From The Christian Science Monitor and The Times
Teachers have been told how to spot cases of potential forced marriage as the summer holidays approach.
The guidelines, issued to schools, doctors and the police aim to to identify families in which girls are made to marry against their will while abroad in the summer.
Chris Bryant, the Foreign Office Minister, insisted that every school should be looking at the issue as he acknowledged some may have been “uncertain” about cultural sensitivities.
The summer break is a peak time for incidents of young people, usually girls, being taken to south Asia in particular and forced by their families to marry.
Seventy per cent of cases involve families of Pakistani origin, and 11 per cent from a Bangladeshi background, according to the most recent figures from the Forced Marriage Unit.
“It may be possible that some schools have been uncertain about the cultural issues here. But I should make it absolutely clear there is no culture and there is no religion in which forced marriage should be acceptable or indeed is acceptable.”
Mr Bryant said: “The most important thing is to spot the problem before it happens. There are key times of the year just as now when this is the case.”
The Christian Science Monitor has a case study to give a human face to the abuse.
But Britain's new efffort has its critics, who say that the tougher message will not be heard in the Urdu-, Punjabi-, and Sylheti-speaking corners of London, Birmingham, and Manchester until there is a specific criminal offense for forcing someone to marry.
Currently, judges can make an order under the Forced Marriage Act, which became law in November, to stop potential victims being taken abroad and married against their will. Orders can also release a victim from the control of their family. But no one has stood trial for forcing a marriage.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is also training its sights on perpetrators of other so-called honor crimes – which, in the extreme, include murder – and the communities that collude in them through silence.
Nazir Afzal, the lead lawyer for London's CPS, says the issue boils down to the power relations within male-dominated societies.
"It is not just the elders who may believe women are inferior," he says. "I met a 21-year-old Muslim boy, who told me 'man is a piece of gold, women are silver. If you drop gold in mud it can be cleaned; drop silver and it is worthless.'
"That's what we're up against, but we are heading in the right direction."