Alumna Mojan Samadi: ‘Femicide is not about the perpetrator’s motive’
Mojan Samadi obtained her PhD in 2020 in Leiden and has since remained at the university as an assistant professor. Her research currently focuses on gender and criminal law, with a key question being how criminal law should address femicide.
'My research is at the interface between human rights and criminal law,' says Mojan Samadi, who has worked at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology since 2012. She started as a PhD fellow and has been working as an assistant professor since obtaining her PhD in 2020. 'After completing my PhD, I had no desire to leave.'
Although Samadi ultimately opted for an academic career, she had already gained practical experience in international law. After studying Public International Law and Criminal Law at the University of Amsterdam, she had worked at law firm Prakken d'Oliveira, as well as the Cambodia Tribunal in Phnom Penh and the Lebanon Tribunal in Leidschendam.
'I missed the freedom to decide what I was doing,' says the assistant professor. 'Proceedings in international tribunals take a very long time because of the political sensitivities, and those sensitivities also mean that the legal work sometimes gets snowed under. Though it did teach me a lot, it was sometimes frustrating.'
Procedural errors
That was a reason for Samadi to apply for a PhD position in Leiden in 2012. Her PhD research focused on the importance of the compliance with standards by the police and the judiciary. ‘So, it was about what happens if the police or judiciary make mistakes during criminal proceedings’, she explains. 'How does the judge act on this in court and are there other bodies that deal with it? I examined how that action is supervised and whether this is adequate.'
‘One of the central questions in my PhD research was: what do we do when the rights of suspects are violated?', says Samadi. According to her, this is precisely where the intersection between human rights and criminal law meets. In the years since obtaining her PhD, her focus has shifted to broader human rights themes, such as gender-based violence.
Sociological knowledge
'This interest partly stemmed from an interest I already had in feminist theory,' says the assistant professor. 'I was inspired by the books of feminist thinkers and philosophers such as Judith Butler, Andrea Dworkin, Audre Lorde and Simone de Beauvoir.'
'When I conducted research on gender-based violence in the legal field of study, I noticed that the discussion was very often conducted without regard for the rich sociological knowledge, which is relevant when it comes to interpreting the frame.' For that reason, the assistant professor is attempting to implement that knowledge in her research.
And her attempts are successful: last year, an article by Samadi on the criminal law context of femicide was awarded a Meijers Prize and the Van Wersch Springplank Prize. Each year, the Meijers Prize is awarded to the best scholarly article from each faculty research programme. The Van Wersch Springplank Prize is a named fund at the Leiden University Fund (LUF) amounting to €10,000 and is presented to the winner of a Meijers Prize for a special contribution to their area of research.
Misogyny
In her article Femidice of moord? (Femicide or murder?) Samadi examined the value of using the term ‘femicide’ within Dutch criminal law policy. ‘From a legal perspective, femicide is a difficult term’, she explains. ‘At least, if you adopt the term one-on-one from sociological literature. You not only have to prove that someone killed intentionally, but also that this happened because of the gender of the victim, i.e. being a woman. This presupposes a motive of misogyny, which is virtually impossible to prove legally. Not only that, in doing so you overlook the essence of the use of this term, namely social criticism.
What is femicide?
‘Femicide is a compound of the Latin femina (woman) and -cide (to slaughter or kill). So, it literally means: killing a woman. This differs from homicide, which is commonly used for murder, often without gender distinction. If we look at murders of women, we see that they usually take place within a completely different context than murders of men. Femicide therefore refers to the murder of women within a context of gender-based violence, such as partner homicide or sexual violence.’
According to Samadi, a legal definition should therefore not focus on the motive of the perpetrator, but on the objective context within which the violence occurs. 'For example, when a crime affects women structurally and disproportionately, such as sexual violence, genital mutilation or partner killing. When this violence is deadly, it can be called femicide,’ she explains.
Gender equality
One possible step would be to include the term femicide in the Dutch Criminal Code. 'Latin America is a forerunner in this respect, but some European countries have also taken a step in that direction,' says the assistant professor. 'But we can't just copy that legislation. We first have to investigate what exactly the problem is in the Netherlands. Our social and cultural context is very different from, for example, that in Mexico. Deadly gender-based violence against women also occurs in the Netherlands, but the form it takes can be different to that in other countries.'
'Besides, by merely changing criminal law you won’t solve the problem,' she emphasises. Although the gravity of the violence must be punished through criminal law, the real key lies elsewhere, according to Samadi. 'The violence stems from gender inequality and that is a broader social and cultural problem.' According to her, more attention needs to be paid to gender equality. 'This requires a broader social discussion. You could consider public campaigns, more attention in education and, above all, not constantly pointing to others. This theme is not infrequently hijacked to express xenophobia, while misogyny is also part of Dutch society. Tackling the problem will require serious self-reflection and introspection.