Israeli Researcher To Lead European Battle Against The Murder Of Women

For the first time, COST, an inter-governmental framework for European Cooperation in Science and Technology, will sponsor an Action initiated by an Israeli researcher to prevent femicide across Europe. Femicide, the killing of a woman because she is female, is a leading cause of premature death for women globally.

The Action will establish a pan-European coalition on femicide, with researchers who are already studying the phenomenon in their own countries, in order to agree on definitions, improve policies for femicide prevention, and publish guidelines for the use of national policy-makers.

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To date, 26 countries have joined the initiative proposed by Dr. Shalva Weil, a senior researcher at the NCJW Research Institute for Innovation and Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Doctor Weil has been unanimously elected as the chairperson for the action and is the only Israeli to hold such a position. The proposal emerged out of Weil’s own research on wife-murder/femicide among Ethiopian immigrants in Israel.

The Hebrew University has been elected by the European representatives in the COST Action as the grant-holding institution. The four-year COST Action will launch the idea of a European Observatory on femicide.

“It is an honor for the State of Israel and for me to have been selected by a majority of countries in Europe to lead an initiative to prevent femicide, a phenomenon that may be on the rise in Europe in the wake of globalization and migration,” Weil said upon learning of the honor.

Photo: Dead Woman by Bigstock