Honor killings: What would it take to keep women safe in Pakistan?

Police have arrested four men for the alleged killing of an 18-year-old girl in the north Pakistan district of Kohistan last week, including the victim’s father, in a case that has sparked outrage across the country and reignited a conversation about Pakistan’s failure to protect women.

Authorities say the teenager was shot by her family on the instructions of a village council, or jirga, as a way to restore her family’s honor. Her alleged infraction? Posing in a photo with a man.

Hundreds of Pakistani women are murdered every year in so-called honor killings – homicides committed because the women in question are judged to have transgressed social mores through indecent behavior, thus bringing shame on their families. In many instances, honor killings are triggered by rumor or doctored evidence, and few perpetrators are ever convicted.

The Kohistan incident has underscored all that is needed to curb honor killings, from patching legal loopholes to addressing deeply rooted cultures of misogyny to strengthening support systems for women. Advocates say cultural and legal efforts to protect women will require all hands on deck – and enthusiastic backing from the state.

“Honor killing in Pakistan is an abhorrent ... practice that has no place in our modern society,” says Malaika Raza, the general secretary of the human rights wing of the Pakistan People’s Party. “We must unite as a collective force against this grave violation of human dignity.”

Patriarchal anxieties

In this remote and deeply conservative district, several women have been killed in the name of honor in recent years.

This incident echoes a similar case in May 2012, when a video surfaced of a group of girls singing in the presence of men from a different tribe. It resulted in the convention of a similar jirga. Then, as now, tribal elders handed down a death sentence to those visible in the footage, leading to the deaths of at least eight people. 

“In this area, there is an extremely strict control over women’s bodies and sexuality, and these things are monitored very closely,” says feminist scholar Farzana Bari. “The state hasn’t invested anything in people’s education, nor does it have much control, so the area is governed by local tribal elders and because their thinking is so patriarchal, they often make these sorts of decisions.”

Khawar Mumtaz, who served as the chairperson of the National Commission on the Status of Women and has been a women’s rights activist for more than four decades, believes the practice is spreading. 

“When we started looking at honor killings, it used to be in small pockets of certain areas,” she says. “But over the years, what has happened with migration is that it has spread all over the place.”

Experts note that recent examples reveal an increasing level of patriarchal anxiety surrounding social media, and the opportunities and visibility it provides women. 

“In some parts of the country, the mere presence of a woman in public is considered obscene,” says human rights campaigner Usama Khilji. “What social media has done is given women the freedom to express themselves, to enjoy themselves, to sing and to dance – so of course the old guard of the patriarchy has been quite upset by that.”

If patriarchal anxieties are the fuel of the crisis, Pakistan’s parallel legal systems are the vehicle. Mr. Khilji opines that the inefficiency and corruption of Pakistan’s criminal justice system leads some parts of the country to put their faith in the judgments of tribal elders.

“The biggest criticism of the jirga system has been the way it is quite anti-woman and quite misogynistic,” he says. “It’s pretty much elderly men that have status, privilege, and prestige in society-making decisions.”

Legal impunity

But even the mainstream legal system in Pakistan has been criticized for allowing perpetrators of honor killings to evade punishment. Under the Pakistan Penal Code, the murderer may have his sentence commuted if they are pardoned by or come to a financial arrangement with the victim’s family. Since honor killings are almost always carried out by close relatives, such pardons are common.

Human rights defender Tahira Abdullah believes it is too easy for killers to “circumvent the law through forgiveness and compromise settlements.”  

“The only way Pakistani women can escape dishonor killings is for the state to become the complainant in court cases filed on behalf of the victims,” she says.

In 2016, after social media influencer Qandeel Baloch was killed by her brother for allegedly defaming the honor of her family, Pakistan’s Parliament attempted to close this loophole by requiring that courts sentence anyone convicted of an honor killing to a minimum of life imprisonment.

However, critics say the amendment places the burden of proving motive squarely on the prosecution. Those accused may evade the life sentence by claiming they killed the victim for reasons other than honor.  

“It all comes back to this sense that women are the property of the family ... and they’re also disposable,” says Ms. Mumtaz. “The state’s failure is not providing justice and not providing safe places for victims to hide themselves.”

Seeking safety

Part of the solution, according to police officer Amna Baig, is for victims to engage law enforcement at the first sign of trouble. 

“I have dealt with hundreds of cases of femicide and most of them have been honor killings,” she says. “Trust me, a victim usually knows that this is coming. She knows what’s happening around her and she understands the level of threat – but what she doesn’t often know is how to access the police and how to seek that help.”

In order to ensure speedy access to justice, Ms. Baig helped create the Gender Protection Unit of the Islamabad Police, a department staffed almost entirely with female officers who act as the first port of call for women being abused or facing threats of violence.

“If there is an early intervention ... the chances of this escalating into an honor killing go down,” she says.

For Dr. Bari, the academic, the problem can only be eradicated with a concerted campaign that focuses as much on education as on access to justice.

“In the long term, if you want to attack the root causes of this issue, you will have to change the patriarchal mindset that views the woman as the property of the man,” she says. “We need to declare a national emergency and launch a nationwide campaign to create awareness around gender-based violence. It isn’t rocket science, but who is going to do it? It’s clear that it isn’t a priority for the state.”