Oxfam to launch campaign against honour killing

The international NGO Oxfam is preparing to launch a massive drive against killings in the name of family honour in Pakistan. The campaign will start in March 2005 in the southern province of Balochistan and will be extended across the country in November next year running until 2011, an Oxfam official told IRIN. "We recognise that a lot of good work is going on - on the legal and policy reforms side of the honour killing issue. So we decided not to focus on that, but rather on attitudes and changes to values and behaviour," Farhana Faruqi Stocker, Oxfam Country Representative said in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. "We want to create the kind of social environment which would ensure enforcement of any legal framework that might be introduced to discontinue the practice of honour killing," Stocker added. Honour killings are widespread in Pakistan. During 2003, a total of 1,261 women were killed in the name of honour, according to the Pakistani human rights' group, Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid (LHRLA). In the first half of 2004, 268 cases of honour killings were reported in the province of Sindh, according to the women rights' organisation, Aurat Foundation. Highlighting the main features of the forthcoming campaign against honour killing, Stocker said that a number of main target groups had been identified - rural women and men, youth, social, tribal, and political leaders, members of the lower judiciary and police and national electronic and print media. Pakistan's lower house of Parliament has recently passed a law proposing the death penalty for the killings of women committed in the name of honour. Human rights activists have long been campaigning for such legislation, however they have reservations about how well it will be implemented. Stocker said: "Its not so much the law itself, which needs to be looked at but the attitude of the people who are supposed to be implementing it, that's why we have identified the lower cadres of police and judiciary as primary target groups. This campaign is a part of Oxfam's South Asia regional programme to End Violence Against Women (EVAW), which has different country specific themes. The theme of Pakistan's campaign is 'honour killing' with the slogan 'We Can End Honour Killing'. According to the Oxfam campaign manager, Dr Arif Mehmood, 23 districts have been identified across the country where the incidence of honour killing is known to be high. "We will not work the same strategy across the country, rather we'll consult our local partners so that the strategies would be acceptable for local communities," Mehmood said. For more details of Oxfam's campaign to end violence against women in Asia, go to: http://www.wecanendvaw.org/