WHAT IS FEMICIDE?

The term Femicide came to light when Diana E. H. Russel used the term while testifying to the women attending the first International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women In Brussels, Belgium in 1976. The term is defined as “the killing of females by males because they are female” and it encompasses all types of killing of females. While there is no internationally accepted definition, the term “femicide” is commonly used to describe the intentional killing of women and girls because of their gender. The most severe form of gender-based violence against women and girls, femicide requires the perpetrator to have a gender-related motive for the killing. Such motives may include the desire to exercise power over females or prevent or punish them for socially unacceptable female behavior, assumptions of entitlement and ownership over women and girls, pleasure, or sadistic desires towards females. Most femicides are committed by the victims’ husbands or male relatives in the privacy of the home. Femicides may however also occur in the public sphere and include different modi operandi and relationships between victims and perpetrators.

In the context of the Middle East, including Iran, a common form of femicide are so-called “honor killings,” which are defined as the killing of women and girls for the sake of preserving the family’s honor. The perpetrators are typically male family members who – sometimes with the support of the matriarchs – kill another female family member for acts that allegedly go against societal traditions, wrongly interpreted religious demands, or the family’s reputation. Such acts may include perceived sexual or behavioral transgressions or cases of incest and rape.

LIVES NOT JUST NUMBERS

• Many acts of femicide happen in silence, behind closed doors. Victims are sometimes left on desolate routes or quietly buried, some without headstones that mark their names. For these reasons, obtaining accurate data on femicide is a challenging task. StopFemicideIran assembles statistics and information about cases of femicide in Iran. We utilize multiple sources including local and national news, social media and grassroots reports.
•  Although acts of femicid occur in all parts of the country, based on available data, they are most prominent in 5 provinces
• Although given the current laws it is not easy to hold the perpetrators accountable for these murders, from a sociological perspective, it is important to understand the profile of perpetrators who commit these murders. According to the available data, most murders of women are committed by spouses, brothers, and fathers, but they are all committed by sons, cousins, inlaws, and others.

The list of femicides in Iran has been compiled with the utmost care by StopFemicideIran.org, if you know of cases that are not yet included in our overview please report them to us so we can make our overview as complete as possible.

KEY FINDINGS:

Based on the analysis of 149 recorded femicide cases in 2023, the report identifies the following patterns and stories of femicides:

FEMICIDES ARE STILL PREVALENT

• The 149 recorded femicide incidents represent an average of approximately one killing every other day, or nearly 13 killings per month. 
• This figure reflects a decrease of roughly 18% compared to the incidents documented in 2022. The decline may be attributed to factors inhibiting reporting such as heightened government censorship, particularly online, and reduced public reporting by affected families due to diminished trust in the government system. 

MOST VICTIMS ARE YOUNG, AND THEIR NAMES ARE BURIED WITH THEM 

• Analysis of the age distribution among victims reveals that at least 80% (120 unique cases) of women and girls who were murdered were under the age of 50. Among them, at least 20 cases were girls under the age of 20.
• The youngest documented victim is a mere 9 years old, while the oldest victim is recorded as 66 years old, representing a broad spectrum of age groups affected by femicide. The 9-year-old girls was shot by her father when he killed his wife for alleged honor reasons; the 66-year-old woman was found dead in the outskirts of Tehran, and initial investigations revealed that she was killed in a brutal manner, and the perpetrator had previously killed another woman with the same brutality.
• For another 30% of the victims, their age remains unknown.
• More than half of the recorded femicide victims, totaling 85 individuals, remain unnamed in publicly available records, underscoring the significant anonymity surrounding these incidents.

FEMICIDES PRIMARILY OCCUR IN TEHRAN PROVINCE AND WESTERN IRAN 

• Tehran province recorded the highest number of femicide cases, totaling 42 incidents or approximately a quarter of the total cases, indicating a prevalence of gender-based violence in the capital region. While this province is ethnically and socio-economically diverse, the available data does not reveal any background information of the femicide victims, rendering definitive conclusions on the correlation between femicide and ethnicity or socio-economics impossible.
• Another significant number of femicides (45 cases or 30% of all incidents) is recorded in western Iran, including the provinces of Fars, Ilam, Kermanshah, Khuzestan, Kurdistan, and West Azerbaijan, a region known for its tribal structures and ethnic diversity. This suggests a potential intersection between tribal affiliations and patterns of gender-based violence in these areas.
• The relatively low incidence of femicide in Sistan and Baluchestan province, with only two reported cases, is surprising and suggests potential disparities in reporting mechanisms or societal factors affecting the documentation of such incidents in this region.

Many other provinces also record femicide incidents, but with a total of only 11 cases, the numbers are significantly lower for central and eastern Iran. This can also be attributed to cultural, familybased, and regional barriers in reporting.

Read all key findings here.