Majority Of The World’s Honor Killings Happen In Pakistan & That’s Seriously Messed-Up!

Killing someone in the name of “family honor” is not something Pakistanis are unaware of. Going a whole week without killing someone – sorry, killing a woman – to protect the family honor and pride seems to be unthinkable in the land of the pure.

According to Honor Based Violence Awareness Network (HBVA), globally 5000 lives are lost every year in the name of honor killings and Pakistan contributes to this by an astounding figure of 1000 murders annually.

This means that one-fifth or the majority of hounor killings take place in Pakistan.

These figures spring primarily from reported cases.

It is extremely difficult to get an exact number of such cases as the killings are occurring in cultural and social contexts which do not recognize the criminality of honor crime and even those who do, are reluctant to report such cases to the authorities.

Read: Qandeel Baloch Can Finally Rest In Peace As Her Murderer Gets 25 Years In Prison

Most remote and/or rural areas of the country continue to have parallel systems of justice such as jirgas and Panchayat led exclusively by influential men.

The existence of these parallel justice systems makes the government’s job to discourage honour crimes even harder than it already is.

A closer investigation at most jirga/panchayat-led sentences involving honor killings in Pakistan often reveal that these “verdicts” are given to settle such disputes such as inheritance, long-standing family feuds and even as a means to get rid of a wife who’s no longer welcome in the husband’s household.           

Little has changed despite legal reforms in 2016 that established a sentence of 14 years in prison for crimes committed “on the pretext of honor.”

The notion of women as property and honor is deeply entrenched in our roots

It seems that the honor and izzat of an average Pakistani male is so fragile that a woman can shatter it to bits by simply asking for her right in inheritance, an opportunity to earn a respectable living on her own and – the favourite among honor criminals – the right to marry out of choice.

In short, a man’s ghairat can be invoked by doing anything that he perceives to be a threat to his delusional superiority.

I know I should end this piece with a call for action so people know what they must do to eradicate honor killings from the country. However, a lot has already been said on the subject.

At the same time, it shouldn’t take Einstein’s intelligence to understand that killing another human being for the sake of something so intangible, subjective and frivolous as ghairat is wrong.

And so, instead of demanding greater public uproar and grander government scrutiny to curb honor crime, I’ll conclude with an excerpt by Ali Shariati, “Mujhe ek aurat ko dekh kar bohat dukh hota hai, jab humaray mashray mein uus ki saakh par dhaba lagta hai aur wo usay mitanay kay liye daarhi nahi rakh skti.”