|
Some 200 delegates from
around the world are to meet in Stockholm from
Tuesday for an international conference on combating
honour killings, organisers said.
"Drawing attention to honour-related violence is one
aspect of our efforts to combat all forms of
violence against women across a broad front,
nationally and internationally," Swedish Foreign
Minister Laila Freivalds and Gender Equality
Minister Jens Orback, the hosts of the conference,
said in a statement.
Honour killings became front-page news in the
Scandinavian country in 2002 when Fadime Sahindal, a
26-year-old Kurdish woman who campaigned in Sweden
against the practice herself was shot dead by her
father because she had had a relationship with a
Swedish man.
"Patriarchal violence against women, including
violence in the name of honour, is a threat to
women's lives and mental health and to equal
conditions between women and men, both in Sweden and
in other countries," the statement said.
"By convening an international conference, Sweden
wants to combat all forms of patriarchal violence
against women," it added.
More reports of honour killings in West
Honour killings are traditional family vengeance
against women suspected of being unchaste, where
male relatives often believe they are acting to save
their families from shame.
They are a regular occurrence in certain parts of
the Middle East and Asia.
But the phenomenon is also increasingly being
reported in Western countries, where it often
affects recent immigrants torn between the more
liberal society they grow up in and the strict,
traditional upbringing their immigrant parents want
to maintain.
The aim of the two-day conference is to increase the
exchange of information and experiences and foster
cross-border engagement and dialogue.
"That these dialogues are effective we can see, for
example, through the fact that they have helped
countries with which Sweden has taken up this
question at a high level to amend their legislation
with relation to honour murders, (or) such as in the
case of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan," the
ministers said.
In 2004, Sweden changed its laws to strengthen
women's rights by raising the marriage age to 18 and
refusing to recognise child and forced marriages
entered into abroad.
Among those attending the Stockholm conference are
Nilofar Bakhtiar, an advisor to Pakistan's prime
minister on the development of women, Zorayha Rahim
Sobrany, the deputy minister for women's affairs in
Afghanistan, as well as UN and Human Rights Watch
officials.
AFP
Top |
® 