poster for tomorrow 2024: Stop killing women 

According to UN Women, 2022 was the year in which the most women were intentionally murdered to date: nearly 89,000.

If it’s not bad enough that femicide is increasing, the real statistic is probably much higher. The same report continues ‘for roughly four in ten intentional murders of women and girls, there is not enough information to identify them as gender-related killings because of national variation in criminal justice recording and investigation practices’.

This must change. So this year, we want to ask your help in drawing attention to all forms of violence against women.

Insight: Violence against women starts at home

Femicide is the most savage form of gender violence, but it is not the only kind. The two most common forms of violence that women suffer are physical and sexual violence, acts which are often committed in places where women should be safe, by men that they know.

According to the World Health Organisation, 26% of women have been subjected to physical or sexual violence by someone who they are in (or have been in) a relationship with. When it comes to femicide, in 2022 ‘around 48,800 women and girls worldwide were killed by their intimate partners or other family members (including fathers, mothers, uncles and brothers). This means that, on average, more than 133 women or girls are killed every day by someone in their own family.’ (UN Women).

Message: Change starts at home

How?

By calling out and reporting violence and threatening behaviour towards women whenever we see it. By changing our behaviour, at home and in public. By offering support to women we see threatened in the street, in a café, on the bus or on social media. By doing our best to make the world, wherever we can, a better, safer place for women at home and beyond.

“If you want to change the world, go home and love your family” – Mother Theresa.

As femicide and gender violence take place all across the world, for this contest we would like to invite you to interpret this brief through the lens of what you see and experience in your own country and community. In this way we hope to reveal a wider range of insights into the challenges faced in confronting this issue on national and local levels and help prevent more women suffering worldwide.