Crimes of Honour – Females' Right for Support in the Multicultural Society

Abstract: This research demonstrate how crimes of honour functions and consequently could lay the path in which females do need help and support in order to escape from (or manage) their environment of oppression. Thus, females all over the world are violated in the name of honour and every year around 5,000 women and girls are murdered in the name of honour by her relatives. The exact number how many that is affected by crimes of honour could only be guessed, due to, we only see the registered crimes. Nevertheless, this phenomenon is still evident within multicultural societies as in Sweden. Hence, those females that do not want to live in oppression or expose themselves to violence and crimes such as murder, instead escape and as a result necessitate protection and societal aid. The legal and practical support targeting these victims must therefore be known. The aim with this research is to highlight this support in an empirical research. In addition, various theoretical and legal perspectives explain a broader understanding of the phenomenon of crimes of honour; in which relevant regulations of the Swedish jurisdiction and the Human Rights are dispositional. The empirical research takes departure from semi-structured interviews with eight local agents in the city of Malmö (Sweden), and also, an interview with a woman affected by crimes of honour was conducted in order to highlight strengths and weaknesses of the local support. The result demonstrates that both the legal and practical support has its affirmative elements; however this support is also limited. For instance, victims of honour crimes lack information how to access this support. Moreover, the Swedish Penal Code do not have any uttered criminal classification about this sorts of violence, leading to the lack of registration unless not considered being a crime according to the Swedish Penal Code. Since crimes of honour affects many people’s lives and exists in many different shapes, conducts and societies it is required that the right kind of support is carried out; whereas the importance of local agents taking responsibility must be acknowledged.