it's going to be 20 years since the first Latin American countries criminalized femicide. So it's a region in which we have a kind of extended experience on these topics. We have almost 20 countries that have criminalized femicide over the past decades. So of course, These are almost 20 countries with different definitions of femicide.

That this is important to say that it's not exactly the same crime, although the elements are more or less frequent. But probably the first question is, why the focus on criminal law? Because in many countries, as my own country in Chile, the word femicide started to be used by the civil society movement before it became law. And it was used also kind of trying to influence the media how they were calling these crimes, like moving away from these discourses of crimes of passion and instead talking about femicide. So I would say it was a concept that came first from civil society and then it went into criminal law.

Why criminal law? Because in the Latin there are some factors that are regional, but some others could be extended. The regional factors is that as you probably know, the Latin American and the American continents have has high levels of violence and including organized crime. There were cases of missing women and murders of women in Mexico that were known worldwide as the Ciudad Juarez cases of femicides. And those were not just cases of missing women and killed women.

They were also cases of high levels of impunity and lack of responsibility from the state, not even in adequate investigations. So there's another level that is very regional, that it's the high level of coordination of the feminist movement in the region. I think there's no other region in the world where for probably colonial reasons, we speak the same language in most of the continent. And that really facilitates that. We have a number of Latin American network of this that so many areas.

And in the feminist movement it happens the same. So we have a strong Latin American movement and there was a strong coordination. And also that's why also in this region we had in 1994 the first regional convention on violence against Women that it's a Bella and do para convention that was adopted in 1994. So when that was adopted, also the framework for feminist understanding of violence is like this is responsible for of responsibility of the state. Somehow the way using criminal law was part of that focus, that the state has to do something.

And using criminal law was a way of showing this, that the state was taking measures to address the problem. Interestingly, other of the reasons that these laws were adopted in all countries with support of all political parties, left wing, right wing, religious groups. And it's interesting because it's a continent that you probably cannot say. We have at the same time very severe and restrictive legislation on abortion, for example. However, femicide legislation was passed in a way that was not really controversial.

And this probably is related to the idea that this is really clearly extreme violence. And nobody doubts that. In addition to that, I think that what happened is that other measures were implemented. For example, a specialized investigation and protocols for investigation of femicide. There was the UN women and the Office of the High Commission on Human Rights prepare a model protocol for investigation that has been adopted in a number of countries and also data collection systems that have been put in place in the region.

But I would say that the focus on the criminal justice system response has had certain limitations. And I will just mention two cases. I was a lawyer in a case many years ago that was the first case in Chile that had the highest penalty that the country has, like permanent. Well, it was the case of a man who killed his daughter. In the context, he was attacking the mother, but he didn't kill the mother, he killed the daughter.

And the case was and was very dramatic for a number of reasons that I will not explain. And it was framed as a success from the perspective of the prosecution and the justice system, like the conviction is equal to success. But then the problem was that that woman had reported threats before and nothing had happened. It was considered that, yes, there were threats, but he remained the father of the daughter. So let's keep the visitation rights.

And it was in the context of the visitation that this crime took place. And there was another more recent case also in Chile, also always using Chilean cases that was a man who was convicted for violence against a former partner. And then he was on bail and he went on to go to Argentina, where he initiated a new relationship in that crime. In the previous crime, he was convicted, but he was not, you know, the decision was not communicated still. But the thing is that he killed not just the former part, he killed the next part partner.

And in that case, all women had. I mean, the previous partners had reported the violence, but that could not prevent what happened to the next new partner that he had. So I think these cases show that really the responses have to go beyond that, and the criminal justice system approach is limited. And I believe that in the next discussion in this panel, we will go to those topics. Thank you.


Moderator [21:52]:

Thank you. Thank you indeed. Thank you also for highlighting the important role of civil society and the feminist movement, but also, as you mentioned, limitations of the criminal justice system. And this brings me to you, Ms. Thandeter, and to the issue of accountability. How can impunity be effectively challenged and investigation and prosecution of femicide cases improved?

Please,


UN Women · Policy Specialist · Lee Tandeter [22:25]:

thank you. Well, first, thank you for inviting us and for organizing this very important event on femicide and also including another regional perspective. So thank you very much. So one of the most effective ways to, to challenge impunity is to ensure that feminist femicide cases are investigated from the outset with a gender perspective. For many years, violent deaths of women were treated as ordinary homicide or even lesser crimes.

But we know that femicide often occurs within recognizable context and patterns of gender based violence in including intimate partner violence, sexual violence, trafficking, organized crime, environment, and other forms of gender related persecution against women. So recognizing this context is essential for effective investigation. Without this lens, critical evidence may be overlooked. Patterns of violence remain invisible and investigative hypotheses remain incomplete. As a result, the true nature of the crime may be mischaracterized, ultimately weakening the accountability and allowing impunity to persist.

So, as Patsili was saying, this is precisely why 10 years ago, the Latin American Model Protocol for the Investigation of Gender Related killing of Women was developed by UN Women and the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights. So its core contribution is to provide investigators, prosecutors and judges with practical guidance on how to incorporate gender analysis into investigations from the very stages, the very first stages. Sorry. So over the past decade, UN Women has supported its dissemination and implementation across Latin America and beyond, working very closely with justice institutions and prosecutor networks to strengthen investigation, investigative practices and also promote common standards. And actually, I want to take a moment to present to everybody.

We have here Marielle Laboceta, who's the regional coordinator of the Regional Network on Public Prosecutors that specialize on gender and with whom we have been doing this very important line of work. So as Patsily was saying, Almost 20 countries in our region have adopted or adapted this model protocol to investigate femicide. But as we know, and Patsili was saying, the existence of standards Alone do not guarantee accountability. So the real challenge lies in the consistent implementation and that's a huge challenge in our region, implementation of policies in general. So I just to finish my intervention, want to highlight three elements that I think are particularly important to effectively challenge impunity.

So first, specialization. So investigating femicide requires trained police units, specialized prosecutors and forensic expertise capable of identifying gender based motives and patterns of violence. Second, institutional coordination. As we know, femicide rarely occurs in isolation. Femicides are often preceded by prior complaints, protection orders or or other warning signs.

So connecting the information across police, justice system, social services, protection mechanisms, schools, is essential to prevent cases from escalating into lethal violence. And third, and lastly, this has been said already, data and accountability. Countries need reliable data systems that allow them to track femicide cases from investigation to prosecution and sentencing. So without this information, it is impossible to identify the gaps, evaluate performance and improve institutional responses. So as Patsili was saying, our region, Latin America and the Caribbean have made significant normative progress.

But the real challenge today is ensuring that these standards should translate into consistent investigative practices, adequate resources and sustained political commitment. Because ultimately challenging impunity is not only about punishing crimes, but it is also about restoring trust in institutions and guaranteeing that the justice system can truly protect women's lives. Thank you.


Moderator [27:43]:

Yes, thank you. Specialization, institutional coordination, data and accountability. Key issues if we want to go from the normative level into the implementation of legislative amendments, identification of gaps. Also you mentioned, and this brings me to Dr. Rowland's, because you have been working a lot with femicide reviews. In what ways can femicide reviews and risk factors such as for example, coercive control, help improve prevention, early intervention and protection against evolving forms of gender based violence.


Durham University · Assistant Professor of Sociology · James Rollins [28:27]:

Thank you. And it's a real privilege to be here so briefly to explain what I'm talking about. When we say femicide review, we might say sometimes known as domestic abuse related death review or domestic homicide review. And that will reflect really the kind of cases which are in scope and that varies considerably. But what we are essentially talking about is a multi agency review after a death, bringing together information from those agencies that could or should have had contact with a victim, perpetrator and children, if appropriate, to try and learn about the nature of that contact and what might need to change, change as a result.

So it's a learning process. So there's some really important features. They vary very widely. It depends on how you define them. They involve state and non state actors sitting around that table.

They're not Part of the criminal justice system, they're separate to that. So it's not about culpability of a perpetrator, for example, and they're normally state enabled. And that's important because you require enabling legislation, including access to information, for example. I want to just focus on a couple of areas though, where I think these review systems are really important. First of all, they are a way of understanding individual victims lives and the circumstances in which they lost their life or their life was taken, understanding their history, their contact, their contact with agencies and the events preceding that tragedy.

And critically, that's the picture from the inside because it's involving agencies and other stakeholders in that dialogue to build that picture. And the focus is on learning and change so we understand about individual victims and potentially perpetrators. Secondly, what we want to do with that information is look at that in aggregate. It's not just about that one victim, it's about all those victims. By putting those pictures together, we start to see these patterns which help us think about prevention, help us identify risk indicators, help us identify the consistent face failures in terms of state responses, for example, and of course recognize the underlying feature of most of these cases, which are they are gender related and other intersecting oppressions.

The third thing we try and do, so having learnt about an individual victim, learn about victims collectively and seeing how that's a structured and patterned form of killing, is we can try and actually make change. We're not just looking at this for the sake of what we're trying to do is say, well, what would be different? What would be different in terms of practice, policy and system responses. Now there are considerable challenges in how you do that, including how you implement change, how you track that, but nonetheless that is the goal that you are driving and holding accountable the state and non state actors in terms of their response to these killings. The thing I want to end on though is these review systems are important in their own right.

They are symbolic in some sense, so they speak to a political will to do something about femicide, which of course can be challenging. And we can critique the states who've established them, how they've established them, whether they always respond as they should to the learning, but nonetheless they send a really important message. The other thing they do, and I think we don't talk about this necessarily enough, is they create a really unique space, a space where you're bringing all those different states stakeholders together that may involve state, non state, family and community stakeholders to talk about these deaths and what could be different. That is a very difficult space. To hold where you want to leaven power relationships, create potential for change, be bold in terms of what could be different.

But you can widen that lens and therefore the prevention possibilities, including thinking about new and emerging forms of violence and how we might want to respond to those. And I guess lastly the reflection for me, why these reviews are important in some way, the fact we have to do a review mean we have failed, we have failed to protect that woman and of course those who she leaves behind. And so the very least we can do is in her death, honour her story, tell that well and mobilise that learning to make change to try and prevent future deaths and improve responses by the state. Thank you.


Moderator [32:34]:

Thank you so much for bringing clarity on how these mechanisms of retrospective review operate. What is their purpose? Because there have been misconceptions, especially from countries that have not yet set up such kind of mechanisms. And it's true that one of the recommendations of government towards states is to establish such mechanisms because they are so important and as you mentioned, they offer, I would say, a space for truth and convenient truth, but truth on what went wrong, which are the structural gaps and which statutory responses were not correct and what can be done differently. So this brings me also back to you, Minister, if I may.

Now, how can Member States move from an individual case based response to femicide towards a comprehensive and strategic approach to femicides seen and considered as a structural phenomenon? Because precisely, I think this is one of the elements that come up from previous interventions.


Republic of Moldova · Minister of Labor and Social Protection · Natalia Plugaro [33:48]:

Yes, well, thank you so much. It's such an interesting discussion. And indeed when we come up to reviews or when we have to address the femicide as a criminal offense, it means indeed that we failed, right, as a state, as a service provision.

And yes, I'll share with you how we do it in Moldova. And indeed the, the introduction of the femicide in the national legislation is just one part of the broader integrated prevention strategy, because the criminalization of femicide was not, was never conceived as a standalone measure, but it is part of a broader and integrated strategy to prevent gender based violence and femicide. And the, the colleague from UN women mentioned the kind of three parts I would mention, you know, a bit more like the six pillars shortly that we focus in Moldova kind of in a way the same, but looking more granularly in the same areas. But indeed one of the recent achievement in Moldova was mandatory specialization of the justice system sector. They were so, so, so proud.

There was that is being led by the National Agency on Gender Based Violence Prevention and we have a number of judges, prosecutors and police officers who are currently undertaking this mandatory formal training and education on specialization in addressing GBV cases. It was not easy to compare convinced on the importance of this specialization, but I think it's a bold step that we're currently undergoing. The second kind of pillar is the lethality risk assessment tools. And I know we've been also discussing before this event about the quality of these assessment tools, but we're using them in Moldova. They used by police and social workers to identify, you know, high risk situation at an early stage.

And that's an area that requires still a lot of, you know, investment in the capacity building of professionals in using it really as a preventive tools tool. The third pillar is digitalization and we are currently developing a digital case management system in the social assistance where the social workers are case managers for the gender based violence and domestic violence case. And we are connecting this, the case management with all the digital systems system in other sectors, the health, the police, the justice and the system aims to provide information on case identification by the social assistance specialist. It includes the vulnerability assessment module. It provides also the history of interventions at different stages, the services provided and individual assistance plans, but also monitoring of victim progress while we aim.

So it's a system that is being developed now while we see already a very interesting result and impact just with the same capacity, with the same number of social workers, with the same number of professionals. Just by digitalizing the case management, we've been able to increase the number of women that the system can support by four times from 2,500 to 10,000 case management cases that the social system can handle. That's just because we move from a paper based approach to a digital system that is being connected to different services. And I think digitalization is very much important to be able to provide quicker services, to be able to track the case and ensure that cases do not fall through the institutional, you know, gaps and that survivors receive faster, more coordinated approach. The fourth pillar is support services that we provide through the network of the GBV shelters and the family justice centers in Moldova.

We are expanding the network of GBV shelters that are state funded and we are currently covering around 80% of the recommendations of the Istanbul Convention in terms of availability of shelter shelters for the country. And I think what's an important element when we look at the shelter network is looking at the accessibility for people with disabilities. Looking at the accessibility in terms of women with small kids and, you know, making sure that all women of different background have access to the shelters. The fifth pillar is the one that you also mentioned on coordination. And I think we've been able in Moldova to develop very good system in health and social protection in police.

But you know, this cross sectoral coordination, as we always speak, is really lagging behind. And what we did two years ago, the government established a dedicated agency on gender based violence prevention. And the director is here today with us that is under the prime Minister. So it's really kind of considered as a priority for the country that has the role to connect all these sectors together. And I think one of the role of the national agency that they are working now is developing a preventive model that place early intervention and economic empowerment at the center of their action.

And we are also developing now and putting in place a training curricula for multi sectoral approach, bringing together endeavor, same room, you know, the police officers, the social workers. So they can not only act, but they can learn together how to act. And I think that's an important element where we saw a lot of gaps when it comes to cross sectoral coordination. And the last pillar, the sixth pillar is the economic empowerment. I think that's obvious and it's recognized by everyone that financial dependency is frequently a major barrier preventing women from leaving abusive relationship.

And we put in place a lot of not only policies, but also funding supporting mechanism through entrepreneurship program for women. We have also subsidies for companies who hire survivors of gender based violence to facilitate easy integration of victims of violence into the labor market. So altogether these pillars really kind of help us to move from fragmented, reactive response to a more comprehensive and strategic approach that treats or looked at femicide as a preventable, a structural phenomenon and places really prevention and early intervention at the center of our public policy. Thank you.


Moderator [42:24]:

Thank you. I think we can all agree that all pillars that you mentioned are extremely important. Important. If I can go back to the issue of training that you mentioned, because it is very close, it goes close to my heart. If I can say you mentioned mandatory, you refer to mandatory training, which I would like to highlight how important it is.

We see more and more, I would say even resistance from the judiciary to receive training. Especially when it comes to, when it comes to training from outside the judiciary, very often we see it is training from judges to judges and it's not enough on a voluntary basis, not mandatory. So one of the standards of the Istanbul Convention as interpreted by Grevio precisely is that we need mandatory, initial and complete continuous training for the judiciary and all other professionals who come into contact with victims or perpetrators. And thank you so much for taking this, this initiative because this will also inspire other countries to take this bold step. As you mentioned, for the judiciary, there are even sometimes arguments around the judicial independence.

And I always wonder to what extent independence may be hampered if you provide knowledge. But anyway, it's a big discussion, but thank you for bringing this. Now I have one last question that will be addressed to the rest three distinguished panelists. So what forms of collaboration between governments, civil society, academia and international organizations are most important, according to your opinion, to prevent and address femicide? And how can this operation address structural roots of gender based violence and drive cultural changes?

Because what we are discussing today is that the underlying reasons for femicide are the unequal power relations, their harmful stereotypes and the misogynistic norms and attitudes. May I start with Dr. Toledo? Please.


CEDAW · CEDAW Member; Co-Chair WG on GBV · Patsili Toledo Vázquez [44:48]:

Thank you so much. And yes, there are so many issues that are so complex as independence from knowledge, as a type of independence that we wear.

I think that one of the critical things that I believe we have to be reminded when we are talking about femicide is that while all measures are needed in order to protect women and provide what they need, the ones committing femicide are men. And we need to focus on what are the responses that are offered for men that are using violence in order not to commit this type of crime or any other. And I believe that in a number of countries this is a question that nobody is addressing and it's a critical one, I think, and I'm a believer in the potential of sitting around the table in these reviews, in depth reviews, and having those hard questions, because I don't think, and this is a risk that what is reviewed is the life of a woman and what she did or what she didn't. And that is already being done by the media when they said she didn't report it before. And this is a slight form of victim blaming when we should be asking where was this man before?

And in particular we see it when this was really using violence in previous relationships. So it's not really very often we will not find answers looking at the life of women. But we have to look, and that is an obligation. We have to look at the lives of those men who are using violence and what are the responses that we need. We have to sit on that table, I think, and this is important because when this is a close discussion that it's happening in a number of countries in which just a commission with heads of different departments meet and they agree on what were the main failures or lack of coordination.

But that's a close discussion. They are not including family members, friends of social networks of both victim and perpetrators. A former partner is a social relation of the perpetrator and they could provide very important information for these type of reviews. Co workers of perpetrator who were probably seeing how this man was obsessed about his former girlfriend and they didn't know what the resources existed even for them as co workers. And these are the questions that I think that with not just identifying failures, but also what else is needed?

What other type of responses and spaces and services are needed for all people involved, that is the whole society. We are all personally involved in these cases and we need to find what is exactly the role of schools, teachers, of neighbors, of co workers, companies, etc. Not just thinking about again victims, but also about perpetrators. And I also believe that we have with all of them look at not just what happened before and how we could avoid this from happening, but also how we provide the needed support for victims and families and communities after these crimes. That is a missed.

I think it's something that overlooked very often and families are not just impacting by the grief, but also a number of the victimization of the justice system or the media coverage of these cases and all that should be also part of the discussion on the responsibility. Thank you.


Durham University · Assistant Professor of Sociology · James Rollins [48:30]:

Thank you. And I couldn't agree more about the importance of these being open processes. Obviously you can't always conduct them in public, but they are open venues for those dialogues. And, and you need to think about the mechanism for bringing in multiple actors, state, non state, family communities and so on. I guess my answer actually in a sense builds on yours because I want to talk about that idea of this widening of the lens that this collaboration allows.

And I think that's really important. It allows us to go from beyond the individual focus on the victim, but also the perpetrator. Also professionals who for some reason, or not often are blamed for not doing a certain thing and situate that in a community and social context or in a system and say, well, why is it that that didn't happen? So why did a victim not go to an agency? Why might that be a barrier for her?

If a professional did not complete the risk assessment, why did they not do that? Was that about a lack of training? Was that about caseload? So in all these ways what we're doing is widening the lens, broadening what we're looking at and therefore what we can learn on which takes us away from the risk of victim blame. I think in these Small answers because the risk is that these reviews and our response generally becomes a kind of patching up job because we often know that the systems don't work terribly well and we get distracted by the patching up.

And the patching up is really important. Of course it is. And sometimes what reviews have done have made small but really significant changes to policy and practice. But we need to then be able to step back and reimagine what these systems could look like as well. And that's what these kind of broad open learning processes allow.

And I just want to kind of end on one thing about this idea of collaboration. I think we really need to think about what that collaboration means, which is it's about having a shared ambition. What is the purpose, why we are bringing these people together? And does everyone around that table agree that it's about meaningful people participation? Everyone has a voice, they feel they are heard.

Whether or not you necessarily agree is another question. But you feel you are heard and then you have a sense that there is a collaborative endeavour in this, that actually what the solutions you are producing are something that you can all be part of and can all hold your hand to and say this is part of the solution. And I think that's what these kind of reviews can offer along with other mechanisms where again, what we're doing is making this part of a whole society. Response.


UN Women · Policy Specialist · Lee Tandeter [51:03]:

Thank you. So. Well, I think it's important to stress that collaboration, I mean we're clearly talking about collaboration not only as a way to improve response, but basically as a way to prevent femicide right in the first place. So this has been said already, femicides as we know, are rooted in structural inequalities and equal power relations, discriminatory norms and social tolerance for violence. So I think as said already, the most important collaboration are those of institutions and actors that often don't seat at the same table.

So we need to make that happen so we can shift norms and everyday practices. So maybe if you allow me, I want to identify three forms of collaboration for this very that I think are very decisive. So first, I think it's very important to invest in sustained partnership with civil society to reach communities and build trust and transform social norms. We know that women rights organizations and community based groups are often the first to identify emerging patterns of violence and also barriers that women face in seeking help. And a lot of the times are also the ones that are providing this first response through community based prevention, survivor centered support, especially where institutions fail basically.

So second, another form of collaboration is knowledge and cultural partnership with academia, media, international organizations to drive evidence based prevention and cultural change. As we know, evidence matter. The minister from Moldova was telling us about the importance of. Of evidence affecting policies in her country. So research helps to identify risk factors and also identify practices on what works in preventing these risk factors.

International organizations such as UN Women can help escalate good practices, strengthen standards and also support monitoring of this, of the standards. And the media, together with educators and cultural institutions, also shape social expectations. And patsily, I apologize that I'm quoting you so much, but they are key in how violence is portrayed, whether victim blaming, it's an issue that we face, and also whether equality is reinforced as a shared value also. And lastly, and then I'm quoting Professor Rodland here, another collaboration is whole of government prevention compact, right? That connects, as we have said before, not only justice, but also with social protection, education, health.

Because we know that too often these institutions work in silos. So we need. Prevention requires basically an integrated referral pathway, shared risk criteria and coordinated protection measures so that women at a high risk especially are not left navigating this system by themselves. And just to finish my intervention,

we want collaboration to address. To not only address root causes, but it also, I mean, to address root causes, not only to coordinate services, but also basically to advance gender equality policies in general, right, that change the conditions, that make violence possible. And the minister has said this. We need to advance equal economic opportunities, education that promotes equality from early ages.

We need to engage men and boys and also transform institutions that promote inequal social norms. So this kind of structural change requires government, civil society, academia and international partners to work together, as I said, not only to respond to femicide, but. But make it less likely to happen in the first place. Thank you.


Moderator [56:05]:

Thank you so much. Extremely informative. So many elements that all of you mentioned about collaboration, which made me think that much more needs to be done. We have a long way ahead of us, but still it's important to know which are the key steps that needs to be taken. Now, we have a few minutes for Q and A part, so could you please raise your hand those that would like to ask questions?

And if I may kindly invite you to keep your questions brief. Yes, please.


Elisa Niklander [56:48]:

Put the mic on. I'm Elisa Niklander from Finland and I would like to ask about. Well, I had three different questions in my mind, but I'm gonna just ask about two of them. I wanted to know if you have looked at the price of a femicide. That's one question.

And then Another question is if there are some kind of measures taken related to the children left behind. Thank you.


Moderator [57:22]:

Thank you. Thank you for bringing this aspect. I suggest we collect a few questions and then we go back to the panelists.

Yes, please.


Women Observatory · Leader · Kiteria [57:33]:

Thank you. My name is Kiteria and I am from Mozambique. I'm leading the Women Observatory. And thanks for this insightful discussion. In Mozambique, we have been discussing whether we need a specific law for feminicide because of high rates, if we need to review the penal codes, or if we need to review the gender based violence legislation.

We have only the domestic violence law. And this discussion has led us to produce a lot of research at Civil society and we produce the Women Barometer. One of the key findings of our last Women Barometer was this discrepancy of data that you talk about. For instance, in our case, for the last year, police has registered 9,000 cases of gender based violence, while the health system has recorded for the same period 91,000 cases and the judicial system as recorded 4,000 cases that entered. So all these discrepancies adding to the fact that we had a reduction of domestic based violence recorded by police, but an increase of alarming of serious crimes as feminicide is a specific problem for us in Mozambique because we understand that the early warning sign out that could help prevent this escalation, including feminicide, has been failing and you have been talking about it.


Moderator [59:08]:

So my question is if you have faced some resistance on the needs of strengthening these integrated and interoperable data systems across sectors so that these discrepancies between different sectors do not hide risks and undermine early detection and prevention of feminicide. And if you also for the case of Moldova, if you understand what, if you understand that the concrete measures is helping to solve these risk factors and inaction of institutions and whether what would you counsel Mozambique Penal Code REVIEW legislation Thank you. Thank you. Perhaps one more question.


Soroptimist International Belgium · Sivik Cormos [1:00:00]:

Yes, thank you very much. My name is Sivik Cormos, I'm from Surreptimist International, Belgium. And I'm sorry I came a bit late or maybe I missed something of the discussion. But for our association, prevention is a very important thing and we are working very hard on prevention. We are doing each year campaigns, for instance, to arrange the word redesigned campaigns that we are doing each year in Belgium, also in the metro of Brussels, but we are also using tomatoes and so on.

So my question is, what is the best to do concerning prevention within the policy and what is doing generally? What are the countries doing concerning prevention? If I can have a General, Very short. General Ide. Thank you.


Moderator [1:00:57]:

Perhaps one more question. Yes, two more. Okay, you and you. And then we can. Yes, there is a lot of interest.


Speaker 23 [1:01:16]:

Thank you for you share your reflections. I'm from Mexico, from Mexico City. And we have a very important genealogy of the category femicide, like a feminicidio, by our very important master, Marcela Lagarde, a very important anthropologist. And well, she did a lot of very important things. So I recommend to you to read her reflections.

Marcela Lagarde y de los Rios. But I have some. A lot of ideas, but also some questions. First of all, I would like to go further about prevention, because you mentioned men. But

don't you think that maybe we can do something else to prevent. To put in the center the build of masculinity? Because I think we talk about a lot of victims, but what happened with aggressors. And also because in my country, the definition of violence against women is not just aggressive about the domestic sphere, according with your legal frame. What about the violence against women in the public sphere?

I think it's important because in, I don't know, places like school, work, we supposed to build citizenship, but we are not doing that because sexist violence. And. Well, my last question is what about indirect victims, like orphans, for example. Orphans, children, the rest of the family. Because in the morning we have in a group of Mexican parents, we were discussing about this because we want to reform law.

What happened with these victims that lost their mothers at the same time, mothers that lost their daughters. So it's very hard. Thank you. Hi everyone. I don't think that I need a microphone.

Okay. I'm coming from Turkey, from Istanbul, in Europe example. Many of the panelists mentioned about Istanbul convention, but in our example, Turkey withdrew from convention in the year MOA signed it. So I. We are an example of the results of the backlash in gender.

I don't think that there is a sufficient discussion around here in UN or. Or in Europe. So my question is, how can we raise a discussion in Europe?

And also

can Europe. No. Can a United nations convention, a similar kind of convention, help to, you know, withdraw online this backlash?

Thank you.


Moderator [1:04:40]:

Dear panelists, you have the difficult job to address these very interesting questions. Minister, may I start with you?


Republic of Moldova · Minister of Labor and Social Protection · Natalia Plugaro [1:04:52]:

Sure. Maybe some of them to address. And there was also a colleague from Mozambique. I think on your question, in terms of which path to take in terms of legislation, I will. I will let the experts to judge.

I believe it depends a lot on the national context. And I don't think there is a kind of golden rule. So it really depends on the national legislation and the service, the way it is constructed. But on your question on the digital system and the case management that brings together different, different sectors. In our case, in case of Moldova, actually, we didn't feel any kind of strong pushback, but it was a lot of willingness by different sectors to understand where we are kind of falling apart and where is this gap because indeed, when you look at the reports by different sectors, the numbers are completely different and it doesn't help in understanding where the issue is.

So there is quite a good support platform from everyone to bring this data together. And like just now, as I was saying, the system is still being developed, but we already see results. And I'll give you an example. So we're looking back and forth for the social workers who is providing support for the victim.

We looked between the initial assessment and then analyzed the type of referral, all the services that the victim received. And there are, you know, quite discrepancies there. So we do understand that. Okay, so here is the issue and then we go back to the social workers and discuss understanding. So why there is this, you know, mismatch.

Okay, we understand that's because of the lack of understanding or because of lack of capacity or because, you know, maybe there is kind of regulatory framework that doesn't allow them, you know, to refer to certain services. So really helps that, you know, electronic system to visualize where the issue are and maybe also to reflect on what happens on with the children or orphans. And we do have a service provision called professional parental assistance where the kids are put in a family with the, with the support of social services and psychosocial support. But I do agree, I think there is a lot of still space to look at the broader family members. I think, yeah, that's.

We are kind of mostly, you know, concentrated on the direct, you know, relatives. But when you look at the broader. So I think it. We need to expand the service provision. Yeah, thank you, Dr. Toledo.


Moderator [1:08:02]:

Within one minute if possible, because we're running out of time. So please. So thank you for the questions. I just maybe just wanted to emphasize that the cost of femicide is probably not even being calculated in terms of when you are thinking even in the direct family, the impacts. And I'm not just thinking about children, could be children, of course, but other family members, parents of the victims and the social network of the extended family.


CEDAW · CEDAW Member; Co-Chair WG on GBV · Patsili Toledo Vázquez [1:08:35]:

So it's enormous cost. Even if, for example, where I live in Barcelona, they are providing support for children in the aftermath of femicide and then ongoing and then don't know when that support will end because it's been years that they are providing this and there's no end to foresee, they don't need it anymore. And I also thinking the impact on other children when, when we are talking, for example, the mother of a school girl or schoolboy is killed, the impact is not only on that child, all the whole school and the classmates and they experience a number of impacts that it's anxiety that this could happen to a mother that is killed. So that is not even assessed in terms of what is that impact. There is impact and it needs to be addressed.

And I would say that probably in prevention. I think that the weakest point we have now it's precisely as you were saying, men, masculinities and how this is really the.

I think that it's one of the areas where much more need to be done because we are even seeing a number of projects, et cetera on prevention and are not or barely touching upon this. And it's very hard issue, but I think it's a critical issue.


Durham University · Assistant Professor of Sociology · James Rollins [1:10:00]:

Thanks. There were a lot of questions. I was thinking about your point about these different data systems and I think that's, you know, reflecting on the uk. I know that that's a regular problem. From case management through to what we know generally.

I guess the solution for us has often been to try and create that kind of shared language. That's where things like risk assessment tools come in. But also often some kind of hub approach to try and find ways to make the connections, which I think has been alluded to. But the barrier just continues to be the kind of practical ones of these kind of legal challenges, the practical challenges of systems, which is where I was really interested in the Minister's talk about the IT system. But I guess there's that implementation gap.

Even if we get these systems, systems right, how do we keep that pressure on the pedal, as it were, to make sure they continue to get used? And I think that's often the real difficulty. One of the things which I think is really stark for us in terms of cases currently in England and Wales is domestic abuse related deaths by suicide, which has come much more to the attention in the last few years. And actually now we commission twice as much many reviews into those deaths than we do homicides. And those cases have been described, to quote a colleague, as hidden in plain sight.

So their profile is quite different to homicides in some cases where a lot of those victims were very well known. To services. So I think what these reviews also do is actually expose some of those silos and they provide quite an urgent challenge for why we need to kind of break those walls.


UN Women · Policy Specialist · Lee Tandeter [1:11:40]:

Thank you. Thank you very much. Very interesting questions. We could restart the side event. So maybe just to confirm that the cost of violence has been estimated between actually 1% or between 1 and 3% of national GDP.

So clearly it's also good business to invest in prevention and maybe to reflect on your comment on violence in the public sphere, something that we are seeing in our region. For example, in Ecuador last year, for the last two years, there have been more femicide cases related to organized crime than intimate partner violence. So clearly that's a trend that, that we are seeing and absolutely agree with what previous panelists have said. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much.


Belgium · Minister [1:12:40]:

We still have one more minute and I would like to conclude with saying thank you to the experts around this table. I think it was a very, very interesting discussion. We could go on for hours, but I think that everyone can take their experience with them at home to work on this specific topic. I would like to end with five critical points that I noted after this discussion. The first one is femicide.

The intentional killing of women and girls because of their gender is not an isolated act, but part of a broader phenomenon. And to avoid killings can happen, we need a coordinated collective approach. Approach. Second, one ambitious legislation provides a necessary foundation. But I also write down that law alone does not prevent femicide.

Implementation determines impact. Third one, prevention must be structural and forward looking. And we must also engage men and boys in this discussion. Fourth, impunity remains a challenge. Effective investigation and prosecution requires gender sensitive approaches, adequate resources and institutional capacity.

And finally, collaboration is essential. Governments cannot act alone. Civil societies, academia, independent expert mechanisms and international organizations. They play a crucial role in monitoring, providing expertise and supporting survivors. So that's what I wrote down after this interesting session.

I would like to thank you all. It's 6pm sharp and thank you very much for being in this session.