UNODC promotes international standards to measure femicide

On March 16, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) participated as a speaker through the Center of Excellence for Statistical Information on Government, Public Security, Victimization and Justice (CoE), in the event Data and maps on femicide. What are we communicating?

The objective of this event was to invite the media and researchers to reflect on the statistical data used in Mexico to understand the magnitude and statistically represent more accurately femicide – a phenomenon that afflicts the country in an ascending way since several years ago.

That is why the CoE presented the International Classification of Crimes for Statistical Purposes (ICCS), a methodological tool approved in 2015 by the United Nations, which aims to improve the coherence and international comparability of criminal statistics and as well as the analytical capacity, both nationally and internationally. It’s based in internationally agreed concepts and principles.

In addition, the CoE shared some other recommendations, such as using official sources of information, like from the Health System (death certificates) and those of the Criminal Justice System, which should be in line with the UN’s Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics, as Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) sources of information do.

Finally, data from recently published booklet on Gender-related killing of women and girls was shared, part of UNODC’s 2018 Global Study on Homicide.

This event was organized by UNAM’s independent researchers Emanuela Borzacchiello and Giulia Marchese with the support of Mexico City’s Ministry of Culture. Other participants present: Patricia Castañeda Salgado, academic from UNAM; Andrea Medina Rosas, feminist lawyer; Angelica Lucia Damián Bernal, feminist geographer and coordinator of the first national cartography of femicide; and Carolina Torreblanca, data analyst at Data Cívica.

For more information about this event, please visit their website (only in Spanish).