This initiative, promoted by the  non-violent youth campaign  'EUnited for Equality' ,  aims to achieve mandatory and harmonised implementation of the United Nations statistical framework for measuring gender-related killings of women and girls in all EU Member States. 

The campaign does not require the institutionalisation of femicide as a separate crime in all countries (as happened in Italy), but it focuses on the urgent need for a harmonised, comparable statistical approach to effectively reveal and combat the phenomenon. 

Currently, most EU countries record lethal violence using "gender-neutral" homicide classifications, treating the victim’s sex as a mere demographic detail. This statistical practice cloaks the discriminatory gender-based motivation that is the root cause of these crimes. When countries do attempt to measure femicide, they rely heavily on intimate-partner or family homicide as a proxy, resulting in a dangerous blind spot by systematically excluding gender-related killings in the public sphere, such as the murders of sex workers, victims of human trafficking, or women targeted in misogynistic hate crimes by strangers.

Furthermore, while the newly adopted EU Directive 2024/1385 is a historic regulatory step, the petition argues that Article 44  ("Data collection and research") is too generic and vague. It requires Member States to count victims killed "due to violence against women" but fails to establish objective operational criteria for how national authorities should deduce this motivation. It also makes the recording of victim-perpetrator relationships optional ("where possible") and completely ignores public-sphere context variables. Consequently, without standardized guidelines, Article 44 risks becoming a hollow administrative exercise where EU institutions attempt to compile structurally incompatible national statistics.

 
- Why do we need a new European statistical framework?

While overall willful murder rates have steadily declined in Western societies over recent decades, the rate of gender-related killings remains stable and even spikes during crises (such as pandemic lockdowns). This mathematical resilience proves that generic crime-reduction strategies do not work for femicide.

Indeed, general homicide prevention focuses on territorial control and street policing. In contrast, preventing femicides requires targeted interventions: affective education, the funding of anti-violence centers, economic independence initiatives, and specialized risk-assessment protocols for law enforcement. Moreover, transitioning to a standardized statistical language makes hidden, marginalized, and non-domestic femicides visible.

Standardized metrics are the only way agencies like Eurostat and EIGE can compare data objectively: reliable statistics ensure that EU policy is guided by actual regional prevalence, highlighting which national protective policies are genuinely working. A harmonized system allows states to cross-reference previous police reports or active protection orders with final lethal outcomes. This systematic audit exposes exactly where judicial, police, or social support systems failed a victim, allowing for crucial institutional reforms.
 

- Why do we propose the implementation of the UN Framework?

The UNODC and UN Women "Statistical framework for measuring the gender-related killing of women and girls" is widely recognized as the most complete and adequate tool currently available to resolve these gaps. 

• It was officially approved by the United Nations Statistical Commission in 2022 following extensive global consultations with 54 countries.
• It is fully aligned with the International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (ICCS). This means it does not require Member States to formally codify "femicide" as a specific criminal offense in their national penal codes. Instead, it uses a set of objective, evidence-based variables to identify the gendered motivation of a killing for purely statistical purposes, bypassing incompatible legal systems.
• It mandates the systematic collection of variables covering the victim, the perpetrator, and the state response to provide a complete picture of the crime.
• To ensure comprehensive coverage, it organizes all gender-related killings into three distinct statistical "Data Blocks": (1) killings by intimate partners, (2) killings by other family members, and (3) killings by unrelated perpetrators where at least one specific gender-motivation criterion is met.
• It solves the "blind spot" of non-domestic killings by providing eight clear, concrete criteria to identify femicides committed by strangers or acquaintances. These include checking for prior harassment or stalking, illegal exploitation/trafficking, work in the sex industry, sexual violence, overkill/body mutilation, and gender-related hate motives.

By incorporating this international framework as a "presumption of compliance" under Article 44, the EU can harmonize its statistics, respect national legal discretion, and build a unified, life-saving prevention network.

To know more about it: Statistical research

EUnited for Equality Campaign and this petition are the final output of "InclusiVoice" Erasmus+ Small Scale project involving three partner organizations and more than 20 young participants from Italy, France and Latvia.

The project is co-funded by the European Union and the Italian Youth Agency.

• Centro per la Pace di Forlì - APS (leader partner)
• Euromed Feminist Intiative 
• Women's NGOs Cooperation Network of Latvia

You can find out more about the project and the partners here:

• InclusiVoice Project Summary 2025
• EUnited for Equality: Youth against femicide
• Project report 2025-26
• @eunited4equality

 

You can contact us here: forli.centropace@gmail.com or eunited4equality.campaign@gmail.com