ALGIERS: Femicide and domestic violence against women in North Africa are increasingly reported online and by the media but rights groups say legal measures to protect the victims are still lacking.
In Algeria, at least one woman is killed each week, according to the watchdog Feminicides Algerie, which has been documenting murders since 2019.
Across the border in Tunisia, femicide rates quadrupled between 2018 and 2023, reaching 25 murders compared to six in 2018, according to the NGOs Aswat Nissa and Manara.
The situation is also alarming in Morocco where Stop Feminicides Maroc, another group, has recorded five killings so far this year, with at least 50 cases in 2023 and more than 30 the year before.
The latest gender-based killing in Algeria took place on Monday in the eastern city of Khenchela, where according to media reports a man aged 49 stabbed his 37-year-old wife several times before slitting her throat.
Imad, who asked to use a pseudonym, told AFP how his 23-year-old sister was murdered by her husband last year.
A mother of three, she was preparing a meal for the Ramadan fast when she was killed.
“Her husband found her taking selfies with her cell phone while frying some borek (stuffed pastries). He got angry and poured oil on her face then slit her throat,” Imed said.
His brother-in-law was tried and sentenced to just 10 years in prison for his crime after his lawyer submitted medical records claiming he suffered from depression, he added.
Farida, a 45-year-old Algerian, who also asked to use a pseudonym out of fear of retribution from her ex-husband, told AFP she nearly died when he attempted to choke her with a rope.
“My married life was very unhappy, with beatings and death threats,” the journalist and mother of four said. “He once strangled me with a rope until I collapsed.”
They eventually divorced but the husband got custody of the children and threatened to harm them if she filed a complaint, she said.
Femicide “is not a new phenomenon,” Algerian sociologist Yamina Rahou told AFP. “But it has become more visible with social media.”
Rights groups have also been raising awareness of the killing of women by their husbands or other male relatives, but they argue that known cases only represent the tip of the iceberg.
Tunisia’s most recent known attempted murder took place at the end of June in the southern region of Gafsa where a husband is suspected of dousing his wife with gasoline and setting her on fire, according to judicial sources.
The woman survived but was hospitalized with critical injuries while her husband escaped.
In 2017, Tunisia adopted a law aimed at fighting gender-related violence but its implementation has been slow, according to Karima Brini, head of the Tunisian Women and Citizenship group.
“Cultural obstacles” are among the main stumbling blocks, said Brini, noting that Tunisian schoolbooks continue to describe women as people “whose place is in the kitchen” while men “watch TV.”
Brini and Algeria’s Rahou said such views must change.
“We must raise awareness among both sexes from a young age about equality, shared responsibility and mutual respect,” in particular through state-run media, said Rahou.
Relying on law and law enforcement was “not enough,” she said.
At least 13 death sentences have been handed down in Algeria since 2019 for perpetrators of femicide, but a moratorium on executions has meant the convicts were sentenced to life in jail.
Sexual harassment, verbal or psychological aggression, and violence against women are also punished by law in Algeria since 2015.
In Morocco, violence against women has been punishable by law since 2018, but rights groups say it has not changed the reality on the ground where women continue to be victimized.
Judges in Morocco “tend to think that (domestic) violence... is a private” matter and as a result, the sentences meted out do not provide a sufficient deterrent, said lawyer Ghislaine Mamouni.
Camelia Echchihab, founder of “Stop Feminicides Maroc,” said Moroccan laws are a “farce” when it comes to violence against women and urged “more concrete” legislation.
In 2023, the brutal murder of a woman who was cut into pieces and hidden in a refrigerator sparked outrage across Morocco.
“The case is symbolic because it shows that there must be a certain level of horror for journalists to write about it, when in truth all femicide is horrible,” said Echchihab.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Iran held a runoff presidential election on Friday that pitted a hard-line former nuclear negotiator against a reformist lawmaker. Both men had struggled to convince a skeptical public to cast ballots in the first round of voting that saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.
Early results reported by Iran’s election authority on state television showed reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian narrowly ahead of hard-liner Saeed Jalili.
Mohsen Eslami, the election spokesman, said Pezeshkian had 2,904,227 votes trailed by Jalili with 2,815,566 votes, with 5,819,911 votes counted in 13,277 polling stations. There are some 60,000 polling stations and more than 61 million eligible voters.
Government officials up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have predicted a higher participation rate as voting got underway, with state television airing images of modest lines at some polling centers across the country.
However, online videos purported to show some polls empty while a survey of several dozen sites in the capital, Tehran, saw light traffic amid a heavy security presence on the streets.
Polls closed after midnight, after voting was extended as had become tradition in Iran.
Khamenei has insisted the low turnout from the first round on June 28 did not represent a referendum on Iran’s Shiite theocracy. However, many remain disillusioned as Iran has been beset by years under crushing economic sanctions, bloody security force crackdowns on mass protests and tensions with the West over Tehran’s advancing nuclear program enriching uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels.
“I want to save the country from isolation we are stuck in, and from lies and the violence against women because Iranian women don’t deserve to be beaten up and insulted on the street by extremists who want to destroy the country by cutting ties with big countries,” voter Ghazaal Bakhtiari said. “We should have ties with America and powerful nations.”
The race pits former negotiator Jalili against reformist Pezeshkian.
Jalili has had a recalcitrant reputation among Western diplomats during negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, something that is paired with concern at home over his hard-line views on Iran’s mandatory headscarf, or hijab. Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon, has campaigned on relaxing hijab enforcement and reaching out to the West, though he too for decades has supported Khamenei and Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Pezeshkian’s supporters have been warning Jalili will bring a “Taliban”-style government into Tehran, while Jalili has criticized Pezeshkian for running a campaign of fear-mongering.
Both contenders voted Friday in southern Tehran, home to many poor neighborhoods. Though Pezeshkian came out on top in the first round of voting on June 28, Jalili has been trying to secure the votes of people who supported hard-line parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who came in third and later endorsed the former negotiator.
Pezeshkian offered no comments after voting, walking out with former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who struck Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. A rambunctious crowd surrounded the men, shouting: “The nation’s hope comes!”
Both Pezeshkian and Jalili hope to replace the 63-year-old late President Ebrahim Raisi died in a May 19 helicopter crash that also killed the country’s foreign minister and several other officials.
Jalili voted at another polling station, surrounded by a crowd shouting: “Raisi, your way continues!”
“Today the entire world admits that it’s the people who decide who’s president for the next four years,” Jalili said afterward. “This is your right to decide which person, which path and which approach should rule the country in the next four years.”
But as has been the case since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women and those calling for radical change have been barred from the ballot while the vote itself had no oversight from internationally recognized monitors. The country’s Interior Ministry, in charge of police, oversees the result.
There have been calls for a boycott, including from imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, though potential voters in Iran appear to have made the decision not to participate last week on their own as there’s no widely accepted opposition movement operating within or outside of the country.
Khamenei cast one of the election’s first votes Friday from his residence, TV cameras and photographers capturing him dropping the ballot into the box. He insisted those who didn’t vote last week were not boycotting the government.
“I have heard that people’s enthusiasm is more than before,” Khamenei said. “God willing, people vote and choose the best” candidate.
One voter, 27-year-old Yaghoub Mohammadi, said he voted for Jalili in both rounds.
“He is clean, without depending on powerful people in the establishment,” Mohammadi said. “He represents those who have no access to power.”
By Friday night, both hard-line and reformist figures urged the public to vote as lines remained light in Tehran.
“Until a few hours ago I was reluctant to vote,” said Ahmad Safari, a 55-year-old shopkeeper and father of three daughters who voted despite skipping the first round. “But I decided to vote for Pezeshkian because of my children. Maybe they’ll have a better future.”
The vote comes as wider tensions have gripped the Middle East over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. In April, Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israel over the war in Gaza, while militia groups that Tehran arms in the region — such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels — are engaged in the fighting and have escalated their attacks.
Iran also continues to enrich uranium at near weapons-grade levels and maintains a stockpile large enough to build several nuclear weapons, should it choose to do so. And while Khamenei remains the final decision-maker on matters of state, whichever man ends up winning the presidency could bend the country’s foreign policy toward either confrontation or collaboration with the West.
More than 61 million Iranians over the age of 18 were eligible to vote, with about 18 million of them between 18 to 30. Voting was to end at 6 p.m. but was extended until midnight to boost participation.
Raisi, who died in the May helicopter crash, was seen as a protégé of Khamenei and a potential successor as supreme leader.
Still, many knew him for his involvement in the mass executions that Iran conducted in 1988, and for his role in the bloody crackdowns on dissent that followed protests over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman detained by police over allegedly improperly wearing the mandatory headscarf, or hijab.