[https://www.thebulletin.be/feminicide-be-officially-recognised-belgian-law](https://www.thebulletin.be/feminicide-be-officially-recognised-belgian-law)

Belgium has decided to officially recognise feminicide, or the murder of women for gender-based reasons, as its own separate crime under homocide, according to the state secretary for gender equality.

The Belgian bill distinguishes between several forms of this type of crime: intimate (committed by a woman’s companion), non-intimate (a woman in a prostitution ring), indirect (as a result of a forced abortion or female genital mutilation) and gender-based homicide.

It also notes the different forms of violence that can precede this type of homicide, such as sexual violence, psychological violence and coercive control, and names special rights for victims of an attempted feminicide.

These include the right to be interviewed by a member of the police force of the gender of their choice, the right to be received in a suitable room offering the necessary privacy and discretion, the right to interact with a police officer trained in gender-based violence, and the right to receive information on existing protection measures.

26 comments

  1. Belgium is not an exception, and many women die at hands of men each year. Around 20/30 each year, but there is still no official figures yet.

    IMO, it is good that the government tackle this issue and women can be more protected against feminicides, with measures like legal protection, education and awareness rising, support to the victims that report violence from their partners, prevention of gender inequality and violence against women.

  2. There are definitely some discriminations built in. Murder of female partner is seen separate, but not of male partner. Woman in prostitution are the focus, but boys forced in prostitution and violence they receive (yes, it happens in Brussel and many get disappeared and it is largely ignored by media) is ignored.

    It also is again the making something that is already illegal (murder) once more illegal because politics and justice can’t be bothered to have the already existing law enforced. A new law by itself won’t change anything for the better.

    So well fuck, everything is getting more complex. I don’t see how this will make everything better. It only serves as a look at my halo moment.

    ​

    If it was actually about statistics, it could be solved more easily by forcing more full statistics gathering in all cases of (attempted) homicide of suspected perpetrator and link to victim, suspected motive, circumstances, …

  3. >own separate crime under homocide, according to the state secretary for **gender equality**.

    Thank the state secretary they will also include androcide… right?

  4. >These include the right to be interviewed by a member of the police force of the gender of their choice, the right to be received in a suitable room offering the necessary privacy and discretion, the right to interact with a police officer trained in gender-based violence, and the right to receive information on existing protection measures.

    Regardless of all the rest, these are good measures. I’ve accompanied a woman who was wanting to file charges against an abuser. We ended up in a public room where other people were, and the woman in question had to talk through holes in the plexiglass to a man what had been done to her.

  5. Cool. So eh… Are they actually going to do something about it or does it end at “we acknowledge that women get murdered, now praise us while we create an entirely new ministry department to acknowledge this and nothing else”?

  6. I think this is a very good thing. Murder is already atrocious enough. But even more so when the harmdoing is motivated by any discriminatory discours (racism, gender-based, anti- gay, …).

  10. “the right to interact with a police officer trained in gender-based violence”

    Is this a serious thing in the police force, or is it just like in the army where some person is given a 2 hour ppt presentation on the topic and now he’s the local expert

  11. I wrote a mail to the office of Schlitz last time this was in the new and got some answers I’d like to share:

    > It is not a criminal law and therefore does not introduce any new penalization, nor does it adjust the punishment of existing crimes. What the law will do is provide a legal definition of femicide….

    > It is true that a hate crime consists of a predicate crime + a hate motive. Indeed, there is already a gender hate motive for certain crimes and soon for all crimes.

    > Finally, not every form of lethal violence against a woman will automatically be considered a form of femicide. For example, a woman who is active in the drug world and is killed in this context is not a victim of femicide. Victims of feminicide are women who are killed by their (ex) partner because of a misplaced sense of authority or sense of ownership on the part of the (ex) partner, a woman who dies due to a badly performed genital mutilation… To be clear: if a man were to die in the same circumstances, it would also be covered by law (as a gender-related homicide) and male victims of violence that could lead to a gender-related homicide have the same rights as female victims, or victims of a different gender identity.

    So in conclusion, unless I see otherwise I’m assuming it’s more a theoretical law to be able to classify and quantify violence against women.

  13. Should it not be called femicide instead of feminicide if you follow the same logic as homicide and suicide?

  14. >according to the state secretary for gender equality.

    So we have a state secretary for gender equality, and their idea of equality is a different set of laws for different genders?

    I thought we were currently in the state of acceptance where “gender is a social construct” and we should move towards gender neutrality as much as possible. Unless that undermines favouritism of one gender?

  16. it is about time !

    a student has been killed by her brother in the high school where i’d teached. she refuse to marry an unknown guy to get him immigration papers. him, their mother and father are in jail for 20 years under hate murder charge.
    still a brilliant marketing student died because she did not behave like a sexual slave.

  18. So then we’ll do the same for transgenders and all other genders too?

    It’s really hard to look past the double standards here and it takes so little effort to make the law applicable to both women and men and also other genders. Everyone happy :). But hey virtue signaling and idk lawmakers still living in the year 2000?

  23. Has this comment section becomes a gathering of the most stupid people that have ever lived in Belgium or what ? Not a braincell detected in some of these comments jfc….

    I’m glad that the law will officially recognise those kind of crimes.

  26. I don’t understand what the bebefits are of this law? Isn’t is just another statistic, which has very obscure definitions on when they apply? How will you show when a woman is murdered because she is a woman? (Genitelia and forced abortian is obvious, other reasons are not)

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