No prison if you kill your daughter in the name of honour

Three victims of honour crimes in Iraqi Kurdistan. Photos posted on the "Conference to Remember Du’a Khalil" Facebook page.

On Tuesday, a Moroccan living in the north of Italy stabbed his 18-year-old daughter to death. His motive - she was going out with a 31-year-old Catholic. This type of "honour killing" was headline news in Italy, but in some countries in North Africa, South Asia and the Middle East, the practice is relatively common.

According to NGO Human Rights Watch, an honour crime is "committed by male family members against female family members who are perceived to have brought dishonour upon the family". 

In 2002 a report by the UN Commission for Human Rights said this kind of crime took place in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Turkey, and other Gulf and Mediterranean countries. According to the report, in European countries such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom this kind of crime only occurred within immigrant communities. The list is not exhaustive. Yemen, Iraqi Kurdistan, Bangladesh and the Palestinian Territories are all areas where the practice is on the increase.

There are no official statistics for honour killings because they are usually committed in the family home and then disguised as accidents. Yet, every year, honour killings are are said to claim the lives of up to 50 women in Jordan, 200 in Syria, 500 in Yemen and over a thousand in Pakistan. In the Palestinian Territories, 70 percent of crimes perpetrated against women are thought to be honour killings, while the majority of them are attributed to natural causes.

Unlike a crime of passion, an honour crime is premeditated. And yet, sentences in many countries are usually only a couple of months long, maximum two years. The persecutor benefits from extenuating circumstances and is occasionally excused completely, escaping without charge.

In Jordan, Queen Rania has publicly called for tougher sentencing of honour crimes. But the parliament there has twice refused to abolish Article 340 of the penal code, opting instead to modify it and allow convicted honour killers to be sentenced for a few months only.

Pakistan however has voted to introduce a law to punish honour killers with the death penalty. And in Turkey, where honour killers used to incur just an eighth of the normal sentence, life imprisonment is now a real possibility.

“These said crimes affect both Muslim and Christian families in Syria”

Bassam Alkadi runs the Syrian Women's Observatory, a campaign against honour crimes launched in 2005.

Women are usually murdered for behavioural and societal reasons, like falling in love with a person from another faith, even if sexual relations or marriage are not involved. The family can also ‘get rid of' a woman because they don't approve of the man she's married, or because it's the easiest way to protect the heritage.

Contrary to popular opinion, these said crimes affect both Muslim and Christian families in Syria, according to a study compiled by our observatory. This plague is not fussy about religion, social class or level of education.

The Syrian law which affects this has recently been modified (article 548 was repealed due to the legislative decry 37). Honour killers no longer benefit from absolute exemption, but only from mitigating circumstances. This alteration however doesn't make much difference, as in the case of honour crimes, judges are able to reach their verdict using another article - article 192 - in consideration that the aggressor committed the crime due to an ‘honourable motive', and therefore faces a maximum of one year.

It must also be pointed out that it's only men who benefit from this. A Syrian woman who killed her husband after finding out that he was raping her daughters got 12 years in prison."

Do'a Khalil, stoned to death in 2007

On 7 April 2007, Du’a Khalil Aswad was stoned to death before a crowd of hundreds of men in Bashiqa, Iraqi Kurdistan.