WHY DO WE NEED A FEMICIDE WATCH IN DENMARK?

In 2015, the UN urged all member states to establish a national femicide watch to register and map murders of women. The Femicide Watch Initiative was founded on the recognition that femicides or gender-related killings of women represent the most extreme form of violence against women. The initiative aims to prevent violence and killings of women by collecting national data on femicides in order to compare across borders, thereby identifying and accelerating evidence-based policies and strategies to prevent and stop gender-based killings of women.
In Denmark, however, no official femicide watch has been established, and in 2023 the Danish Parliament decided to reject a proposal to create a partner homicide commission, such as the one established in Norway. Denmark therefore lacks an official body that registers and maps femicides with the aim of strengthening the preventive work that both the UN and EU call for even though it is increasingly recognized that Denmark, too, has a structural problem with violence against and killings of women.
And this is precisely why we have established Femicide Watch because violence against women and femicides are structural problems that must be prevented, and because we like the UN—believe that collecting and analyzing knowledge about gender based violence and killings is the best way to prevent them.

DEFINITION AND DELIMITATION OF THE TERM FEMICIDE OUR DEFINITION

• Killings of women as a result of intimate partner violence or violence in close relationships.
• Killings of women committed by family members.