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Nearly half of South Sudanese girls between 15 and 19 years old are married. Some were as young as 12 years old when they were forced to marry men who, in many cases, were far older than them. The Old Man Can Feed Us So You Will Marry Him, a new report from Human Rights Watch, documents these facts and describes the terrible consequences of forced marriage for so many girls in South Sudan.
Women who find themselves victims of forced marriage and honour based violence are being urged by Derbyshire’s Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner, Hardyal Dhindsa, to seek help from the police.
Mr Dhindsa, speaking out in the lead-up to International Women’s Day on Friday, said: “Forced marriage has far-reaching impacts, and particularly with regard to safeguarding children and families.
“I am, however, pleased to say that multi-agency professional help is increasingly emerging. Both the police and partner agencies know about these crimes and ready to help victims find a solution.”
He added: “Only this week we saw the launch of a Government-funded smartphone Freedom app. It provides information and sources of help aimed not just at potential victims – who so often don’t know where to go for help – but also at their friends, teachers and professionals.”
He also acknowledged Prime Minister David Cameron’s promise to make forced marriage a criminal offence and said he hoped it would be sooner rather than later. It is hoped that legislation will be brought forward this year or next.
Barry Coppinger, The Police and Crime Commissioner for Cleveland and Yasmin Khan, Vela Group – Talk about Honour Based Violence and Forced Marriages in our Region.
https://www.haloproject.org.uk/img/page/halo-inverview.mp3_page_image.mp3
Cleveland’s Police and Crime Commissioner has today pledged to back a new initiative aimed at tackling what he described as the ‘misery and suffering’ caused by so-called honour-based violence and forced marriages.
Barry Coppinger, speaking at the launch of the HALO Project held in Middlesbrough, stressed that, as well as providing support to victims, it was crucial that the police and other agencies had the expertise to develop their services.
Led by Tees Valley Inclusion and backed by a wide range of partners, the HALO project aims to provide a focal point of contact which can deal sensitively and confidentially with victims, as well as providing guidance for agencies on how they can meet their needs effectively.
David Cameron is right to criminalise forced marriage. This abominable, inhumane act robs people of their lives.
In deciding to criminalise forced marriage – the act of coercing a person to marry against their will – the government has made a bold statement: that this heinous, inhumane, oppressive act is never acceptable. The decision couldn’t come soon enough. The government’s forced marriage unit (FMU) provided advice or support in almost 1,500 cases last year, but the true picture is thought to be even graver. One study in 2009 estimated that up to 8,000 women and men, girls and boys could be entering into unwilling unions each year, often being torn from their lives in Britain to live in an unknown land with an unknown spouse.
Shockingly, a third of victims assisted by the FMU last year were minors – schoolchildren who suddenly became spouses either here or abroad –the youngest reported case is thought to have been just five years old.
We must be clear. This is not like arranged marriage, where two parties consent. In forced marriage, to resist betrothal is to risk ostracism, abuse and even murder. Currently, the law does not go far enough. Forced marriage protection orders were introduced in 2008, but breaching an order is only a breach of civil law. The message this sends out is a dangerous one: it says that Britain equates this enforced matrimony with mere civil misdemeanours.
Parents who coerce their children to marry will face jail under moves to be set out tomorrow by David Cameron.
The Prime Minister will announce that forced marriage will be made a criminal offence following reports that up to 8,000 Britons are made to marry against their consent every year. He has previously described the practice – which can include kidnapping, beatings and rape – as “little more than slavery” and “completely wrong”.
Most cases of forced marriage involve families from southern Asia, including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Among them are hundreds of girls below the age of 16 who are taken abroad to be coerced into marriage. The Government’s forced-marriage unit – which dealt with 1,500 cases last year – has revealed that a five-year-old girl was one of 400 children it helped. One in five victims was male.
The Government is already committed to criminalising breaches of forced-marriage protection orders, which are criminal injunctions and carry jail terms of up to two years for contempt of court. But ministers have decided to go further and draw up a new criminal offence for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The offence will carry a prison sentence, but the maximum term has not yet been decided. During consultation on the move, concerns were expressed that criminalising forced marriage altogether could deter victims from coming forward to police.
The issue must be seen in the context of violence against women and the inequality found throughout society.
On Sunday a Canadian court found three members of an Afghan family, the father, mother and son, guilty of killing three teenage sisters and another woman. The judge described the crimes as “cold-blooded, shameful murders” resulting from a “twisted concept of honour”. The prosecution argued that for father Mohammad Shafia, honour was everything – quoting him as saying “even if they hoist me up on to the gallows … nothing is more dear to me than my honour”.
This was undoubtedly a brutal and heinous crime. Yet is there a danger in simply condemning it as an “honour killing”, as so many in the mainstream media and government have? The concept of “honour” is notoriously difficult to define. At its most basic level, it refers to a person’s righteousness in the eyes of their community. It is often employed to ensure that people act morally. In this respect, if people follow what is considered socially good, they are honoured. If not, they are shamed. This most recent case in Canada is just one of many tragic examples that reveal its continuing influence. In the UK there was the recent, well-publicised murder of teenager Heshu Yones by her father for becoming “westernised”. The family had migrated to Britain to escape persecution by Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraqi Kurdistan, and Heshu had developed a relationship with a Lebanese Christian man.
Yet, by focusing on the subject of honour, such violence is too often explained away by cultural stereotypes – allowing society to dismiss these cases as something that only happens in minority communities with their “outdated” notions of justice. This allows us to completely overlook that, first and foremost, these cases are of violence against women, and the concept of honour is being used to legitimate the continued oppression of women.
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/01/honour-based-violence-deep-wide
Nearly 3,000 so-called honour attacks were recorded by police in Britain last year, new research has revealed.
According to figures obtained by the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (Ikwro), at least 2,823 incidents of ‘honour-based’ violence took place, with the highest number recorded in London.
The charity said the statistics fail to provide the full picture of the levels of ‘honour’ violence in the UK , but are the best national estimate so far.
The data, taken from from 39 out of 52 UK forces, was released following a freedom of information request by Ikwro.
In total, eight police forces recorded more than 100 so called honour-related attacks in 2010. The Metropolitan Police saw 495 incidents, with 378 reported in the West Midlands, 350 in West Yorkshire, 227 in Lancashire and 189 in Greater Manchester. Cleveland recorded 153, while Suffolk and Bedfordshire saw 118 and 117 respectively, according to the figures. Between the 12 forces able to provide figures from 2009, there was an overall 47 per cent rise in honour attack incidents.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2069459/alarming-number-honour-attacks-uk-police-reveal-thousands-carried-year.html#ixzz2RrDyoAmJ
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