The most searched word on the Treccani dictionary website since the start of 2026 is “femminicidio” – femicide. Not artificial intelligence. Not influencers. Not smart working. Femicide.
We could file this away as a linguistic curiosity, one of those rankings that simply track how Italian is evolving. That would be a mistake. Behind a search repeated thousands of times lies something far deeper: the need to understand and put a name to a violence that continues to fill the news and to challenge society.
Treccani had already chosen “femminicidio” as its word of the year back in 2023. Three years on, it is still there, at the top of the searches. And that is probably the most unsettling part of the story: we still haven’t managed to make that word less necessary.
San Marino is not outside this story
One might think this concerns mainly Italy and larger countries. That San Marino, with just over 30,000 inhabitants, belongs to a different world.
The numbers tell a different story.
In 2025, the Republic recorded 76 requests for assistance related to gender-based violence and child protection. Thirty-one cases involving violence against women drew the attention of the judicial authorities, while 27 reports were referred to the Mental Health Service. Twenty-nine people ended up in prison during the year for offences linked to these dynamics.
This doesn’t mean San Marino has suddenly become a violent country. It means something simpler: the Titano is not immune to the problems affecting the rest of society.
And the Republic’s small size does not necessarily offer protection. It can, on the contrary, become an added difficulty. In a small community, everyone knows someone, word travels fast, and reporting abuse can mean exposing oneself in front of colleagues, acquaintances, friends and relatives.
This is precisely one of the most delicate points already highlighted in analyses of the Sammarinese phenomenon: a report does not measure how much violence exists, only how much manages to reach the institutions. In Italy, for example, only 13.3% of women who have suffered physical or sexual violence file a report, a figure that drops to 3.8% when the perpetrator is a current partner.
A zero that must not become an alibi
There is, however, one significant and positive fact that San Marino can claim: for twenty-five years, no killing of a woman linked to gender-based violence has been recorded on the Titano.
This is important news. But it would be dangerous to turn it into proof that the problem doesn’t exist.
Femicide, after all, represents the final step of a ladder that begins much earlier. Before it, there can be control, humiliation, isolation, economic and psychological abuse, threats, stalking, assault. These are exactly some of the forms of violence that Sammarinese services continue to encounter.
So the question shouldn’t simply be how many femicides occur in San Marino. It should be: how capable are we of intervening before that word could ever apply directly to us?
Because the true success of a community does not lie in counting victims afterwards. It lies in preventing them from existing in the first place.
San Marino’s figures demand answers
Something has been done in recent years. The Council of Europe’s GREVIO report acknowledged several steps forward taken by the Republic, from the introduction of the offence of sexual harassment to changes regarding stalking, as well as rules addressing the digital dimension of violence and the National Plan for 2024-2026.
But the same body also flagged specific shortcomings: the reporting rate for rape and sexual violence remains almost non-existent, and among the recommended measures is the need to close the gap in emergency restraining orders against perpetrators of domestic violence.
And here the issue stops being cultural and becomes political.
On 21 July, the Grand and General Council (Consiglio Grande e Generale) unanimously approved a motion committing the State Congress to bring gender-based violence by September 2026 before a joint examination of the relevant Commissions, presenting updated data and the shortcomings flagged by the Equal Opportunities Authority.
September is practically tomorrow.
The real challenge is getting there first
The fact that “femicide” is still today one of the words we feel most compelled to search for should make us reflect on exactly this.
Words often arrive after the facts. Politics and institutions must try to arrive before them.
San Marino starts from a position that other countries, unfortunately, do not have: twenty-five years without femicides. This figure should not be used to lower the guard, but to raise it even further. Because keeping that zero is worth infinitely more than one day having to explain why we failed to.
What’s needed is immediate protection, accessible services, training, support for victims and work with perpetrators of violence. But something else is needed too, something no law can impose: a community in which asking for help does not mean fearing judgment, exposure or disbelief.
San Marino’s small size can be a limitation, because it makes it harder to hide. But it can also become a strength: in such a small Republic, it should be harder to leave anyone alone.
“Femicide” is the most searched word.
San Marino’s goal should be far more ambitious: to do everything possible so that it remains just a word in the dictionary, and never again becomes a word in our news.
