The law on forced marriages needs to actually be enforced before we talk about strengthening it.

I’ve not heard of a single prosecution brought forward under this law, just some pre-emptive orders.

We also need to empower women, particularly young women, to be able to make it clear that forced marriage is a complete non-starter.

There are laws against slavery, illegal imprisonment and rape which should also be employed against those who force people into marriage.

A few convictions on those grounds might make it clearer that a forced marriage isn’t just a slightly worse ‘arranged marriage’.

Kate

The noticeable silence to your post, reflects LC’s normal bias, the readership are reluctant to criticise any faiths other than christianity.

Just look back on LC and the evidence is clear.

So although this is is a women’s issue which would normally get good support here – don’t feel it is is anything you have written or not written that has cause the lack of reaction.
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EG – Herer a week or so ago for example – a thread was kicked off about violence against women, and an attempt to raise awareness – and the debate moved to the issue whether VAW is not actually rising anyway. But when a proven increase of 47% in violence against women through Honour Killings and related violence was raised (Guardian newspaper links and all) – ironically an area where it is proven that the problem is increasing – no one picked up on that fact!

As Simon + Garfunkel sang ‘A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest’ !

Myself who is citizen of two countries, UK and Pakistan, I find it more disturbing to witness here in UK that the citizens of the republic are being allowed in 21 century to act against their consciousnesses and will under the name of marriage which deprive them to live in liberty and with dignity as human and woman.

I can only imagine how baffled, confused, disillusioned, and emotionally battered the young girls and boys feel when they are forced to marry someone who they never either met or have no desire to be with them.

Forced Marriage in UK is an issue of multilayered complex outcome of a group of immigrant families who pre-dominantly belong to Muslim societies specially families from troubled countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. The issue of forced marriage is intertwined with right of individual to liberty with its full extent verses group rights and identity of the family. In case of forced marriages, often family trump over individual girl against her struggle for her liberty and choice. Immigrant families who are less integrated socially and economically are more prone to force their kids to choose girl or boy who the family can relate and control. It is utmost important to consider and adopt statistics of forced marriages in policy making against forced marriages.

If statistics are right and only in one year there are 1700 and more British citizens has been forced to marriage contract which subjugate the right of consciousness and right of choice then government should put as many resources to protect its citizen against it as it protect its citizen against terrorism. Forced marriages is a terrorist act of family against the child of republic and the child of republic should be protected same way it gets protection against any other physical attack. Freedom of choice and freedom of thoughts goes hand in hand. If we don’t want our next generation to be raised in cultural ghetto and be radicalized then we need to take decisive action and it has to save the current and future children of the republic.

Knowing the fact how complex and difficult it is for government to intervene in such cases still there are few structures that government can put in place that will help in long and short term. Government policy on forced marriage should be revised on regular basis based on new statistics.

In short terms, the government should introduce Alert system same as Terrorist Alert. The alert system should be raise based on statistics if they show a clear increase of forced marriages in few individual countries ex-pats families such as Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan then an alert should be sent to Home Office immigration department and outside in our British Consulates. Altert system should have trigger system which gives clear instructions to home office internally and immigration offices outside British consulates on how to deal and process with visa applications of spouses married with British citizen. The interviews of the applicants should be face to face with immigration officers who are well trained and specialised in forced marriages.

For long term, it is utmost important to have support system in our schools and universities to address, and educate our young generation on forced marriages.

Government should establish an independent Forced Marriages Commission which has power to monitor, prevent, and prosecute the abusers. Also this body should have policy recommendation unit who advise government on regular basis.

Government should allocate more funding to non-government organization that specialized on forced marriages.

Government should ban any parallel legal system which advice or deal with marriage contract such as Sharia Courts.

ambreen hisbani