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Article History

Received: 24 July 2025

Accepted: 14 January 2026

First Online: 21 January 2026

Declarations

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: This study received ethical approval from the St. Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College Institutional Review Board (Ethical clearance reference no: PM 23/524). In accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and Ethiopian National Research Ethics Review Guideline, the need for informed consent to participate was waived by the Institutional Review Board. This waiver was granted based on the following considerations: As this study used only prospectively collected, anonymized data as part of routine postmortem procedures and involved no interaction with participants or families, the risk to individuals was minimal. Furthermore, the research posed no risk to participants, as all data were anonymized using unique identification codes to ensure confidentiality. The data was solely used for the purposes of this research, with the potential to contribute to improvements in forensic practice, inform national policy, and aid femicide prevention efforts. The Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, School of Medicine, SPHMMC, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, granted permission for data collection and publication following a full review of the study details, including the intended data use, methodology, and data security measures. After obtaining IRB approval, a support letter from SPHMMC was obtained. This letter facilitated obtaining formal permissions from the respective police departments/offices, granting the research team access to official police files for review. To gather comprehensive data, we collected information from police records 2 to 3 years after the recorded events. To ensure the confidentiality of the data, all information was anonymized upon extraction using unique identification codes. The resulting dataset was securely stored on a password-protected institutional computer, with access strictly limited to the research team to uphold privacy standards. Importantly, no direct interviews were conducted by the researchers; we relied solely on the analysis of documents obtained from police dockets.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare no competing interests.