By Myrna Dawson, Danielle Sutton, Angelika Zecha, Ciara Boyd, Anna Johnson, and Abigail Mitchell

This report contains critical information that builds on the earlier and ongoing work on femicide in Canada and internationally by highlighting current and emerging trends and issues that require further investigation and monitoring in the coming years.

Guelph Ontario: Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability, 201p. 77p.

Edited by Jill Radford and Diana E.H. Russell

"'There's no place like home.' This familiar phrase invokes the image of an ideal: home as safe haven and shelter from the world. For women who have been victims of femicide - misogynist killing by men - these simple words take on a disturbing new meaning. There is indeed no place like home for a woman who has died at the hands of a man, because it is there that she was least safe from harm. The threat of violent death for a woman is in fact greatest in her own home. And her killer is likely no stranger, no masked psychopath, but someone who knew her intimately, a companion or former companion, a husband or lover. In Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing editors Jill Radford and Diana E.H. Russell have compiled more than 40 articles and essays that document and describe such terrible truths about the phenomenon of femicide.

New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992. 380p.

By Ana Carcedo

Trans. Susan Murdock. The report, We Will Not Forget Nor Will We Accept: Femicide in Central America 2000-2006, provides information on femicide in the countries of Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Panama for 2000-2006. Data on incidence and prevalence of femicide are presented in tables, broken down by year and country.

Social Justice Fund of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU). 2011.

By European Institute for Gender Equality

This literature review contributes to a comparative analysis of definitions of, types of, indicators of and data collection systems on femicide in the EU Member States and the United Kingdom, and at international level. It is based on a comprehensive and in-depth search for studies published in respected peer-reviewed journals and in books. The aim is to give an overview of the existing multidisciplinary literature on variables and factors used to identify femicide and gender-related motives of female homicides. It provides a structured outline of the state of play on defining and creating typologies of femicide. The literature review relies on a broad definition of femicide as ‘structural violence’, while acknowledging that femicide is an individual act with a specific motivation. It also reviews methodologies of gathering data on femicide, together with current challenges, and identifies adequate variables to identify femicide and gender-related motives of homicide. Only some of the literature described can contribute to developing an indicator of femicide or statistical measurement.

Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2021. 59p.

By European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE)

Sound and comparable data on gender-related killings of women and girls is essential to understanding the prevalence of femicide. This data gathering must be based on a commonly acknowledged definition of femicide and recognised units of measurement and indicators, as well as a typology of femicide. This report gives a comprehensive overview of definitions, data collection systems, methodologies and variables in gathering data on femicide. It outlines whether and how different global and national actors are moving towards: a legal definition of femicide; construction of indicators / measurement framework, based on common (agreed) variables to identify femicide. The aims are to establish a framework for the measurement of femicide at EU level by using variables that might lead to a common definition, and the operationalisation of variables for statistical purposes. This common battery of variables should guide methods for data collection, ensure the gathering of reliable data and result in data comparability across the EU. This report provides the broader context for definitions and variables based on an overview of definitions at both international and Member State levels.

Vilnius, Lithuania: European Institute for Gender Equality, 2021. 63p.

By Tamsin Bradley

Growing awareness of femicide has not universally translated into effective policy and programming. Though legislation relating to gender-based violence and/or femicide exists in many countries, both persist. A combined social, cultural, political and economic approach situates femicide prevention and responses at various levels, including changes in individual behaviour. Using the term ‘femicide’ more frequently at international forums is crucial not only to focus attention on the gendered nature of violence but also to act as a call for action. Situational studies reveal that political will to end femicide differs from country to country. Femicide together with the patriarchal norms and misogyny that precipitate it are not just extra-EU problems. Rather, they are of global concern, demanding a global response; in non-EU countries this response is often dependent on donor funding. We now know more than ever what works to reverse patterns of violence. These patterns can be broken by developing the capacity of women’s organisations and strengthening global feminist movements that work with national and local activist networks. Additionally, engaging men and boys in this process of transformation is vital if we are to address violence against women and girls and ultimately end femicide.

Brussels: European Parliament, 2021. 22p.

By Consuelo Corradi

Femicide is a violation of the basic human rights to life, liberty and personal security, as well as an obstacle to social and economic development. The term indicates the act of intentionally killing a female person, either woman or girl, because of her gender, and it is the end-result of combined risk factors existing at the level of the individual, interpersonal relations, community and society. This crime displays three prominent characteristics: women are disproportionately killed by men; victims have previously experienced non-lethal violence; the rate at which women are killed tends to remain steady over time. Estimates indicate that 87 000 women were intentionally killed in 2017, but the exact number is unknown and suspected to be higher. The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the situation and reduced access to services. Femicide’s classification differs according to context, but most significantly includes: killing by an intimate partner or family member; honour, dowry and witch-hunting deaths; femicide-suicide; pre- and post-natal excess female mortality; infanticide; and deliberate neglect, rooted in a preference for sons over daughters. Collecting accurate data is a strategic goal and necessary to facilitate the design of effective policies.

Brussels: European Parliament, 2021. 35p.

By Jack A. Blum; Michael Levi; R. T. Naylor; and Phil Williams

While there has been a general trend towards enacting money-laundering laws that provide for the lifting of financial secrecy in appropriate cases, such secrecy remains a barrier in many jurisdictions, including some of those that have come to be known as 'financial havens'. The advances in technology and communication have made the three F's - finding, freezing and forfeiting of criminally derived income and assets all the more difficult. This publication discusses these issues and other related problems in depth. The law enforcement success stories presented convey a sense of imaginative ways in which financial havens are used. The cases also highlight the advantages, from the point of view of criminals, of collusion with bank employees and the use of professional launderers.

Vienna: United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, 1998, 117p.

By Maximo Q. Mejia Jr., Pierre Cariou, François-Charles Wolff

Piracy in its various forms has posed a threat to trade and shipping for millennia. In the 1970s, a steady rise in the number of attacks ushered in the present phenomenon of modern piracy and not many parts of the world's seas are free from piracy in one form or another today. This paper reviews the historical and geographical developments of piracy in shipping, with a discussion on contentious issues involved in defining piracy. Using data available on piracy acts collected from the IMB related to 3,957 attacks that took place between 1996 and 2008, we shed light on recent changes in geography and modi operandi of acts of piracy and investigate how poverty and political instability may be seen as the root causes of piracy.

Malmo, Sweden: World Maritime University, 2010. 35p.

By Teagan McGinnis, Octavio Rodríguez Ferreira and David Shirk

Justice in Mexico has released its latest working paper titled Analyzing the Problem of Femicide in Mexico by Teagan McGinnis, Octavio Rodríguez Ferreira, and David Shirk. This study examines the patterns of violence against women in Mexico, with special attention to the problem of femicide. While national homicide data show that the proportion of female homicide victims in Mexico has stayed largely the same for decades, the authors demonstrate that the elevated rate of homicides throughout the country has contributed to a large increase in the total number of female homicide victims. Because many homicides targeting women have distinctive characteristics—such as sexual violence, intimate partners, or other factors attributable to the woman’s gender—they have been legally codified as “femicides,” murders targeting women due to their gender.

The authors explore the question of why both the number and proportion of femicides has increased dramatically since national level data became available in 2015. Since prosecutors play a key role in determining whether a crime will be classified as either a homicide or femicide, the authors specifically evaluate the effects of state level prosecutorial capacity on the reporting of such crimes. The authors compiled an original dataset of state prosecutorial budgets and levels of homicidal violence (by gender and by state) and used both means testing and linear regression models to assess differences between states with special prosecutors and those without, while controlling for the level of homicidal violence across states. In terms of qualitative methods, the authors also compiled federal and state laws to examine differences in criminal and administrative laws and conducted interviews with state prosecutors and security experts.

The authors find statistically significant evidence that states that have special prosecutors for the investigation of femicides are substantially more likely to classify female homicides as femicides. Indeed, appointing a special prosecutor for gender-related crimes increases the investigation of femicide cases by 50% on average, even controlling for levels of homicidal violence in those states. These findings illustrate the impact of recent prosecutorial reforms in Mexico and offer useful insights for policy makers and activists working to combat violence against women in Mexico. Informed by the novel findings in this study, the authors recommend that Mexican states lacking special prosecutorial offices for the investigation and prosecution of femicides should create such units, and that all states should provide more resources and prosecutorial tools for the investigation and prosecution of gender-motivated crimes.

Washington, DC: Wilson Center, 2022. 33p.

By Allepandro Bernales, Diether Beuermann, Douglas Cumming. and Christiaan Olid

Relatively little is known about the effects of blue-collar crime (theft, robbery, vandalism or arson) on financial decisions. Previous literature has focused its attention either on 'regional' crime rates or the 'perception' of crime as business obstacles. Instead, we examine financing terms of 'individual' firms that 'effectively' experimented blue-collar crime events. We show that blue-collar crime worsens the access and conditions to external financing, which is unexpected since firms do not have to reveal to lenders that they suffered such crime incidents. We also find evidence that firm-information leakages may explain the negative effects of blue-collar crime on financing terms.

Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, 2022. 785p.

By Ben Coetzee and Riana Horn

Due to the importance of the precious metals mining industry and the continuous criminal threat to the industry, the Chamber of Mines of South Africa approached the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) to investigate the occurrence of theft and various related issues. The statistical information this project is based on was provided by the mining sector and is for the period January 2000-December 2004. Some of the mining houses have implemented orientation workshops to explain what type of employee conduct constitutes a crime and the importance of reporting crime. It was therefore important to test the perceptions of employees in the industry to ensure that these workshops are effective. Despite advancements in crime detection and prevention technology, transgressions are nonetheless common at most mines and processing plants. The precious metals mining industry is still not capable of determining exactly how much product is lost during processing phases, leaving a window of opportunity for theft and corruption. Reliable crime reporting is critical to determining the extent of the criminal threat facing the precious metals mining industry. Although most mines have developed processes to record and manage crime-related information, the methods used by the police and the mining industry are not standardised for efficient analysis purposes. It became evident during interviews conducted for the study that there is a general perception in the mining industry that most stolen product sold on the black market ends up in some organised illegal business or syndicate. It is presumed top-level syndicate members, who supply organised criminal dealers, dispose of the largest volume of stolen product. Statistics recorded on identified syndicates may therefore reflect the most reliable magnitude of losses suffered when it comes to approximating the extent of precious metals theft in South Africa.

Pretoria, South Africa: Institute for Security Studies, 2007. 140p.

By Financial Action Task Force (FATF)

The aim of this project is to study one specific sport which could reveal money laundering schemes that may also be occurring in other sports. As one of the largest sports in the world, football1 was chosen. Both professional and amateur football were to be examined. Although the scale of vulnerabilities to money laundering is potentially different, risks in both areas were considered likely to be similar.

Paria: FATF, 2009. 42p.

By EIA

A report on the role of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in curbing illegal timber trade and protecting endangered tree species. Despite the success of its current CITES listing, endangered ramin remains under threat, with the remnants of Malaysia’s ramin forests exploited unsustainably. Although ramin is banned from cutting and export in Indonesia – the only other significant range state – stolen wood continues to be laundered through neighbouring Malaysia in quantities exceeding the global annual legal supply.

London; New York Environmental Investigations Agency, 2011. 17p.

By Human Rights Watch

Since 2016, over 400 human rights defenders have been killed in Colombia—the highest number of any country in Latin America, according to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). In November 2016, the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC) guerrillas reached a landmark peace accord, leading to the demobilization of the country’s then-largest armed group. The agreement included specific initiatives to prevent the killing of human rights defenders. Separately, that year the Attorney General’s Office decided to prioritize investigations into any such killings occurring as of the beginning of 2016.

New York: HRW, 2021. 135p.

Edited by C.D. Spinellis / Nikolaos Theodorakis Emmanouil Billis / George Papadimitrakopoulos.

Volume Ii: Essays In English, German, French, And Italian. Nestor Courakis is Emeritus Professor of Criminology and Penology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Faculty of Law and a full-time Professor at the University of Nicosia.

Athens: ANT. N. Sakkoulas Publishers L.P , 2017. 1899p.

Edited by Gjalt de Graaf , Patrick von Maravić. and Pieter Wagenaar

Money makes the world go round - corruption The book presents the state of the art in studying the causes of corruption from a comparative perspective. Leading scholars in the field of corruption analysis shed light on the issue of corruption from different theoretical perspectives. Understanding how different theories define, conceptualize, and eventually deduce policy recommendations will amplify our understanding of the complexity of this social phenomenon and illustrate the spectrum of possibilities to deal with it analytically as well as practically.

Opladen & Farmington Hills, MI. Barbara Budrich Publishers. 2010. 207p.

By Elleman, Bruce A. and Paine, S.C.M

The sixteen case studies in this book reflect the extraordinary diversity of experience of navies attempting to carry out, and also to eliminate, commerce raiding. Because the cases emphasize conflicts in which commerce raiding had major repercussions, they shed light on when, how, and in what manner it is most likely to be effective. The authors have been asked to examine the international context, the belligerents, the distribution of costs and benefits, the logistical requirements, enemy countermeasures, and the operational and strategic effectiveness of these campaigns.

Newport, RI: U.S. Naval War College Press, 2010. 277p.

By John Alexander

In this monograph, Dr. Alexander sets the stage with a brief historical account of how maritime piracy has evolved over the centuries to its current state: a vast enterprise whose increasing profitability has attracted a confluence of nefarious actors including warlords and international criminal organizations. Dr. Alexander speculates on the potential for intersection between pirates and ideological terrorist movements such as al-Qaeda and Associated Movements. Such a future would significantly elevate the stakes in a U.S. whole-of-government counter-piracy response. What role should the U.S. military, and Special Operations Forces (SOF) in particular, play in addressing the global issue of maritime piracy? Dr. Alexander points out many of the thorny legal considerations that contextually color any efforts to address counter-piracy and notes that the best solution to criminal acts occurring hundreds of miles at sea may in fact lie with efforts, including the use of SOF, to improve the security apparatus on shore.

MacDill Air Force Base, Florida: Joint Special Operations University Press. 2013. 102p

By Elleman, Bruce A.; Forbes, Andrew; and Rosenberg, David

As modern nation-states emerged from feudalism, privateering for both profit and war supplemented piracy at the margins of national sovereignty. More recently, an ocean enclosure movement under the aegis of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 has granted states access to maritime resources far beyond their territorial limits.

Newport, RI: U.S. Naval War College Press, 2010. 277p.