1,000 of 5,000 Honour Killing Victims from Pakistan: UN Report

The United Nations Population Fund has estimated that 1,000 out of 5,000 victims of honour killings in the world are from Pakistan.

The Times quoted a United Nations Development Fund for Women report, as saying that 22 women in India are killed every day in dowry-related murders, and in South Africa a woman is killed every six hours by a close family member or partner.

In Britain itself, 12 cases of "honour killing" were investigated each year from 1998 to 2007.

Many victims of "honour" killings are abducted. They disappear and are never reported missing.

"In Kurdish or South Asian communities, the silence that surrounds violence against women means that many crimes go unrecorded; either that or they are reported long afterwards, by which time victims may have suffered repeated abuse, or, as in the case of Tulay Goren, been murdered," said Dr Aisha Gill, a senior lecturer in criminology at Roehampton University.

Victims seldom go to the police, but they often seek help from the health service or domestic violence charities.

In 2000, United Nations special adviser Asma Jahangir gave a report to the Commission on Human Rights.

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"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," the report said.

She noted that killings had been reported in Bangladesh, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Sweden, Turkey, Uganda and the United Kingdom.

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Source-ANI
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