Cornell Center on Death Penalty Worldwide

Silently Silenced: State-Sanctioned Killing of Women examines States’ involvement in ‘feminicide’. Feminicide is understood as the gender-motivated killing of women and girls that States actively engage in, condone, excuse, or fail to prevent. We use the term ‘feminicide’ to refer to the various forms of State-sanctioned killing of women and girls. In this report, we outline States’ direct involvement and complicity in the killings of women and girls and explain these deaths as a product of gendered forms of structural violence upheld and sustained by the State. We examine 3 types of feminicide: gender- related killings of women directly perpetrated by the State, such as the death penalty and extrajudicial killings; gender-related killings of women committed by non-State actors that are excused or condoned by the State; and gender-related killings of women that the State failed to prevent.

• Document type Academic report
• Themes list Women

One of every 15 women in prison — amounting to more than 6,600 women — is serving a life sentence and nearly 2,000 of these have no chance for parole. Another 52 women in the U.S. are awaiting execution. Many women serving extreme sentences were victims of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse long before they committed a crime.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Women

Written by a team including experts in the fields of capital defense, gender rights, gender-sensitive mitigation and the rights of transgender persons, the guide includes sections on gender-based violence, women’s mental health, prison conditions, discrimination in the legal system, working with the media, and how to build a gender-sensitive team. It also includes a step-by-step gender-sensitive interview protocol that builds on resources developed by the anti-violence community and is tailored to the needs of defense teams.

• Document type Legal Representation
• Themes list Legal Representation / Women
• Available languages Défendre les femmes et les personnes transgenres confrontées à des peines extrêmes

“No one believed me” is a quote from Merri Utami, who was sentenced to death for drug trafficking in Indonesia in 2002. Her quote reflects the injustices faced by women accused of capital drug offenses around the world: many decision-makers disbelieve women’s plausible innocence claims or discount the effects of relationships and economic instability on women’s decisions to traffic drugs.

• Document type NGO report
• Themes list Drug Offenses / Women
• Available languages

On 10 October 2021, the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty and other abolitionist organizations worldwide will celebrate the 19th World Day Against the Death Penalty.

This year the World Day is dedicated to women who risk being sentenced to death, who have received a death sentence, who have been executed, and to those who have had their death sentences commuted, have been exonerated or pardoned. Included in this theme, are trans women and other gender diverse individuals, who are a minority on death row but who are discriminated against on the basis of gender.

Capital punishment disproportionately targets socially marginalized individuals; it is no different for transgender people, who may face discrimination in every aspect of their lives.

• Document type Campaigning
• Themes list Women
• Available languages FICHE D’INTRODUCTION SUR LES PERSONNES TRANS PASSIBLES DE LA PEINE DE MORT