Our Team
We are a team of researchers working with Karma Nirvana and survivors of forced/child marriage and/or honour-based abuse in their Survivor Ambasadors’ Panel.
Our Project
It is increasingly recognised that survivors of forced and child marriage should lead the campaign against these practices. However, there is little training for survivors considering doing so. Our team combines expertise in activism, media and communications in this area with cutting-edge knowledge in supporting survivors to engage in leadership in a fully informed, ethical and safe manner. We will work with survivors to co-develop a pilot project: an online training resource for survivors; those working to support them; and those looking to engage with them. This will include reflective materials and practical information on ethical engagement for all sides.
Further Details
| This project will work with survivors of child and forced marriage (CFM) in the UK to co-develop a pilot Survivor Advocacy Training Programme. It is increasingly recognised that those with lived experience should be leading campaigns to end forced and child marriage. Yet survivors are often expected to tell their stories and advocate for change in public and policy settings and at media and public events, without having had any training or support to do so. This can be exploitative in many ways, including leading to re-traumatisation and putting survivors at risk of harm. This project offers an intervention for the development of safe and ethical engagement with survivors of CFM in efforts to foster social and political change and end CFM in the UK. It aims to build survivors’ capacity for leadership and as advocates in local and national campaigns combatting CFM. Further core objectives that will enable us to achieve our overall aim include: CO1: To improve advocacy training and support for survivors of CFM. CO2: To promote ethical media and policy engagement with survivors of CFM. The necessity of introducing robust training and support for survivor advocates has been increasingly raised by survivors of CFM, including members of Karma Nirvana’s SAP, and media staff at relevant NGOs (like Fsadni). Drawing on learning from the anti-slavery space (and McCabe and Eglen’s work with Azadi, Kenya, on which this project draws) we also emphasise the need for survivors to understand the wide scope for activism in this space, and to be supported to reflect on what opportunities, and when, are right for them. This can include saying no, and/or deciding to develop leadership in a different sphere. To achieve CO1 we will co-develop an innovative Survivor Advocacy Training Programme to build the capacity of survivors for leadership in campaigns against CFM. This will include training on what advocacy is; why they might want to engage in advocacy, and what it involves, including training on public speaking, media engagement, and feeling empowered to use their lived experience in safe and ethical ways (as well as to say no to certain, or all, opportunities they encounter). This curriculum will be co-developed and piloted with survivors in the UK but will have international impact potential for NGOs and service providers working with survivors of CFM globally. To achieve CO2, we will produce a Survivor Engagement Ethical Guide for those seeking to engage survivor leaders in public and policy advocacy efforts, including media and journalists. Working with media contacts to gauge the kinds of advocacy roles they are interested engaging survivors in, we will co-develop with survivors an ethical checklist for media to ensure that those wanting to work with survivors are doing so in an ethical and safe way to avoid re-traumatisation. We will also produce a “Know Your Rights” checklist and reflective “Do I Want This (Now)?” tool for survivors and people supporting their engagement. We will produce a report for all participants on the process, outcomes and next steps. Check back here as the project progresses for links to our outputs. |
Forced Marriage Research 