Two thousand Pakistani women in four years were victims of “honour” killings, study says

One in five homicides in Pakistan may be so called honour killings, a new report says.

Over four years around 2000 women were killed, with husbands, brothers, and other close relatives the main perpetrators, says the report in the European Journal of Public Health (doi:10.1093/eurpub/ckp021).

The study found that the victims were mostly adult married women and that the main reason for the homicide was alleged extramarital relationships, accounting for 1759 (92%) of the 1902 deaths where a reason was given. In 116 of events (6%), however, the reason given for the killing was that the woman had made her own …