STOCKHOLM, Dec 7 (AFP) - Thousands of women are murdered by their fathers or brothers each year in so-called honour killings, a practice which can only be fought by improving women's role in society, an international conference was told Tuesday.
"The most ruthless form of violence against women is honour killings," Guldal Aksit, state minister in Turkey responsible for women's issues, told 200 government officials, experts and representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) attending the two-day meeting hosted by the Swedish government.
"Increasing women's education and employment opportunities, and thereby improving their financial independence, are very important factors in preventing honour crimes," she said.
Such killings are seen by male relatives as a traditional way to avenge a their honour if a woman is suspected of being unchaste and of having brought shame on her family. They are a regular occurrence in certain parts of the Middle East and Asia.
But the phenomenon is also increasingly being seen in Western countries, where it often affects second-generation immigrants torn between the more liberal society they have grown up in and the strict, traditional upbringing their immigrant parents want to maintain.
Statistics on the frequency of the honour killings remain shadowy, as the brutality usually occurs in the family's home and goes unreported to authorities.
Delegates heard how women around the world are also subjected to domestic violence, rape, gang rapes, acid attacks, while others suffer sleep disorders, depression and mental disorders as a result of patriarchal violence.
Two countries brought sharply into focus at the conference were Turkey and Pakistan.
In Pakistan, 70 to 90 percent of women have experienced some form of patriarchal violence and 450 women were killed in honour killings in 2002 alone according to unofficial figures, Nilofar Bakhtiar, an advisor the prime minister on women's affairs, told delegates.
Pakistan has passed new legislation on honour killings bringing in the death penalty for perpetrators. Other initiatives to improve the status of women include putting more women in the workplace.
"We are sensitizing police to the issue, we have NGOs on board, parliamentarians are doing their bit, and we are going to the faraway corners of Pakistan. We hope we will see a change in the near future," Bakhtiar said.
While acknowledging its efforts, the UN rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Asma Jahangir, nonetheless fired a salvo at Pakistan, noting that only 20 people had been arrested for the honour killings committed in 2002.
Turkey has also recently revised its legislation to make honour killings punishable by life in prison. "We have made important strides in our country and honour killings have now become exceptional," Aksit said.
She said the underlying problem was a lack of gender equality.
"If our women have a place in the business world and the workplace, then they will have a firmer place in the family," she told AFP.
Yet in a report published in June, Amnesty International accused Turkey of failing to enforce the new law, and said at least a third and possibly up to a half of all women in the country are estimated to be victims of physical violence within their families.
In Sweden, honour killings became front-page news in 2002 when Fadime Sahindal, a 26-year-old Kurdish woman who campaigned in the Scandinavian country against the practice, was shot dead by her father because she had had a relationship with a Swedish man.
Largely as a result of that killing, Sweden changed its laws to strengthen women's rights by raising the age of marriage to 18 and refusing to recognise child and arranged marriages entered into abroad.
Yet there is still a lot of work to be done, officials from many countries admitted. Even in Sweden, often hailed as a world leader in gender equality, between 20 and 40 women are beaten to death by their male partners annually.
"No country, including my own, can claim to have come to a satisfactory solution to this problem," Swedish Gender Equality Minister Jens Orback said.
12/07/2004 16:36 GMT - AFP