Sartorio on Honor Crimes in Pakistan

P. Sartorio has posted an abstract of Qandeel Baloch’s Sacrifice – A Review on Pakistan’s Anti-Honor Crime Bill and Its Effectiveness as a Legal Tool to Safeguard Women from Honor Killings in Pakistan (INTERDISC. J. OF L. FORENSIC SCI., Vol. 2, Issue 1, 2017) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

On July 15, 2016, 26-year-old Qandeel Baloch was asphyxiated by her brother, Waseem Azeem, while she was asleep in her parents’ home in Multan, Pakistan. Azeem confessed the murder on video and expressed no remorse, saying, "I am proud of what I did. I drugged her first, then I killed her. She was bringing disrespect to the family's honor". Her murder has divided the nation and made her an unlikely political icon. Her death also brought unwanted attention to the tradition practice of honor killings. According to Pakistani custom, perpetrators of honor killings can avoid punishment by seeking forgiveness for the crime from another family member, and thus be legally pardoned. In some rural parts of Pakistan, the male-dominated jirga, or tribal council, decides affairs without the participation of the perpetrator and its executive decisions are final taking primacy over state legislation. Although horrifying and appalling to most, this is not the exception, but the rule in Pakistan. According to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), nearly 1,100 women were killed by relatives in Pakistan last year, while many more cases go unreported. In the summer of 2016, long-awaited legislation called the Anti-Honor Crime Bill was passed. Its purpose is to primarily tackle Pakistan’s loophole for perpetrators of honor killings. According to the new law, honor killings were now considered a crime against the State carrying a sentence of a minimum of 25 years to life imprisonment. Relatives can still forgive perpetrators in the case of a death sentence, but the perpetrator would still have to serve the minimum sentence. Judges no longer have the discretion to allow acquittals via the victim’s relatives’ pardon.

This paper focuses on how the events of Qandeel Baloch’s murder triggered a call to action to put a stop to honor killings in Pakistan, resulting in the enactment of the Anti-Honor Crime Bill. This paper also analyzes the law’s effectiveness as a legal tool to safeguard women from honor killings in Pakistan. Accordingly, this paper begins introducing Qandeel Baloch, a Pakistani teenager and a reflection of how times are changing with the help of social media. Next, it deals with the tradition of honor killings, its origins, specifically in Arab cultures, the driving force behind their motivation to regain the perceived lost honor, and the role of society as an usher in favor of such action. Then, the paper analyzes the Pakistani government’s response to the grassroots activism influence in the genesis and ultimate adoption of the Anti-Honor Crime Bill. Finally, this paper concludes with offering suggestions, lessons learned and challenges from the implementation of the Anti-Honor Crime Bill and the work ahead. 

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/crimprof_blog/2019/02/sartorio-on-honor-crimes-in-pakistan.html

Sartorio on Honor Crimes in Pakistan curated from CrimProf Blog