From Santiago to Rome to Dhaka, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women was marked by grief, anger and demands for accountability from the institutions that enable femicide and domestic abuse.

UN figures estimate that around 50,000 women and girls were killed by partners or family members in the past year—roughly 137 every day.

Memorials, vigils and mass marches took place around the world, sometimes in heavily policed streets.

In Mexico City, tens of thousands of protesters filled central plazas with banners naming the dead and denouncing federal authorities for failing to reduce femicide rates. They highlighted the murders of mothers searching for their children and demanded ending the criminalisation of protest and effective access to legal and safe abortion.

Protests took place more widely across Latin America, including Santiago de Chile, Lima and Quito.

Ahead of the day, anarchist platforms in France issued manifestos articulating their revolutionary, anti-imperialist feminism. These texts reject the idea that gendered violence is exceptional, arguing it is a structural component of the state—visible in policing, prisons, border controls and France’s overseas deployments. They promoted decentralised, intersectional actions, solidarity with trans and sex-worker struggles, and a refusal to confine 25 November to ritualised awareness-raising.

Calls from the Kurdish women’s movement framed 25 November as a day to demand “a free and dignified life”, and stressed that war and militarisation heighten community-level violence and constrain women’s autonomy.

In Italy, feminist and transfeminist movements including Non Una Di Meno organised demonstrations in more than a hundred cities. with tens of thousands demanding justice for victims of femicide.

Protesters also targeted the government’s restriction of sex education and its growing military budget.

In Greece, anarchist and feminist blocs marched in Thessaloniki and Athens, where the main demonstration moved from Klauthmonos Square to memorial sites honouring murdered LGBTQ+ activist Zac Kostopoulos. Activists reported continuous MAT policing along the route.

Their messages linked domestic and sexual violence to policing, border regimes, austerity, and a political culture of impunity.

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