‘Honour’-based violence and Kurdish communities: Moving towards action and change in Iraqi Kurdistan and the UK

Abstract

This paper discusses ‘honour’-based violence (HBV) and ‘honour’ killings in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (in the north of Iraq) and the UK. HBV consists of violence committed, most commonly, against (young) women by male relatives and is usually carried out in order to preserve or restore the ‘honour’ of families, communities, or individuals. The paper discusses HBV in the context of the first-ever transnational study of such violence in Iraqi Kurdish communities. The study is a major part of the contribution of Iraqi Kurdistan to the current global effort to begin to combat this type of violence against women. Using an understanding of HBV as gender-based violence, the paper reports on the findings, actions, and recommendations which emerged from the study for both Iraqi Kurdistan and the UK. These recommendations are grounded in a gendered perspective and are currently leading to social action and change for women in Iraqi Kurdistan, together with some further impacts in the UK.

Keywords::

• honour-based violence
• Iraqi Kurdistan Region
• violence against women

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gill Hague

Gill Hague is Emeritus Professor of Violence Against Women Studies, in the Centre for Gender and Violence Research, School for Policy Studies, at the University of Bristol. She was a founder member, 22 years ago, of this Centre, which has had a pioneering role in establishing violence against women research in the UK and elsewhere. She has worked nationally and internationally on violence against women for 40 years and has more than 100 publications on the issue.

Aisha K. Gill

Dr Aisha K. Gill is a Reader in Criminology at Roehampton University. She has been involved in addressing the problem of Violence Against Women (VAW) at the grass-roots and activist levels for the past 13 years. She has published a number of recent papers exploring how victims of forced marriage and ‘honour’-based violence experience the civil and criminal justice systems in the UK, Iraqi Kurdistan Region, and elsewhere.

Nazand Begikhani

Dr Nazand Begikhani is Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Gender and Violence Research at the University of Bristol and the leading expert on, and originator of, this Kurdish project. She has extensive experience in research on gender and violence, focusing on the Middle East and Kurdish communities. She is an advocate and consultant on gender equality and human rights. Her scholarly activity focuses upon gender, identity, representation, violence, and ethnicity.