UN Femicide Report Lacks “Context,” So Where Are the Fact-Check Police?
Dendodge, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Introduction.
The UN long ago took up the cause of transforming social institutions, norms, and traditions worldwide that feminists within its ranks believe promote inequality between men and women, boys and girls. They tell us that inequality is the underlying cause of violence against women, including all intentional killings of women by intimate partners and family members. And they purport to know how to achieve the “elimination” of this violence through social transformation.
To advance their political agenda, UN Women and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime recently produced a report titled “Femicides in 2023,” accompanied by a rollout in the press. The document and the press rollout rely on a deceptive presentation of statistics. So where are the media’s speech police who are so vigilant to remove “mis,” “dis” and “mal”-information from the public square and deplatform disseminators? In this instance they are silent, not even bothering to place the UN’s spun-up facts and conclusions in proper “context.” Could it be that their reverence for the truth simply disappears when the truth fails to further their goals?
Femicides in 2023 – The News Account.
The headline of the story in the paper was: “UN: Domestic violence killed 51,100 women in 2023.” The story is about a report released by two UN agencies — UN Women and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime — titled Femicides in 2023, timed to coincide with November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
The first two paragraphs of the story tells us:
The deadliest place for women is at home and 140 women and girls on average were killed by an intimate partner or family member per day last year…Globally, an intimate partner or family member was responsible for the death of approximately 51,100 women and girls during 2023…
The story goes on to tell us, “Women and girls everywhere continue to be affected by this extreme form of gender-based violence and no region is excluded,” and that Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, the Deputy Executive Director of UN Women:
told a news conference launching the report that women have been killed by their loved ones for a long time and the trend is continuing because underlying issues haven’t been addressed – especially gender stereotyping and social norms. “This is killing which is associated with power over women,” she said, and it continues because of the continuing impunity for violent attacks against women.
In sum, 51,100 women and girls were intentionally killed by an intimate partner or family member in 2023 — an average of 140 such killings per day. This is an extreme form of gender-based violence associated with power over women that continues because of impunity for violent attacks against women and because underlying issues, especially gender stereotyping and social norms, have not been addressed. If we were to follow the prescription of these UN agencies, we could outright eliminate violence against women. Or am I missing something?
Femicides in 2023 – The Report.
Maybe the Femicides in 2023 report itself provides more crucial details. Let’s have a look.
First, is “femicide” the same thing as the “intentional killing of women and girls?” The report explains that the UN categorizes three types of killing as femicide:
1. Intentional homicides of women and girls perpetrated by intimate partners
2. Intentional homicides of women and girls perpetrated by other family members
3. Intentional homicides of women and girls committed by perpetrators other than intimate partners or other family members and where the killing meets at least one of eight criteria identified in the Statistical framework.
But because “the availability of data on the third type of femicide is still very limited,” the UN report explains, the report “is focused on patterns of and trends in the first two types of femicide.” Alright, then, for purposes of this UN report and the news accounts about it, “femicide” simply means the intentional killing of women and girls perpetrated either by an intimate partner or other family member.
This matters because the references to this type of homicide as “gender-based” or “gender-related” might cause anyone not aware of this definition to think that “gender-based” or “gender-related” necessarily means intentional killings motivated by bias against women and girls. But that is not the case. If an intimate partner or family member intentionally kills another person who happens to be a woman or a girl, that murder is included in the reported numbers, regardless of the motive.
Even though the numbers in the report include all such intentional killings regardless of motive, the report tells us:
Broadly speaking, femicides or gender-related killings of women and girls are committed in different settings, within the private sphere and beyond, for gender-related motives. Such motives are rooted in societal norms and stereotypes that consider women to be subordinate to men, as well as in discrimination towards women and girls, inequality and unequal power relations between women and men in society.
Although the cases that comprise the numbers were included regardless of demonstrated motive, the advocates who assembled the report nevertheless simply assigned a motive to all of them that is “gender-related…rooted in societal norms and stereotypes that consider women to be subordinate to men,” as well as in “discrimination” and “unequal power relations between women and men in society.”
But this can’t possibly be the motive for all of them, unless as a starting point every woman and girl in the entire world who was intentionally killed by an intimate partner or family member in 2023 was killed by a man or a boy.
What about the women who were intentionally killed by their same-sex intimate partners? The report suggests that “Restraining orders on male partners that prohibit further contact between them and the victims of their violence are among the measures that could prevent the killing of women.” Why, specifically, restraining orders on male partners? Why not restraining orders on partners in general? Why not treat intentional killing at the hands of same-sex female partners the same as intentional killing at the hands of heterosexual male partners? And what about women or girls who were intentionally killed by other family members who are women or girls?
In fact, in what do the report’s authors ground their assumption that every female who was intentionally killed by a non-female family member or intimate partner was killed because of unequal male-female power relations rooted in societal norms and stereotypes that cast women as unequal to men? The assumption is grounded in nothing other than feminist ideology — political theory.
If these killings are explained, everywhere they occur, by deadly social norms, does that mean feminists must be allowed free reign to transform offending norms everywhere?
The numbers in the report are worldwide numbers. That certainly covers a broad range of social norms. And yet, as varied as social norms are the world over, the report would have us believe that norms that enforce male/female power imbalances and gender inequality are the cause of the intentional killings of all girls and woman by their intimate partners or family members everywhere.
The number of murdered women and girls sure seems dire. How much worse is it than the number of men and boys intentionally killed in 2023?
Are women and girls who are killed by intimate partners, family members and others victimized at a much greater rate than men and boys? After all, it seems extremely dire that girls and women are intentionally killed by intimate partners and family members at a global rate of 51,100 per year, for an average of 140 per day. How does that compare to the number of boys and men who were intentionally killed by intimate partners or family members in 2023?
Let’s run some calculations from numbers provided in the UN report. The report tells us that there were, altogether, 85,000 intentional killings of women and girls in 2023, of which 51,100 (rounded off), or 60% (rounded off) were committed by an intimate partner or family member. The report also tells us that the 85,000 intentional killings of women and girls amounted to only 20% of all the intentional killings of human beings last year. The remaining 80% of the victims of intentional killings were men and boys. That means 340,000 men and boys were intentionally killed last year. While the overall number of intentional killings of girls and women averaged 233 per day in 2023, boys and men were intentionally killed at an average rate of 931 per day.
Alright, but the big headline for girls and women is that they are unsafe at home, within the family. How did boys and men do last year when it came to being murdered by intimate partners or family members? The report highlights that while 60.2% all intentional killings of girls and women are committed by an intimate partner or family member, only 11.8% of the murders of boys and men fall into that category. But that amounts to 40,120 boys and men killed by an intimate partner or family member, which is 78.5% of the number of girls and women who were intentionally killed by an intimate partner or family member in 2023.
Put differently, the number of intentional killings of boys and men by an intimate partner or family member (“gender-based,” or “gender-related” killings under the standard applied to female victims) amounted to 44% of all intentional killings of a human being by an intimate partner or family member in 2023, while the intentional killing of girls and women made up 56% of the total.
As opposed to boys and men, girls and women can venture outside the home in relative safety from being murdered, while within the home girls and women are about 22% more likely than boys and men to be murdered by an intimate partner or family member. In this fuller context, aren’t the numbers of women and girl victims of murder significantly less suggestive of a worldwide epidemic of anti-female, gender-based intentional killings? Yes, it seems that they are, which I suspect is precisely why the UN report and press rollout carefully frame the numbers as they do. And yet, there don’t appear to be any news or fact-checking outlets calling the UN out for the lack of context in its presentation.
What is the call to action in the Femicides in 2023 report?
The Introduction to the UN report tells us:
With the clock ticking towards 2030, the target date for the Sustainable Development Goals, and as the global community approaches the 30th anniversary review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, we urgently need to accelerate progress towards gender equality and eradicating violence against women and girls. The time has come to request more accountability, more funding, and a renewed dedication to safeguarding and advancing the rights of all women and girls, in every place and in all their diversity. UN Women and UNODC remain committed to supporting Member States to end violence against women and girls and achieving justice for every victim. Impunity must end and perpetrators must be held accountable.
“Impunity” – the intentional killing of women and girls without consequence – must end! Where does it exist? Everywhere, of course.
What are the Sustainable Development Goals and what is the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action referenced in the introduction to the femicide report? Do those documents provide any greater context or insight into the agenda?
The Sustainable Development Goals are seventeen goals set forth by UN declaration of which goal number five is “gender equality.” The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action is a 1995 document produced by UN Women. The introduction to the 2015 edition of the Declaration explains:
As the international community is in the final stages of crafting a post-2015 development agenda, this anniversary edition of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, together with the outcomes of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly, is a timely reminder that gender equality is not only a goal in itself, but a means for achieving all other goals on the global agenda.
Today, more than ever, urgent and sustained action is needed to transform the structures, institutions and norms – economic, political and social – that are holding back progress on gender equality. These systemic changes must be deep and irreversible. (Emphasis added).
What are the structures, institutions and norms that are holding back progress on gender equality and that therefore require urgent and sustained action to transform? In feminist theory, traditional heterosexual marriage and the nuclear family are right near the top, and so is the male/female “gender binary.” The quest to undermine and disrupt the gender binary has, ironically, led to actual males doing actual harm to actual females in sports, in which actual males are physically much stronger. But that’s an even deeper story. Are traditional heterosexual marriage, the nuclear family, and the male/female gender binary among the institutions and norms that the UN has thrown its weight into transforming?
The text of the Beijing Declaration explains:
Violence against women is a manifestation of the historically unequal power relations between men and women, which have led to domination over and discrimination against women by men and to the prevention of women’s full advancement. Violence against women throughout the life cycle derives essentially from cultural patterns, in particular the harmful effects of certain traditional or customary practices and all acts of extremism linked to race, sex, language or religion that perpetuate the lower status accorded to women in the family, the workplace, the community and society.
Among the actions that the document insists must be taken are the following:
Adopt all appropriate measures, especially in the field of education, to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, and to eliminate prejudices, customary practices and all other practices based on the idea of the inferiority or superiority of either of the sexes and on stereotyped roles for men and women; and
Encourage the media to examine the impact of gender role stereotypes, including those perpetuated by commercial advertisements which foster gender-based violence and inequalities, and how they are transmitted during the life cycle, and take measures to eliminate these negative images with a view to promoting a violence-free society.
The Beijing Declaration, which ironically was formed in a country that forced women to undergo abortions at the time under its One Child policy, was a follow-up to the 1993 U.N Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women. The preamble to the UN’s 1993 Declaration contains the following passage:
Recognizing that violence against women is a manifestation of historically unequal power relations between men and women, which have led to domination over and discrimination against women by men and to the prevention of the full advancement of women, and that violence against women is one of the crucial social mechanisms by which women are forced into a subordinate position compared with men,
Article 4 of the Declaration contains the following actions to be taken, among others:
(j) Adopt all appropriate measures, especially in the field of education, to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women and to eliminate prejudices, customary practices and all other practices based on the idea of the inferiority or superiority of either of the sexes and on stereotyped roles for men and women;”
(o) Recognize the important role of the women’s movement and non-governmental organizations world wide in raising awareness and alleviating the problem of violence against women;
(p) Facilitate and enhance the work of the women’s movement and non-governmental organizations and cooperate with them at local, national and regional levels
The power grab goes unchallenged.
This all demonstrates that back in 1993 a group of people prevailed upon the United Nations to adopt the feminist line that all male-against-female domestic violence is explained by “historically unequal power relations between men and women, which have led to domination over and discrimination against women by men and to the prevention of the full advancement of women.” The prescribed remedy is to scrub the world of all institutions, customs and practices that are “based on the idea of the inferiority or superiority of the sexes and on stereotyped roles for men and women.” Which institutions, customs and practices are those? That is left to the expert scrubbers to identify.
While the men-as-oppressors/women-as-oppressed model controls to this day, the language of the movement eventually shifted to “gender” equality, “gender”-based violence, etc., such that by the time the 2015 edition of the Beijing Declaration issued, UN Women were recommending deep, irreversible, sustained and systemic actions to “transform the structures, institutions and norms – economic, political and social – that are holding back progress on gender equality.” They were also telling us that “gender equality” is not just a goal itself but “a means for achieving all other goals on the global agenda.”
If institutions, traditions, and norms that underpin “gender equality” are responsible for all intentional killings of girls and women by intimate partners or family members, and if the eradication of these norms will erase impunity and eliminate violence against women and girls, it becomes a matter of life and death to root out these institutions, traditions and norms. What can be allowed to stand in the way, especially given that bringing about “gender equality” will not just stop there but will also serve as a means to achieve “every other goal on the global agenda!”
Who, other than one who wishes to facilitate the murders of women and girls, and therefore be complicit, could have the temerity to insist that the facts must be accurately presented and placed in context, when putting them in context places the goal of eliminating femicides at risk? As NPR’s CEO, Katherine Maher put it in a 2022 TED talk “Perhaps for our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth and seeking to convince others of the truth might not be the right place to start. In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.”
Maher is big on the censorship of “mis,” “dis” and “mal” information and on making sure that all inconvenient information is placed in “context.” You see, the quickest way to ensure that everyone is on common ground is to cause everyone to operate from the same curated information base. On the other hand when it comes to achieving desired (lefty) ends, reverence for the “truth” can’t be allowed to make us squeamish about using the necessary means to get things done.
This must be why you never see the usual fact-checking brigades take this kind of thing to task. On the team they play for, everything has been simplified to a single question: Are you on the right side of history, or the wrong side? Proceed from there.
This is just one more thing the UN has been up to, and this is how it’s done: “We have expertise regarding a massive and deadly problem (in this case, expertise we get from our ideology); you lack the expertise to question our expertise; so shut up or be complicit in the killing.” Neat trick. Effective. Some might recall the slight variation on the theme recently deployed to enforce compliance with policy proclamations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Bully, Bully!
