When G.F.*’s adult granddaughter was murdered in Esmeraldas, Ecuador, it wasn’t counted as a femicide, and her family didn’t push for further investigation, under threats. “It’s very difficult. … Nobody knows what it's like around here,” she recounted in a report on the invisibility of femicides in the country, produced by the national civil society organization Fundación ALDEA.
Hers is the kind of killing the Government of Ecuador is hoping to register more clearly in the future, after participating in a Women Count pilot programme in 2024 to implement the UN Women and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Statistical Framework for Measuring the Gender-Related Killings of Women and Girls (Femicide/Feminicide).
Led by UNODC and the UN Women Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Office, in collaboration with Ecuador’s National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC), the pilot provided insights into the current state of femicide data-collection and reporting. Participants hailed from various institutions involved in collecting these official data,1 all members of the INEC-chaired Special Commission on Statistics on Security, Justice, Crime and Transparency.
Verónica Cuzco, the INEC Analyst who leads the Special Commission, says the pilot coordinated and trained these institutions to use the statistical framework, while generating spaces for analysis, debate and discussion about necessary changes.
“It allowed us to see that there were variables we were already collecting, although we didn’t know that they could be used to measure the gender-based murders of women – for example, the variable of ‘signs of sexual assault against the victim’, and ‘relationship between victim and perpetrator’. But thanks to the technical advice we received, we’ve identified how to do it,” explains Cuzco.
She says the pilot also helped institutions identify variables they weren’t measuring, several of which they’ve now committed to monitor, in line with framework recommendations.
“Another important result of the pilot is to put on the table the importance and urgency for the country to implement the framework to be able to measure this indicator, because the need is so evident and so great that we really need to have this indicator reported, now!” adds Cuzco.
She says they’re also hoping to be able to harmonize such data into a single registry of violence, so policymakers can access reliable and timely statistics to inform the design of policies or programmes.
“I think this systematization of data could help legislators see that it’s necessary to make visible, name or record as femicides the other murders of women that don’t currently fall under the category of intimate femicide, but that do meet the characteristics of having been women who were violently murdered because of their gender,” says Cuzco.
One of the problems is that femicide data are currently limited to cases under investigation or with convictions as such by the criminal justice system.
In fact, the National Council for Gender Equality, also part of the Commission, has suggested legislative changes to the typification of femicide. The Ministry of Women and Human Rights has also been calling for improved data so as to identify the family members of femicide victims, who are entitled to compensation under a new 2024 Organic Law on Support and Reparation for Families of Victims of Femicide and Gender-Based Violence Deaths. Without accurate data, Cuzco says it’s difficult for the Ministry to budget for these compensations.
She hopes the pilot will also help reduce the gap between official and citizen data. For example, according to the Feminist Alliance for Mapping Femi(ni)cides in Ecuador, there were 274 feminicides in 2024, but INEC only counted the 84 that were registered as such in the criminal justice system. And the Alliance’s tally of 1,346 femicides from 2019–2024 contrasts sharply with INEC’s mapping of 487 femicides over the same period – although Cuzco acknowledges that the pilot helped them realize that “there are more cases that haven’t been counted that could be added to the femicide indicator”.
According to Geraldine Guerra Garcés, from Fundación ALDEA and the Feminist Alliance, the State has a debt when it comes to proper femicide registration. She says data-collection must be done according to the Latin American Protocol for the Investigation of Violent Deaths as well as Ecuador’s 2022 National Protocol for the Investigation of Violent Deaths, which both specify that all violent deaths of women should be investigated as femicides.
“The problem is that something happens along the way, and the official information is presented differently,” says Guerra Garcés. “INEC has made great efforts to narrow the gap, but they’ve only just achieved this. … But there is a need to fine-tune the criteria and change how they present these data to the public.”
She says there needs to be greater transparency, cross-referencing of data and coordination between forensic doctors, the State Prosecutor’s Office, police and judicial council, and they need to spend more time at the table with civil society.
INEC used to cross-check its data with the Alliance until 2020 – a practice both Cuzco and Guerra Garcés now hope to revive with the newfound momentum catapulted by the pilot.
“That’s the reconciliation approach required; because the State, when it has civil society involved, can broaden its criteria,” says Guerra Garcés.
*Name changed to protect her identity.
1Including the State Attorney-General’s Office, Judicial Council, National Service of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, National Police, Ministry of Women and Human Rights, and the Ministry of Public Health.
