Category Archives: Forced marriage

Nigerian activists condemn mass ‘forced marriages’ of 100 girls and young women

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Petition launched to halt mass ceremony that organisers say is for 100 orphans whose parents were killed by gangs

Human rights activists in Nigeria have launched a petition to stop a plan to push 100 girls and young women into marriage in a mass ceremony, which has caused outrage in the west African country.

The plan, sponsored by Abdulmalik Sarkindaji, the speaker of the national assembly in the largely Muslim north-western state of Niger, were criticised by Nigeria’s women’s affairs minister, Uju Kennedy Ohanenye. She said she would seek a court injunction to stop the ceremony next week and establish if any of the girls were minors.

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UK’s forced marriage unit underfunded and too Muslim-focused, report to say

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Colin Bloom’s report expected to be most sweeping review of government’s relationship with religion in more than a generation

UK ministers’ efforts to stop forced marriages are failing because the unit set up to tackle them is undervalued, under-resourced and overly focused on Muslim families, according to a report from Michael Gove’s levelling up department.

The 165-page report by Colin Bloom, the government’s faith adviser, will highlight a range of areas in which ministers are ineffective because they are too wary of tackling problems that arise within religious communities. It is expected to be the most sweeping review of the government’s relationship with religion in more than a generation

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Sisters allegedly murdered by husbands in Pakistan ‘honour’ killing

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Six men arrested after Pakistani-Spanish women tricked into travelling to Gujrat where they were shot

Two sisters with dual Pakistani and Spanish citizenship were allegedly killed by their husbands, uncle and brother in a so-called “honour” killing a day after they were tricked into travelling to Pakistan.

Aneesa Abbas, 24, and Arooj Abbas, 21, were strangled and shot dead on Friday after arriving in the eastern city of Gujrat with their mother, Azra Bibi.

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Parliament to vote on bill to ban child marriage in England and Wales

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Marriage of under-18s associated with risk of domestic, sexual and ‘honour’-based violence, say MPs, who will vote on Friday

A bill that would ban child marriage in England and Wales will be presented to parliament for its second reading this week and has been welcomed by campaigners as a “huge stride” forward.

Currently, marriage and civil partnerships are legal at 16 and 17 with parental consent. This is not just out of step with international legislation but also a loophole that is “more often used as a mechanism for abuse”, according to Pauline Latham, MP, who will present her bill on Friday.

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‘I’m one of them’: the FGM survivor providing a lifeline in Leeds

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Stigma can stop women seeking help but Hawa Bah, who was cut at eight, reaches those suffering in silence to get them the care they need


One night 14 years ago, Hawa Bah crept out of her house in Guinea and slipped into the darkness. She says she had lost count but it may have been her 14th or 15th escape attempt from an abusive marriage she was forced into with a man 37 years her senior.

Bah made her way through a maze of streets to the meeting point where a car was waiting with two strangers inside. When they took her to the airport, Bah felt her heart beating through her chest. She had not realised until then that she would be leaving her country. Aged 17, she had no belongings and no idea where she was going.

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‘Nowhere to go’: divorced Afghan women in peril as the Taliban close in

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As horror stories emerge from areas that have fallen to the Islamist militants, women living alone fear they have no route of escape

There’s an old saying in Afghanistan that encapsulates the country’s views on divorce: “A woman only leaves her father’s house in the white bridal clothes, and she can only return in the white shrouds.”

In this deeply conservative and patriarchal society, women who defy convention and seek divorce are often disowned by their families and shunned by Afghan society. Left alone, they have to fight for basic rights, such as renting an apartment, which require the involvement or guarantees of male relatives.

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‘I worry my daughters will never know peace’: women flee the Taliban – again

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Families fearful of what will happen to girls and young women as the Islamist militants gain ground are joining the tens of thousands of displaced Afghans

It was an exceptionally hot summer morning, on 13 July, when people in Malistan district, in the southern Afghan province of Ghazni, woke up to find that the conflict that had swirled around them for weeks had reached their small town and Taliban fighters were closing in.

By noon that day, 22-year-old Fatima, seven months pregnant, was seeking shelter from bullets raining down on her home in the village of Qol-e Adam, which was caught in the vicious crossfire between Taliban militants and government forces.

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Aid cuts make a mockery of UK pledges on girls’ education | Zoe Williams

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The government’s words at the global education summit are completely at odds with its behaviour. Whatever the event achieves will be despite its UK hosts, not because of them

With all the fanfare Covid would allow, the global education summit opened in London this week. Ahead of the meeting, the minister for European neighbourhood and the Americas was on rousing form. “Educating girls is a gamechanger,” Wendy Morton said, going on to describe what a plan would look like to do just that.

The UK, co-hosting the summit with Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, plans to raise funds for the Global Partnership for Education, from governments and donors. The UK government has promised £430m over the next five years.

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‘We can do anything’: the Indian girls’ movement fighting child marriage

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At 17, Priyanka Bairwa refused her arranged marriage. Instead, she started Rajasthan Rising to help thousands of others and call for free education

Priyanka Bairwa was 15 when her family began to look for a husband for her. The pandemic sped up the process, as schools shut and work dried up. By October 2020, her parents had settled on a suitable boy from their village of Ramathra in the district of Karauli, Rajasthan.

But Bairwa, now 18, wouldn’t hear of it. “During the pandemic, every family in the village was eager to marry off their girls. You’d have to invite less people, there were fewer expenses,” says Bairwa. “But I refused to be caught in a child marriage. There was a major backlash – constant fights. I finally threatened to run away and, fearing I would do something drastic, my family called it off. My mother convinced them to let me study and I joined a college.”

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‘I miss school’: 800m children still not fully back in classes

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Rights groups warn that children across the world are being pushed into abusive situations, from early marriage to child labour

Across the world 800 million children are still not fully back in school, Unicef is warning, with many at risk of never returning to the classroom the longer closures go on. There are at least 90 countries where schools are either closed or offering a mix of remote and in-person learning.

The UN agency’s chief of education, Robert Jenkins, told the Guardian that the closures are part of “unimaginable” disruption to children’s education.

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Family of girl, 12, forced to marry abductor condemn Pakistan authorities

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Criticism follows release of 29-year-old who kept girl chained in cattle pen, in latest case highlighting abuses of religious minorities

The family of a 12-year-old girl in Pakistan who was chained up in a cattle pen for more than six months, after allegedly being kidnapped and forced to marry her abductor, have attacked the authorities for refusing to act.

The case is among those now being examined by a government inquiry into the forced conversions of religious minority women and girls, after police released the man, saying they believed the girl had married him of her own free will.

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From Yemen to the UK: Noor’s story

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A women’s rights activist tells the extraordinary story of how she fled Yemen after her life was threatened, and her devastation at having to leave her four children behind. She describes her terrifying journey to the UK, where she faces an uncertain future

Anushka Asthana talks to Noor*, 29, who escaped from Yemen when her life was threatened because of her work as a human rights campaigner focusing on girls’ rights to education and the right for children not to be forced into marriage. Noor was forced into marriage at the age of 14, but later managed to divorce her husband.

She travelled alone with only smugglers and other desperate migrants for company on a terrifying eight-month journey to Britain. Noor was determined to flee not only because her own life was in danger, but also in the hope of rescuing her four children from the Yemen civil war once she had reached safety, and because her children’s lives would be at risk if she remained in the country. She describes the devastating impact of leaving them behind. Her oldest daughter is at risk of child marriage in Yemen, and she says time is running out to bring her children to safety.

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‘She won’t be the last’: why not enough has changed since the murder of Banaz Mahmod

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In 2006, the 20-year-old was killed on the orders of family members. Ahead of an ITV drama on the case, her sister reflects on the police response

As a television drama of the real-life investigation into the murder of a young woman by her family airs this month, her sister told the Guardian little had changed since Banaz Mahmod was killed in 2006.

“Lessons have not been learned. Banaz is not the first ‘honour’ killing and she won’t be the last,” says Payzee Mahmod, a British Kurd, who was a teenager when her sister disappeared from her south London home. Banaz had gone to the police five times for help.

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Why do Dubai’s princesses keep trying to run away? – podcast

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Ola Salem discusses the divorce case of Princess Haya, who fled to London. Why do royal women keep trying to escape the emirate? Plus John Marsden on the growing trend of toxic parenting

Over the summer, Princess Haya, the estranged wife of the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, asked an English court for a forced marriage protection order relating to their children and a non-molestation order after the breakdown of their marriage.

The Guardian reporter Haroon Siddique describes the court scene to Rachel Humphreys, while the journalist Ola Salem discusses previous attempts by two other princesses to flee the Dubai royal family, and looks at why this case is so significant for women in the emirate.

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Love Commandos: guardians of forbidden romance accused of extortion

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Sanjoy Sachdev helped scores of Indian couples marry across cultural lines, and against family wishes – but police are asking if he was a fraud

It was a world-famous charity dedicated to rescuing star-crossed Indian lovers. For the past nine years, using a network of secret safe-houses across India, Love Commandos sheltered thousands of young people seeking to marry outside their caste, religion or clan – and who feared their families might kill them for it.

Sanjoy Sachdev, the organisation’s chairman, became one of India’s most celebrated activists. Bollywood star Aamir Khan interviewed him on television. International clothing brand Bjorn Borg raised money for his group. Filmmakers and journalists found the craggy, chain-smoking activist who could quote Robert Frost irresistible.

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Women forced into marriage overseas asked to repay cost of return to UK

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Foreign Office criticised for seeking to recoup outlay on victims’ fares and expenses

The Foreign Office is seeking to recoup the cost of repatriating young women who have been forced into marriages overseas, it has been revealed, prompting charities to criticise the government for making women “pay for their protection”.

An investigation found that many of the 82 victims of forced marriage repatriated in 2016-17 had to pay for living costs incurred between making distress calls and returning home, as well as their airfare, while others received loans from the Foreign Office.

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