Netherlands: Women's emancipation to lead to more honor murders

The emancipation of immigrant women is expected to lead to more cases of honor related violence in the coming years, said Dutch minister of integration Ella Vogelaar in a discussion in parliament.

She admitted that the authorities do not yet know the precise extent of the problem. The phenomenon has been set on the agenda in the past few years and a debate started about it. This lowered the bar for coming out with it and asking for help.

According to Vogelaar this lead to an increase in the number of registered cases of honor related violence. Additionally she had understood from women organization that the emancipation process that immigrant women are going through, will go hand in hand with domestic and honor related violence. "We must take into account an increase of the problem," she said.

Meanwhile, there is a national expertise center on honor murder and other forms of honor related violence, in order to better approach the problem. Each police department also has a contact person for honor murder cases, according to minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin (Justice). The special honor murder team (MEP) received about 470 cases this year. A third were related to cases from the Haaglanden police region, the rest from other police departments.

Men are also victims of honor related violence. State Secretary Jet Bussemaker is working on a national shelter for adult and minor male victims. These could be homos, but also brothers who want to help their sister. To start, they will have 5-10 places in the four major cities.

Source: Telegraaf (Dutch)

See also: Keeping count of "honor" murders, Netherlands: No help for male "honor" crime victims