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CRIMINAL LAW, HUMAN RIGHTS AND A PARADOX most European countries have signed and ratified the Istanbul Convention" and introduced corresponding criminal offence statutes, it is fair to say that there is evidently widespread support in Europe for the use of criminal law to respond to cultural traditions considered to violate human rights (in particular rights of women and children), support that is backed up by international human rights documents (see for example Art. 24 §3 Child Convention reguesting effective and appropriate measures with a view to abolishing traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children).!? Questions of penalization pertain to whether and how cultural and religious minorities should be protected by specific criminal law, whether criminal law should restrain itself when confronted with conflicting values and norms and whether and to what extent criminal law should be invoked to contain certain culturally motivated (or rooted) practices through punishment. Honor related violence, forced and under-age marriages, female genital mutilation (and not least the burqa) stand also for public discourses on social integration (or the failure of integration) related primarily to Muslim communities and reflect perceptions of otherness and differences also when (female) immigrants victimization is placed on the agenda.’* Such acts are labelled “imported foreign cultural practices” and “a threat to fundamental European or Western values” and human rights.“ In turn, critics argue that penalizing approaches instrumentalize women’s rights and gender equality in ways that foster stigmatization of immigrant communities and, moreover, serve policies that aim at restricting immigration.” Conflicts and a clash of interests become also visible when 2005 the Special Rapporteur on Traditional Practices affecting the Health of Women and Children noted attempts to initiate a semantic shift with the aim of avoiding the term “genital mutilation”, not least because of its alleged pejorative (and stigmatizing) connotations’*, and adopting neutral language instead which — the Special www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list/-/conventions/treaty/210/signatures. Katja Luopajarvi, International Accountability for Honour Killings as Human Rights Violations, Nordisk Tidsskrift For Menneskerettigheter 22 (2004), 2-21. Katherine Pratt Ewing, Stolen Honor: Stigmatizing Muslim Men in Berlin, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2008; Aisha Gill — Trishima Mitra-Kahn, Modernising the other: assessing the ideological underpinnings of the policy discourse on forced marriage in the UK, Policy & Politics 40 (2012), 107-122; Leti Volpp, Framing Cultural Difference: Immigrant Women and Discourses of Tradition, Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 22 (2012), 90-110. Alexia Sabbe, et al., Forced marriage: an analysis of legislation and political measures in Europe, Crime, Law & Social Change 62 (2014), 171-189, 172. 15 Anna Korteweg — Godkce Yurdakul, Religion, Culture and the Politicization of HonourRelated Violence. A Critical Analysis of Media and Policy Debates in Western Europe and North America, Geneva, United Nations 2010, 33. Georgios Sotiriadis, Der neue Straftatbestand der weiblichen Genitalverstiimmelung, § 226a + 107 +
