On 25 November 2025, the Worldwide Day for the Elimination of Violence towards Ladies, the Italian Parliament unanimously authorised Regulation No. 181/2025, creating the autonomous crime of femminicidio (femicide). Revealed on 2 December, the regulation defines femicide because the intentional, gender‑motivated killing of a girl. With this reform, Italy joins a handful of European international locations, together with Croatia, Cyprus, and Malta, in recognizing femicide as a definite crime.
The measure responds to rising concern over gender‑based mostly violence and a surge of intimate companion killings. The federal government, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, framed it as an “pressing response to an insupportable scourge.” Excessive‑profile instances, resembling that of Giulia Cecchettin, and the protests that adopted, offered the political momentum. But the regulation additionally raises deeper questions on how felony regulation is getting used—and infrequently overused—to handle gender‑based mostly violence.
Whereas the regulation acknowledges the gendered nature of such crimes, it does so by a predominantly punitive lens. This publish examines whether or not criminalizing femicide as a stand‑alone offense brings Italy nearer to fulfilling its worldwide obligations, situating the brand new regulation inside the broader worldwide framework on violence towards ladies and assessing the critiques it has provoked amongst authorized and feminist students. We conclude that Italy’s criminalization of femicide symbolically aligns with worldwide norms however substantively departs from their holistic, preventive strategy.
The Worldwide Authorized Framework on Violence In opposition to Ladies
Worldwide regulation offers no single, universally binding, stand-alone treaty provision that explicitly prohibits violence towards ladies or femicide. Reasonably, it establishes a fancy community of authorized devices and definitions that collectively tackle the difficulty, with regional and common frameworks complementing each other.
On the regional stage, the Inter-American Conference of Belém do Pará (1994) was the primary to outline violence towards ladies as a violation of human rights and to impose optimistic duties on States to stop, examine and punish such violence. The Council of Europe’s Istanbul Conference (2011), which Italy was the primary to ratify in 2013, stays essentially the most complete European instrument, requiring States to undertake built-in insurance policies based mostly on the “4Ps” (prevention, safety, prosecution, and coordinated insurance policies). Just lately, the EU Directive 1385/2024 has expanded the framework. Implementation in Italy, nonetheless, has been uneven. Power underfunding of prevention and survivor help measures has led the European Courtroom of Human Rights to sentence Italy repeatedly for failing to guard victims.
On the common stage, the Conference on the Elimination of All Types of Discrimination towards Ladies (CEDAW, 1979) doesn’t identify violence explicitly in its treaty textual content. But the CEDAW Committee clarified in its Basic Suggestions that gender‑based mostly violence towards ladies constitutes discrimination (GR No. 19), and that its prohibition has advanced into customary worldwide regulation (GR No. 35). Whereas persuasive, this interpretation stays debated, since Basic Suggestions are soft-law devices, and proof of State observe and opinio juris stays restricted. Nonetheless, States are sure by their basic duties underneath CEDAW Articles 1 and a couple of to eradicate discrimination in all its types.
Inside this framework, femicide stands as essentially the most extreme type of gender‑based mostly violence. Worldwide regulation doesn’t oblige States to create an autonomous offense however does require efficient safety, non‑discriminatory legal guidelines, and strong prevention insurance policies. It’s towards these obligations that Italy’s new regulation should now be assessed.
Femicide as a authorized idea in Italy
Inside this worldwide panorama, Italy’s new regulation marks a shift from discourse to felony codification. Previous to 2025, femicide in Italy was not a authorized idea however a social and political one. Even earlier than the reform, the homicide of girls by their companions was punishable by life imprisonment underneath aggravated murder provisions, resembling kinship, premeditation or cruelty, however there was no particular authorized class for femicide.
The primary nation to make use of the time period femicide as a felony offence was Costa Rica in 2007, and since then, over the course of 15 years, the complete Latin American area has adopted swimsuit to various levels, together with the Republic of Cuba.
In Italy, the time period “femicide” started to flow into after the 2009 Campo Algodonero case. Native organizations used the time period to focus on systemic gender inequality and demanded companies resembling standardized shelters, trauma care, and prevention packages slightly than new offenses. Though within the final fifteen years the difficulty of violence towards ladies has taken heart stage within the Parliament’s and political leaders’ debates, with new laws launched virtually yearly, Italian legal professionals, with a couple of exceptions, have remained detached to the authorized and political implications of “femminicidio”, notably as seen within the Americas.
The federal government launched the femicide invoice on 7 March 2025 and pushed it by Parliament with little session. The brand new regulation punishes with life imprisonment anybody who kills a girl “as an act of discrimination or hatred towards the sufferer as a girl” or to “repress the train of her rights or freedoms, or, in any case, the expression of her character.”.
The reception of the regulation by civil society was lukewarm exactly as a result of it didn’t mirror their core priorities. As an example, there was no point out of the long-advocated want for coordinated gender schooling initiatives, that are presently being applied on an advert hoc foundation in colleges throughout Italy with out a shared plan or specialised workers. The one a part of the definition that finds some consensus is that referring to the gender-based origin of the homicide, which was already acknowledged as a legislative hole. Quite the opposite, the half regarding femicide as repression within the train of rights or freedoms is harshly criticized each as a result of it’s not possible to think about a homicide that doesn’t repress the victims’ freedoms, and since there isn’t a reference to the worldwide and comparative regulation on the topic.
Nearly unanimous is the criticism of the supply for all times imprisonment as a hard and fast sentence. In actual fact, whereas aggravated homicide can already result in life imprisonment, making it the obligatory penalty for femicide raises considerations about proportionality and reasonability. Different provisions authorised on the identical day set up particular mechanisms for calculating notably extreme aggravating circumstances and limits on sentence reductions and parole-eligibility for convicted femicide offenders resembling sexual violence and stalking.
Comparative regulation classes had been missed. Belgium’s 2023 regulation on femicide, as an example, centered on prevention and information assortment with out amending its felony code. Belgium doesn’t routinely equate femicide with against the law solely and, on this sense, appears to have remained extra trustworthy to the unique concepts of Diana Russell and Marcela Lagarde. Even the primary model of the Ley Basic that Lagarde proposed when she was a member of parliament in Mexico didn’t think about femicide to be a separate crime. This stands in distinction to Italy, which has taken a extra punitive strategy, with little emphasis on the structural, preventive measures that many worldwide our bodies, together with the Istanbul Conference, view as important.
The misuse of felony regulation
The Italian reform matches inside a broader international sample of “penal populism”: using felony regulation and harsher penalties to supply symbolic reassurance slightly than efficient prevention. The emphasis on punishment slightly than prevention displays what students name the “politics of concern,” (e.g., right here and right here) by which human safety discourses privilege the determine of the perpetrator over the State’s structural obligations. This shift individualizes accountability, foregrounding the perpetrator’s punishment whereas obscuring State’s collective responsibility to rework the social, political and financial buildings that allow gender-based violence.
Regulation 181/2025 matches squarely inside this sample. Whereas it responds to public outrage and satisfies the political have to act decisively on gender-based violence, it fails to decide to the deeper, structural reforms required to handle the basis causes of this violence in society, as said on 26 Might by 77 feminine professors, researchers and felony regulation students in a doc unprecedented in Italy. By introducing life imprisonment as the usual penalty and framing femicide as a symbolic, moralized offense, the regulation makes use of the felony justice system primarily as a communicative software behind a facade of selling human safety to hide a considerable narrowing of rights and freedoms.
The primarily punitive strategy is at odds with the 4P framework of the Istanbul Conference: prevention, safety, prosecution and coverage. Whereas prosecution is central, it should be accompanied by efficient methods in prevention, safety, and coordinated motion throughout all ranges of presidency and civil society. Italy continues to chronically underfund shelters, authorized support, perpetrator packages, and schooling. Worldwide our bodies constantly reaffirm that criminalization alone doesn’t scale back femicide charges and should even divert consideration and sources from lengthy‑time period preventive methods.
Conclusion
Regulation 181/2025 positions Italy inside the worldwide discourse on femicide, signaling political dedication to gender equality. But its punitive focus stays largely symbolic. By framing femicide as an ethical and felony difficulty slightly than a structural one, the regulation dangers simplifying the advanced realities sustaining gender‑based mostly violence. With out sustained funding in prevention, survivor help, and schooling, Italy’s new regulation could show extra rhetorical than transformative.
Whether or not the brand new offense may have any measurable impression on femicide charges stays unsure. What is obvious is that with out strong funding in shelters, financial help, schooling, perpetrator packages, and cultural change, the promise of the regulation dangers remaining largely rhetorical.
