North Macedonia: 26 women murdered in five years

North Macedonia: 26 women murdered in five years

26 women were murdered in North Macedonia from 2021 to 2025. Due to the long-standing lack of legal regulation, it is unknown how many of them are victims of femicide.

“Either mine or dead,” was just one of dozens of threatening messages that 31-year-old Rosica Kocheva received just days before her ex-partner, Ilija Stefanovski, killed her and her father near their home in Veles. This is the latest case of femicide in North Macedonia, documented by police.

Rosica had repeatedly denounced her ex-partner’s constant violence and threats, not only against her, but also against her parents and friends, but her case was never taken seriously by the institutions.

Before committing the act, the murderer Ilija Stefanovski was only sentenced to a suspended sentence and a restraining order, which he had not respected. After the double murder, he also killed himself.

This remains one of many cases that raise questions about the institutional response to women’s calls for help.

In five years, 26 women murdered

Rosica is just one of a total of 6 women murdered in Macedonia during 2025. Five women were murdered in 2024. Two of them had previously filed a complaint for domestic violence.

The year 2023 was the worst in terms of femicide, with a total of 9 victims. Three of the cases were related to domestic violence. In the Eurostat ranking for 2023, North Macedonia was among the countries with the highest rate of femicide in Europe, with 6 femicide per million inhabitants, and ranked third after Lithuania and Latvia. In 2022, two women were murdered, while in 2021, four cases of femicide were recorded.

Macedonia among the first countries in the region to legally recognize femicide

The murder of a woman does not necessarily constitute femicide. For a case to qualify as such, it is necessary to prove that the murder was gender-related, namely that the woman was killed because she was a woman.

Despite the fact that the term “femicide” is not used in the Criminal Code, in 2023 Article 123 was supplemented with paragraph 2-a, which sanctioned the killing of a woman or girl under the age of 18 “as a result of gender-based violence”.

Because this has not been regulated, it is not known exactly how many of the murders of women qualify as femicide. The National Network Against Domestic Violence is currently analyzing all trials and decisions related to the murder of women from 2014 to 2023 and is expected to publish a report that will provide a clearer picture of the nature of these cases.