25 November 2025 – Outside the Ministry of Defence, opposite 10, Downing Street, London
One week in England, June 2025:
- June 20th – Nilani Nimalarajah, 44, a Sri Lankan-born woman, died at a hospital after being stabbed in her shop in Bootle, Merseyside. A 47-year-old man who had admitted two counts of harassment by breaching a restraining order has been charged with her murder. Police have described her killing as a “domestic incident.”
- June 23d – Irene Mbugua, 46, a nurse of Kenyan heritage, was found dead at a property in Birmingham. Her accused killer is allegedly a patient she had cared for.
- June 26th –A woman in her 40s who hasn’t been named, of Bangladeshi descent, described as “a housewife,” was found critically injured in a property in Tower Hamlets and died at the scene. Her son has been charged with her murder.
Six days. Three dead women. Although the law prevents detailed reporting on the nature of a murder until the case goes to trial, very few outside those who knew them or were directly involved in the aftermath of their deaths will know the names of these women. The woman who was killed by her son has not even been publicly named, let alone mentioned in any source of national press.
Men’s fatal violence against women cuts across all sections of society—across ages, class, and ethnicity. But some women are afforded more empathy than others. Some are more likely to be disbelieved, blamed, or sent away without the help they need. Black women and disabled women are disproportionately victimized, yet more likely to receive a substandard response from state agencies. Poor women, and those with mental health or substance use problems—often the result of a long history of abuse from multiple perpetrators—are more likely to be blamed.
This appalling hierarchy of victims continues into death. It is almost always the young, conventionally attractive, middle-class, white woman killed by a stranger—the “perfect victim”—who makes the front pages. There is widespread public reaction to the killings of some women; others go unremarked upon and seen as “evidence of a culture” deemed by many as “different” from the mainstream. We know the names of Sabina Nessa, killed in 2021, and Zara Aleena, killed in 2022, largely because their families and Black feminist activists fought against the racist lack of concern for the deaths of Black, Asian, and minoritised women. We also know of Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, killed in 2020—not because of the killings of two sisters, but because of campaigning led by their mother, which highlighted police negligence in responding to their disappearance. A friend eventually found their bodies, and it later emerged that two police officers involved in the investigation had taken photos of themselves with the bodies and circulated them in a WhatsApp group.
The Femicide Census is an entirely independent, small charity that has recorded the killings of all women and girls aged 14 and over in the UK at the hands of men since 2009. We were set up because we were not satisfied that the state adequately recorded and analysed men’s fatal violence against women—let alone that the state’s response was adequate to prevent future deaths.
The information we have collected for the Femicide Census tells us that for 15 years in the UK, a woman has been killed by a man on average every three days; on average, a woman is killed by a partner or ex-partner every four days.
Because of the Femicide Census, we know that in the UK, 92% of women killed by men are killed by someone they know. One in 12 (or 8%) is killed by her son— exactly the same proportion as those killed by a stranger. Sixty-two percent of women killed by men are killed by a current or former partner. More than 40% of these had already left or were taking steps to leave him. More than a third were killed in the first month post-separation, and almost three-quarters within the first year.
We need to listen to women. We need to listen to victim-survivors of men’s violence, who tell us they find it more helpful and reassuring to reach out to specialist organisations run by women for women. We need to listen to specialist women’s charities, who say they are breaking under the scale of cuts and cannot meet the level of demand. We need to ensure that all women receive a fair and equitable service regardless of which agency they approach. We also need to fight to save independent specialist organisations like SBS, which are led by, understand and are tailored to the needs of women from minoritised groups.
We need to recognise that these groups have been at the forefront of the fight to ensure all women have equal protection under the law, so that support services and legal remedies are accessible to all women—including those with no recourse to public funds. This includes extending the Migrant Victims of Domestic Abuse Concession (Domestic Violence Indefinite Leave to Remain Model) and implementing a firewall to prohibit data sharing between the police and immigration enforcement, and supporting campaigns like “One Law for All”—a campaign against Sharia and religious arbitration in the UK, critically led by Black feminists, including some of whom are ex-Muslim, rather than those with racist agendas.
We need to recognise that the conditions for men’s violence against women go beyond what happens in the family or policing and look seriously at wider society in mainstream, as much as minoritised cultures. We need to stop accepting men’s violence against women as natural and inevitable. We need to reject language that eliminates the perpetrator’s actions and choices and renders sex differences in domestic and sexual violence invisible. We need to recognise that femicide is not simply homicide with female victims but something different that reflects sex inequalities. We need to resist growing right-wing rhetoric that links protection of women to immigration and “those men” rather than the cross-section of abusive men found in all social, cultural, ethnic, or religious groups. We need to end the hierarchy of women— dead as well as alive.