The database created records 287 documented cases. Of these, 82 were identified as political femicides. This does not mean that the other two-thirds are not. In most cases, the available information was too limited to allow us to clearly define them as such.
Women activists increasingly under attack
In Iraq and other parts of the world, hundreds of women human rights activists have not been so fortunate. Cyberbullied, threatened, assaulted and mutilated, women who choose to engage in political activism are sometimes killed. Whether they are political figures, lawyers, heads of organizations or institutions, or local activists, women are increasingly under attack. The UN observes that "almost everywhere, the increase in women's political representation has been accompanied by an increase in violence against them". And in the most extreme form of this phenomenon: "women have been murdered for exercising their political rights".
287 MURDERS IN 58 COUNTRIES
As part of the Femmes à abattre project, a team of ten journalists analyzed 287 murders of women activists in 58 countries and interviewed experts, NGOs, lawyers, survivors, relatives and families of the victims to understand this mechanism of "silencing".
The team was able to identify motivations and modus operandi attributable to gender-related issues in almost one third of these murders (82) committed between 2010 and 2022. These are causes that investigators, police and the justice system almost never investigate, yet they are essential to explaining these murders, which occur on every continent. Europe included. In France, for example, the case of Vanessa Campos was documented: a transgender woman and sex worker of Peruvian origin, she was killed at the age of thirty-six by a bullet to the chest on the night of August 16-17, 2018.
The Femmes à abattre database shows that women activists defending women's rights were by far the category of activists most affected by murders over the past ten years. They are followed by activists defending the rights of LGBTQI+ people, environmental activists, and campaigners fighting for the right to access land. When the perpetrators of the murders were known, the killers were always men, in every single case.
Sexual defamation
Worldwide, sexual defamation is a "tactic used to attack women human rights defenders", the UN notes in its January 2019 report.
"Their actions are discredited through comments and insinuations about their lives, their sexual orientation, their marital status, and so on. They are falsely accused of promiscuity or prostitution".
SMEAR CAMPAIGNS
These campaigns of sexist hatred have disastrous consequences.
"Public humiliation often has the effect of turning families and communities against women human rights defenders, the UN explains. Yet families and communities are precisely the main bulwark protecting women. When this protection collapses, they become more vulnerable to attacks".
These defamation campaigns can also have a profound impact on police forces, which should instead receive activists' complaints when they are threatened.
The murders of women human rights activists often aim to sow fear
Valentine Sébile, researcher, PhD candidate and expert on the situation of women human rights activists
Murders as a tool of intimidation
The staging of an especially brutal death can also serve as a warning to women who intend to take up the torch and continue the struggle. In Kenya, the remains of land rights activist Esther Mwikali were found on August 27, 2019, with her eyes gouged out and sticks inserted into her intimate parts. A direct message to the country's increasingly numerous women activists, who are fighting to have their inheritance rights respected.
The same macabre display was used for Victoria Pineda, a trans woman and LGBTQI+ rights activist in the Republic of El Salvador. Her naked body was found in a crucifixion position in the middle of the street in November 2019. Around her face, disfigured by blows, the killers had placed a tire so that it formed devil's horns.
"The murders of women human rights activists often aim to sow fear," explains Valentine Sébile, "and to send a signal to other activists and their communities. In fact, sometimes the most exposed people are killed so that the shockwave extends beyond the community and is perceived as a threat by civil society as a whole, as a message saying: imagine what we are capable of doing".
The killers of Esther Mwikali and Victoria Pineda were never arrested. Nor were those responsible for the murder of Hande Kader, a Turkish trans woman who fought for LGBTQI+ rights, Juana Quispe, a woman elected in Bolivia, Eman Sami Maghdid, an Iraqi feminist, or Nare Mphela, a South African LGBTQI+ activist.
IMPUNITY: "WOMEN MATTER LESS"
In reality, very few political femicides reach the trial stage: only 15%, according to the Femmes à abattre database. Less than half of these cases end in a conviction. In the overwhelming majority of cases, a police investigation is not even initiated.
Forced suicide and indirect killings
The boundary between murder and suicide is sometimes blurred. This is why the concept of "forced suicide" was introduced into the French Penal Code in July 2020. The multiple pressures and physical and sexual assaults suffered by some activists can also lead them to take their own lives. The death of Egyptian LGBTQI+ activist Sarah Hegazi, who died by suicide in June 2020 after being tortured for three months for waving a rainbow flag, is emblematic of what are also known as indirect killings.