Reports of honour-based violence have hit record highs in the Netherlands, driven in large part by the arrival of migrants from Islamic nations such as Syria.
According to a report from the Dutch National Expertise Centre for Honour-related Violence, there were 757 cases of honour violence in 2025, up from 673 during the previous year, a jump of 13 per cent.
The centre found that Syrians accounted for 34 per cent of all reported cases last year. This has increased alongside the massive influx of migrants from the war-torn country over the past decade, with just 37 reported cases involving a Syrian in 2016 compared to 257 in 2025, public broadcaster NOS reports.
Other ethnic groups that are highly represented include Turks at 15 per cent and Moroccans at 11 per cent.
The Head of the National Expertise Centre for Honour-related Violence, Wilfred Janmaat, said per Amsterdam’s De Telegraaf: “We now indeed have a large group coming from Syria, but if many refugees from Yemen had come to our country, the number of honour killings among this group might have been higher.”
“Large new groups are coming to the Netherlands,” Janmaat continued, saying that “honour is an important family theme” in Middle Eastern migrant groups, who have often suffered some form of trauma in their homelands.
“Then they come to the Netherlands, and they have no job. The only thing they can often derive honour from is their family. Then you don’t want gossip, and then shame also plays a major role,” he said.
Broken down by category, 35 per cent of honour cases involved threats, 34 per cent physical abuse, nine per cent some form of coercion, four per cent in rape, three per cent in attempted murder or manslaughter, and one per cent in murder or manslaughter.
Nevertheless, there have still been at least 121 victims of honour-based killings over the past twelve years in the Netherlands. Intriguing, while such killings often grab media headlines when directed at women, more men were recorded as being killed for honour purposes, at 66 killings.
Janmaat said that this often comes as a result of men either being openly homosexual or having entered into an affair with a married woman. Others have faced honour violence for merely posting images of their girlfriends, offending her male family members.
“Because he victimised the girl, he can receive ‘visitors’, or a bomb will go off at his front door,” Janmaat said.
The Netherlands was rocked last year by the honour killing of an 18-year-old girl named Ryan in the northern Dutch town of Joure. She was murdered by her two brothers Mohamed (23) and Muhanad (25) on the orders of their father, Khaled al N.
Her body was found in a swamp in a nearby nature reserve in May of 2024. The court heard that she was wrapped in sixty feet of duct tape and thrown into the water alive. Finding a “significant honour-related component”, the court sentenced her two brothers to 20 years in prison and her father to 30 years. However, the father successfully fled to Syria before being jailed.
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