The University of Malta, through the Department of Gender and Sexualities and the Women’s Rights Foundation, has launched an awareness-raising campaign for the prevention of femicide.
The project, titled ‘FEM-United – United to prevent IPV/DV Femicide in Europe,’ focuses on the prevention of intimate partner violence and domestic violence which could lead to the killings of women and girls.
“The campaign’s aim is to raise awareness among front-line professionals, policy makers, and the general public on the prevention of intimate partner femicide and to enable citizens to call on governments, politicians and state institutions to take action,” the statement read.
The release of five videos will emphasize on naming the killings of women and girls due to their gender as femicide; linking the normalisation of violence against women in our societies with femicide; noting the warning signs and risk factors associated with femicide; debunking myths and misconceptions on femicide that obscure the foundations of violence against women and femicide; and demanding governments to take action to prevent femicide
A statement for the project revealed that every day, 137 women and girls are killed due to their gender by a family member or an intimate partner globally. It also stated that in Malta, 11 women have been killed due to femicide since 2016.
The statement noted on findings from the FEM-United study, which revealed that in the cases reviewed between 2019 and 2020, intimate partner femicide was the most common form of femicide.
Migrant women were at increased risk of femicide, as well as the majority of perpetrators were men and of Maltese origin. The study also revealed that no support or involvement prior to the femicides was given by authorities, despite a history of intimate partner violence in some cases.
The EU-funded project seeks to highlight the urgent need to develop and implement strategies for preventing femicide. The project involves five EU countries, being the Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus; the Institute for Empirical Sociological Research at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany; the University of Zaragoza, Spain; and the University of Porto, Portugal.
The project also involves advocacy NGOs and women’s specialist services including Malta’s Women’s Rights Foundation and the União de Mulheres Alternativa e Resposta (UMAR) in Portugal.
The FEM-United team comprises of board members of the European Observatory of Femicide (EOF), which is the first European-wide network monitoring femicide cases as well as fighting for the prevention of it.