Portugal // Feminicide and domestic violence numbers~ 1 min

By Víctor Boaventura

Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Four demonstrations against gender violence have been called in several points of the country.

After decreasing slightly in the last few years, the number of women killed by domestic violence increased in 2018. Since the beginning of the year until November 20, 24 women were killed “in a context of intimacy or close familial relations” in Portugal, according to the Observatory of Assassinated Women (OMA). Another 16 were victims of attempted feminicide.

Most of these women were killed in their own house (92%) with a bladed weapon (42%), leaving behind around 29 orphaned children. These numbers only account for those cases which were covered in media and collated by OMA. The reality should be worse.

The district of Leiria has the highest number of feminicides for the first time, in a total of 6.

Until recently, Portugal has presented a brutal number of women slain in a context of domestic violence. An average of 42 murdered women between 2010 and 2015.

According to 2017’s Annual Security Report, 79,9% of domestic violence victims are women and 84,5% of those denounced are men. There was a total of 25,498 denunciations of aggressions against women.