KURDISTAN: Kurdistan Takes Measures Against Gender-Based Violence

As Kurdistan is fast progressing, becoming democratized and westernized, it faces serious difficulties with its conservative culture that has subjected women to painful and deadly rituals including honor killing. Barham Salih, prime minister of Kurdistan, promised on Thursday to put the issue of women first in his government's policies and eliminate violence against women, who constitute more than half of the Kurdish society.

Like many countries around the world, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women was greatly celebrated here in Kurdistan. Key officials including prime minister, chief of staff of the president, key ministers as well as foreign diplomats attended a conference to celebrate the day on November 25th.

They all admitted that honor killing and female genital mutilation were two negative parts of the Kurdish culture that need to be uprooted. For doing so, they said, the KRG should have a long-term policies of how to inform and educate the current and next generations. For example, on Thursday the region's government announced at least two such projects namely kicking off a 16-day campaign to raise awareness of the people about women rights and launching a KRG-funded academic research made by two British universities on honor killings in Kurdistan.

Dr. Nazand Bagikhani and Professor Gill Hague of the University of Bristol in the UK, Dr. Aisha Gill, a professor at the Roehampton University and Kawther Ibraheem are the authors of the report, which is the first study on the honor killing in Kurdistan.

“Iraqi Kurdistan will be first leading a broader Middle Eastern region to be committed to women issues,” said Professor Hague, appreciating attempts made by the KRG to eliminate gender-based violence in the post-conflict region. Prof Hague has worked for 40 years on the issue of violence against women.

Dr. Bagikhani, Kurdish co-author of the study, summarized the report considering Kurdistan “pre-modern society” where violence against women remains a tough battle for the government to face. She avoided giving any statistics on how many women have died in honor killing in Kurdistan. Although, NGOs refer to the deaths of thousands of women, the government denies the number saying that it is difficult to come up with an accurate statistic about domestic violence.

“Honor killing, as a practice against humanity, still continues here in Kurdistan as well as among diasporic Kurds in Europe,” noted Salih adding that his government had no options left but to take necessary measure to end the “embarrassing” act. Earlier this month, two cousins, who murdered a female relative named Banaz Mahmoud, were given a life sentence in the UK.

“This is because of the social backwardness and a patriarchal domination,” added Salih.

Despite the amendment of a law that had justified honor killing in 2008 to a new one that regards it as “murder”, the lack of law enforcement in Kurdistan remains a serious problem as murderers of women have often remained unpunished for strong family ties or for the of dominance of tribal solutions “Sulhi Ashairi” in many rural places as discussed in-depth by the research.

Dr Gill, co-author of the research, said that honor killing was not confined to Kurdish culture or any other specific culture or religion. It exists, for instance, in India and Pakistan.

“Honor-based killings transcend cultural and religious lines,” said Dr. Gill exclusively to Rudaw after she gave a presentation on the study in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region.

Asos Najib, Kurdistan's minister of Social Affairs who overseas three shelters that the KRG has created to protect threatened women, said it was time to take practical measures to eliminate the phenomenon.

“We should find tools to solve the problem not just talk about it,” Najib added.