Honor Killing di Afrika Utara: Konstruksi dan Respons Hukum Pidana di Mesir, Maroko, dan Tunisia

Abstract

This article examines honor killing in North Africa as a form of gender-based violence rooted in family honor, patriarchal control, and social change that has not yet produced a stable new order. The research employs normative legal methods through statutory, case, and comparative criminal law approaches across three representative jurisdictions, namely Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia. The primary legal materials include criminal provisions on homicide, adultery, mitigating excuses, and the protection of women, with particular attention to Article 237 of the Egyptian Penal Code, Articles 418 and 491 of the Moroccan Penal Code, the repeal history of Article 207 of the Tunisian Penal Code, Article 236 of the Tunisian Penal Code, and Law No. 58 of 2017 on Eliminating Violence Against Women. The findings show that honor in this region operates as a social mechanism for regulating women’s bodies, sexuality, mobility, and life choices, reinforced by community pressure, reputational stigma, and family-based moral legitimacy. Social transition does not remove this logic; instead, it reshapes conflict and diversifies forms of control, ranging from threats, confinement, coercion, and the criminalization of sexual morality to homicide itself. On the legal plane, Egypt and Morocco still retain norms that soften criminal responses in certain situations linked to adultery, whereas Tunisia has moved in a more progressive direction by abolishing explicit mitigation and strengthening protection for women, even though the regulation of sexual morality has not been fully abandoned.