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PROJECTSA Project to Implement European Anti-Discrimination Law (top)
PROJECTS
INTERIGHTS/CIMEL's
PROJECT ON STRATEGIES TO ADDRESS CRIMES OF HONOUR
A
PROJECT TO IMPLEMENT EUROPEAN ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAW
INTERIGHTS/CIMEL's
PROJECT ON STRATEGIES TO ADDRESS CRIMES OF HONOUR (top)
ACTIVITIES
CURRENT PROGRAMME
CONTACTS
INTRODUCTION
Fundamental human rights are now protected by a
growing body of international human rights law. These rights include the right
to life, personal liberty and security and the right to equality before the law.
Such rights are also secured by the national constitutions of most countries.
Nevertheless, they continue to be violated across the globe in the form of
'honour' killings or 'forced marriage.' The targets of these crimes are
overwhelmingly women.
Of the many hundreds of
individual cases which take place, only a few cases reach the news. Several
cases have catalysed a coalescence of national and international action in the
past few years. In Pakistan, for instance, Samia Sarwar was gunned down in her
lawyers� chambers, reportedly at the instigation of her parents, while seeking
advice regarding a divorce. In Britain, Rukhsana Naz was killed by her mother
and brother for insisting on marrying against their will. In Brazil, Sandra
Gomide, a journalist, was murdered, allegedly by her ex-partner, for having
decided to break off the relationship. In Jordan, dozens of women are retained
in 'protective custody' in jail rather than being returned to homes where they
fear they may be subjected to �honour� killings for their alleged 'immoral
behaviour.'
The nature and level of attention
to such cases and patterns inevitably varies, domestically and internationally.
The adoption by the UN General Assembly�s Third Committee in November 2000 of
a Draft Resolution on �Working towards the Elimination of Crimes against Women
Committed in the Name of Honour� demonstrates an overall increasing level of
awareness. It also illustrates some of the sensitivities involved: after
protracted discussions failed to achieve consensus, 25 countries abstained from
the vote.
In this context, the
International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights (Interights) and
the Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (CIMEL) initiated an
action-oriented collaborative research project on Strategies to Address
�Crimes of Honour� in 1999. The Project seeks to facilitate co-operation
among activists, lawyers, academics and others and to develop and build upon
diverse and multiple strategies, nationally, regionally and internationally, to
combat impunity for those responsible for �honour� crimes and to challenge
the climate of support for the practice amongst state institutions.
ACTIVITIES
(top)
In its first year, the Project
undertook several activities to identify commonalities in incidence, practice
and law that might contribute to developing such strategies within the framework
of international human rights law. These activities included:
-
compiling a directory of
Initiatives to Address 'Honour' Crimes; preparing an Annotated
Bibliography, containing over 100 entries in English, in Arabic and
Portuguese (available at http://www.iwhc.org/uploads/HONORCRIMESBIBLIO.PDF
or by following the links at http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts);
-
compiling Statutory
Provisions on Crimes of �Honour� in the Penal Codes of Arab
states;
-
compiling Extracts of
International Human Rights Documents on �Honour� Crimes, including
�honour� killings and forced marriage;
-
submitting material on
�honour� crimes across the world to relevant UN human rights
mechanisms.
-
holding a Roundtable on
Crimes of �Honour�, convening twenty key scholars, lawyers,
journalists and human rights activists from Turkey, Jordan, Palestine,
Israel, Pakistan and the UK.
Focusing specifically on the
issue of forced marriage, the Project also :
-
commissioned papers on
the practice within the UK (�Forced Marriage: A Crime of Honour�,
and �Respecting Choice in Marriage within Family and Community: A
Cultural/Contextual Approach to Combating Forced Marriage�).
-
In collaboration with
human rights groups in Bangladesh and Pakistan, contributed to the
British Government�s Information Gathering Exercise on Forced
Marriage, recommending strategies to be undertaken to protect women and
girls at risk of abduction and forced marriage from the UK to Pakistan
or Bangladesh;
-
convened a
practitioners� seminar on 'Forced Marriage as an Abuse of Human
Rights: Legal and Social Issues' in July 2000, to enable reflection
on the scope and dimensions of the practice of forced marriage as an
abuse of internationally recognised human rights, and to explore legal
and other strategies .
CURRENT
PROGRAMME (top)
Over the next two years, the Project
will focus on supporting documentation at the country level on strategies of
response, especially legal initiatives, to address crimes of honour. These
will include reviewing legal and other support strategies to address the
practice of �honour� killings and forced marriage, analysing case law and
documenting community based advocacy programmes. In addition, the Project will
publish a 'Handbook on Remedies for Forced Marriage in India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh' for the use of lawyers, activists and other frontline workers .
In many countries, statutes,
often based on colonial codes of law, continue to provide an explicit defence
to the killing of women within the family on the grounds of �honour�. In
others, although no statutory provisions explicitly cover such incidents, the
judiciary has established interpretations recognising a defence to murder
(especially of women) based on 'honour.' The Project will include preparing
documentation on the implementation of such laws and their impact on women�s
human rights for review at an international meeting of experts to be held in
2002.
CONTACTS
(top)
The Project is jointly
co-ordinated by Dr. Lynn Welchman, Director of CIMEL, and Sara Hossain, Legal
Officer for South Asia at INTERIGHTS. Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im acts
as a consultant to the Project. We would welcome contact from interested
lawyers, academics or activists working on the issue. For further information
please contact hcp@interights.org or cimel@soas.ac.uk.
Sara Hossain,
Legal Officer, Interights
4 July 2001
Implementing European
Anti-Discrimination Law is a three-year
project, conducted jointly by the European Roma
Rights Center (ERRC), Interights, and the Migration
Policy Group (MPG). The Project aims to support local and regional groups
and individuals in making the most of the historic opportunity for enhanced
anti-discrimination efforts created by the European Union Race Equality
Directive and Protocol No. 12 to the European Convention on Human Rights. The
Project began in January 2001, and focuses on the 15 EU member states and 11
candidate countries (Turkey and 10 in Central and Eastern Europe). Working in
conjunction with local NGOs and individuals, the Project engages in three
principal activities, each designed to promote the Directive's effective
application and the Protocol�s timely entry into force:
Workshops
for judges, lawyers, NGO anti-discrimination advocates, government
officials, members of parliament and representatives of specialised bodies
to provide key actors throughout Europe with information about the legal
obligations flowing from the Directive and the Protocol, support for their
creative use and application, and the opportunity to discuss comparative
approaches and methods;
Test litigation
before selected constitutional and Supreme Courts, the European Court of
Human Rights and the European Court of Justice, to ensure the
adoption in judicial caselaw of the various elements of the Directive and
the Protocol; and
Legislative advocacy
before individual governments and relevant EU institutions to ensure
that the requirements of the Directive � in short, the adoption of
comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation and the establishment of
effective enforcement bodies � are swiftly and adequately complied with,
and that Protocol No. 12 to the ECHR is speedily ratified by at least the
minimum ten states required for its entry into force. This activity is
conducted primarily by ERRC and MPG, with Interights' involvement limited to
legislative drafting.
All three
Project components are predicated on extensively researched country reports by
local lawyers assessing the status of anti-discrimination law as it exists both
on the books and as implemented in practice. These reports will be published in
autumn 2001.
The first
of the workshops is scheduled to occur 15-18 November 2001 just outside
Bucharest in partnership with the Open Society Institute (OSI) Romania, with
activists, lawyers, selected government officials and others from Finland,
Italy, The Netherlands, Romania and Slovakia in attendance. Over the next two
and half years, the Project will organise four additional transnational
workshops to bring together representatives from the remaining 21 countries, as
well as a Judicial Colloquium comprised solely of judges from all 26 countries.
A concluding conference will assemble selected workshop participants to sum up
and evaluate achievements and assess concrete next steps.
For further information, contact
any one of the three Project partner representatives: Mariann Meier-Wang (mmeier-wang@interights.org),
Isabelle Chopin (ichopin@migpolgroup.com) or Veronika Leila Szente Goldston (vszente@errc.org).
Mariann Meier-Wang
Legal Officer, Interights
September 2001
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