In August last year, the Supreme Court passed a detailed judgment upholding the legality of the 21^st Amendment and the trial of civilians before military courts. Significantly, for the first time in Pakistan’s history, in the same judgment the SC also ruled it could review and strike down constitutional amendments enacted by parliament if they violated salient features of the Constitution as determined by the court. Few would know that, however, as media coverage of the judgment predominantly reported the Supreme Court had "rejected" judicial review of constitutional amendments -- Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif even thanked the Supreme Court for respecting the "supremacy of parliament" and the "will of the people".

The ‘Offences in the Name or Pretext of Honour Act, 2016’, passed by parliament on October 6, will likely suffer the same fate. The media has already declared that through the new legislation, the honour killing loophole has been closed; the prime minister has congratulated all those who supported the passage of the law, and the United States and United Nations have hailed the Act as a "historic success" for women’s rights.

Even a cursory reading of the actual law shows the celebrations are premature and misleading.

The statement of objectives of the law says that it is being passed to address the loopholes and lacunae in the existing legal framework to prevent and deter "honour crimes" from repeatedly being committed.

There are many ways to assess a law with such an ambitious objective. We can ask what we mean by an honour crime and how we can decide which categories of violence against women are driven by notions of honour and which are not. We can also argue whether a separate legal category of honour crimes as a specific form of violence against women makes conceptual sense. We can ask whether it is even desirable to continue with piecemeal exceptions to the Qisas and Diyat laws without more radical reform of the framework of "forgiveness" for serious crime.

And we can question how the honour killing law would apply in practice -- for example, how the motive of "honour" for honour crimes would be proven in the absence of a confession; how extralegal -- or out of court -- compromises would be prevented; and how an independent, impartial and thorough investigation would be ensured, especially as it is well documented that in typical honour crime cases, the sympathies of police often lie with the perpetrators, not the victim.

Since much of social media and civil society activism on honour crimes has centred on the question of forgiveness, let us assess the law on its own terms and see how far it goes to make such crimes punishable even after compromise between the victims (or their heirs) and the perpetrators.

First, and most importantly, the new law does not make honour crimes non-compoundable. This means that heirs can continue to forgive the perpetrator even where crimes are committed on the pretext of honour. This is a significant omission, especially as a previous draft of the bill moved by Senator Sughra Imam did in fact propose barring compromise in cases of honour killings.

Some argue that the parliament decided against making honour crimes non-compoundable because of opposition and fear of backlash from religious parties. However, precedent already exists where certain crimes have been declared non-compoundable: for offences under the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, for example, heirs of the victims cannot forgive or compromise with the perpetrators. The same exception could have been extended to honour crimes without rocking the boat of the Qisas and Diyat framework, but our elected representatives perhaps did not think it was worth the risk.

Second, the new law provides for a mandatory life imprisonment sentence where all heirs of the victim of an honour killing enter into a compromise with the perpetrator in Qisas cases (where the accused person confesses or where required number of witnesses who meet the Islamic credibility test are available).

But there is a catch. The mandatory life imprisonment sentence is only applicable if after the heirs compromise, the court decides to use its discretion to punish the offender. In other words, punishing perpetrators of honour killings is not obligatory and remains a choice that the court may or may not exercise depending on the circumstances of the case -- only if the court decides to punish the offender does the sentence have to be mandatory life imprisonment.

Previously, the minimum sentence for honour killings in such cases was 10 years; now it is life imprisonment. This is the only major difference between the old law and the law after amendment.

As some commentators have argued, not only is the mandatory life imprisonment sentence a cosmetic change, it could even have the unintended consequence of further deterring judges from exercising their discretion to punish the perpetrators.

Third, the new law appears to be silent on the question of punishment after compromise in Ta’zir cases (which becomes applicable if the evidentiary requirements of Qisas are not met i.e. if the accused person does not confess and if the appropriate number of witnesses are not available). The Supreme Court has held that Qisas and Ta’zir are two separate legal regimes and has reiterated that under section 345 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, heirs can enter into a compromise for murder and other serious crimes even if the conviction is under the framework of Ta’zir. In such cases, courts retain the final say on whether perpetrators should be punished if heirs compromise and there is no minimum mandatory sentence for honour killings.

Finally -- and this is where there is some (possible) good news -- the law expressly includes offences committed in the name or on the pretext of honour in the definition of fasad-fil-arz (creating disorder in the community) for all offences against the human body. (Previously, this was the case only for the purposes of one specific provision of the Penal Code.)

Pakistani jurisprudence considers fasad-fil-arz as an aggravated form of crime, and in multiple judgments courts have punished offenders where the crime falls under fasad-fil-arz even after legal heirs of the victims entered into a compromise. We can argue, therefore, that more courts will be encouraged to exercise their discretion to hold to account perpetrators of honour crimes -- both in Qisas and Ta’zir cases -- even if the heirs choose to forgive. This, however, remains only a possibility: how courts interpret honour crimes after their express inclusion as fasad-fil-arz, only time will tell.

Even on its own terms, the new law can only be considered an opportunity lost for significant reform that could have potentially affirmed the rights of women in Pakistan to live their lives according to their own choices and ensured that those who go as far as taking their lives for doing so are brought to justice.

Ironically, legislation that many hoped would put an end to compromise for honour crimes is itself so badly compromised that it will likely achieve very little.

This is an edited version of the article that appeared in print.