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Public education

Drafters should ensure that laws on “honour” crimes and killings include provision for public awareness and educational campaigns. Information campaigns should aim to dispel negative perceptions that discriminate against women and girls and to increase understanding of gender equality and women and girls’ rights. Also, judges, prosecutors, law enforcement, child protection service providers, educators, health providers, media and advocates must undergo training to understand “honour” crimes, its causes, effects, indicators and available remedies and resources for women and girls who are victims of or at-risk of “honour” crimes and killings.  

 

Promising Practice: The non-governmental Turkish organization, Women for Women’s Human Rights, works in collaboration with the General Directorate for Social Services and Child Protection to provide trainings to women throughout Turkey in socio-economically disadvantaged districts with high immigrant populations. The program social workers as trainers and provides workshops on 16 different topics, including violence against women and strategies against violence. (See: Liz Ercevik Amado, The Human Rights Education Program for Women (HREP): Utilizing state resources to promote women’s human rights in Turkey, New Tactics in Human Rights, 2005) Drafters should ensure that public education programs mandate government agencies to work in partnership with and financially support non-governmental groups with expertise in “honour” crimes and killings.

 

Laws should ensure that target audiences include religious and community leaders, youth, communities of concern, including minority ethnic communities or immigrants’ communities, media, healthcare, social and educational sectors that work with children.

  • Outreach to religious and customary leaders and institutions should seek to provide them with human rights education, as well as engage them to publicly condemn “honour” crimes. (See: Working towards the elimination of crimes against women and girls committed in the name of honour, A/RES/59/165 (2004) (¶ 34) and Council of Europe Resolution 1681 (2009) (¶ 4.5-4.7); Civil and Political Rights, Including the Question of Disappearances and Executions: Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/2001/9, ¶ 41)
  • Public education of women and girls should provide information on “honour”-based violence, their rights, how to report such crimes and obtain protection, and resources and service providers available to assist them.
  • Public education of service providers and sectors working with children should include a focus on detecting risks of “honour” crimes.
  • Public awareness campaigns should also target the media to educate them on the human rights violations associated with “honour” crimes and encourage them to report on these crimes in a respectful manner that maintains victims' dignity and privacy. Media should be trained on reporting the dynamics of violence against women and “honour” crimes. (See CoE Resolution 1699, ¶ 4.7; The urgent need to combat so-called “honour crimes,” Council of Europe, June 8, 2009)
  • Public education efforts should also target the law sector, including judges, police and prosecutors, through trainings on the dynamics of “honour”-based violence and women’s human rights. 

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