Why the UK must criminalise forced marriage.

In a speech on immigration today, Prime Minister David Cameron announced plans to criminalise forced marriage, a move that is likely to have a strong impact on tackling the wider issue of honour-based violence in this country.

Forced marriage should not be conflated with arranged marriage: individuals enter into arranged marriages voluntarily; whereas people forced into marriage are usually tricked into going abroad, physically threatened and/or emotionally blackmailed to do so.

The Ethnic Minority Foundation, a group working closely with the government on an initiative to tackle forced marriage, estimated there were 400 cases of forced marriage the year before its launch in 2009. It is believed these numbers are growing.

In 2008, the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC), now part of the Henry Jackson Society, published Crimes of the Community, a comprehensive report on honour-based violence in the UK based on interviews with women's groups, community activists, police working in the field and victims of honour-based violence. Almost all were unanimous in saying that tougher measures are needed to tackle the root causes of such crimes.

The report stated that making forced marriage a civil offence had not worked and recommended a high profile law to criminalise forced marriage, holding people who carry them out accountable. It also suggested that people who seek to impede police investigations or withhold evidence should be prosecuted.

While the previous government came to the issue late, significant progress was made in its final years – which I believe Cameron’s aim, if realised, will be the culmination of.

In September 2008, the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act (2007) came into effect. Under the act, the police, friend or victim can apply for a Forced Marriage Protection Order, which forbids family members taking anyone abroad for marriage or intimidating victims to get married. Any person who contravenes a forced marriage protection order is liable to a fine, six months imprisonment or both.

Currently, however, there are no specific criminal laws against individuals who force another to marry. The Forced Marriage Act 2007 is a civil law and, outside of this, action is only taken by the police against individuals who commit crimes of assault, kidnap, abduction or sexual offence when forcing someone to marry.

For example, in a landmark case in a UK court in May 2009 a mother was sentenced to three years after attempting to force her two teenage daughters to marry their first cousins in Pakistan in July 2007.

The defence claimed that the mother acted to 'defend' the honour of the family's reputation in their Muslim and Pakistani communities, as her eldest daughter allegedly had an affair with an older man and then had an abortion.

When the same daughter got married, the mother told her that if she did not consummate the marriage, she would 'tie her to the bed, blindfold her and strip her', and then watch to make sure her daughter had sex with her new husband.

The mother was specifically convicted of inciting or causing a child to engage in sexual activity, arranging or facilitating the commission of a child sex offence, and intending to pervert the course of justice.

The Judge’s words are worth reading in full:

Everyone is entitled to his or her beliefs and is to be encouraged to practice in accordance with those beliefs and to live a life which embraces the culture of those beliefs.
But those who choose to live in this country and who, like you, are British subjects, must not abandon our laws in the practice of those beliefs and that culture.
If they do, they will face the consequences.
Forced marriage is cruel. It deprives children, your children, of their basic human rights.
It must be and will be distinguished by the courts from arranged marriage, which is conventional in many cultures, and in which these basic rights are preserved.
[…]
You probably thought then and you continue to think now that even forced marriage was in the best interests of your daughters - one of whom in any case was a handful and who was not toeing the traditional line. That is a wholly misguided view.
I am bound to send, in the clearest possible terms, a strong message to the public that the forcing of a child into marriage against his or her will, will not be tolerated in our courts and that appropriate punishment will follow.
Where a forced marriage leading to consummation is accompanied by threats of violence and is tantamount to cruelty, the punishment will be more severe.

The role of community and religious leaders in shaping the ideas and values of their respective communities in the UK is also significant. In many cases, such leaders – who are almost always men– forcefully uphold and defend conservative ideas of honour within communities. While there are individuals working hard to eradicate honour-based violence, many community leaders are reluctant to admit that their community has any problems with this at all.

For example, Nazir Afzal, the former Crown Prosecution Service lead on honour crimes, told the CSC:
“When you talk to community leaders there are basically two responses. The first response is that they say there is no problem; that they deny that anything is wrong. The second response is that they don’t deny it and they acknowledge it as a problem but they then say that they have other priorities instead – they just see it as something that is not important to address.”

Similarly, plans in 2004 to criminalise forced marriage were dropped for fear of a backlash, with ministers admitting that any such law would be 'resented as an intrusion into minority cultures and religions'. One community group, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), opposed the plans because they felt the new laws would lead to Muslim communities being further stigmatised.

In its 2005 response to the government's Forced Marriage Unit consultation paper, Forced Marriage - A Wrong not a Right, the MCB wrote: “Any law in this regard which is promoted as a tool to help the victims and deter the offenders is most unlikely to be effective because of the nature of the problem and the cultural as well as familial sensitivities involved. A coercive tool in a family and cultural setting is rarely, if ever successful.”

While the MCB were clear in their condemnation: “a ‘forced marriage’ has no religious, moral or legal validity,” they claimed the best way to eradicate forced marriage was through education and that it had to be community led.

While I agree with the MCB on the importance of education, with upwards of 400 cases a year I don’t think there’s time to wait for community-led initiatives to trickle down into collective consciousness.

Undermining the concept of honour – and its association with the female body as a commodity and a barometer of virtue – is the single most important thing society can do to eliminate this abuse.

Criminalising forced marriage will not just act as a deterrent. Just as all societies draw their moral codes from their legislature, criminalisation will go a long way to encourage a widespread intolerance to forced marriage and the perverted concept of honour behind it.

Hannah Stuart is a Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. She is co-author of “Islam on Campus: A survey of UK student opinions”; “Hizb ut-Tahrir: Ideology and Strategy”; and “Islamist Terrorism: The British Connections”. She is also author of “The Beth Din: Jewish Law in the UK”.