In the 1970’s until the beginning of 1980’s the Netherlands began to raise public awareness and implement government action to address the issue of domestic and intimate partner violence. Existing interventions against femicides in the Netherlands include offering financial and institutions support towards women’s organizations. However, formal support systems need to be improved as the care given frequently falls short of meeting both the victims' psychological and medical needs. As a result, a lot of victims choose not to access legal, medical, or mental health services.

In 2020, GREVIO released a report to document the implantation of the Istanbul convention in the Netherlands.  GREVIO is an independent human rights monitoring body to investigate the implementation of the Istabul convention, the independent human rights monitoring A significant lack of a thorough understanding of gender as a (risk) factor in violence was outlined, attributed to the “gender-neutral” approach taken by the Dutch government. The gender neutral approach resulted from the introduction of the new term “violence in dependency relationships” which aims to highlight the various forms of domestic violence occurring irrespective of gender, sexual orientation, relationship or age. Furthermore, the government's attempt to develop more intersectional policies resulted in the misconception that violence against women mostly occurs in ethnic minorities and violence against women from non-western migration backgrounds is regarded as a cultural issue. However, data evidence shows that  in 2017 68.1% of perpetrators of domestic violence were born in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands need to develop a femicide definition for statistical data collection and implement a process of continuous data collection. With help of this continuous data collection, it can be ensured that the gender dimension of homicide is made more visible to policy makers and the public. Subsequently, policy makers could use this knowledge to develop a gender-sensitive approach which is needed to separate homicide and femicide in legislation. Such legislation is currently still missing, but making this distinction could help fight femicide.

Furthermore, more advocacy may benefit women who are in or have left an abusive romantic relationship in stopping or reducing recurring victimization and overcoming the effects of the abuse. Education, planning for safety, facilitating increased access to various services are all part of advocacy. Advocacy may stand alone or be incorporated into other services such as assistance related to healthcare, criminal justice, social policy, or specialized domestic violence assistance. When designing advocacy interventions it is important to consider both women’s vulnerabilities and intersectionality and the tradeoff of abuse related decisions in the contexts of individual women’s lives. Key aspects which are needed in advocacy are education and information on abuse, rights and resources, risk assessment and safety planning and active referral to other services. The success of advocacy interventions are dependent on contextual factors (such as type of abuse) and the outcomes which the particular advocacy interventions aim to tackle (such as decreasing depression). 

This Dossier is part of a living lab project from Groningen University, Campus Fryslân. This project offers students a unique opportunity to apply their academic knowledge and skills in real-world scenarios. The living lab is a key component of the bachelor's degree program in global responsibility and leadership. Our team, comprised of Lee, Josefina, and Linde, collaborated with UNSA Vienna & Femicide watch and undertook an academic systematic literature review focused on conceptualizations, prevalence rates, measurements, risk factors, policies, and interventions of femicides in Europe, with a specific focus on the Netherlands. The findings presented in this dossier serve as an output of our research.