A new platform is tracking every femicide case in Tunisia 🇹🇳

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In Tunisia, the fight against femicide has just gone digital. Aswat Nissa, a Tunisian women’s rights organization, has launched a platform designed to record and archive every femicide case documented in the country since 2018. The numbers explain the urgency: 109 femicides logged by the organization since January 2018, with no sign of the trend slowing. 2025 alone recorded 30 cases, up from 26 in 2024, 25 in 2023, and 23 in 2022. To keep this sensitive data from being lost or scattered across disconnected sources, Aswat Nissa moved it into a secure digital space. The platform went live on August 12, alongside the presentation of the organization’s third annual femicide report.

A tool for memory and advocacy 📊

This isn’t just a statistics repository. Built as a full digital infrastructure, the platform centralizes information on femicides and makes it accessible to three key audiences: researchers, journalists, and civil society organizations. The technical goal doubles as a political one — the database is meant to feed advocacy for stronger public policy on protecting women.

The timing wasn’t incidental. The launch took place in Tunis, the day before Tunisia’s National Women’s Day, celebrated every August 13 — a date marking the anniversary of the 1956 Code of Personal Status, the law that first granted Tunisian women major civil rights. By choosing this symbolic moment, Aswat Nissa tied its digital effort to a legal and social fight that stretches back nearly seven decades. (It’s worth noting this is a national holiday specific to Tunisia, not to be confused with International Women’s Day on March 8.)

Beyond archiving, the tool is meant to work as an accountability lever. With femicide data now structured and centralized, both public institutions and private actors face closer scrutiny, and the platform is designed to track the phenomenon’s evolution in real time.

A model already tested in Kenya 🌍

Tunisia’s approach fits into a broader continental trend. In Kenya, a similar initiative has already proven its value: 1,069 cases of women killed were recorded between 2016 and 2025 through the work of Africa Data Hub’s « Silencing Women » project. That database pulls femicide cases from media reports and court records, showing that a well-built digital tool can help close the gaps left by official statistics.

In Tunisia, this push toward digitizing protection for women is still largely driven by civil society, through Aswat Nissa’s work. It’s part of a wider pattern taking shape across the continent — the collection, reporting, and tracking of violence against women, where technology is becoming a real tool for collective memory and justice.

Do digital databases like Aswat Nissa’s actually have the power to shift public policy on protecting women in Africa? Let us know in the comments.