Global 16 Days: Femi(ni)cide in Focus Panel Series: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls

These panels explore the intersecting phenomena of femicide, the deliberate killing of women and girls due to social perceptions of their gender, and feminicide, how the actions and inactions of nation-states facilitate that violence. Femi(ni)cide is driven by the devaluation of women and girls in societies globally that subjects them to a wide range of gender-based violence (GBV).

Those experiences of GBV are further compounded by the multiple, intersecting forms of discrimination women and girls experience due to other identities they assume related to their sexual orientation, class, caste, religious affiliation, ethnicity, etc., within their families, communities, nation-states, and the global community. Collectively, this devaluation renders women and girls vulnerable to a wide range of gender-based human rights violations—most commonly rooted in intimate partner relationships—that so undermine their human security that they are vulnerable to immediate or early death. Given the frequency with which femi(ni)cide occurs every day on a global scale, UN Women has labeled this violence as “the most brutal and extreme manifestation of violence against women and girls."

Learn more here. 

PANEL 3
November 12: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG)

This panel explores femi(ni)cide through the lens of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) in Mexico, Canada, and the United States. In their home nations indigenous women and girls are disproportionately subject to a startling range of human rights violations in comparison to their men and boy counterparts, as well as to other communities of women and girls.

Experts explore how this extreme marginalization routinely results in the murder and/or disappearance of indigenous women and girls, which is often unaccounted for in national registers globally.