Annotated Bibliography on 'Crimes of Honour'
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ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY ON ‘CRIMES OF HONOUR’ Preface This annotated bibliography was originally prepared under the auspices of the Project on “Strategies of Response to Crimes of ‘Honour’”, jointly co-ordinated by CIMEL (Centre Of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law) and INTERIGHTS (International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights) over the period 2000-2005. The most recent update has been completed in July 2013. The Bibliography includes annotations of published material, both general and regional, from several countries (in Africa, the Americas, Europe, Middle East/North Africa and Asia/South Asia). Within the geographical sections, entries are further divided between books & articles and reports, studies & comments. The co-directors of the Project, Lynn Welchman, then Director of CIMEL, and Sara Hossain, then Legal Officer (South Asia) at INTERIGHTS, acknowledged the work of Sanchita Hosali, Research Assistant, as well as Fouzia Khan and Samia Bano, former Research Assistants on the Project, in producing the original versions of this bibliography. For the most recent update, Lynn Welchman would like to acknowledge the work of Libera Chiara D’Acunto, an intern at CIMEL. Thanks also go to the following people who have volunteered in preparing annotations and in suggesting further sources during the different phases through which the Bibliography has passed to date: Faten Abbar, Zina Al-Askari, Saad Alami, Furkan Ali, Madiha Azeem, Cassandra Balchin, Mashaer Bashir-Ali, Andrea Nahal Behrouz, Sanghmitra Bhutani, Christina Brandt-Young, Zara Farooqui, Jonathan Faulkner, Danila Genovese, Daniela Gomes, Leyla Gulcur, Connie Hackbarth, Attia Jamil, Nurcan Kaya, Sabina Khan, Nazia Kosar, Ana Paula Linhares, Lisa Malesky, Naz Modirzadeh, Elaine Ngai, Rupa Reddy, Isobel Lucy Renzulli, Javeria Rizvi, Nina Sadik, Reena Sawar, Ziyad Sheikh, Anjolie Singh, Katrin Strohmaier and Anna Yarmon. We would like to acknowledge Amnesty International for annotations of their reports on honour killings in Pakistan and to thank the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC) and the University of Minnesota Human Rights Centre for placing the bibliography on their websites during the early phases. AIMS This bibliography aims to assist those working to combat crimes of 'honour' by facilitating research and the development of strategies of response. We invite comments from users regarding possible improvements and additions to the bibliography, as it is clearly not exhaustive, and we hope to continue to update it to increase its usefulness as a tool for advocacy and research. SUGGESTIONS FOR CHANGE We should underline that the annotations are the work of the project and its follow up, not of the cited authors of the various items. If any of the authors, or others, feel that we have misunderstood the substance of the piece, or missed out critical points, please do contact us at the email below with corrections and we will ensure that the annotation is amended accordingly. Please send any suggestions for changes or additions to the bibliography (indicating where such materials might be located) by email to [email protected], citing ‘changes/additions to bibliography’ as the subject title. Table of Contents 1. General.....................................................................................................2 - Books & Articles.......................................................................2 - Reports, Studies & Comments..................................................9 2. Regional.................................................................................................11 a) Africa...............................................................................................11 - Books & Articles.....................................................................11 - Reports, Studies & Comments................................................11 b) Americas..........................................................................................12 i) Latin America…………………………………………………….12 - Books & Articles......................................................................12 - Reports, Studies & Comments.................................................16 ii) North America...............................................................................17 - Books & Articles......................................................................17 - Reports, Studies & Comments.................................................20 c) Europe..............................................................................................20 - Books & Articles.....................................................................20 - Reports, Studies & Comments................................................37 d) Middle East/North Africa................................................................42 - Books & Articles.....................................................................42 - Reports, Studies & Comments................................................60 e) Asia/South Asia...............................................................................66 - Books & Articles.....................................................................66 - Reports, Studies & Comments................................................77 1 1. GENERAL - Books & Articles NEW ENTRY Abu-Lughod, L., “Seductions of the ‘Honor Crime’”, Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, vol.22 no.1, 2011, pp. 17-63. This paper investigates the possibility of tackling the issue of ‘honour crimes’ without stigmatizing entire cultures or ethnic communities, and in particular without perpetuating a negative image of Islam. One particular focus is what people mean by ‘honour’. The author tells about her experience in the Egyptian Bedouin community where ‘honour’ is a key moral value and she wonders whether a moral system that sets the ideals for the public and private behaviour of men and women should be simply reduced to a form of patriarchal oppression of women that leads to violence. A critical examination of human rights organizations reports, popular literature and scholarship on the issue, produced in the last decade and half, is provided. The author uses the expression of “compulsions of liberal fantasy” to demonstrate, also through alleged or supposed cases of misattribution, the tendency in scholarship and campaigns to treat the ‘honour crime’ as a distinctive and specific cultural complex, with the risk of manipulating the category, finding honour crimes where they do not exist (here the author is referring particularly to Western popular media), as a result of the fantasy and seduction of the ‘honour crimes’ for Western audiences. She states that one must be cautious about the easy association of love, sex, freedom and individual rights, and the association of all of these with the modern West. By adopting such an approach ‘honour crime’ produces strong distinctions, stressing the superiority of a liberal and liberating West as opposed to a backward and repressive East. According to the author, one should not blame culture because the ready availability of the cultural category can mask more complex truths and also because such an approach leads us to ignore the dynamism of historical and political transformation of women, families and every day cultural and social life and experience. The author, as an anthropologist, concludes that we should go deeply into the moral systems which differ across cultures and change over time and analyse them in connection to forms of economy and society, as well as in light of the political and the legal institutions through which everyday life proceeds. Abu-Odeh, L., ‘Comparatively Speaking: The “Honor” of the “East” and the “Passion” of the “West”’, Utah Law Review, (1997), 287-307. The author describes dishonouring as a “collective injury” in which daughters and sisters, not only wives and girlfriends (or ex-wives and ex-girlfriends), are victims. In contrast, a crime of passion is an “individual injury” and a result of sexual jealousy. Whereas Arab laws have tended, more recently, to diminish the relevance of emotion in penalty reductions for honour crimes, the “West” has essentially moved in the opposite direction; a “humanizing” movement toward accounting for emotions replaced a prior emphasis on more honour-based contexts of defence. This movement, however, has perhaps increased the danger of violence to women, as it had more often been the paramour who was likely to be killed in the honour/provocation context. Both honour and passion allow for retaliation against a “broad spectrum of actions”. The defence of passion in US Penal Codes may be based on a narrow interpretation requiring an observation of the victim in a sexual act or a broader interpretation of such passion being sufficiently elicited by a belief (whether true or not) on the part of the aggressor that his partner has become sexually engaged with another. Likewise, the defence of honour across a variety of Arab Penal Codes may be applied to crimes committed in response to a range of women’s behaviours which may provoke suspicion or be perceived in and of themselves as an affront to the violating group’s or person’s honour. The author argues that the violence of each reveals the somewhat contradictory fallacies that the “East is different from the West” and that “violence against women all over the world is the same.” She concludes that the honour of the "West" is the passion of the "East", and vice-versa, in that the provocation defence