UN Women and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime presented paired technical and policy findings on the scale of intimate‑partner and family‑related femicide and the growing role of technology‑facilitated abuse.

“In 2024, an estimated 50,000 women and girls were killed by intimate partners or other family members,” said Candice Welch, director of the Division for Policy Analysis and Public Affairs at UNODC, summarizing the joint report’s headline figure. The agencies described the number as a global estimate subject to uncertainty because not all countries report consistently.

That estimate translates in the report to roughly 137 women and girls killed each day, with regional counts cited by the agencies: about 22,600 victims in Africa, 17,400 in Asia, 7,700 in the Americas, 2,100 in Europe and roughly 300 in Oceania. The report also noted regional rates per 100,000 people — Africa around 3 and the Americas about 1.5 — and stressed that longer time‑series data are available only for some regions.

Sarah Hendricks, director of the Programme Policy and Intergovernmental Division at UN Women, placed the figures in a broader rights context, saying femicide is typically the ‘‘fatal final act in a continuum of violence’’ and warning that digital harms both reflect and accelerate offline danger. “One woman or girl is killed every 10 minutes by an intimate partner or by her family member,” Hendricks said, and she added that an estimated 1,780,000,000 women and girls worldwide lack legal protection from online harassment or cyberstalking.

Speakers emphasized limits in existing data. David Rosas of UNODC said small year‑to‑year changes fall within statistical uncertainty because country reporting varies. “This decrease is actually not really significant,” he said, noting that shifts in which countries submit data can change aggregated totals and that the agencies are developing improved statistical frameworks to link technology‑facilitated abuse with lethal outcomes.

Panelists and journalists at the briefing focused on policy responses. Kaleopi Manjiro, chief of the Ending Violence Against Women Section at UN Women, said laws and awareness alone are insufficient without budgeted enforcement and survivor services and argued that responsibility should not be placed solely on women to protect themselves online. “It’s very important that we don’t have only women having the responsibility to protect themselves,” she said, calling for stronger platform accountability, better content moderation, and cooperation with women’s rights organizations and service providers.

The agencies pointed to recent national legal changes and to international instruments that can help: speakers cited strengthened domestic laws in countries such as Belgium and Colombia and the recent international discussion around cybercrime instruments that include provisions addressing nonconsensual dissemination of intimate images. Candice Welch noted UNODC work on statistical guidance and data systems and said the agencies will publish technical materials to better capture technology‑facilitated pathways to lethal violence.

Journalists pressed agency speakers on whether online abuse can be tied directly to femicides. Hendricks and Rosas said evidence is growing — for example, research cited at the briefing found many domestic victims had been surveilled online prior to being killed — but added that data systems remain insufficient to establish causal links broadly. The agencies said they will publish methodological guidance to improve measurement and called for cross‑sector collaboration to enforce existing digital safety laws and remove harmful content.

The joint femicide report and supporting materials are available on the UN Women and UNODC websites. The briefing closed with a note that the President of the UN General Assembly would hold a related briefing later in the day.