Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Dignity and Human Rights

Hoda Mahmoudi, Michael L. Penn, Hoda Mahmoudi, Michael L. Penn

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781789738230
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The concept of dignity is essential to discourses of human rights, and to understand what dignity means and requires, we must address a number of difficult questions with input from a wide range of disciplines. How is human dignity protected, maintained, or ensured in a rapidly changing world? What are the rights and responsibilities that go hand in hand with the concept of dignity? Which beliefs, discourses, individuals, and institutions threaten its global application or block its reach across all categories of difference? How is a consciousness of the importance of dignity developing across the globe?
This timely collection brings together a diverse array of field-leading contributors in order to give urgent and sustained attention to such questions and to offer interdisciplinary explorations into this most fundamental of concepts. Contributors from a diversity of academic and cultural backgrounds identify the challenges and opportunities in the realms of research, policy, education, religion, international law, social discourse, and media to define, broaden, and protect human dignity within both public and private spheres. They also address the need for reconstituting the current discourses on dignity to align them more effectively with the intellectual, moral, emotional, and spiritual capacities and concerns that animate the lives of human beings, ultimately gesturing towards a framework for ensuring that each member of the human race will be able to enjoy the conditions that are required if each person is to have the opportunity to realize their full human potential.
For its rigorous interdisciplinary inquiry into this deceptively simple concept and for its practical implications for those pursuing real-world solutions, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Dignity and Human Rights is essential reading for researchers and students working within international relations, legal and global studies, philosophy, peace and conflict studies, and human rights and humanitarian law.

Section Two

Practice/Action

Chapter 6

Honor-based Violence in Pakistan and Its Eradication through the Development of Cultural and Jurisprudential Ethos of Human Dignity

Sania Anwar

Introduction

On average, one in every five homicides in Pakistan is an honor killing (T. Miller, 2009). Each day, at least two women are murdered by a member of their family in the name of honor. These murders are usually based on mere accusations.¹ The prevalence of the practice is deeply rooted in the cultural concept of “woman as a commodity,” which rationalizes the killing of a female relative for marrying or wanting to marry a man of her choice, for refusing to marry a man of her family’s choice, for seeking divorce, or for engaging in alleged illicit acts or relationships. In some cases, the conscious decision or subjective intent to engage in dishonorable behavior is not a prerequisite: women are sometimes killed after being raped since the rape constitutes pre-marital or extra-marital sex and, therefore, violates family honor (Nosheen & Schellman, 2011). Victims of honor killings are stoned, shot, burned, or buried alive, hacked to pieces with axes, or left to bleed out after brutal assault. In this chapter, the murdered or surviving victims are referred to as honor-transgressors.

In Pakistan, the concept of social honor is deeply rooted and upheld by two cultural processes: psycho-cultural forces – which include attitudes, beliefs, and values that provide the structures of consciousness that legitimize honor-related violence; and socio-structural forces – which include political, religious, and economic structures of authority that legitimize gender-based violence that has as its presumed purpose the preservation of family honor (Johnson & Karlberg, 2006; see also Ross, 2006, pp. 19–20). Internalization of gender-based oppression is thus best understood within a conceptual framework that explains how psycho-cultural and socio-structural forces are intertwined in the practice of honor killings. From such a perspective, an analysis of the “free will” of women (Higgins, 1996),² and perhaps even of many men, to engage in or legitimize honor killings becomes complex (Bertelsen, 2005, pp. 122–123).³

Through internalized oppression, many women in Pakistan not only endorse but also facilitate honor killings.⁴ The deep cultural roots of the practice attract female support for it in the same way that the practice of female genital mutilation summons to its defense the voices of many powerful women (Benedek, Kisaakye, & Oberleitner, 2002, p. 271).⁵ Those who resist condemnation of honor killing claim that it cannot be thought of as a violation of women’s rights when it is supported and carried out by the members of the protected class itself. This chapter seeks to analyze the nature of the internalizing processes that sustain societal acceptance of honor as justification for violent acts against women.

We begin by describing the communitarian, collectivistic, and honor culture of Pakistan, which places a strong emphasis on the avoidance of shame. We then show that in such an environment, men defend honor through violence that is motivated largely by guilt, while women justify it as a defense against shame. Both men and women are thus trapped within a “shame culture” that conceals female sexuality by attempting to control or de-emphasize it. This analysis will focus largely on the psycho-social forces that discourage women from taking a stand against honor-based violence. The discussion illustrates how emotional and psycho-social responses that justify honor killings are reinforced by a number of political, legal, and religious factors at play in Pakistani society, including procedural injustices inherent in Pakistan’s Sharia law, public shame sanctions, and the increasing anti-Western social and political fervor.

Based on the analysis of social, psychological, religious, political, and legal factors that come together to produce a culture that justifies honor killings, we outline recommendations for addressing these dynamics. The argument here is that Pakistan’s women’s rights movement must undergo significant reconceptualization if it is to combat societal internalization of destructive gender norms. This process of reconstruction must have two objectives: to build an effective autochthonous movement by advocating for change from within existing institutional frameworks and to enhance the representation of women leaders within the country.

Finally, we close by outlining the most effective means to minimize internalization of social honor and the consequential gender-based violence – the development of a counter-culture of human dignity, which is neither an attribute of one’s social rank nor an attribute of one’s conformity to the societal honor code, but is grounded in the equal and inherent worth of all human beings. This chapter advocates the idea that human dignity, wherever it may be found, has, at its core, universalistic “minimum content” based on the intrinsic value of all human beings. However, despite the pluralistic “minimum content” of human dignity, the vehicles for developing human dignity as a value require customized frames for different cultures. Postulating a workable definition of human dignity for Pakistan requires that it be anchored in established Islamic sources that safeguard personal integrity and freedom from coercion. The key in renovating Sharia law in Pakistan would be to develop the least restrictive legal procedures and principles that promote human dignity without imposing intolerant majoritarian norms. A successful outcome of such a model can establish the potential for a pragmatic evolutionary trend in Sharia law as a microprocessor for transnational discourse on human dignity.

Factual basis of Honor Killings

Common justifications for the practice of honor killings include a range of acts or omissions by women that can be perceived as infringement on a man’s or a family’s honor. Such acts include defiance of social and sexual norms, pursuing a marriage or relationship of choice, seeking a divorce, or suffering a rape. To a large extent, the factual basis for an honor killing is largely socially irrelevant, as the killing is simply legitimized by a declaration of an honor violation by any male relative. Dishonor resulting from mere assertion of defiance of social norms, regardless of its validity, is sufficient. The alleged nonconformity with social norms can be based on superficial and frivolous grounds (Amnesty International, 2002).⁶ Inflicting death as punishment for a dishonorable action is not an exclusive prerogative of the honor-transgressor’s husband or father, but rather is transferable to any male in the family.

A woman’s identity is tied, by law, to her relationship with a male family member.⁷ As a result, a woman’s behavior must always conform to an established code of conduct, and actual or perceived failure to do so results in forfeiture of her right to protection within the family.

Another force driving the growth of honor killings in Pakistan is referred to as the “Honor Killing Industry” (Amnesty International, 1999). In situations involving honor violations, if only the kari (“blackened woman,” this term refers to the woman who has brought dishonor) is killed and the karo (“blackened man,” which refers to the man who may be involved in the dishonorable act) escapes, as is often the case, if his life is to be spared, the karo has to compensate those whose honor has been stained, which is usually the kari’s husband, brother, or father (Amnesty International, 1999). This arrangement creates perverse financial incentives to assert false allegations of dishonor (Ali, 2001, pp. 12–13)⁸ as many men are willing to fabricate dishonor in order to secure compensation. At times, the compensation may also be in the form of a new wife, provided by and from within the karo’s family, especially when his family lacks monetary resources (Amnesty International, 1999).⁹

In this regard, it should be noted from the outset that the current discussion deals with the “genuine” perceptions of honor and shame when they are applied to justify honor crimes. Therefore, it addresses the emotions and beliefs that are active when social actors subjectively believe that honor or shame justifies the violence. These emotions are arguably absent in the context of the honor killing industry, which fabricates honor infringements by women for monetary gains.

The Pakistani Culture

Culture can be defined as “the shared assumptions, values, and beliefs of a group of people which result in characteristic behaviors” (Storti, 1998, p. 5). The study of value patterns within a culture asserts that while everyone within a particular group will not share the same values, a majority of individuals within that group will conform to similar values, thereby creating the “dominant culture” (Gold, 2005; citing Bennett, 1998, pp. 157–158).

It is especially challenging to describe Pakistani culture because a variety of conflicting political, provincial, tribal, social, and religious identities coexist (Castetter, 2003).¹⁰ There are numerous sub-cultures within Pakistani society that conceptualize honor in different ways. Honor killings are committed in urban, tribal, and rural communities. This chapter acknowledges the diverse social conditions under which honor killings occur in Pakistan but will be focused on the dynamics of the rural communities because of their pronounced societal role in perpetuation of patriarchy in Pakistani culture. Rural Pakistan also shares its dominating collectivistic/communitarian- and honor/shame-based values with most of Pakistani sub-cultures, such as in the urban, tribal, and the Pashtun-majority areas.¹¹ In addition, the analysis of cultural and emotional conditioning of rural men and women presented in this chapter can be applied to most of the sub-cultures.

Compared to most urbanites, people in rural areas have less access to education and the roles of men and women are more rigidly drawn. A kind of feudal culture predominates, and although it lacks tribal jirgahs, or assemblies of tribal elders exercising judicial functions, feudal lords, referred to as waderos, may perform functions similar to the jirgahs. Some women work with the men in the fields but are otherwise confined to their domestic roles and boundaries. Religion plays a prominent role and local imams, or religious clerics, enjoy a high status and influence within the community.¹²

Individualistic or collectivist dimensions of cultural value patterns describe the relationship between the individual and larger society (Gold, 2005, p. 296). In an individualistic culture, the needs of the individual come before those of the group, individual identity is more important than group identity, individual rights are more important than group rights, and important values include self-sufficiency, autonomy, and personal freedom (Gold, 2005). In a collectivist culture, by contrast, identity is tied to a primary group, usually the family, and the overarching belief is that the survival of the group will ensure each member’s survival because the success of the group benefits the individual. Therefore, interactions within a collectivist culture are based on promoting the significance of “ingroups,” with prominent perception of a common fate and a shared emphasis on loyalty within the group. Those who are not part of “ingroups” are perceived as unequal, distant, or even threatening (Gold, 2005). The social response to deviants from societal norms differs in individualist versus col...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• Section One. Theory/Discourse
• Section Two. Practice/Action
• Afterword
• Index