On 9 May 2024, the Forced Marriage Unit published its statistics for 2023. I have written a more detailed report, but here are the key findings and recommendations.
Key Findings:
The FMU saw another decrease in “advice and support” cases and forced marriage enquiries.
There is no clear pattern to calls, but spikes in March and December (and low numbers in the summer) suggest, at least, that those at risk are not making contact with the FMU before the long school holidays (usually understood to be a time of heightened risk, at least for school-age children and young people).
The highest number of cases were in the 18-21 age bracket, revealing the need for all stakeholders to be more aware of the risks facing this age group.
A significant number of cases handled by the FMU do not involve children, serving as a reminder that forced marriage can happen to people of all ages in the UK.
There was another decrease in the percentage of “advice and support” cases concerning female victims, despite forced marriage being an issue which mainly affects women (and girls) across the globe.
In the main, the FMU helps British nationals. In most cases, vfictims are also in the UK.
In almost half of cases, the forced marriage has already happened.
An increasing number of cases were from the West Midlands. This region, London and the North West remain the regions where victims to whose cases the FMU gave advice and support were most likely to be located. There were more cases per 100,000 people in the West Midlands than in any other region.
An increasing number of referrals to the FMU are made from other parts of the Home Office: this was over 1/3 of all referrals in 2023.
Recommendations:
Consistency is needed in how FMU statistics are collected, collated and presented. There should be no further changes in this for 2024 and future years.
Consistency needs to be guaranteed between the FMU’s written report on their data, and their published data-tables. The 2023 data tables should be updated with accurate data.
Although we should recognise that men are at risk of forced marriage as well as women, the FMU should analyse its data and connections to try and understand why the gender split of cases to which it offered advice and support was so different in 2023.
The FMU’s statistics support some stereotypes around forced marriage (e.g. that it predominantly affects people from South Asian communities). It is important to check that the high reports of cases with a link to Pakistan, and/or from the West Midlands and North West (with large South Asian populations) are not sure to these stereotypes (meaning other cases are not being spotted, and helped).
The FMU should engage with stakeholders and find out why there has been a drop in referrals from some, and why there has been such an increase in referrals from within other areas of the Home Office itself (especially UK Borders and Immigration). This is particularly important as service providers and other stakeholders are reporting a loss of trust in the FMU.
This project stems from Karma Nirvana’s strategic priorities for 2021-2024, one of which is to “Develop a national dataset to better understand the scope, scale and prevalence of – and appropriate responses to – Honour Based Abuse (HBA). This is vital, because there is currently no prevalence estimate for HBA, or data-informed understanding of the national, regional or local scope and scale of the problem. Even where organisations are collecting data, therefore, we cannot know what proportion of the total number of real cases they are identifying.
My research confirms what was probably already known in the sector: currently, data on HBA is incomplete, very piecemeal, and not very reliable. This means we cannot use the current data to meaningfully inform understandings of scope and scale, or estimate prevalence, because of its incompleteness, piecemeal nature, and unreliability.
In this blog, I cover some initial findings emerging from the research. I have surveyed quantitative and qualitative data available in the public domain, and also spoken to 22 people in four key sectors: the police, healthcare, local authorities, and the third sector.
What Data?
Data is currently collected by (at least):
Police forces across the UK.
The Forced Marriage Unit, relating to their helpline.
Family Courts, relating to Forced Marriage Protection Orders and FGM protection orders.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
Healthcare providers, because of the statutory duty to report FGM.
Karma Nirvana, from their helpline (published by the Office for National Statistics).
Some local authorities.
IDVAs (in some cases)
MARACS (in some cases)
Schools (in some cases)
Other service providers (e.g. refuges, by-and-for service providers, domestic abuse charities etc.)
Creating a national database is not as simple, however, as amalgamating all this data, even if that was practically possible.
There are several issues with this data, many of which are recognised across the sector. These include:
Not all the anonymised data which is being collected being made available to other organisations, researchers and/or the general public.
Gaps in the data (e.g. in the CPS data, between 2019 and 2024) making longitudinal understanding of data difficult.
Organisations changing the way they collect or present data (e.g. the Forced Marriage Unit) making longitudinal comparisons difficult.
Organisations only collecting data on a specific sub-set of HBA (e.g. forced marriage) and/or for a very specific region (e.g. one local authority).
Data being organised differently for analysis. For instance, some organisations, (e.g., the FMU) collect data on an annual year basis, and other organisations (e.g. Karma Nirvana and the police) on a financial year basis. Some organisations use police force areas to geographically group data, others use local authority areas, and others use NHS commissioning areas, and these do not directly overlap.
Different software systems recording HBA in different ways (and/or allowing HBA to be directly tagged, or not).
No clear process for flagging or tagging something as HBA (e.g., there is no official offence code for HBA in the police).
Limited time and resource for people on the frontline to properly identify HBA.
Limited understanding of how to properly tag something as HBA on an organisation or agency’s systems.
Inaccuracies and/or over-counting of incidents, e.g. a contact with police being tagged as “HBA”, “forced marriage” and “FGM”, when it may have been only one, or two, of these things, not all three.
Data-collation and/or analysis being done by people with no specialist training in HBA (e.g. staff in IT departments), meaning some qualitative data might be missed.
Organisations using different definitions of HBA.
Lack of current and/or mandatory training on HBA, leading to a lack of confidence from people on the frontline in identifying HBA.
All of these issues create barriers for good data collection and data-sharing, and for the creation of evidence-based policy and understanding of the best response to HBA in the UK. If the data going into any database or analysis is not robust, then any findings, or policies built on those findings, won’t be robust either.
What Happens?
Data being collected on HBA is currently being used by stakeholders to:
Meet statutory obligations to record and report data on certain issues
Making the case for the need for funding
Create “problem profiles” to improve localised understanding (e.g. in the police) and/or specific, local case studies for training and learning
Be transparent
Inform campaigning and media work
Very few people I interviewed said data would directly inform their organisation’s policy on HBA. Similarly, very few said they shared data for reasons to do with informing evidence-based policy, apart from informing the funding policies by local and national government or other bodies – i.e. evidencing need.
Similarly, few respondents said they had a clear idea of what other organisations did with any data they shared. This included when they sent statistics to government departments, aside from where those were published publicly for reasons of transparency.
Some noted that there would be barriers to sharing data, especially where that data is owned by the providers of specialist software, but many other interviewees expressed themselves as keen to share anonymised, high-level data if they knew who with, and for what purpose.
What Next?
One reason Karma Nirvana are campaigning for a statutory definition of HBA is that it would help overcome at least one issue identified above – that of different organisations using different definitions, and therefore collecting data which is not necessarily comparable as it might include different things. A sector-wide definition has recently been agreed, and the Home Office recently surveyed the sector on what definitions they used, and whether or not there should be a statutory one. We will have to wait and see what they decide based on the outcomes of that survey.
Of course, a statutory definition would make little difference if it was not also backed up by government requirements for organisations to report their data, and collect it robustly. Many people I interviewed for this project explained how their organisations were relatively reactive when it came to data collection and processing: they would collect and share what they were asked to (e.g. by government or funders).
Interestingly, no data on HBA has been requested as part of the local authority return on how many victims of domestic abuse they supported as part of the Support in Safe Accommodation Data Monitoring Collection. This means that the need for specialist support for victims of HBA is not necessarily being mapped by local authorities, although HBA is recognised as a form of Domestic Abuse. In turn, this suggests not as much specialist provision as might be needed is being provided.
Overall, data-collection practices need to be improved, and support (including financial resource) to do so provided. Some barriers to comparison could be ironed-out by sector-wide agreement on how to present and collate data. Others will take a lot longer to fix, as the underlying issues are more fundamental.
On 20 June 2023 the Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) published its statistics for 2022. The headline fact is that the FMU handled 35 fewer cases in 2022 than in 2021. In this blog post, I look at other key points to note, comparing the statistics to those from 2021. It is not possible to compare data before 2021, as the FMU radically changed how it recorded cases in 2021.
Key findings: ▪ Calls to the FMU do not correlate to the school year, highlighting both that it is not only school-age children who are at risk of forced marriage (FM) and that education providers account for relatively few referrals to the FMU (9% in 2022). ▪ Although over 50% of victims were aged under 21, half of those victims (i.e. 26% of the total) were aged 18-21. This is potentially a group of victims who are overlooked by stakeholders – for instance, children’s social services and education providers are unlikely to be monitoring this age group for signs of risk. ▪ Between them, London, the West Midlands, the North West, and Yorkshire and the Humber accounted for two-thirds of all cases in 2022. This may mean that people in these areas are more at risk, or that stakeholders in these areas are more alert to risk, and likely to contact the FMU (which is based in London). Data from the recent 2021 census might help us understand causes of risk in these areas. ▪ Only around a quarter of referrals come from victims themselves, their friends, family, partners or colleagues. This raises questions of whether private individuals are unable (perhaps forcibly prevented) from seeking help, or whether they feel less comfortable contacting a government agency than professionals (e.g. police, social workers, teachers) do. ▪ A quarter of referrals come from social services, which may account for school-age victims being the most common age group in cases handled by the FMU (though adult social services may also be responsible for referring cases where victims have a disability, who tend to be older). ▪ Pakistan was the “focus country” in almost 50% of cases. This tells us something about who is reporting cases to the FMU, and what kinds of risk of FM they perceive. It probably does not tell us much about risk or prevalence across the UK. ▪ Three quarters of victims were British (including dual nationality). This shows that FM is not just a problem which affects people from overseas. ▪ In almost half of cases, victims were in the UK and had not yet been forced to marry. This shows that, at least in cases involving the FMU, good work is being done by stakeholders to prevent FM (though not necessarily to manage to prevent the abuse which may be experienced as part of efforts to force someone to marry). However, many people are still being taken abroad (despite the efforts of stakeholders including UK Borders and Immigration), and far more than ought to be the case have been forced to marry before the FMU is alerted to their case.
A full report is available via the Rights Lab website. You can also download it below.
The importance of evidence-based policy is well-recognised. Without evidence, how can people plan policies that will have the desired outcome? An essential requirement for evidence is good data. A lack of good data on Honour-Based Abuse in the UK means that policy is not currently robustly evidence-based. There is no way of knowing, therefore, if it is effectual, or what might be better.
Data is collected on Honour-Based Abuse by a number of stakeholders. For instance, police forces, children’s and adult’s social-services, housing officers, health professionals, and schools all have statutory obligations to collect some relevant data, and often collect more. However, this collection appears to be idiosynratic and to differ widely across the country and different sectors.
Evidence from the national helpline for victims of Honour Based Abuse suggests this is a significant problem in the UK. Since its foundation in 2008, the helpline at Karma Nirvana has received 100,000 calls. These are both from victims, and from other stakeholders (family, friends, teachers, social workers etc.) who are concerned about someone they think is at risk, or already experiencing Honour-Based Abuse. In 2021/2022, Karma Nirvana heard from 1,130 professionals who were supporting victims of Honour-Based Abuse.
This project, funded by a British Academy Innovation Fellowship, seeks to: 1) map key stakeholders who are, and who should be, collecting data on Honour-Based Abuse (including forced marriage); 2) identify and share best-practice; 3) identify key barriers to data-sharing faced by stakeholders; 4) co-develop ways to overcome them.
Our aim is to improve data-collection so that policy aimed at ending Honour-Based Abuse, and supporting those at risk, can be properly evidence-based. This would mean policy could be more effectively monitored and evaluated, and lessons could be learned about effective (and less effective) policies and interventions. Ultimately, we hope this would lead to an end to Honour-Based Abuse in the UK.
Come back as this project develops for more updates! If you are a stakeholder who collects data, and you’d be willing to be interviewed for this project, please get in touch! (Email: helen.mccabe@nottingham.ac.uk)
In the first episode of the Forced Marriage Research Podcast, Dr. Helen McCabe and Dr. Hannah Baumeister discuss how different international courts have dealt with prosecutions of forced marriage in war; how they have understood forced marriage as a form of slavery in different ways; the implications of this for understanding forced marriage and slavery in non-conflict situations; and whether “forced marriage” as a term should be replaced with “forced conjugal association”.
Forced Marriage, International Travel, and Quarantine.
Wedding rings with surgical gloves.
As Covid-19 restrictions are eased in England, a new set of travel restrictions have come into place, including the need to quarantine in a government-approved hotel on arrival in the UK from a “red-list” country. Currently, many countries which regularly feature as “focus countries” for the forced marriage unit are on the “red list“. Quarantine costs £1,750. We are very concerned that the cost of quarantine may be a serious barrier for people being forced to marry abroad, making it harder – perhaps impossible – for them to return safely to the UK. We also think the current travel restrictions raise a number of other concerns relating to the safety of victims and survivors of forced marriage including around the need for specific tests before re-entering the UK and access to specialist services and safe accomodation on their return.
These concerns have been echoed by Karma Nirvana, in an open letter signed by twenty-two other leading campaigners and researchers on this issue. This was picked up by The Independent, and the Victims Commissioner, who said forced marriage victims “face many barriers”, and “hotel quarantine should not be one”. So far, neither the Home Office nor the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office have responded.
Although cases referred to the forced marriage unit almost halved in 2020, they still dealt with 753 cases in 2020, despite travel restrictions (and understandable caution about travelling internationally, even when it was permitted). 14 people needed assistance with repatriation from the forced marriage unit in 2020. These numbers are, of course, a lot smaller than the total number of cases, for instance, of Covid-19 experienced in the UK last year, but they are still higher than they should be, as that should be zero. Forced marriage is against the law in the UK and in many other countries, and recognised internationally as a human rights abuse.
We will continue to monitor the response from the government, and changes to travel restrictions.
Forced Marriage Research 