Russia: women’s deaths from domestic violence
In the past two years, 2284 women have died in Russia as a result of domestic violence
03.12.2024
Article published on the ASI website
The Centre for the Protection of Domestic Violence Victims at the Consortium of Women’s Non-Governmental Associations has prepared a new study on domestic violence The Algorithm of Light, which is based on data for 2022 and 2023.
Experts working for the Centre analysed more than 15,000 publicly available sources, focusing on published sentences under national Criminal Code Articles:
- The intentional causing of the death of another person (Article 105 of the Federation’s Criminal Code);
- Murder committed whilst in a state of temporary insanity (Article 107 of the Criminal Code);
- The intentional causing of serious harm to health resulting in the death of a victim through negligence (Article 111, Paragraph Four, of the Criminal Code).
According to the study, 2,284 women died as a result of domestic violence in 2022 and 2023, with the vast majority (93%) killed by their partners.
The ratio of women murdered as a result of domestic violence was 66% during those years. “At least 95 women were killed each month in our country in cases of gender-based violence – that’s three women every day”, said the authors.
The verdicts studied included those who have taken part in the war in Ukraine. We found 65 convictions, 11 in which the victim was a woman but only eight were the result of domestic violence.
“It has not been possible to draw conclusions on how often women have died at the hands of those who fought in the conflict in 2022 and 2023 given the small sample size. We are also aware that the courts might not reveal information of previous ex-prisoners’ convictions, or the involvement of the accused in military operations”, said the authors.
Experts are concerned that Russia still lacks the necessary legislative measures to protect women, particularly Special Protection Orders, and the fact that survivors are not protected from harassment or retaliation from pardoned men.
“A pardon means that a person is no longer considered to have a criminal record. If he reoffends, he won’t be seen as a recidivist, i.e. having a more severe sentence imposed that takes account of a previous offence”, said the authors.
Although the past 13 years have seen a consistently high number of women killed as a result of domestic violence, experts believe that we can now see a slight decrease in violent crime and the number of deaths. This is supported by data produced by the Federation’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, which were quoted in the survey.
So, in 2023, compared to the previous year, 2% fewer murders (Article 105 of the Criminal Code), 6% fewer rapes (Article 131) and 4% fewer cases of serious harm to health (Article 111) were recorded. The Ministry registered 15,600 violent crimes from January to July this year, which is 6% less than during the same period in 2023.
The whole study can be found on https://algoritmsveta.com
