Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.34075/sb.64.1.3
Femicide in the Context of Domestic Violence: From Neologisms to Nomenclature of Criminal Offenses
Nevena Aljinović
orcid.org/0000-0001-6557-2796
; University Department of Forensic Sciences, University of Split
Abstract
In the context of violence against women, the paper deals with the issue of femicide - such a strong word of political connotation with a hint of feminist aspiration to recognize and define gender-based murder of women committed (out of hatred) by men based only on their gender status. In an attempt to encompass all the different manifestations, femicide has surpassed its initial meaning and gone beyond a clear theoretical concept resulting in a counter-effect in its ambiguity and failure to find a unified,
comprehensive, and generally accepted definition. It is precisely the impreciseness of the concept of femicide, as well as the fear of violating the neutrality of legal provisions, that the Croatian legislator saw as a (substantial) obstacle to its
incorporation into the criminal law framework. Also, the public discourse on the introduction of femicide as a special form of gender-based murder of women was occupied by antagonistic controversies. Despite the above, efforts to single out femicide in a specific category, different from other forms of murder, prevailed precisely because of the gender component as its essential determinant, and the presence of violence against women as its immanent pertinence. As a result, in recent amendments to the Criminal Code, femicide was introduced as a special crime of “aggravated murder of a female.” However, under the influence of the Istanbul Convention, in 2011, the Croatian legislature has incorporated a (new) qualified form of murder of a “close person previously abused by the perpetrator,” which, due to the connotation of previous violent behavior, can be referred to as a common
denominator with femicide. In the context of the above, the paper analyzes the practice of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia and the High Criminal Court of the Republic of Croatia from January 1, 2013, that is, from January 1, 2021, to January 1, 2024, in cases of committing the criminal offense of aggravated murder under Art. 111 para. 3 CC/11 in which the victims are women and the perpetrators are men who have previously abused the victim with whom they were in a close relationship. Due to the connotation of femicide as a “hate crime” against women, as an essential determinant of femicide in general, the practice of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia and the High Criminal Court of the Republic of Croatia was also analyzed regarding the criminal offense of aggravated murder from para 4 of Art. 111 CC/11. The data of the Ministry of the Interior and the Croatian Bureau of Statistics on the trend of violence and murders of women, especially those committed by intimate partners, were also analyzed. The conducted research aims to answer the question of whether adequate protection of the most extreme form of gender-based violence against women has been ensured at the normative level and in court practice, despite the omission of the term femicide from the criminal law framework.
Keywords
femicide; intimate femicide; domestic violence; violence against women; intimate partner violence
Hrčak ID:
319424
URI
Publication date:
19.7.2024.
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