The honor crime began to appear in international discussions surround-ing gender- based violence in the early 2000s. In December 2001 the United Nations passed Resolution 55/66, “Working towards the elimination of crimes against women committed in the name of honour” (United Nations General
Assembly 2001). The resolution called on member nation- states to fulfill their obligations to international human rights treaties and to develop specific and multidimensional strategies to “prevent and eliminate crimes against women committed in the name of honour” through legislative, educational, and social measures. It also called on member states and the international community to provide actual and potential victims of honor crimes “protection, safe shel-ter, counselling, legal aid, rehabilitation and reintegration into society” (2001, 3). The first UN resolution surrounding honor- based violence was spurred, in part, by the work of Radhika Coomaraswamy, former UN Special Rap-porteur on Violence against Women (1994–2003), who began to report on honor- based violence as early as 1999.15 Responding to accounts of rising rates of honor- related violence globally, Coomaraswamy expressed serious concern about this phenomenon and requested information on “such violence and measures that are being undertaken to combat it” (UN Economic and Social Council 1999, 7).
Coomaraswamy’s initial reporting on honor- related violence identified it as a form of family violence that “comprises, inter alia, woman- battering, mar-ital rape, incest, forced prostitution, violence against domestic workers, vio-lence against girls, sex- selective abortions and female infanticide, traditional violent practices against women including forced marriage, son preference, female genital mutilation and honour crimes” (1999, 6–7; emphasis in origi-nal). In addition to identifying this violence as occurring within the domain of the family, Coomaraswamy sought to provide a definition of honor and its operations in relation to “traditional family ideology” (7). Her report showed how families enact the decision to execute a “female relative” who is deemed to have violated honor codes because of the belief or the assumption that she has engaged in “adultery, premarital relationships (which may or may not include sexual relations), rape and falling in love with an ‘inappropriate’ per-son” (para. 18, 7).
Coomaraswamy’s subsequent coverage of honor- based violence described the phenomenon as one among a number of “practices in the family that are violent towards women and harmful to their health” (UN Economic and Social Council 2002, 2).16 In a detailed report on “cultural practices in the family that violate women’s rights,” the former special rapporteur focused on the “dominant ideologies and structures within societies” that help perpetu-ate violence against women (3). The report amassed information on a num-ber of harmful cultural practices, including female genital mutilation, witch hunting, forced marriage, marital rape, and honor killings. The section on honor killings provided a lengthy overview of the crime, delineating how it manifests differently and under many labels. Importantly, the UN report also listed “crimes of passion” as a form of honor- based violence that is enabled
by the existence and codification of legislative loopholes that exonerate men who commit violence against women.17 The report emphasizes, however, that these crimes share a common constitutive framework that utilizes honor “as a magic word, which can be used to cloak the most heinous of crimes. The concept of honor is especially powerful because it exists beyond reason and beyond analysis. But what masquerades as ‘honour’ is really men’s need to control women’s sexuality and their freedom. These murders are not based on religious beliefs but, rather, deeply rooted cultural ones” (13). Coomaraswa-my’s turn towards the recognition of honor- based violence as a harmful cul-tural practice echoes a shift in public discourse surrounding the links between culture and tradition, gender violence, and ongoing human rights violations.
The report alludes to this shift in the introduction where it notes that certain forms of domestic violence have “avoided national and international scrutiny because they are seen as cultural practices that deserve tolerance and respect”
(4). The report rejects the culturally relativist position that invokes culture as a legitimation for these crimes, a position that resonates with Article 4 of the
“Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women” (48/4) which insisted that “States should condemn violence against women and should not invoke any custom, tradition or religious consideration to avoid their obliga-tions with respect to its elimination” (UN General Assembly 1993, 2). As Sally Engle Merry has noted in her study of UN resolutions surrounding gender- based violence, the shift in language was intentional, “paralleling a deepening critique of culture as an obstacle to human rights” (2006, 60).
Emphasizing the importance and broad influence of Coomaraswamy’s reports and their shaping of the UN global agenda on gender- based violence, Merry also recounts the resistance that the discursive shift towards linking gender- based violence to harmful cultural practices provoked among member states, noting that “the discussion of honor killings was particularly conten-tious” (2006, 63). At stake in the debates surrounding the identification of honor killings as a form of gender violence and the assumed role that culture and tradition play in sanctioning or exacerbating these crimes is a tension between the desire of member states to condemn all forms of violence and a fear by some states that the first draft of the UN- level resolution, and its sub-sequent focus on honor crimes, had “associated crimes against women with Islam”18 (UN General Assembly 2000b). Importantly, the press release on the adoption of the draft resolution on violence against women noted that some member states objected to a film that was shown prior to the presentation of the resolution and that they saw the language contained within the resolution as “non- objective” (UN General Assembly 2000b). The film in question was Shelley Saywell’s Crimes of Honour, which received an Emmy Award for
Out-standing Investigative Journalism. The film primarily focuses on cases of femi-cide from Jordan and the West Bank. In response to the perception that the film wrongfully linked Islam with certain forms of gender- based violence, the Organization of the Islamic Conference submitted a letter to the UN Secretary General stating that “the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference wish to reiterate that there is no linkage whatsoever between the killing of women and girls under any communal banner, including in the name of passion, honour or race, and the teachings, practices and values of Islam” (UN General Assembly 2000a, 2).19
This position is also well captured by the statement of the representatives of the two Muslim- majority states of Qatar and Jordan. The first statement, which was provided by Mr. Al- Mohannadi, the representative of the state of Qatar, argued the following:
My delegation would like to offer its views on the draft resolution on crimes of passion against women. In Qatar, as in other Islamic countries, we try to protect women’s rights, and we have always recognized full equality between men and women.
My country believes that all crimes against men and women are equally reprehensible, and my country rejects these constant attacks against Islam, a religion that has more than 1.25 billion adherents. These crimes are not confined to any particular people or region. We believe that crimes called
“crimes of honour” are crimes against people. Hence, we have reservations on the draft resolution entitled “Working towards the elimination of crimes against women committed in the name of honour,” and we shall abstain in the voting. (UN General Assembly 2000, 6)
The Qatari representative’s concern regarding the singling out of honor- based violence in the draft resolution captures a well- shared view that attempts to single out this crime were, in essence, thinly concealed attacks on the religion of Islam.20 The Qatari representative thus carefully states his country’s opposi-tion to this resoluopposi-tion, dismissing the need for a specific resoluopposi-tion that con-demns honor- based violence because all crimes against men and women are
“equally reprehensible” in the eyes of the state of Qatar.21
Taking a different stance, the Jordanian representative argued that Jor-dan had abstained from voting on the resolution because the draft language would open up all states to the charge of human rights violations for “not hav-ing exercised due diligence to prevent the commission of such crimes” (UN General Assembly 2000c, 7).22 The Jordanian representative argued that the draft law would need to distinguish between crimes committed in the name of
honor and those committed in a fit of passion or “in a sudden state of rage,” a difference that had been disappeared in the text of the resolution. The Jorda-nian representative’s important point makes a distinction between premedi-tated crimes such as the honor killing and the passion crime or killing that occurs in a fit of fury, a difference that is central to the operations of the law in arbitrating cases of women killing. His country’s opposition to the wording used in the draft registers a rejection of the potential charge that some states were providing impunity to those who murder women through the existence of codes in their legal systems that provide lesser or reduced sentencing for men who kill, a matter that I return to in more detail in chapter 4.
As Jane Connors reveals in her detailed discussion of the UN agenda and the crime of honor, the discussions that surrounded the adoption of the resolution made honor- related violence “a matter of human rights” (2005, 37). While this was an important political move that mandated that mem-ber nation- states fulfill their obligations to international treaties regarding exercising due diligence in preventing, investigating, and prosecuting these crimes, “the issue remain[ed] an uncomfortable one, with some delegations concerned that a focus on crimes against women committed in the name of honour is selective, rather than comprehensive in its treatment of violence against women” (37). With the elevation of honor- related violence to interna-tional and UN- level scrutiny, the crime became one of the most recognizable forms of violence against women. The UN resolution against honor- related violence and the debates that it invoked at the transnational level showcase the charged terrain surrounding discussions of gender- based violence and the world of policy making.
The tension between the positions outlined above elucidates a few para-digmatic and enduring qualities of discussions about honor- based violence.
First, the debates delineated above chart what Merry names the “turbulent waters” of international efforts to produce effective legislation surrounding ending violence in general and the need to build momentum for efforts to end gender- based violence that have been associated with particular cultural prac-tices (2006, x). As Merry makes clear, “Diminishing violence against women requires cultural transformation” and the remaking of the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable forms of violence against women (25). This pro-cess is marked by tensions between those advocating for the change and those who are wary that such changes are fundamentally a challenge to their tradi-tions, cultures, and religious practices or an attack on their social structures and orders. Second, the debates signal the growing anxieties around the singu-larized discourse of the honor crime and its linking to particular geographies of violence. Despite careful work, the honor crime remains invariably linked
to specific sites, regions, and states, and it is thus attached to certain racialized bodies, publics, and communities. For example, in the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Its Causes and Consequences, Rashida Manjoo notes that “although honour crimes have occurred in the vast zone spreading from the Sahara to the Himalayas, it also occurs in other regions and countries with migrant communities” (UN General Assembly 2012, 12).23 Despite the lack of specificity around what the honor crime is, the label nevertheless evokes rhetorical and geospatial connections between people and places and forms of gender- based violence identified as extreme. Third, the debates highlight the lingering ambiguities and definitional struggles that surround the honor crime as a specific form of gender- based violence. As Mark Cooney states, literature on the honor crime “conceptualizes honor violence variously: as a crime, as gendered violation, as a violation of human rights, as a discursive formation” (2014, 407). In other words, the term is immersed in imprecision not only because it describes a number of interconnected forms of gender- based violence but also because it is variously employed to criminalize vio-lations of human rights and to bring attention to particular rhetorical and discursive positions, claims, and assumptions about a social problem. The explanatory power of the honor crime appears to be simultaneously limited and expansive, circulating knowledge that not only describes a phenomenon but also gives shape to it.