Every 10 minutes around the world, a woman is killed.

It is critical that we all sit with that for a minute and consider the implications of that reality.

There are 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in a day, which means that EVERY day, cumulatively around the world, 144 – One hundred and forty-four – women are murdered.

Perhaps what is even sadder is that the majority of these women are murdered by their partners and family members. For these women, and for many others like them across the world, the place where a person should be most safe and feel protected from harm – their home – became a place where the end of their lives were heralded.

Femicide, an intentional killing of a woman or girl because of her gender. There are countries around the world where so little value is placed on having a daughter that girls are murdered by their parents and extended families. There are countries where, in cases where girls are allowed to grow up, it is with an understanding that they exist to serve the males around them, as daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers.

Exactly 7 days ago, in Nigeria, Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu published a report on HumAngle titled, “A Tragic Femicide Case in Northeastern Nigeria Smells Like Honour Killing,” where she took us through the journey of Falmata, a 17 year old girl in Bama, Borno State, who was murdered by her uncle, her father’s brother, for the apparently unforgivable sin of disrespect.

Buoyed by cultural and social norms, this man, her uncle, murdered Falmata while she was asleep in the room she shared with her mother, daring to tell a mother whose child he had just murdered that he had dug her daughter’s grave and she could bury her at 9am the next morning.

Every time I think about this report, I feel an ache begin to form at my left temple. What level of disregard of the inherent value in a woman’s life allows you to just murder someone and then go about your day like it was just a regular day of the week? What kind of value system does a community operate that makes this kind of crime even conceivable? And for the love of God, what kind of faux legal system do we operate in Nigeria that arrests a grieving mother on the day of her daughter’s funeral, while her daughter’s killer roams free?

Violence Against Women and Girls exists within a cycle of abuse that sometimes culminates in the murder of a woman or girl. But it rarely begins there.

The casualization of women’s agency is a step in the cycle. The prevailing rape culture and determined re-victimization of survivors of gender-based violence is a step in the cycle. The predominant hierarchical system in our society that places different values on individuals based on their gender is a step in the cycle. The silencing of women’s voices, and by extension, their agency, is a step in that cycle. The harsh, often disproportionate response, to dissent, especially when it comes from a woman, is a step in the horrendous cycle of gender-based violence.

These steps, often trivialized as standalones, are the perfect recipe for the creation of a society, of a world, where a woman is murdered every 10 minutes and it’s just another day because what else is new?

And so we must all take responsibility. In our homes, among family members, in our places of work, our places of worship, and the places where we hold any form of power.

You have a daughter and a son? Ensure both of them know that none is beholden to serve the other simply on the basis of gender.

You read about a case of abuse or rape? Take a minute before typing your opinion to ask yourself if it is one that centers the humanity of the survivor or it’s one that plays into tired tropes.

Your friend makes a ‘joke’ that trivializes a woman’s agency? Call it out, right there, on the spot.

We must deliberately and intentionally contribute to building the framework of a society where everyone is respected, their opinions judged on its merit, and one where gender-based violence simply has no place. 

By Tawakalit Kareem, for ARDA-DCI.