Femicide is often discussed like it’s an anomaly that occurs within a society that is otherwise free from violence. The reality, however, is that the ongoing murder of women, particularly African women and other colonized women cannot be understood outside of the violent social conditions created by colonialism itself.
Across the world, women are being killed at alarming rates. In 2024, nearly 50,000 women and girls were killed by intimate partners or family members globally. Africa recorded the highest rates of femicide, with an estimated 22,600 women and girls killed by partners or relatives. Nearly half of the total number! This data reflects the outcome of conditions imposed on colonized people living under colonialism.
Femicide does not exist separately from homicide
In countries where the State has normalized violence, women are not protected from violence, instead we are targeted within it. The home becomes another site where colonial violence is reproduced.
This is why the countries and regions with the highest levels of femicide are often also places marked by the deepest forms of colonial and neocolonial control.
For example, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) documented at least 3,770 femicides and gender-related killings of women in 2024, more than 11 women killed every day in this part of the western hemisphere. Honduras recorded one of the highest femicide rates at 3.1 per 100,000 women, followed by Guatemala at 1.9 and the Dominican Republic at 1.5. Caribbean nations including Suriname, Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines also reported femicides in 2024.
These numbers may appear small compared to larger countries, but in small island populations, each killing has a devastating social impact. These deaths also exist alongside some of the highest homicide rates in the hemisphere, showing that femicide is part of a wider colonial crisis of violence.
Jamaica, for example, has long experienced some of the highest homicide rates. Honduras and Guatemala are similarly marked by severe rates of gang violence, political instability, militarized policing, and poverty. Femicide emerges inside of these violent colonial conditions.
Violence persists inside imperialist countries
In the United States, black women are significantly more likely to be killed by intimate partners or acquaintances than white women. In 2020, the homicide rate among black women reached approximately 11.6 per 100,000 compared to 3.0 for white women. Black men experienced homicide rates exceeding 46 per 100,000, exposing the broader conditions of normalized violence imposed on black communities overall.
Canada reveals a similar reality through the crisis of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls. Indigenous women represent only a small percentage of Canada’s population but account for a vastly disproportionate number of female homicide victims. Indigenous women make up roughly 4 to 5 percent of the female population while accounting for as much as 16 to 24 percent of female homicide victims nationally.
The Canadian State, which often frames itself as a multicultural oasis, portrays this crisis as a tragedy requiring reconciliation, but the violence is inseparable from settler colonialism itself.
A recent European Union (EU) survey found that one in three women across the EU has experienced physical or sexual violence. African and immigrant women often face heightened vulnerability due to precarious labor conditions, housing insecurity, immigration status, and policing. Yet the absence of race-based data allows the State to obscure the colonial foundation of this violence.
The same European powers that enrich themselves through the colonization of Africa and the Caribbean preside over the policies that continue to produce violence against women.
The struggle against colonial domination is the answer
So, it is extremely important that when raising the issue of femicide we do so with the understanding that women are not dying outside the broader crisis of violence around us. Femicide is one expression of a violent social order maintained by colonialism.
The colonial State claims it will protect women while simultaneously presiding over the conditions that produce violence daily. The same State that launches awareness campaigns also oversees colonial conditions that make women vulnerable.
This is why penalizing femicide alone will not deter it. Ending colonialism will.
Death to colonialism!
Forward the African revolution by any means necessary!
Join the African National Women’s Organization!
Uhuru!
