Effectiveness in Addressing Femicide: Protocol for a Systematic Review of Reviews

Femicide has been recognized as an epidemiological crisis, and there is a need for more knowledge about the effects of institutional interventions aimed at reducing this extreme form of violence. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to present a methodological protocol for developing a Systematic Review of Reviews, in order to investigate how organizations associated with the justice system approach effectiveness in addressing femicide. The PICOS strategy structures the review question (Population, Interventions, Context, Outcomes, and Study type), inclusion and exclusion criteria are operationalized through the PRISMA 2020 flow diagram, and a standardized set of charting questions guides data extraction. A pilot search and calibration exercise, reported here to demonstrate feasibility, identified 61 review-type records eligible for the full SRR and confirmed substantial-to-almost-perfect inter-rater agreement during screening. The findings are expected to map how the concept of “femicide” and related terms are used in the literature, which institutions are involved, and where the evidence base presents gaps, supporting transparent and policy-relevant synthesis. This protocol, through the mapping of keywords associated with the types of research strategies presented, provides information for other systematic reviews, facilitating new searches in the literature for authors who continue to conduct research on violence against women and femicide. The systematic review is registered on PROSPERO CRD42024629264.