Abstract
Femicide is at the most lethal end of the continuum of violence against women, but remains under researched. Civil society organizations have recently brought this issue to the global stage. This chapter examines the definitional and measurement issues surrounding femicide, the current status of explanations for femicide and efforts to counter femicide in policy and practice. We note a tension between the more feminist definitions of femicide, which emphasize its structural and institutionalized misogynistic roots, and the ways data are collected and programmes and policies are created to counter it. Well-intentioned recommendations of the United Nations do offer a wide array of ways to reduce femicide, yet these are often too abstract to translate into initiatives at the national level and demand more resources than available in developing nations. Furthermore, there is little consideration of intersectionality in the response to femicide, nor to the aftermath of femicide and collateral effects on the families of victims.