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Honour Crimes
This project is the first one of its kind proposed by CEWLA.
CEWLA was the first NGO raising the problem of honor crimes in Egypt in general and in Upper Egypt in particular.
It was important to handle the problem of honor crimes with credibility and daring, presenting it in an objective way which reflects the gravity of the case without mitigating its seriousness and this is exactly what CEWLA did.
Moreover CEWLA's 2nd project is considered as a step forward, through operating in four different aspects:
1. A study of the convention of eliminating all forms of discrimination against women between the law and the Islamic legal code:
This study was prepared by Dr. Shukry El-Dakak, head of the court of appeal in Alexandria and professor in the law school, Malaysia. He presented the legal aspect in the study in cooperation with Dr. Abd El-Moaty, dean of the elements of religion in the Azhar University. He presented the aspects of the Islamic legal code in the same study.
CEWLA was also keen on implementing the legal aspect in the study to use it as a strong legal argument, since it is one of our goals to figure out to which extend the Egyptian constitution and the Islamic code is uniform with the CEDAW.
Moreover Dr, Fathy Naguib was supposed to prepare this study but he passed away before completing it. That is why Dr. Shukry El-Dakak presented the rest of the study.
2. The book of the international conventions related to women:
This book contains a collection of the international conventions and provisions related to women's issues.
It was presented by a number of people who are concerned with women's related topics especially about violence against women.
3. Four roundtables in Egypt's governorates:
(Quena-Sohag-Assuit -Alexandria)
CEWLA held 4 roundtables in four governorates in the following order: Quena, Sohag, Assuit and Alexandria.
Through these roundtables CEWLA was able to raise the problem of honor crimes and invite the people to discuss and interpret the motives behind committing honor crimes.
Apart from Assuit, where CEWLA started its work on honor crimes before, it was the first time to work on the three other governorates. The roundtables in Assuit were a continuation of the work of before, trying to find a new perspective to continue working on this issue.
The audience in these four roundtables included intellectuals and public figures such as lawyers, NGO members, journalists, media field workers, head of the bar association, members of the national party and representatives of the national council for women.
They interacted and proposed many solutions and had their impact on the discussion.
We have sent you a detailed report about these four roundtables and we mentioned the outcomes and suggested solutions in the report.
Needs and Recommendations that came out of our work in the governorates:
Through our work in the governorates we see that it is necessarily to put a future plan to carry on with our work in these governorates. Many recommendations and needs have to be met whether on the legal, informational or social level.
The participants agreed on the following:
1) Issue a law that allows abortion for girls who are illegitimate pregnant. That way we can decrease the number of extruded and rejected children in the society.
2) Collaborate with leaders, jurists, NGO members and media field workers because working with the basis will not be effective.
3) The case has to be inserted in the agendas of the NGOs.
4) Establish centers to protect and shelter abused women.
5) Develop the religious speech and role (Muslim and Christian)concerning honor crimes.
6) Run surveys and social studies inside the governorate to figure out the reasons and numbers of honor crimes.
7) Create a law that allows to overrule the judgments and civil prosecutions in honor crimes cases.
8) Collaborate with NGOs which deal with violence against women related to the UNICEF project "Implementing the Beijing convention.
9) Insert the subject of sexual education in the school curriculum.
10) Prepare trained cadres on fighting honor crimes.
4. The regional conference:
The Center for Egyptian women's legal assistance held its final conference on Honor Crimes at the Ekhnaton Hotel in the Menya governorate. The conference was attended by Mr. Hassan Hemeda , governor of Menya, Mrs. Azza Soliman, general director of Cewla, Mrs. Hala Abd El-Kader, director of the project and a number of cadres and directors of the participating organizations of the project from the governorates of Sohag, Quenna, Assiut, Cairo and Alexandria.
Chairpersons were also Dr. Shokri El Dakak, head of the court of appeal ( Alexandria), Dr.Madiha Ebada, head of the sociology department - Ganoub El wady university. Furthermore the conference was attended by the director of the social affairs ministry- Menya governorate and a number of members of regional and international agencies at the governorate.
First session:
The session was opened by a speech from Mrs. Azza Soliman, followed by a speech from Dr. Hassan Hemeda who expressed his appreciation and gratefulness for having the opportunity to attend this conference .
He stressed on the importance of the role of Egyptian women in the society especially in decision making posts. On the other hand he focused on the role of the Egyptian media and the role it plays especially when approaching an issue like Honor Crimes and the negative effects it can have.
Furthermore he assured that the freedom of objection is guaranteed to everyone but it has to be constructive criticism which does not aim at negatively affecting the people and the country's reputation. Finally he talked about the achievements and projects which have been conducted in Menya such as the cooperation with the administration of collaboration in favor of Ngo's in Menya that work on Women's issues in villages and rural areas in Menya.
Second session:
Hala Abd El-Kader, chaired the second session. She presented the project and the motives behind it, which is the fact that the phenomenon of Honor Crimes is spreading wide in society.
A crime is committed only for suspecting another persons behavior and is unfortunately justified by claims such as the offender was "washing away" the shame. Therefore awareness had to be spread on this phenomenon on the public level through holding roundtables, symposiums with NGO's in the various governorates especially in Upper-Egypt where this phenomenon is widespread.
Moreover she briefly described the project of the network for resisting violence against women, through which Cewla is currently operating in cooperation with three other NGO's in Menya, Alexandria, and Mansoura under the supervision of the Arab Alliance for women. Honor Crimes is one of the types of violence against women that this network is tackling.
This presentation was followed by the speech of Dr. Shokri El-Dakak who brought up the issue of Honor Crimes from a legal perspective .
He identified the most discriminative laws against women such as the article related to the crime of adultery which proves obvious discrimination between men and women in terms of the sentence-the place of committing the crime-the right to grant pardon. Despite all this, the constitution stated equality between both sexes in front of the court with no distinction based on color, race or sex.
At the same time when we refer to the Islamic Sharia ( Qur'an and Sunna) we would find that there is Equality between men and women regarding the crime of adultery. He suggested to include an article of ' Li'an ( Double testimony and recrimination) in the cases of adultery in order to be able to differentiate between men and women's testimony.
Dr. Dakak also presented the motives behind Honor Crimes which are mainly based on old traditions such as giving the man the right to protect the Honor of a girl and even kill her only out of suspicion claiming to " wash away the disgrace" .
Later on the forensic medicine discovers that the girl did not lose her virginity and despite this the penalty is mitigated for the male offender and his act is being justified with excuses such as; he was under psychological pressure.
Dr. Madiha Ebada held a speech afterwards and discussed the social perspective of Honor crimes through shedding the light on the current situation of women in reality.
She also presented the various theoretical views in social sciences and explained that many studies and researches illustrate that the phenomenon of honor crimes is increasing under the cover of cleaning ones reputation although forensic medicine proves the innocence of the girl in many cases.
One of the theoretical views of social sciences that she mentioned was the Marxist view which indicates that the motive behind committing the crime is men's domination over women and the societies division into classes. She also discussed the feminist radical view which sees that women are the first discriminated and oppressed group in society and this situation exists in all societies.
Dr. Madiha also mentioned that honor crimes are legitimized from many people due to the gender classification, which gives men superiority. Therefore women should no longer be marginalized. On the other hand she emphasized the motives behind killing a woman in an Honor Crime case such as " washing away the disgrace" and that this is due to many other reasons such as ( suspecting the behavior-Orfi marriage-marriage without the familie's consent-discovering betrayal).
Furthermore Dr.Madiha added that the increases in this phenomenon lead many people to doubt the role and efficiency of NGO's although many of this NGO's are actually very active. Another problem Dr. Madiha raised was that till today there are no exact researches and studies in Egypt about Honor Crimes except in a very limited and narrow manner.
She believes that this is because people think that an imbalance in society could occur if women start speaking up about what happens to them and what kind of violence they face inside society.
As a strategy to overcome this dangerous phenomenon she suggested following three basic approaches, they are:
The religious approach:
This could be effective with the help of liberal and correct interpretation of the Qur'an. They would have a deterrent and preventing effect on society.
Social approach:
Here we must concentrate on changing women's image and her role in society. We have to criticize the society's culture which unfortunately encourages violent crimes against women.
Legal approach:
This approach was also raised by Dr. Dakak. It is indicating to execute legal provisions without discrimination between men and women and in accordance with the Egyptian constitution.
Finally there were a lot of oral interventions such as:
- Ngo's should play a more effective role to overcome this issue.
- The concentration should be all over Egypt including different governorates.
- A proposal for changing the current discriminatory laws between men and
women should be prepared with emphasis on the article of adultery.
- There is a strong need to discuss this issue with the public groups.
- We should recourse to the media to bring up the issue of violence against women especially Honor Crimes.
-Mrs. Azza Soliman presented at the end of the conference, Cewla's future perspective of the Honor Crimes project which is :
1) Continue working with the governorates of Assiut, Quenna, Sohag and stop the work in Alexandria, Cairo and Giza due to prior cooperation with these governorates in the past in this issue.
2) Cooperate with the 'Nile offices for media' at the governorates to include the issue of Honor crimes in the their field awareness programmes.
3)Collaborate with the administrations of the Ngo's working in these governorates to encourage them to insert the problem of Honor Crime son their agendas.
4) Get in touch with the media field workers active in all different media devices to shed the light on this phenomenon.
5)Train the cadres of Ngo's to raise this issue with the public groups they deal with.
6)Conduct field researches to with an analytical nature of the phenomenon in the governorates of Quenna, Assiut, Sohag, that analyze the social, legal, and media perspective of the problem of Honor Crimes.
With these suggestions, the final conference on Honor Crimes came to its end.
Funded by : CIMEL/INTERIGHTS
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