'Honour'

The right to life of women … is conditional on their obeying social norms and traditions

Hina Jilani, Pakistani lawyer and women’s rights activist

If one surrenders, then she is honorable; if you don’t comply with, if you argue back, if you commit suicide, if you risk death to get married with the one you love, then you are dishonorable…If you have a free soul, you cannot be honorable…

Female, aged 30, interviewed in Şanlıurfa, Turkey

I would rather die than lose my honour...Our whole life is founded on honour. If we lose it, we have no life, we become swine. If we lose our honour, we are just like swine. We’re no better than animals.

Sirhan, age 35, interviewed in ABC documentary The Lost Honor of Sirhan after serving a six month sentence in Jordan for killing his sister who had fallen victim to rape, 2003

So-called ‘honour’-based violence (HBV) occurs in communities where the concepts of honour and shame are fundamentally bound up with the expected behaviours of families and individuals, particularly those of women. The most extreme form is ‘honour’ killing, but in other circumstances, the victim can be subjected to long-term low level physical abuse and bullying as a punishment for ‘bringing dishonor on the family.’ Such crimes include battery, torture, mutilation, rape, forced marriage, imprisonment within the home, and even murder. These crimes are intended to "protect the family honor" by preventing and punishing women's violations of community norms for behavior, particularly sexual behavior. Women who have been abducted, arrested, or raped are often blamed for shaming their families and may also be targeted for ‘honor killing.’

The underlying purpose of ‘honour crimes’ is to maintain men's power in families and communities by denying women basic—and internationally recognized—rights to make autonomous decisions about issues such as marriage, divorce, and whether and with whom to have sex. Reasons for these murders can be as trivial as talking to a man, or as innocent as suffering rape. These crimes are often collective and premeditated yet few of the perpetrators are convicted or punished as murderers in countries where the practice is indigenous. In some cases the law condones 'honour' killing with lesser sentences, such as in Iraq, Syria, Jordan and other countries; in others unofficial community courts even mandate 'honour' crimes.

“The perpetrators of these crimes are mostly male family members of the murdered women, who go unpunished or receive reduced sentences on the justification of having murdered to defend their misconceived notions of ‘family honour,’” according to Asma Jahangir, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions. In her 2000 annual report to the Commission on Human Rights she noted that killings have been reported in Bangladesh, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Sweden, Turkey, Uganda and the United Kingdom.

There are many factors which distinguish violence motivated by ‘honour’ from other forms of family violence and violence against women:

1. Gender relations that problematise and control women’s behaviour, shaping and controlling women’s sexuality in particular
2. Women may play a role policing and monitoring the behavior of other women
3. Collective decisions regarding punishment, or in upholding the action considered appropriate, for the transgression of these boundaries
4. Premeditation
5. The potential for women’s participation in killings
6. The ability to reclaim ‘honour’ through enforced compliance or killings
7. ‘Honour’ killings may occur publically or theatrically in order to demonstrate ‘honour’ reclaimed and to terrorise other women into accepting male control
8. In some cases, there is state sanction of such killings through recognition of ‘honour’ in mitigation

The concept of 'honour' in much of the Middle East is dichotomous. 'Honour', a single word in English, is used to translate two words, 'namus', and 'sharaf' (‘seref’ in Turkish) denoting a polarisation of characteristics which readily maps onto polarised, patriarchal gender stereotypes. 'Honour' in its more feminine form revolves around negative, passive concepts: stoicism, endurance, obedience, chastity, domesticity, servitude. In its masculine form it is active and positive: dynamism, generosity, confidence, dominance and violence. Female 'honour', being sourced in passivity is static: it can neither be increased nor regained, and once lost it is lost forever. Male 'honour', by contrast, is maintained and increased or decreased through active participation and competition in the life of the community and is in a constant state of flux. So when a woman loses her ‘honour’ (namus) her brothers, father and uncles have lost their ‘honour’ (sharaf), which can only be regained through a violent display of dominance. In South Asia, the concept is singular and collective ‘izzat’ refers to family ‘honour’ to Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims alike, with the same deadly effects.

‘Honour’, as defined above, which revolves around the control of the sexual behaviour of female relatives is widely displayed in human history, including the Roman Empire, prerevolutionary China and in many other societies and historical periods. Violence justified by ‘honour’ is not linked with any particular culture, but is based in the commodification and control of women, forming a total system of oppression which influences every aspect of an individual’s life.

As UNFPA representative Anne-Brigitte Albrechtsen writes: “The underlying notion that familial and particularly male ‘honour’ is determined through the control of women leads to the exclusion of women and girls from the public sphere, education, the formal economy and political decision making.”

Further reading: Anatomy of 'honour'-based violence