Recently, the world learned that Jihadists had stoned a Syrian woman to death for "adultery." Stoning, a barbaric form of death by torture, involves the throwing of stones at a person until they die.
In recent days, more accounts have been reported about a similar stoning in Syria. A few months earlier, a 25-year-old pregnant woman was stoned to death right outside a high court in the Pakistani city of Lahore, for marrying the man with whom she had fallen in love. About 20 men participated in the stoning, among them the father of the woman who confessed to the act by explaining it was to save the honor of the family.
In most countries, so called "honor stoning" is illegal, but in other countries such as Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and a few other countries it is a legal form of capital punishment or an act for which the legal system shows leniency and forgiveness. According to the 2013 Human Rights Commission report on Pakistan, 869 women were killed in the country that year "in the name of honor." The report also indicates that the same year, at least 56 women were killed solely for giving birth to a girl child.
I share the feelings of other women around the world that such events hit our innermost beings and leave us with a sense of helplessness. In this article I shed light on the nature of crimes against women and the context in which these occur; and present to the global community an imperative action plan to prevent these crimes from happening.
[For more of this story, written by Hannah Laufer-Rottman, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...girls_b_5786272.html]
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