Iran's 'Honor Killings': Systemic Gaps Enable Femicide Despite Women's Rights Progress

On the morning of October 5, Maryam Yarmohammadi, a 28-year-old mother of two, was attacked with knives by her husband and brother on Qeshm Island in southern Iran. Her genitalia were mutilated. She died in the hospital hours later. Both men were arrested, but when about fifty relatives gathered outside the hospital, they protested the arrests. According to media reports, they believed death was the mildest punishment she deserved. What exactly she was accused of has never been made public. What is known is that her case follows the contours of what Iran calls honor killings—murders carried out by male relatives who believe a woman has brought shame upon the family.

The logic behind such killings rests on a particular understanding of masculine duty. A man, in this framework, must erase the dishonor his sister, daughter, or wife has caused. To fail to do so invites his own rejection, humiliation, and exile from his community. The definition of what counts as dishonor is fluid and often severe. In traditionally conservative regions, laughing too loudly or having a friendly conversation with an unrelated man can be enough. Women accused of these violations are rarely given a chance to respond or defend themselves. They are judged and sentenced within the family, often with no outside intervention.

Women's rights activists in Iran have spent years trying to build networks of protection—safe houses, counseling, relocation assistance. The Campaign to End Honor Killings is one such effort. Rezvan Moghaddam, a spokesperson for the campaign, told Deutsche Welle that no activist or local group existed in the region where Maryam Yarmohammadi lived who could have helped her. The campaign has managed in some cases to move threatened women to safety, but the gaps are vast, particularly in southern and western provinces where traditional structures remain strongest. Moghaddam herself is from Khuzestan in the south and spoke candidly about the restrictions that limit what activists can accomplish in those areas.

The Iranian legal system itself contains mechanisms that enable rather than prevent these killings. Under interpretations of Islamic law, women do not have equal standing as citizens. They may need their father's or husband's permission to work, travel, or pursue education. Even after death, male relatives can influence criminal proceedings. Iranian law applies the principle of retribution in murder cases, meaning the victim's family can choose between demanding execution or granting pardon. In honor killings, the perpetrator is often a family member—the very person empowered to decide on punishment or forgiveness. This creates an obvious conflict of interest that the justice system does not resolve. A 2020 study by Iran's Police Academy found that honor killings accounted for up to 45 percent of all murders in some conservative provinces in the west and south. In 2024 alone, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran documented at least 179 women murdered by male family members.

What shocked many Iranians about Maryam Yarmohammadi's death was not its occurrence but its brutality. Social media filled with grief and outrage, particularly from women who saw in it a femicide dressed up in the language of honor and shame. But other voices emerged too. Some blamed the victim. Others described the killing as justified punishment for infidelity or attempted to rationalize the men's rage. Saba Alaleh, a psychoanalyst, explained that men in Iran are socialized to see themselves as responsible for controlling women—their behavior, their choices, their bodies. Male identity becomes tied to female obedience. When this belief system is reinforced by social approval and silence, violence becomes normal. When cultural, social, political, economic, legal, and educational systems all reinforce the same message, Alaleh said, the power of that message becomes enormous. Women become economically dependent, isolated, and without recourse.

Yet the story of Iranian women is not one of passivity. Atefeh Rangriz, a sociologist and women's rights activist, pointed out that women have been driving since 1940, voting since 1963, and now make up half of all university graduates. Divorce rates have risen as women exercise choice over their own lives. The Woman, Life, Freedom movement, which erupted after Jina Mahsa Amini died in police custody in 2022, has shifted how many Iranians think about women's autonomy. Many women now refuse to wear the mandatory hijab in public, openly defying state law. Rangriz described this as a kind of radical revolution—women no longer willing to postpone justice to some future date, demanding it now, insisting on the right to live as they choose and free themselves from structures of domination.

But Maryam Yarmohammadi will never know what liberation might have looked like. She was 28. She had two children. What she wanted, how she wished to live, what she might have become—none of that will be known. She was killed by the two men closest to her, in the name of family honor, in a place where the law offered her no protection and where her death, for many, required no justification.