SANTO DOMINGO — The Dominican Republic is confronting a persistent national crisis of gender-based violence, with newly released official statistics highlighting troubling shifts in patterns of femicide and fatal attacks on women across the country. The most recent case underscores this emergency: last Thursday, 28-year-old Aurelina Valdez, a well-loved, hardworking young woman from Monte Plata province, was killed in a multiple shooting carried out allegedly by her former partner, Inocencio Belén, who is known by the aliases “Cristian el Piñero” and “Rey”.
Valdez’s killing fits a growing trend documented in the *Compendium of Statistics on Women Who Died in Conditions of Violence, 2021-2025*, published August 18 by the Dominican Republic’s National Statistics Office (ONE). The report defines intimate femicide as any killing of a woman by a man with whom she currently shares or has previously shared an intimate romantic or sexual relationship — including current and former spouses, partners, boyfriends, and even acquaintances who murder a woman after she rejects their romantic or sexual advances. Overall, 40 percent of all gender-related female deaths in 2025 were classified as intimate femicide.
Breakdowns of the 2025 data show a significant shift in perpetrator patterns: while the number of femicides committed by current partners dropped 16 cases year-over-year, from 56 in 2024 to 40 in 2025, killings by ex-partners rose by four, bringing the total to 22. This aligns with preliminary data from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which counted 59 femicides nationwide in the first half of 2025 alone: 36 by current partners, and 18 by ex-partners — a number already matching the full-year 2024 total for ex-perpetrator killings. In total, the country recorded 150 gender-related violent deaths of women in 2025, the second-highest total across the five-year tracking period from 2021 to 2025.
Urban areas have emerged as the epicenter of rising violence. Across the Santo Domingo national district, the core metropolitan region of the country, 2025 saw sharp spikes in fatal cases. Santo Domingo Norte, which averaged 6 to 7 cases annually between 2021 and 2024, recorded 13 deaths in 2025 — an 86 percent increase in just one year. Nearby Guaricano, which reported zero cases across the first four years of the tracking period, accumulated four fatal attacks in 2025. The highest concentration of cases is in Santo Domingo Este, which recorded 17 deaths in 2025, accounting for nearly 46 percent of all cases reported across the entire Santo Domingo region. The national capital itself has consistently recorded more than 10 fatal cases annually since 2024, rising from 13 in 2021 to 17 in 2025, cementing its position as the municipality with the highest number of gender-based killings nationwide.
The 2025 data also marks a notable increase in foreign national victims. The annual average of non-Dominican victims between 2021 and 2024 was 23.5, but that number rose to 35 in 2025: 31 victims from Haiti, two from Germany, and one each from Colombia and Venezuela.
Beyond perpetrator and geographic patterns, ONE’s data reveals a shift in the circumstances surrounding these killings. While fatal attacks stemming from family conflict, domestic violence, and pre-existing gender-based abuse remain the largest single category, dropping from 88 cases in 2024 to 67 in 2025 (the lowest total across the five-year period), fatalities linked to random quarrels and disputes surged to 48 cases in 2025 — the highest level in the tracking period, and accounting for nearly one-third of all deaths that year. This marks a sharp reversal from 2024, when only 18 dispute-related deaths were recorded. Other circumstances, including robbery-related killings, deaths linked to police or military action, accidental deaths, and sexual assault-related murders, accounted for fewer than 15 combined cases in 2025. In terms of location, most killings in recent years have occurred on public roads, parks, or inside vehicles, alongside deaths in private homes and residential parking lots.
The data also confirms a consistent temporal pattern across the five-year period: more gender-based killings of women occur on Sundays than any other day of the week. Between 2021 and 2025, 153 fatal attacks took place on a Sunday, followed by 135 on Mondays and 130 on Saturdays.