Last year, the total number of victims of murder or manslaughter fell to 120, five people less than in 2023. That is evident from on Thursday published, preliminary figures of the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), which has been keeping information about murder and manslaughter since 1996. In recent years, the number of victims of murder or manslaughter has hardly been falling anymore.
In 2024, 76 men and 44 women were killed or killed – by ‘murder’ there was a premeditated consultation, not by ‘manslaughter’. A year earlier it concerned 84 men and 41 women.
At the beginning of this century, the number of victims was even higher. From 2000 to 2004 there were an average of 163 male and 74 female victims. After a coincidental year in 2017 with 112 killed or murdered men, the number of male victims stabilized at an average of 82 a year. And over the past ten years, an average of 43 women were killed or killed every year. The number of murdered women decreased less sharply than in men.
Male (ex) partner
“It is striking that the number of male victims has fallen a lot since the turn of the century, while the number of female victims remains relatively consistent,” says CBS researcher Luuk Hovius by telephone. “In women, fatal violence often takes place in a domestic circle, committed by (former) partners and family members. That is difficult to tackle policy-based. Men are regularly killed by an acquaintance or in the criminal circuit.”
The police traced between 2020 and 2024 in 97 percent of the cases who (presumably) had killed or killed the women. In 52 percent of those crimes, the (former) partner was the perpetrator. For female victims between the ages of 20 and 60, the (former) partner was the culprit even in 65 percent of the cases. In addition to (former) partners, in 20 percent of the cases family members were responsible for killing women. Victims were “usually” stabbed or strangled, according to the CBS.
“Nine out of ten perpetrators is man” in the case of murder and manslaughter, emphasizes CBS researcher Luuk Hovius. “So it is mainly men who kill men and men who kill women.”
In recent weeks there has again been national attention for fatal violence against women. For example, a man shot his 39-year-old female ex-partner from Gouda, a 36-year-old woman was murdered in Schiedam and the police found a 24-year-old woman in Almere death. And last week, 17-year-old Lisa was murdered in Duivendrecht after a night out. Afterwards the national awareness campaign ‘We demand the night’ was launched. Violence against women was also discussed during the Wednesday parliamentary debate, about the boarding of NSC ministers.
‘Safety experience’ of Dutch people
Statistics Netherlands further writes that parents were responsible for the conversion of 26 of the 30 children killed between 2020 and 2024. This year, too, such a kind of thing was in the news nationwide, when the 67-year-old Klaas B. his children Jeffrey (10) and Emma (8) kidnapped and passed on to drive into the channel in Winschoten with a car.
Despite the dozens of murders per year, the Netherlands is relatively safe compared to other European countries, according to the CBS. In 2023, only in Italy, Slovenia, Switzerland and Ireland were fewer victims per 100,000 inhabitants. In Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania, the number of murders is relatively high.
The CBS published at the beginning of last year figures about the ‘safety experience‘From the Dutch. This showed that 15 percent of Dutch people surveyed sometimes feel unsafe in their own neighborhood. In 2021, that number was 1 percentage point lower.
Women feel more often than men unsafe in their own neighborhood (18 against 12 percent) and in general (44 against 26 percent). This especially applies to the group of 15 to 25-year-old women: 25 percent of them sometimes feel unsafe in their own neighborhood, 61 percent in general.