Workshop on Combating Forced Marriage: Experience from the UK and Norway

I would like to welcome you all to this workshop hosted by the British Embassy and the Directorate of Integration and Diversity (IMDi). In particular, I am happy to welcome a team from the UK's Forced Marriage Unit and the NGO Karma Nirvana who have come to share their experiences from a British context.

A forced marriage is usually one where people are coerced into marriage against their will. The pressure can include physical and/ or emotional pressure.

Forced marriage is an abuse of human rights and cannot be justified on any religious or cultural grounds. It is, I would say “of course”, different from arranged marriages, where the consent of both parties is present. The tradition of arranged marriages has operated successfully within many communities and countries for a very long time.

Forced marriages usually take place in societies which are somewhat community oriented or “we-oriented” In other types of societies,  family or community pressure has much less effect on the individual.

This obviously does not mean that forced marriages have to happen in communities where the collective is important. But we have to see and acknowledge the role of collective pressure in order to be able to fight it.

This is, as I see it, one of the main challenges of combating forced marriages in a Western, individualistic context. The dynamics within a family where collectivistic values dominate differs somewhat from the typical Western family. Even though I am sure that being loyal to and sticking up for your family is more or less important to most people, these values are put even higher in “we-oriented” families. Children of collectivistic cultures are expected to understand and act on a strong sense of responsibility toward the family, the group and the community.

Family loyalty can make it harder to say “No, I do not want to marry this person”, or make it harder to stick to a “no” when your parents don't listen. Trying to help people who are being forced into marriage against their will or who want to get out of a forced marriage is hard. But it becomes even harder when the persons in question do not want to see their parents or family get into trouble.

It would be easier if we could just get our Rambo-gear on and physically get the person in question out of the situation at hand, without regards to the person’s surroundings. It would be easier. For us. But it wouldn’t necessarily be easier on, or fair to, the person in question. You can agree or disagree on the importance of family loyalty, you can say: “I wish it wasn’t important” or, “I don’t think it should be that important”, but you still have to face the fact that for the youngsters who do end up being married against their will, this is one of the issues that they have to struggle with.

Community oriented cultures see people as deeply interdependent with their group. Hence, making unconventional choices is far more “costly” in a community oriented context, than in an individual oriented one. Those who do break out of a forced marriage or leave their family out of fear that they will be forcibly married, are often alone in a sense that is hard for people from an individual oriented community to understand.

However, these factors should never keep us from trying to help or trying to empower the person in question. But it does add an extra dimension to the whole challenge.

We have to be able to identify this dimension and other dimensions that forced marriage or the threat of forced marriage have on our target group in order to be effective. And we should be able to do this without undermining the choices of those who choose what some may see as the strange custom of arranged marriages.

The Norwegian Government’s work against forced marriages goes back to the 1990s, and the first Action Plan was launched in 1998. Since then, the focus on this problem has increased as more cases have reached public support services, as well as NGOs working with such issues.

In June this year, the Government presented a new Action Plan against forced marriages. The plan contains 40 measures and involves 8 different Ministries. More than 70 million Norwegian kroner have been allocated to this aim in the 2008 budget.

We are proud. It is the first time in Norwegian history that such a large amount has been allocated to combating forced marriages. However, it is not always the amount that matters, but how you spend it. Do challenge us on that. It is important that we present measures that are effective and that match the challenges at hand.

I am not going to say much more about Norwegian policies, as I am sure that Director General Arni Hole from the Ministry of Children and Equality will elaborate more than adequately on that later on.

All of you participating in this workshop have a common aim in finding viable strategies and solutions in the work against forced marriage. Sharing experiences and viewpoints concerning the issues and policies related to forced marriage will hopefully bring us a step closer to this aim.

With this I would like to congratulate you on an interesting programme for today’s workshop, and wish you all good luck on your important work.