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British diplomats helped 400 people facing possible forced marriage
by Scott Gilbreath ~ November 24th, 2008
The UK Government is focusing more attention on the long-standing scandal that hundreds of British teenagers—and even pre-teens—are forced to marry against their will. Most cases involve families originally from Pakistan or Bangladesh. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband discloses that his country’s diplomats have intervened hundreds of times in potential forced marriage situations.
So far this year, the Government’s Forced Marriage Unit, set up in 2005, has handled more than 1,500 reports of forced marriage, supporting an individual, advising the police, or intervening directly by locating and, on occasion, rescuing the victims here or overseas. Our diplomats across the world have helped more than 400 people facing possible forced marriage or being made to sponsor a visa after the marriage has taken place.
But there are others we don’t get to hear about, whom we can’t help. Every year hundreds of young British men and women undergo this sort of abuse, without ever coming to the attention of the authorities.
Mr Miliband briefly reports that officials from the British High Commission in Islamabad rescued Shafaq Malik, a 15-year-old British whose father had her trapped in a remote Pakistani village in an attempted forced marriage.
Last week, British diplomats sped to a village near Mirpur in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan. The Foreign Office in the UK had been tipped off that a young British girl was being held prisoner by her father. He was beating her to get her to agree to a marriage she did not want, to a man she had never met. She was just 15 years old.
Shafaq’s mother, who separated from her husband in 2002, had contacted the Forced Marriage Unit in London, who passed the message on to Islamabad. The diplomats from the “consular assistance” team arrived in the village with a British court order, supported by a Pakistani judge, to return Shafaq to her mother. She left safely in the custody of British officials.
Miliband says that, in 2007 alone, the British embassy in Pakistan investigated 131 cases involving suspected forced marriage.
The Forced Marriage Unit recently stated that their caseload increased by 80 percent during the first six months of 2008 compared to the same period the year before.
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November 24th, 2008 at 02:59 PM
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