Crimes related to the offender's cultural background are exceptional, and require special atten-tion in many ways. Firstly, they come as far more shocking than the “typical” offences in a given society, due to their peculiar and infrequent nature. Secondly, as they are so much spe-cific, they pose a serious challenge for law enforcement bodies, and it may seem that they are a significant problem for courts, who must face foreign and often culturally obscure situations and behaviour. This is also an important challenge for researchers, who try their best to define and, most of all, understand the mechanisms leading to such type of crime. The article dis-cusses the specificity of honour killing, characterises the perpetrators and victims, and clarifies the motivational process of perpetrators, who often find themselves entangled in obligations enforced by cultural norms in a degree comparable to what their victims experience. The paper is also an attempt at analysis of the thesis widely found in the literature claiming that abuse towards women (irrespective of their cultural background and creed) stems from the patriarchal social structure, and should not be associated with any particular cultural system . The article claims that in order to properly analyse honour killing cases and create a possibly most effective system of preventing and countering the phenomenon, the expressions and sources of violence against women in different cultures must be precisely and unequivo-cally defined, and so must be the perpetrators' motivation. This clear division is necessary at the terminological level, to start with. This is why the article introduces the notion of “culture specific gender based violence”. Gender based violence itself is too broad a term to define such polarised cases as economic abuse of a wife by a husband, battering, or even marital rape and honour killing. Classifying honour killings as gender-based violence only, without precise identification of the sources behind such violence, is a dangerous practice, as - in consequence - opinions emerge equalising infringement of women's rights in the western world with those experienced in honour-based cultures or Muslim societies . The claim that women suffer the same violence regardless of culture or creed is not true. There is a dramatic difference between Christian background cultures, which nurture basic human rights, and honour cultures or Muslim communities, in the manner they treat women, and in the extent of socially accepted repression if they infringe the norms. What is even more, without changing the cultural rules or interpretation of religious rules, the position of women who are facing honour killings cannot improve. This is due to the fact that it is the culture and religion, or to be more precise, some elements of those, or instrumental use of those, that are at the source of this type of violence. In order to comprehend the issue of honour killing, one must first differentiate the mo-tivation behind the two types of gender-based violence. In the western culture, the motif of gender-based violence may be anger, jealousy, revenge or even a need to humiliate the victim. All of these are, however, emotional motifs, and as such are entirely different from motifs directed at attaining an aim, which is restoring the family honour and regaining the social po-sition it may have had - as this is the case in a society whose members fall victim to honour killings. The other fundamental difference lies in the fact that violence towards women in the western culture is considered pathological and incompliant with the norms. On the other hand, in communities where culture based crimes are seen, and women are victimised, such behav-iours are not a diversion from norms. On contrary, they are a means to protect the values that such societies consider crucial. This is why, when analysing honour killings, it is vital to clarify that the issue being dealt with is in fact “culture specific gender-based violence”. It is only through terminological precision that we can avoid the blurring of the border between crimes motivated by honour (mostly murder ), and other forms of violence towards women. Stating the difference is so important also because prevention and countering such varied cases in-volving violence against women require completely different factual and legal measures. To protect a wife against aggressive behaviour of her intoxicated husband, a quite different set of preventive and repressive activities is necessary, compared with a case in which a girl must be protected against murder meticulously planned by her relatives. What is even more, in the latter case, the western world has a very limited knowledge of the mechanisms leading to cul-turally motivated gender-based violence and its specificity. This is because understanding the phenomenon is understanding the culture in which it is found. To prevent and fight culture specific gender-based violence is a particularly difficult task, as in fact it assumes that a wom-an should be protected against her own community and culture in which she underwent the socialisation process, or that the culture in question should be modified. Yet, without thor-ough understanding of the core of the problem, such activities will most certainly fail.