- Kuwait's slow pace to end honour killings (EU Reporter)
On 6 July, 2021, Kuwait's judiciary issued one of its most-anticipated decisions. The case concerned the killing of Farah Hamzah Akbar, a 32-year-old Kuwaiti single mother of two. What made the case unnerving was not merely the brazen nature of the murder: the killer, Fahad Subhi Mohammed—a 30-year-old naturalized Kuwaiti—kidnapped Farah in broad daylight with her two young daughters in the car, and stabbed her in the chest multiple times in the highly-populated suburb of Kuwait called Sabah al-Salem before coolly driving to a hospital and dumping her body and her distraught children at the hospital entrance which was teeming with people. Rather, it was the tangible feeling that killing of women in Kuwait had now become a mundane occurrence. It was the realization that—despite a domestic violence law issued in 2020—Kuwait's courts had systematically failed to provide punishments of convicted murderers that were commensurate with the crimes. For women, waiting for justice to be served has been like waiting for Godot, writes Fay El-Jeaan, a volunteer with Abolish 153.
   
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