Strangled to death. Stabbed multiple times in the abdomen and face. Lacerations in the neck. Tongue sliced. Intestines hanging out. Dipped in petrol and burned to death. Hammer-smashed face. Covered with sores. Shredded remains. Disfigurement. Relentless beatings. Dismembered and molested. Decapitation. Broken bones. Raped, and slaughtered. Death by acid. Sequestrated and chopped. And many more tortures resulting in death. Those are worse than horror stories. Those are the ends our women and girls have met on Mauritius soil. Imagine this on your mother, wife, daughter, and sister.
Femicide is the murder of a woman or girl merely because of her gender. Some are perpetrated by intimate partners such as husband, boyfriend, ex, stalker, ‘lover’, partner, but can also be by other family members. There are also non-intimate femicides where there are no previous intimate relationships. Reasons behind the murders are not women but deeply deranged men. Reports of such killings usually paint a punitive picture: “she was killed because she wanted to leave’’, or “she was killed because he suspected an affair’’ or “she was killed because she stayed despite the violence’’. No. She was killed because of a man who uses vulgar displays of power to assert control and dominance over a woman. According to Statistics Mauritius, the figures for women victims of homicides (excluding attempts) are: 13 in 2024, 16 in 2023, 13 in 2022, 17 in 2021, and 16 in 2020. The UN reported an estimated number of 51,100 women killed worldwide by people closely related to them in 2023, with Africa having the highest number. This is around 140 women killed per day by a close one.
Death from a criminal act can be under various sections of our Criminal Code. Manslaughter can have sentences of up to 60 years or penal servitude for life if mingled with another crime, or in other cases up to 45 years (s223). Wounds or blows without intention to kill can be up to 20 years (s228). If there is assault with premeditation and death results from it, then it is penal servitude (s229). Death by administering noxious substance can be up to 45 years (s236). Arson causing death can be penal servitude for life or term not exceeding 60 years (s347). Those laws however do not address the gender related killing of women and girls.
Mauritius needs the recognition and introduction of the specific crime of femicide. It is a social, more precisely, a patriarchal problem, which has to be reflected in our legislation. However, it is not to be tackled on its own. Issuance of protection and occupation orders needs to be taken seriously and enforcement by police must be severe. How many women have perished despite having active protection and/or occupation orders? Additionally, victim-shaming needs to be an offence in itself as it shifts the blame from perpetrators to victims, and not only outrageously disrespects the victim and her close ones, but can deter the women from reporting to the authorities. Men who encourage any type of violence against women, from a ‘trivial joke’, to verbal hate, to physical acts, need to be shamed and shunned.
Many countries, specially ones where violence on women are high, have been introducing the offence of femicide. Costa Rica pioneered criminalisation of femicide in 2007 and subsequently reformed it in 2021. Various countries followed, with Guatemala in 2008, Chile in 2010, and Peru in 2011. From this on, most South American countries implemented it in their legislation. As for other regions, Cyprus and Malta added it in their criminal code in 2022. Then Belgium in 2023, and Croatia in 2024. The latest country is Italy in November 2025 through their Article 577 which defines it as “Anyone who causes the death of a woman when the act is committed as an act of hatred, discrimination, domination, or as an act of control, possession, or subjugation because she is a woman, or in relation to the woman’s refusal to establish or maintain an emotional relationship, or as an act limiting her individual freedoms, shall be punished with life imprisonment’’.
The onus is on the State to protect women from femicide. In the Cotton field case which concerned the deaths of three women, the Court held Mexico responsible for violating various human rights including failure to comply with its obligations under the inter-american treaty, the Belém do Pará Convention which deals with violence against women. Mauritius is signatory to CEDAW which has stated that gender-based violence is a form of discrimination against women. The omission of enacting laws to tackle gender-based violence can make the government accountable for the deaths of many women and girls. Recently, our Minister of Gender & Family Welfare has stated that femicide will be incorporated in the upcoming Domestic Abuse Bill.
31 December 2025 ended with a gruesome killing of a woman in the South where the suspect is her husband, and 2026 started with a woman being killed and the suspect is her foreign partner. More femicides are to come this year and the legal framework must be reformed to recognise gender killings. Judge M.S. Manrakhan in the case of THE STATE v NUBBEEBUCCUS MAMODE UMAIIR 2025 SCJ 575 set the right approach when recognising “it is a horrifying case of femicide’’ and “did not view this case in isolation’’.
In Italy, Judge Di Nicola stated: It is incorrect to say, “He killed his wife in a jealous rage”. Talking of such crimes as rooted in exasperated love or strong jealousy is a distortion – that uses romantic, culturally acceptable terms. She goes on to say that ‘’this law means we will be the first in Europe to reveal the real motivation of the perpetrators, which is hierarchy and power.’’ Here, in Mauritius, the Court in Nubeebuccus spoke clearly: women in Mauritius are not the property of those who once lived with them; their autonomy is not conditional; and their refusal to submit to control cannot become a death sentence.
Stop the murderous rampage on our women and girls. More punishment, quicker arrests & intervention, more protection. AND EDUCATE THE SONS.
Shaheen Cheeroo
Barrister-at-Law
