Giving Compass' Take:

• France is just recently aware of the severity of domestic violence and femicide in its country, with an increasing amount of women who have been killed by a former partner. 

• Fortunately, activism has spurred around this issue, and organizations are using social media to connect families grieving over lost ones. How can donors help support this cause? 

• Read about femicide movements in other countries. 

It is possible that 2019 may be remembered as the year France woke up to the seriousness of its domestic violence problem. Pressured by activists such as the feminist campaign group Nous Toutes, the government held a national summit on the issue that ran from September through to November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Two days before the government released their findings, tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Paris to protest against sexual and sexist violence, the largest such demonstration in French history, organisers said.

But if awareness is at an all-time high, women are still being murdered at an alarming rate. By October this year, as many women had been killed by a current or former partner as in all of 2018 according to feminist collective Femicides by a Partner or Ex. The total for 2019 today stands at 148 compared to 120 in 2018 and 137 in 2017.

These numbers are updated in real-time throughout the year by anonymous volunteers from Femicides by a Partner or Ex, who scour media outlets across France to provide an updated tally of domestic violence deaths.

Lawyer and domestic violence specialist Catherine Le Margueresse says this simple act of counting the dead women has played a huge part in the changing conversation about femicide in France.

The National Union for Families of Femicide was registered as an official organisation on October 5, half-way through the government's inquiry into domestic violence. Sandrine says they wanted to be ready to respond when the results were announced on November 25.

In a matter of weeks, they became the public face of femicide in France, appearing in newspapers, on television and at the head of the march on November 23.

At least 219,000 French women each year suffer some form of violence at the hands of an intimate partner, according to the National Observatory for Violence Against Women.

Read the full article about femicide movement in France by Megan Clement at Aljazeera.