By Hadia Khan
There is a grim, unwritten rule in our criminal justice system: if a murder happens on the street, it is a crime against the State; if it happens in the kitchen, it is a “family dispute.”
For decades, the concept of the “private sphere”—the sanctity of the chadar aur char dewari—has been weaponized. It was intended to protect the privacy of the home, but today, it serves a far more sinister purpose. It has become a jurisdictional iron curtain behind which the brutalization of women is not only permitted but protected from state scrutiny.
As a law student observing the trajectory of femicide in Pakistan, I am struck by the repetitive, hollow nature of our “Due Diligence.” We have laws. The Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act exists. The constitutional guarantees of dignity and life exist. Yet, when a woman walks into a police station with bruises, she is often told to “compromise” for the sake of the family. She is sent back to the very “private sphere” that has become her torture chamber.
This hesitation to intervene is not just social apathy; it is a structural failure of international law and domestic application. Legal systems have historically bifurcated the world into “public” and “private.” The State polices the public square but treats the home as a self-regulating sovereign entity. This distinction is lethal.
When the State refuses to pierce the veil of domestic privacy to prevent violence, it is not acting “neutrally.” It is making an active choice to outsource the regulation of women’s bodies to the patriarch of the family. By treating domestic violence as a “private tort” rather than a public crisis, the State becomes complicit. It signals that a woman’s right to life is conditional on her family’s mood.
International Human Rights Law is evolving. The standard of “Due Diligence” now demands that States prevent non-state actor violence. It is no longer an excuse to say, “The husband did it, not the police.” If the State knows violence is likely and does nothing to dismantle the social structures enabling it, the State is liable.
We must stop using the vocabulary of “domestic disputes.” This acts as a linguistic anesthetic, dulling the horror of what is actually happening. These are not disputes; they are acts of terror committed in spaces where victims should feel safest.
It is time to reimagine the boundaries of State responsibility. The “privacy” of the home cannot be absolute when it is used to conceal capital crimes. If the State claims the monopoly on violence, it must enforce that monopoly in the living room as strictly as it does on the street. Until we treat the murder of a woman in her home as a violation of national security—rather than a breach of domestic harmony—we are not just failing our women. We are sentencing them to death.
About author :
Hadia Khan is a Law Student at the University of London and a researcher on human rights.
