AUGUST and September are the peak months for organisations working with the victims of forced marriage.

As the school holidays draw to a close, many young Britons who were taken for what they believed to be family holidays in Pakistan and India are realising that their trip had an altogether different purpose.

“Many children will be missing from class when school starts next week. They will have been married overseas. Others will be back, but they will be married,” said Jasvinder Sanghera, of the Karma Nirvana Asian Women’s Project in Derby, which deals with an average of seven new cases of forced marriage a week.

Forced marriage is not a religious or cultural issue — no leading world religion supports it. It is an issue of basic human rights. Its victims, some as young as 12 or 13, are compelled to marry when they do not want to. The practice frequently involves abduction, threats to kill, assault, false imprisonment, emotional blackmail, rape and child abuse. And all at the hands of close family members.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Forced Marriage Unit deals with about 250 to 300 cases a year, and its embassies and consulates help to repatriate about 200 victims a year. But experts believe that the true number of victims is much higher. Most cases in Britain involve Muslim families, although the practice is not restricted to one religious or ethnic group. At least a third of known victims are under 16 and about 15 per cent are male.

Those who refuse to take part are often threatened with death, and it is acknowledged that many of the 12 so-called honour killings of young women in Britain every year are linked to the practice.

Those who endure it, or escape, do not always fare much better: the suicide rates among young Asian women in the UK are three times the national average.

Last year the establishment of the Forced Marriage Unit put the issue firmly on the policy map. But this summer ministers dropped proposals to outlaw forced marriage.

Supporters of legislation argue that it would send out a clear signal to the communities involved that the practice would simply not be tolerated.

Ms Sanghera rejects the argument that outlawing forced marriage would drive it underground, or that young women would be afraid to complain for fear that their parents may be prosecuted. “That is what they used to say about outlawing domestic violence,” she said. Ms Sanghera said that government guidance issued to social workers and teachers on how to help forced marriage victims was next to useless because there was no compulsion for them to implement it.

Commander Steve Allen, of the Metropolitan Police, who advises the Association of Chief Police Officers on honour-related violence, accepts that the decision not to outlaw forced marriage could be seen by some communities as a signal that it was acceptable. But he said that existing laws were adequate.

Anna Marie Hutchinson, a solicitor specialising in cases of child abduction and forced marriage, who acts for the charity Reunite, believes that any legislation would have been an empty shell.

Far more important, she says, is ensuring that swift action is taken when a case comes to light. Under the Anglo-Pakistan Protocol of 2003, children abducted from Britain, for whatever purpose, can be returned home, she said.

Hannana Siddique, of Southall Black Sisters, a group that works with victims of forced marriage and abduction, believes that the key to combating forced marriage would be for leaders in the worst affected communities to offer practical support to victims of forced marriage.

Some groups and community leaders, including the Muslim Council of Britain, have spoken out against forced marriage, but this is not enough, Ms Siddique says. “Victims should feel that they can go to their community leaders and get practical help, such as housing. At present, they are more likely to be told, ‘You should listen to what your parents say’,” she added.

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