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Introduction: ‘Honour’, Rights and WrongsLynn Welchman and Sara Hossain
Published: pages 1-21 in Lynn Welchman and Sara Hossain (eds), ‘Honour’: Crimes,
Paradigms and Violence Against Women, London: Zed Books, 2005.
This volume arises out of documentation and reflection by individuals and
organisations across diverse regions, communities and cultures on existing and
potential strategies of response to ‘crimes of honour’, seen primarily as a
manifestation of violence against women, and a violation of women’s human rights.
It was catalysed in particular by the murder of two young women, Samia Sarwar in
Pakistan and Rukhsana Naz in the United Kingdom, the reported responses of their
families and the state, and the growing level of attention, regionally and
internationally, to the issue of ‘crimes of honour.’ It discusses the actual and potential
ground-level impact of this attention, which has grown substantially since 1999. It
also considers the changing global context of work on ‘honour crimes’, which is
affected by developments such as the attacks of 11th September 2001 in the United
States and their aftermath.
This volume is an outcome of a collaborative, action-oriented research project
aimed at mapping, disseminating information regarding and facilitating the
development of strategies to combat ‘crimes of honour’. Initially, the collaboration
was between INTERIGHTS,1 an international human rights organisation based in
1
International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights, London, of which the South Asia
Programme was primarily engaged in the Project.
1
,London, and CIMEL,2 a research centre in the Law Department of the School of
Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. However, it was conceived
as, and developed into, collaboration with individuals and organisations in a number
of different countries across the world over the five years of its operation.
At the time the project began, it was apparent that while there were
interventions being made to combat ‘crimes of honour’ within many contexts,
communities and societies, knowledge and understanding of these were often not
shared across different cultures and regions. Thus, increasing regional and
international concern with the issue was not necessarily reflected in a growing or
shared understanding either of the nature and extent of the crimes, or of the strategies
and needs, or even the fact, of locally-placed actors already engaged in working in
this area.
Through the project, therefore, we aimed primarily to exchange information
regarding and facilitate the development of strategies of response by activists,
scholars, lawyers, community workers, policy makers and others committed to the
elimination of these and related forms of violence. To this end, we supported locally-
based efforts by individuals and organisations to implement strategies of response in
their own contexts, some of which are documented in the case studies included in this
volume. Key elements of such strategies included interrogating the concept of
‘honour’ itself, as well as challenging its invocation to justify violence against
women.. In parallel, we set out to develop resources, in terms of information and
2
Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Laws, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London.
2
,analysis of the issue, which were made available initially to our partners, and later
more widely through the project’s website.3 They include an annotated bibliography,
which has been periodically updated, and incorporates case summaries as well as
annotations of books, chapters, and articles.4 A ‘Directory of Initiatives to Address
‘Crimes of Honour’’ was also compiled to facilitate networking and exchange
between individuals and organisations from over twenty countries, and to provide a
practical resource for those seeking expert information for legal or other purposes. A
comprehensive and periodically updated compilation of the international human rights
law materials sets out provisions of various international instruments relating to the
rights implicated by ‘crimes of honour,’ and resolutions and reports of the United
Nations, and UN human rights bodies (this includes documents cited by authors in
this volume, such as Jane Connors and Purna Sen). In addition, reports of major
international or national meetings convened by, and other documents generated
through, the project, are available on the website.
The Project’s framework is international human rights law, and both
CIMEL and INTERIGHTS have a primarily legal brief. In particular, we situate
‘crimes of honour’ within an understanding of violence against women which, as
Coomeraswamy and Kois (1999, 177) point out, ‘accepts the fact that structures that
perpetuate violence against women are socially constructed and that such violence is a
product of a historical process and is not essential or time bound in its
manifestations.’ Our law-focussed approach finds a certain resonance with various
national and regional initiatives combating ‘crimes of honour’ around the world, as
3
The website is at www.soas.ac.uk/honourcrimes. One of the dilemmas faced at the time of writing
(October 2004) by the project, in common with other such efforts, is whether and how to maintain such
resources in a useful (updated) form in the future.
4
Originally the bibliography was hosted on the websites of two co-operating institutions, the
International Women’s Heath Coalition and the University of Minnesota’s Human Rights Centre.
3
, evidenced by the country-specific papers in this volume. As Jane Connors sets out,
international human rights law requires states to exercise due diligence in protecting
women from such violations by private actors, while domestic legislation, court
practice and informal legal structures vary in the level of protection and remedy they
offer women, in particular where family or conjugal ‘honour’ is invoked. The impact
of statutes, and efforts to change their provisions or application, are therefore central
features of the research and advocacy efforts documented in this volume. At the level
of society, informal codes mandating such conduct may be endorsed, to varying
degrees, by some sectors of society, and challenged by others.
In this connection, the operation and hold of ‘parallel legal systems’ in relation
to ‘crimes of honour,’ is discussed in detail in this volume by Nadera Shalhoub-
Kevorkian and Nazand Begikhani, while less ‘formal’ customary laws and social
norms and the way in which the state legal system endorses, accommodates or
challenges these latter are a theme in almost all the country-specific contexts. In
addition, religious laws, and the attitude of religious authorities, may be critical in
forming or reinforcing and also in changing opinion and practice in this area. The role
of the religious right – political groupings that invoke religion and religious traditions
as justifications for their activities, including those which seek to marginalise or
obliterate the rights of women or minorities – is key here, as well as the role of those
who challenge the validity of such positions.
It is abundantly clear that a narrowly legal approach, particularly one
focussing on ‘state law’ and state legal systems, as a stand-alone strategy
unaccompanied by broader and deeper initiatives and understandings, is unlikely to
4
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