This week, Matt Mahmood-Ogston takes over the Guest Editor slot at Camdenist. He’s the founder and CEO of the Naz and Matt Foundation, a Camden-based charity supporting LGBTQ+ individuals facing religious and cultural rejection. He’s also an award-winning social impact storyteller and documentary photographer who uses storytelling and photography to help charities and communities make change visible.

Matt’s story shows how progressive hope can emerge from the darkest of situations, providing a vital new way to give words to lifelong coercive control, something that often lies at the heart of adhering to ‘traditional’ cultural or family values.

I stood in the House of Lords recently. Not as a guest, but alongside other survivors of violence and abuse.

Walking into that room felt heavier than I expected, because I wasn’t just there as a local Camden-based charity CEO. I was there as someone who has lived through the long shadow that honour-based abuse casts over families. I was there carrying Naz’s story on my shoulders, just as I’ve carried it for the last eleven years.

In 2014, my fiancé Naz took his own life after 34 years of enduring honour-based abuse. I didn’t understand it then. I thought it was about his sexuality, his religious upbringing. But the truth ran far deeper.

Naz spent decades under coercion. Conditioning that told him the way he was born wasn’t good enough. That his existence as a gay man would bring shame to his family. That his family’s honour mattered more than his life.

Eighteen months after his death, Karma Nirvana reached out and gave me the language and support I was missing. They helped me see what I couldn’t name: Naz was a victim of honour-based abuse. A truth that explained everything and yet arrived too late.

After Naz passed away, I didn’t want to be here either. Soon after failing to end my own life, I realised the only way forward was to do something to prevent this happening again. That’s when I founded the Naz and Matt Foundation. What began as one person’s grief grew into a national charity supporting LGBTQI+ individuals from religious and culturally conservative backgrounds. Last year alone, we handled 489 requests for support and gave life-saving, trauma-informed help to 292 vulnerable people.

That work has taken me into rooms I never imagined standing in. Government departments. Police forces. Universities. Faith communities. Conferences. And now, again, the House of Lords.

But here is the problem that brought me to Westminster. In 2025, we still don’t have a statutory definition of honour-based abuse. It sounds technical. It isn’t. It is painfully simple.

Without a legal definition, frontline police officers can’t reliably identify honour-based abuse when it appears in front of them. Prosecutors can’t place abuse within its cultural or familial context. Social workers and safeguarding leads may miss the danger signs. And victims remain invisible because the system they report into cannot see them clearly.

Cases slip through the cracks. Lives are lost. Prevention becomes far harder.

And here’s something most people don’t realise: honour-based abuse doesn’t only affect women. Although women are most affected, it also affects men. At my charity, the majority of victims we support identify as male.

At the House of Lords, I joined volunteers and survivors from Karma Nirvana’s Survivor Ambassador Panel to meet House of Lords peers. We were pushing for three critical amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill: (#353) a statutory definition of HBA, (#355) multi-agency guidance and (#354) honour as an aggravating factor aka Somaiya’s Law.

These aren’t abstract policy debates. They’re about life and death.

Victims, survivors and frontline organisations spent years developing this definition. It comes from lived experience, from those who’ve lost loved ones, from charity leaders supporting victims daily. This definition has been shaped by psychologists, safeguarding experts, social workers, police officers, and those who know the patterns of coercion because they’ve survived them.

This isn't abstract policy work. This is the difference between a police officer recognising danger signs or missing them entirely. Between a prosecutor understanding the full context of abuse or treating it as isolated incidents. Between a victim getting help or falling through the system.

The definition must not be watered down. It must not lose its clarity or purpose. It needs to be fit for purpose because lives depend on it.

I’ve seen those lives. I’ve worked with those families. I’ve sat with individuals who have been abused by the very people who were meant to protect them. I’ve supported parents torn between their faith and the child they love, trying to break the cycle they grew up in. And I’ve walked with survivors who fought for their identity in homes where freedom came at a cost.

That’s why I stood in the Lords. Because Naz didn’t have this framework. And because the next person at risk deserves better.

The last 11 years have taught me something important: awareness alone is not enough. You need law. You need language. You need a system that recognises the problem.

That is what these amendments offer. So here’s what you can do.

If you work in VAWG, safeguarding, policing, education, or support any form of violence prevention: follow Karma Nirvana, Hopscotch Women’s Centre, or any other organisation who supports this work. Contact your MP. Ask them to support these amendments. Share the posts. Talk to your safeguarding leads. Bring this into your teams.

Because honour-based abuse hides in plain sight. It thrives in silence. And silence has protected perpetrators for far too long.

Naz didn’t have this framework. Let’s make sure the next person in danger does.

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn

Clean Break is the Kentish Town-based charity that offers life-changing theatre workshops for women who have experienced the criminal justice system, or who are at risk due to challenges such as mental-ill health and addiction.

They were founded over 40 years ago by two women in prison who believed in the transformative power of theatre, and this month have joined the Big Give Christmas Challenge, where any donation you make to the charity until Tues 9th Dec will be doubled - at no extra cost to you.

Clean Break are also using the campaign to shed light on the mental health crisis facing women who are criminalised, with around 70% of women in prison in the UK reporting mental ill health, compared with 20% in the general population. The charity is a brilliant solution to the personal harm that locking up these women has done, and with your support they will be able to continue to reach more women in 2026, using the power of theatre to help them heal, recover and discover their full potential.

🟢 Local participatory funding charity Camden Giving, who work to end local poverty and inequality in the Borough, are also running a Big Give Christmas campaign - raising funds to refurbish The Playhut, Kentish Town’s only free youth space for children and young people up to 25.

The Playhut has been part of the community for 50 years, and the young people who use it right now are helping to design it as a space for today and the future. Again, every pound pledged is doubled at no additional cost to the person or business making the donation, so do consider it.

🕺🏻 And while we’re on the topic of seasonable charitably-minded work, isn’t Camden High Street and Kings Cross street DJ stalwart DJ AG’s ongoing series of visits to care homes to spread the joy of music just one of the best things you’ve seen all year?

ART: 😼It’s the final exhibition of the year and a massive party to boot at the launch of Camden Open Air Gallery’s Wrapped exhibition, which kicks off with a private view tonight, Fri 6th Dec from 6pm. The show features pieces from pieces Abotz (main pic), Ben Rider, Brofoz, Cleon, Haus of Lucy, Mellor, Miguel H. Cuar, Shio Drawing, Tijana Petrovic, Titi Finlay, Xander Coy. All are priced from £10 to £500, keeping the show accessible while supporting original creativity.

CINEMA: 🎞️ A stellar line-up of classic flicks is now showing at the lost cinema, hidden inside the faded shell of the Saville Theatre while it awaits its proposed reimagining as a hotel and Cirque Du Soleil HQ. This week you can choose between seeing Paris, Texas or Mulholland Drive on Fri 5th, with The Red Shoes or Eyes Wide Shut on Sat 6th. Then, stay for the quirky club night until 5am.

MUSIC: 🔊 Local tune-flinging heroes Dig It Soundsystem take over NW5’s beloved backstreet boozer The Dartmouth Arms with guaranteed festive cheer this Fri 5th Dec, the first of two gigs from them this month in the legendary party space.

SHOPPING: 🎁 Ethical seasonal giving is assured if you head to the The Christmas Charity Super.Mkt which is back where it all began in Coal Drops Yard from today, Fri 5th - Sun 7th Dec with second-hand fashion and accessories curated by the UK’s best charity retailers. Look out for The Repair Shop, offering visitors the chance to give pre-loved items a new lease of life while supporting vital causes. You’ll also find the Illustrators Festive Fair on Sat and the Crafty Fox Christmas Market on Sun right next door at KX.

MUSIC: 🎶 Folk-pop artist Molly Rymer likes to say that she’s “a grandma in a 20-something’s body”, since she shares her stories like a cozy conversation in song. Venturing down from Leeds for the first time with her new six-piece setup, featuring cello, double bass, drums, guitar and three-part harmonies, catch them at The Green Note on Mon 8th Dec.

XMAS:🎄Camden Market continues to impress with its rolling series of community-focused free events at Hawley Wharf, the latest of which sees the choir of 100+ voices, TV stars The Big Sing, who will be belting out the carols this Sat 6th Dec, for what can’t fail to be a cold winter-heartwarming moment.

COMEDY: 😂 There’s a night of free stand-up as Joe Davis & Friends land at a brand new secret Soho venue (you’ll get location info when you get the ticket confirmation email) in association with deliciously quirky local member’s club All is Joy on Thurs 11th Dec.

FOOD: 🌯 The whole of the Seven Dials district is going car free on Sat 6th Dec (it’s kinda wild that cars still prowl around all those delightful cobbled passageways, to be honest, but such are the pressures of urban existence), and the freeing up of the highway means that KERB’s Seven Dials Market is having a fiesta of festive Picky Bits. What that means is heaps of tasters from £3-£8 channeling the spirit of a Boxing Day fridge raid. Expect the likes of deep fried brie bites by STAKEhaus, Pigs in blankets by Oh My Dog!, Los Gordos’ turkey al pastor empanadas and Chin Chin x Mello’s Christmas tree baked alaska amoung many more.

We’re keen to help build a thriving ecosystem of decent London newsletters you might like, which focus on topics like the ones we cover here in Camdenist. This week, we’re highlighting Lab.Club, which exists to deliver you the best grassroots parties in London every week. They cut through the big room hype to inform you of the dancefloors that really matter.