‘Tip of the Iceberg’: UK Records 1,428 Forced Marriage Victims in 2016

Britain’s Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) recorded over 1,400 victims in 2016, up from 1,200 the previous year.

The Cyprus Mail reports that Pakistan accounted for 612 of the cases logged by the FMU, Bangladesh 121, India 79, Somalia 47, Afghanistan 39, and Saudi Arabia 16. Most forced marriages were conducted abroad with “only” 157 potential or actual forced marriages taking place in the Britain.

“When you get figures like this, the first reaction is, ‘this is absolutely horrendous’,” commented Aneeta Prem, founder of the Freedom Charity. “But the positive thing is people feel that they’re able to report it.”

However, Jasvinder Sanghera, who heads the forced marriage survivors charity Karma Nirvana, believes the crime still goes largely unreported.

“The victims are extremely isolated and the people who are abusing them are their nearest and dearest – family members. So you can imagine how difficult it is to report it in that environment,” she said.

“We’re all dealing with the tip of the iceberg because [forced marriage] is completely under-reported and we have got a lot to do.”

Naz Shah, a Labour MP briefly suspended from her party for online anti-semitism, asked the Attorney-General’s Office how many prosecutions there had been for forced marriage in 2014-15 last year…

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Also published on Fenixx.org