A report prepared by the Council of Europe reveals that murders of women by family members are more prevalent than previously thought.  The report was discussed at a meeting in Istanbul.
The draft report calls for immediate action to deal with what it describes as the growing problem of honor killings. British member of parliament John [...]

Hasibullah Sidiqi is on trial in Ottawa for shooting to death his sister and her fiancé. He does not deny the homicides, but claims he was justified because his sister had offended family honour by becoming engaged without their father’s consent. In effect, says Mr Sidiqi, he was provoked by his sister’s actions—a [...]

Hasibullah Sadiqi is on trial in Ottawa for shooting to death his sister and her fiancé in 2006. His defence seeks to establish offended honour as a mitigating factor in a murder case.
The Crown contends there will be evidence that the slaying was an honour killing rooted in anger over their engagement, while Sadiqi’s [...]

Police in Mississauga have rescued a 15-year-old girl from forced prostitution. She was found in a hotel room hungry and bearing signs of torture.
Peel police said yesterday a 19-year-old Brampton man coerced the girl, a 15-year-old runaway from Georgina, with death threats, ordering her to remain in the hotel while he arranged for “clients” [...]

A new study by the Immigrant Council of Ireland finds that hundreds of girls and young women have been trafficked into Ireland and forced to work as prostitutes.
In a report out today, the council says hundreds of women are working in prostitution in Ireland and the industry is worth at least €180m every year.
It says [...]

Two years ago tomorrow, Kurdish teenager Du’a Khalil Aswad was publicly stoned to death in an honour killing. She was of the Yazidi faith, and her “crime” was to fall in love and run away with a Muslim boy.  Thousands  reportedly participated in her murder in Bashiqa, northern Iraq.
In her memory, the International Campaign [...]

Today, a new website is launched publicising the struggle against human trafficking. Canada Fights Human Trafficking (CFHT) is a non-profit organisation seeking to raise Canadians’ awareness about modern-day slavery. The site contains a wealth of information.
The impact of trafficking on Canada is estimated at between $120 million to $400 million per year and [...]

French-language news site les quotidiennes reports on a UN-sponsored symposium on honour crime to be held in Geneva on Saturday, 4 April.  The translation posted below comes from Google, with some editing for intelligibility by this blogger.
According to the United Nations, more than 5,000 women and girls each year are victims of “honor crimes”. [...]

In the past year, Northern Ireland police have rescued women from Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Far East who were imprisoned in homes and forced to work as sex slaves.
Assistant Chief Constable Drew Harris detailed the extent of the illegal sex trade at the launch of a new support service to help victims.
The officer said [...]

This coming Friday, 27 March, British television series Unreported World will present a report about honour crime in Turkey.
Unreported World travels to Turkey to investigate honour killings, which have now reached record levels, with more than 200 girls and women killed in the past year alone. And in a chilling new development, the programme highlights [...]

Historian J. Wesley Bush, who blogs at Russian Policy Daily, translates portions of an interview with the head of Russia’s Family and Childhood Foundation.  Note the bit on forced abortions (emphasis added).
Chastnyi Korrespondent has an interview with Sveta Rudneva, head of the “Family and Childhood” foundation of Russia. Like many Russians, she’s worried about the [...]

Laura Rosen Cohen of the National Post is horrified by some recent news stories of abuse inflicted on the disabled. How can we protect the vulnerable?
As the parent of a child with special needs, I was particularly repulsed and revolted by the story of the torture of a mentally disabled young man from Hamilton [...]

This video was made available by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which today launched an international campaign to raise public awareness about human trafficking. Several high-tech publicity tools are being utilised to draw attention to the fight against modern slavery, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
It’s called the Blue Heart Campaign [...]

You’ve got to admit that’s a novel defence against rape charges.
THE alleged abduction and gang rape of a woman was dismissed as harmless fun by a female defence lawyer in a Bahrain trial yesterday.
[…]
The men, aged 19, 20 and 21, are accused at the High Criminal Court of snatching a Filpina off the street as [...]

Carla Del Ponte is one fearless prosecutor. Her investigations of Sicilian mafia, Slobodan Milosevic, and Rwandan genocide earned her powerful enemies and death threats. Her memoir Madame Prosecutor is proving extremely controversial—so much so that she has been forbidden to talk about it.
She alleges that the United Nations and NATO failed adequately to [...]