- Malta’s 2022 reform introduced femicide and misogynistic motives into its Criminal Code, one of the few EU states to do so.
- However, it has had a limited tangible impact. No court ruling has applied the law so far.
- Gender-based violence remains pervasive. Domestic violence reports have almost doubled since 2015, reaching 4,439 in 2024. One in four women in Malta reports experiencing intimate partner violence.
- Convictions remain low. Police issued 17,486 domestic violence charges between 2021 and mid-2025 but secured only 933 convictions, roughly one for every nineteen charges.
- Delays in the justice system continue to undermine victims’ rights, a human rights case is being prepared.
- Recent murders reveal persistent failures in prevention and protection. The killings of Bernice Cassar and Nicolette Ghirxi followed prior police reports or warning signs.
- Gender inequality and institutional gaps remain unaddressed.
- Progress is visible in awareness and institutional reform, but not yet in outcomes.
In the wake of the murders of Paulina Dembska and Rita Ellul in 2022, Malta updated its legislation to strengthen punishments for femicide, one of the few OSCE countries to do so.
“Malta under my watch (…) took the step of introducing the concept of femicide into our criminal code to acknowledge this gender-based crime, raising public awareness and to send a very clear and unequivocal message that there will be no leniency for perpetrators of this horrific crime,” Robert Abela told the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly in June.
But have the amendments fulfilled the demands of women’s rights defenders and made a difference on the ground?
“The state, the country and society did not do all that is required,” Abela told Malta Today in 2022, referring to the murders of Dembska and Bernice Cassar.
“These reforms stem from the need and responsibility to respond to what’s happening in our society: from the duty not to ignore anyone’s reality. Only by doing so can we truly represent the people and ensure that what we hear from them in the streets leads to real change and necessary reform. (…) That is what brought us to today’s legal amendments,” Abela told parliament in February 2022 .
He also said, “What we are talking about today makes a difference in the life of each and every one of us.”
Abela told the diplomatic corps he was ‘particularly proud’ of the femicide law. Meanwhile, Justice Minister Jonathan Attard cited the recognition of femicide as proof of Malta’s “commitment to comprehensive legislative and institutional reforms” at a Council of Europe event this year.
What was the amendment about?
The legal amendment was introduced in June 2022. Now the court must consider several femicide criteria when deciding on a punishment for the homicide of a person of the female gender.
These are:
- Intimate partner violence;
- Family member violence;
- Sexual violence or sexual acts;
- Misogynist motives;
- Reasons related to honour, reputation, religious or cult practices;
- Motives based on the gender, or gender identity, or sex or sexual orientation of the victim;
- Related to sexual exploitation (including commercial) of the victim.
“Following the murder of Paulina Dembska there was quite a public outcry, both because of how it happened – the fact that it was very random, there was no connection with her killer, that it took in a public place, and was also very brutal,” lawyer and human rights activist Lara Dimitrijevic, who worked on the wording of the bill, explained to Amphora Media.
Official data reveals that 3 out of 16 women murdered in gender-based crimes between 2012 and 2022 had previously sought support from the national social welfare agency ahead of the crime.
The amendments limited the grounds to render femicides excusable when “committed by any person acting under the first transport of a sudden passion or mental excitement”, as formulated in the Criminal Code.
It also brought the concept of misogyny into law for the first time, which Dimitrijevic described as “quite a win in itself”.
But femicide is not an aggravation, which means that the punishment for willful homicide is not increased because it is a femicide; it just cannot be decreased.
“I frankly think that [the excuse of sudden passion] should be removed across the board. It’s an extremely old concept that has been removed in many other jurisdictions,” Dimitrijevic said.
“[The legal amendment will] not create a separate legal offence. Rather, it will encourage the judiciary to take into account violence against women, because they are women, when handing down sentences for the already-existing criminal offence of wilful homicide,”the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality (NCPE) said at the time the amends were discussed.
Is this what women’s rights defenders called for?
The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) considers femicide to be “the most severe forms of gender-based violence” and “recognising it as a separate criminal offence “could bring numerous benefits in terms of awareness raising, prevention and applying the law”.
In 2022, NCPE said Dembska’s murder was “a wake-up call to seriously examine and address the unequal power relations between women and men in our society.”
“Gender inequality needs addressing through gender-sensitive policy making and policing as well as the eradication of sexism from all spheres of life, including online and broadcast media, as well as institutionalised sexism,” the NCPE stressed.
By 2024, the NCPE warned that “the deep connection between gender inequality and this pervasive violence, a relationship that remains largely unaddressed”.
“While the introduction of the femicide law in Malta was a significant step in the right direction, more work needs to be carried out to address the underlying structures that make such violence possible in the first place,” it said.
In an EU programme, Aleksandar Dimitrijevic (Lara’s husband) representing NGO Men Against Violence, described how the Maltese justice system is “notoriously slow when dealing with cases of domestic and gender-based violence” with two magistrates presiding over 1500 cases of domestic violence as of February 2025.
According to the EU’s justice scoreboard, Malta has one of the longest estimated time to resolve judicial cases for all crimes.
In 2022, the Women’s Rights Foundation, which has set up the Observatory on Femicide in Malta, has recommended mandatory training to legal practitioners, court staff and judges dealing with violence against women, immediate and effective protection for victims, better enforcement of protection orders, and GPS monitoring of suspects on bail.
Lara Dimitrijevic, one of the authors of the report and WRF’s board member, is preparing to initiate a human rights case related to the delayed proceedings on behalf of the family of Chantelle Chetcuti, who was murdered in February 2020.
“Unfortunately, the judicial process is very lengthy and very burdensome on the victims, i.e. the members of the family. In fact, (…) I will be filing a human rights case on behalf of Chantelle’s family, as we are still awaiting the jury. In the meantime, her mother has passed away. Her father became unwell. Her sister is really suffering, not to mention her children too.”
“Life went on for [the accused], whereas for this family, life will stop. I argue that this is a breach of their human rights. It’s continuously subjecting them to revictimisation. It’s really affecting their right to private life, because they cannot move on. (…) Some of the members of the family will have to testify again now, after so many years, within a trial by jury.”
What has happened since?
Since the femicide amendments were introduced, three women have been murdered: Bernice Cassar, Sandra Ramirez, and Nicolette Ghirxi.
Bernice Cassar filed multiple domestic violence reports against her estranged husband – the man accused of killing her – up to the day before she was murdered. Just two days earlier, her lawyer had reportedly urged police to take action against him for breaching protection orders.
In the inquiry into her death, retired judge Geoffrey Valenzia concluded that the “state system” had failed Cassar, citing a lack of court and police resources, as well as the increasing workload faced by magistrates, which led to significant delays in scheduling and hearing cases.
The accused has since been charged with the murder, and his lawyers reportedly challenged the new femicide law on discrimination grounds.
Nicolette Ghirxi emailed the police a few days before her murder, expressing concern after encountering her ex-boyfriend, who later died in a standoff with police. She had also reported harassment months earlier, in April, but declined a risk assessment at the time.
The Police Complaints Board later cleared the officers involved, stating they had acted within their powers and found no evidence of an imminent threat.
Sandra Ramirez was reportedly stabbed 26 times by her former partner. When he appeared in court, he attempted to have the femicide charge dropped, arguing it was a “crime of passion”, which was rejected.
There has not yet been a published court judgement applying the amended legal provisions in an actual case of the murder of a woman.
“We’ve had more femicides in a short span of time after the introduction of the law. So that, I think, speaks for itself,” Lara Dimitrijevic said.
Conviction rates remain low
Data provided by the police shows that between 2021 and July 2025, there were 933 convictions related to domestic violence, compared to 17,486 charges issued during the same period.
This means that, on average, there has been roughly one conviction for every 19 charges over the past few years.
“We really need to work much, much harder on the prevention element, both in terms of prosecution and protection,(…) and to have dissuasive punishments. Very rarely do we see, for example, effective imprisonments in cases of intimate partner violence,” Lara Dimitrijevic said.
The number of domestic violence charges has also been rising: from 2,929 in 2021 to 4,439 in 2024.
According to the 2024 Crime Malta report, a trend of increasing reports has been observed since 2007. However, the growth is mostly attributed to the rise in reports of psychological harm, and stronger awareness may have also played a role. Parliamentary questions filed in recent years reveal that reports of domestic violence to the police have nearly doubled since 2015.
By July 2025, 2,427 charges had already been filed, as an early warning, this year is also on track to surpass the 4,000 mark.
In 2024, Council of Europe’s experts found that the police have implemented “comprehensive reforms” to address gender-based violence and that “Malta has adopted a more robust multi-agency approach at all levels of decision-making”.
Who has experienced intimate partner violence?
According to the Survey on Safety and Well-being carried out in Malta and Gozo in 2022, 19% of men and 26% of women reported having experienced intimate partner violence. For over half, the violence resulted in an injury, and more than half have felt that their life was in danger.
According to the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE)’s country report on Malta in 2022, the year the femicide law was introduced:
- 79% of recorded victims of intimate partner violence were women, and 69% of victims of domestic violence were women.
- 1,091 men were reported for intimate partner violence against women, and 538 were prosecuted.
- 1,364 men were reported for domestic violence against women, and 1,210 were prosecuted.
- The police recorded a greater number of offences of intimate partner violence (1,099) than the number of victims (831). This difference suggests that several women victims were subjected to violence by a partner multiple times in a single year.
- Between 2020 and 2022, four women victims of intentional homicide were recorded by police. During the same period, police recorded three women victims of intentional homicide committed specifically by an intimate partner;
- Fluctuations between years can be attributed to various social and institutional factors and do not necessarily imply that violence has worsened in the country over time.
EIGE notes intimate partner violence is not explicitly defined in Malta’s Criminal Code, and “no data is available on protection orders for victims of violence” or “on perpetrators sentenced or held in prison for these crimes”. This makes it difficult to assess the extent to which men are brought to justice for violence against women”.
Malta is one of the few countries that has explicitly defined femicide.
International experts have noted Malta’s progress at the various stages of addressing violence escalation, from training of police to the definition of femicide in the law. Women’s rights defenders have called for a comprehensive approach to the underlying structures, notably inequality.
Malta’s statistics of the number of people affected by intimate partner violence and reports of domestic violence suggest that the issue is widespread and shows no signs of subsiding. Meanwhile, the murders of Cassar and Ghirxi have raised concerns over the police’s ability to prevent femicides before they occur.
In Malta, the length of proceedings is a repeatedly voiced concern that has not been resolved. According to lawyer and expert Lara Dimitrijevic, an overhaul of the criminal justice system is needed to fully address the issue.
Politicians’ claims that the femicide law would make a difference are somewhat true. The introduction of femicide is a legal breakthrough. But it is the tip of the gender-based violence iceberg, and the progress in improving the quality of the justice system has been slow.
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