Honour Based Abuse and Social Policy: Using the violence against women and girls, human rights and intersectionality framework

Honour Based Abuse and Social Policy: Using the violence against women and girls, human rights and intersectionality framework

This lecture will examine how codes of honour are used to justify gender-based violence; and the implications for social policy and practice. It will look at the conflict between black feminists demands for recognition of honour-based abuse and anti-racist or multi-cultural concerns about 'othering' minority cultures and religions and ‘undue’ interference in minority communities. It explores the discourse on intersectionality, violence against women and girls in black and minority communities and human rights – and how the state and agencies such as the police and social care can intervene to safeguard victims of abuse, children and vulnerable adults. Suggested reading or viewing includes the following videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aC4e8dNlm4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irnjMln_m20

https://www.amazon.co.uk/No-Safe-Place-Murdered-Father/dp/1913543056

Dr Hannana Siddiqui is a multi-award winning activist, researcher and policy advocate. She is the Head of Policy and Research at Southall Black Sisters, which is a specialist organisation for black and minority women founded in 1979. Hannana has worked on violence against black, minority and migrant women and girls in the UK for about 40 years. She has co-founded several campaigns and organisations, including Women Against Fundamentalism. She has a BSc on social services from LSE and a PhD from University of Warwick. Hannana has introduced a number of reforms on domestic abuse and immigration law; and undertaken work on femicide, incorporating domestic homicides and suicide. She was also was an original member of the first Home Office Working on Forced Marriage which reported in 2000. She has also helped to establish the Government’s Forced Marriage Unit, statutory and practice multi-agency forced marriage guidance and honour based abuse; the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act 2007. Hannana is widely published, and in 2022, she co-authored Bekhal Mahmod’s memoir, No Safe Place (Ad Lib Publishers) on her life and the honour killing of her sister, Banaz Mahmod. Hannana formulated ‘Banaz’s Law’ and is campaigning with Bekhal to introduce it. The law seeks to end the use of cultural or religious defences for gender based violence.

Contact: hannana@southallblacksistrs.co.uk or Twitter: @hannanasiddiqui

This event will be held online, details will be sent to you one day prior to the event and. Please check your spam/junk folder for email confirmation, and please register no later than 12pm on the day of the seminar to ensure you have received all meeting information. If you have any queries, please contact sociology.research@durham.ac.uk