Forced marriage: enhancing protection and prevention responses

This project will conduct the first comprehensive study of Forced Marriage Protection Orders.

Forced marriage is marriage without the consent of one or both parties, including child marriage, and has been criminalised in the UK since 2014. Forced marriage is a serious violation of an individual’s human rights and, when it happens to children, is a form of child abuse. It puts victims/survivors at risk of honour killings and commonly leads to enduring harms such as abduction, domestic violence, rape, forced pregnancy and domestic servitude. In the UK, forced marriage primarily affects women and girls from some black and minority ethnic communities, a majority of whom are of South Asian or Middle Eastern origin, although it is affecting an increasing number of Somali children and teenagers. The government’s Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) supports 1200-1400 victims/survivors every year, a figure which does not include those who do not or cannot seek support. Forced Marriage Protection Orders (FMPOs) were introduced in England and Wales in 2008 to prevent forced marriage and protect its through prohibitions, restrictions or requirements such as limits on contact and passport seizures. However, although approximately 200 to 250 FMPOs have been granted each year in England and Wales since 2014, little is known about their use and their impact. This project will undertake the first comprehensive study of the nature, patterns, impact and effectiveness of FMPOs in England and Wales, with the aim of informing national and international policy and practice to better protect victims.

The multi-method study will begin by mapping the trends in the use of FMPOs over time by drawing on data from Ministry of Justice. The second stage will analyse reported judgements of FMPO court cases to analyse the courts’ conceptualisation of and responses to different forms of coercion. The third stage will undertake quantitative analysis of data from five police forces operating in areas with a high prevalence of forced marriage (n=1000) to explore trends in the reporting of forced marriage to the police. More detailed qualitative analysis will be carried out on a sub-sample of 60 cases across the five forces. Semi-structured interviews with 25 professionals with experience of leading or supporting applications for FMPOs will explore the challenges, opportunities involved in using FMPOs, good practice and practice gaps. Finally, the researchers will carry out 20 life history interviews with a sample of survivors to explore their lived experience of (the threat of) forced marriage, seeking help and receiving services.

To respond to the spread of the Covid pandemic in the UK which coincided with the start of this project in March 2020, the project also explores practitioners’ experiences of supporting victims/survivors in relation to forced marriage and domestic abuse during the pandemic.

The findings from this project will facilitate evidence-based change to improve practice in the judiciary, police and other agencies that encounter forced marriage. It will inform policy debates on FMPOs and international policy transfers at a time of increasing interest in this issue. By combining perspectives from victims/survivors and practitioners with case law and police file analysis, the project will advance conceptual debates on intersectionality and gendered violence.