MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Dec 27 (IPS) – Hours before world leaders gathered in Johannesburg for the 2025 G20 summit in November, hundreds of South African women in black spent 15 minutes in a city park – one for every woman who loses her life every day to gender-based violence in the country. The striking visual protest was organized by a civil society organization, Women for Change, which also collected more than a million signatures demanding that the government declare gender-based violence (GBV) a national disaster. Hours later, the government agreed.
It was a crucial victory in a year marked by brutal violence and political backlash. As the dust settles on the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaign – an annual event that begins on November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and ends on December 10, Human Rights Day – South Africa’s achievement stands in stark contrast to a global landscape of decline.
The numbers that motivated this year’s mobilizations tell a grim story. In 2024, around 4,000 women were victims of femicides in Latin America alone, which amounts to almost eleven gender-related murders per day. Africa has the world’s highest percentage at three femicides per 100,000 women, with South African figures off the charts.
In 2025, women took to the streets in response to persistent patterns of violence and cases of femicide that shocked society. In Argentina, Protests broke out in September following the live-streamed torture and murder of three young women by a drug gang. In Brazil, tens of thousands of people took action in December after a woman was run over by her ex-boyfriend and dragged for a kilometer over concrete, losing her legs. Nationwide protests followed in Italy murder of two 22-year-old students in April and the murder of a 14 year old girl by an older boy whose advances she rejected in May.
These highly visible cases were the tip of the iceberg. Yet they sparked mobilizations thanks to decades of preparatory work by civil society: identifying femicide as a separate phenomenon, fighting for legal recognition, and creating the databases that many governments still refuse to maintain. This deliberate work of counting the dead has transformed individual tragedies into evidence of systematic violence, making it impossible for states to dismiss every killing as an isolated incident.
This continued pressure forced some governments to take action. In 2025, Spain became a European Union (EU) pioneer in criminalizing vicarious violence – violence perpetrated against women through intermediaries, usually children or family members. Are new lawadopted in September, followed Mexico’s recognition of this form of abuse in 2023. On November 25, coinciding with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the Italian parliament a law passed making femicide a clear criminal offense punishable by life imprisonment. This achievement is all the more important because until 1981, the Italian Criminal Code still offered leniency for so-called ‘honor killings’.
But progress is fragile. Right-wing governments that view anti-GBV measures as ideological are dismantling decades of feminist victories. In Argentina, the right-wing government of President Javier Milei has eliminated the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity and announced plans to dismantling comprehensive sex education and the withdrawal of gender equality on electoral lists, among other regressive changes.
In Turkey, what leave the Istanbul Convention – the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence – in 2021, thousands of women defied far-reaching protest bans to demand justice following the suspicious death of a 21-year-old university student in October. According to the We Will Stop Femicide Platform, at least 235 women were murdered by men between January and October, while another 247 women were found dead under suspicious circumstances. Yet the right-wing nationalist government declared 2025 the “Year of the Family,” criticized by activists for reinforcing traditional roles instead of addressing women’s safety.
And in Latvia the parliament voted to withdraw from the Istanbul Conventionbarely a year after its ratification. Right-wing parties argued that they were promoting “gender theories” under the guise of combating violence, and continued despite a petition against them that gathered more than 60,000 signatures. The president sent the bill back to parliament for consideration, but if it is passed, Latvia will be the first EU member state to leave the treaty.
The 16 Days campaign highlights a fundamental truth: violence against women is not just a social problem, but a violation of human rights. The Human Rights Day endpoint, established to commemorate the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, states that women’s rights are human rights and emphasizes the requirement that states fulfill their obligations under international law to prevent, investigate and punish GBV.
South Africa’s statement proves that sustainable collective action can force change. Women’s rights activists successfully took advantage of the international spotlight of the G20 summit, organizing a nationwide shutdown in which thousands of people withdrew from paid and unpaid work, spent no money and protested silently in the afternoon. They have put the crisis on the global agenda at a time of unprecedented international attention.
Meeting even the most basic demands—the ability to walk home without fear, leave abusive partners, participate in politics without risking sexual violence, exist online without harassment—requires structural transformation. Women will only find safety when society stops seeing them as objects to own and control, when those trying to escape abuse have a path to economic independence, when legal systems treat violence against women with the seriousness it deserves, and when technology companies are held accountable for platforms that enable harassment.
The year revealed more decline than progress. But despite increasing repression and dwindling resources, women’s movements continued to document violence, support survivors, educate the public, and advocate for systemic change. Their persistence reflects a clear understanding that real change requires sustainable action. States have human rights obligations to protect women’s lives, and women’s movements will continue to insist that these obligations are met with the severity and resources they require, one protest at a time.
Ines M. Pousadela is CIVICUS head of research and analysis, co-director and writer for Citizen lens and co-author of Report on the state of civil society. She is also professor of comparative politics at the University of Amsterdam ORT University Uruguay.
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© Inter Press Service (20251227091429) — All rights reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service
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