When Will Northern Ireland Name Femicide?

Northern Ireland has the second highest rate of femicide across Europe. The statistics are harrowing. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) responded to instances of domestic abuse every 16 minutes since 2023. The law is apprehensive to tackle matters of domestic abuse, usually dismissing it as a ‘private’ matter. This dismissal has inadvertently resulted in the deaths of too many women. The crisis is clear, but is binding international human rights law enough to combat this?

How CEDAW Redefines State Obligations

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which the UK ratified in 1986, establishes clear obligations regarding violence against women (VAW) and gender-related killing of women. CEDAW establishes its framework with a comprehensive definition of discrimination that creates meaningful protections enabling women to access and exercise their human rights. Under Article 2(e), member states have an obligation to eliminate discrimination by taking 'all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women by any person, organisation or enterprise.' General Recommendation 19 extends this further by establishing a 'due diligence' standard that holds states accountable for violations committed by private actors. This approach both challenges the public/private distinction and transforms non-compliance into a human rights violation.

The implications of this reframing are significant: the private sphere transitions from being a protected zone free from state intervention to an area where states bear affirmative responsibilities. CEDAW establishes its framework with a comprehensive definition of discrimination that creates meaningful protections enabling women to access and exercise their human rights. Under Article 2(e), member states have an obligation to eliminate discrimination by taking 'all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women by any person, organisation or enterprise.' General Recommendation 19 extends this further by establishing a 'due diligence' standard that holds states accountable for violations committed by private actors. Further, General Recommendation No. 35 (2017) explicitly addresses "femicide/feminicide" as the most extreme form of violence against women requiring urgent state action. This approach both challenges the public/private distinction and transforms non-compliance into a human rights violation. The implications of this reframing are significant: the private sphere transitions from being a protected zone free from state intervention to an area where states bear affirmative responsibilities.  This

Northern Ireland’s Blind Spot

Crucially, the CEDAW Committee clarifies that governments can be held accountable for private acts of violence when they "fail to act with due diligence” to prevent violations of rights or to investigate and punish acts of violence. Every femicide in Northern Ireland potentially engages state responsibility under international law.

However, with NI addressing gender-related killing through gender-neutral homicide laws, femicide isn’t recognised as a distinct category requiring specific treatment. The PSNI's approach remains fundamentally gender-neutral. Training materials rarely employ feminist analysis or acknowledge that serious domestic abuse overwhelmingly involves male perpetrators. Homicide investigations don't use specific femicide protocols or examine killings through lenses of gender inequality and patriarchal control. Northern Ireland's conflict legacy adds complexity: paramilitary involvement in "policing" domestic violence, women's reluctance to engage with historically partisan police forces, and normalised violence during the Troubles create distinct obstacles. Austerity since 2010 has disproportionately affected women. The Women's Budget Group found 86% of fiscal consolidation burden fell on women. Cuts to specialist domestic violence services directly undermine femicide prevention, yet these choices aren't contested through CEDAW mechanisms. This gender-neutral approach creates three critical failures.

The Cost of Neutrality

This approach individualises femicide by treating each killing as discrete criminal deviance rather than systemic violence rooted in patriarchal social organisation. The focus remains on individual culpability rather than examining the structural conditions that perpetuate it – economic inequality, inadequate investment in support services and failure of state protection.

It also depoliticises femicide. Early Feminists emphasised “the personal is political,” stating that male violence reflects systematic domination. By routing femicide through criminal frameworks emphasising individual pathology, political dimensions become invisible.

Finally, it fails to generate specific obligations. When virtually all domestic homicides involve men killing female partners, treating this as coincidental rather than systematic produces inadequate responses. CEDAW requires preventing femicides through comprehensive strategies addressing the continuum of violence against women.

Conclusion

Northern Ireland stands at a critical juncture. CEDAW provides the framework. It names femicide as systematic discrimination and establishes that state failure to prevent these deaths constitutes a human rights violation. Yet Northern Ireland's institutions persist with gender-neutral approaches that obscure the gendered reality of these killings. The conflict legacy cannot indefinitely excuse inaction. The question is not whether international law is sufficient, but whether Northern Ireland will treat its CEDAW obligations as truly binding. Until femicide is named, tracked systematically, and addressed through gendered analysis, the framework remains hollow. What's absent is political will. That absence costs lives.

By: Nicole Creighton (LinkedIn @nicolecreighton)

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