CAMPAIGNS

Although forced marriage has been a significant part of our work from the very beginning, interest in and awareness of the issue in the media and government circles sparked off by the tragic case of Rukshana Naz, a 19-year-old Asian woman, who was murdered in Derby in 1998. Her brother strangled her while her mother held her down by her feet. Her mother said, 'it was written in her kismet'.

In August 1999, the Home Office established a Working Group to examine and report on the issue of forced marriage. Southall Black Sisters along with a number of other groups and individuals was invited to join the group. To ensure that the voices of women could reach this Working Group, we organised a meeting of survivors of forced marriage and we mobilised 35 predominantly Asian and minority women's groups and refuges in support of our recommendations to the Group.

SBS resigned from the Working Group when the Group insisted on offering mediation and reconciliation as options to women in this situation. We felt that women usually come to organisations like ours as a last resort, having attempted reconciliation through the traditional community mechanisms of family elders and community leaders. We felt that a woman's safety is paramount and that her safety could not be monitored or guaranteed when she was reconciled into the home. However, we did produce our own report on Forced Marriage one year after the Working Group's own report, A Choice by Right to assess whether the recommendations made by the Home Office Working Group were beginning to make an impact.

Most of our work in this area has consisted of making recommendations to the Home Office, the Police, the Foreign and Consular Service, Social services, Schools and Health Authorities on good practice and minimum standards when dealing with women and girls who face the possibility of forced marriage and/or abduction. We have been especially concerned by the reluctance of statutory agencies to intervene in such cases, seeing them as a cultural practice and believing that it would be racist to intervene. We have been campaigning for a widespread acceptance of the view that it is racist not to intervene and that it is the human right of all women to expect and be afforded state protection against violence.

As a result of our intervention, the Foreign Office appears to have taken some positive steps in investigating and supporting those women who have been abducted to the sub-continent although the service is still patchy. However, they appear to have taken on board the fact that even where a woman may be a dual national because the country of her parents' origin may have conferred dual citizenship automatically, the Foreign office has a duty to that woman. We have also argued that forced marriage should be dealt with as part of the national strategy on domestic violence to avoid marginalisation of the issue.

Urgent….Attention…Urgent…Attention….Urgent…Attention…. Please Respond!

Marriage to Partners From Overseas – Border and Immigration Agencyconsultation: no doubt many of you will be aware of the proposals contained in this consultation document on marriage to overseas partners. The deadline for the response is 27 February 2008.

Download the Southall Black Sisters letter outlining the main issues and SBS's position
Download the BIA Proforma for responses

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