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Report: Femicides drastically on rise in Canada, as one woman or girl killed every 48 hours

File photo shows a participant holding up a placard during a protest against femicide.

A new report has dived deep into the cases of femicide in Canada, showing that the number of women or girls killed in the North American country has drastically increased during the past five years.

The report, released by the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability (CFOJA) and updated on Sunday, says in the interval between 2018 and 2022, 850 women and girls have been killed in the country, which amounts to one woman or girl every 48 hours.

The report said in 82 percent of femicide cases, the suspect was a man while in the remaining 18 percent a female was accused, adding, "Additionally, between 2019 and 2022 there was a 27 percent increase of deaths from male suspects."

In order of prevalence, the cases of femicide accounted for in the report were caused respectively by intimate-partner violence, familial femicide, and non-intimate femicide.

"Women aged 24 to 34 often made up the largest or second largest age-range for victims," the report said, adding, "However, the average age for a woman killed by a male accused is 42-years-old, while the average age for the male accusers is 37-years-old."

The report also estimated that one in five, or about 19 percent of female victims killed by a male suspect were Indigenous, leaving a total of 868 children without mothers.

According to the report, 22 countries have the term femicide implemented in some legislature or use the term to classify certain offences, but Canada has yet to sign a global treaty that aims to create initiatives to investigate and eliminate femicide, despite committing to do so in 2018. Out of the 35 countries that made this commitment, Canada is one of three that have yet to fulfill it.

“This is one example of how Canada lags behind other countries in its response to male violence against women and girls,” CFOJA founder Myrna Dawson said.

The report came less than a week after another one by Iran's High Council for Human Rights, which showed that women in Canada, particularly the Indigenous, were struggling with discrimination, inequality, and violence as their rights were being constantly violated.

According to the report by Iran's top human rights body, sexual assaults accounted for one-third of an overall five-percent increase in reports of violent crime, with homicides, criminal harassment, hate crimes, and firearm offenses also on the rise.


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