Written - Forced Marriage and Honour Based Crime – Three Year Action Plan

The Minister for Social Justice and Local Government has recently approved a three year action plan to take forward work in Wales to deal with forced marriage and honour based crime.

On 26 July 2007 the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection Act) 2007 received Royal Assent. When the Act is brought into force it will provide civil remedies for those faced with forced marriage and for victims of forced marriage.
The Welsh Assembly Government acknowledges that offering the protection of legislation is only one part of tackling the forced marriage problem and since 2007 has been developing measures to deal with these issues. In February 2007, Inspector Lian Penhale, a secondee from South Wales Police, began to take forward issues such as the development of an action plan for Wales and the development of joint guidance with the Whitehall Forced Marriage Unit. Inspector Penhale’s work focused on three specific issues:

• To map the extent of forced marriage and honour based violence throughout Wales.
• Produce draft guidance documents for Education, Health and Social Services in respect of dealing with forced marriages and honour based violence.
• To produce an action plan for consideration by the Minister setting out how the Welsh Assembly Government can take forward the work regarding forced marriage and honour based violence.

Inspector Penhale concluded that there is no data available on the extent of the problem in Wales. There are around 300 UK cases per year dealt with by the Forced Marriage Unit but these cannot be broken down into Welsh cases. The Welsh Police Forces have recently started gathering data and this will need to be built on. The main non-government agencies working in this field include Black Association of Women Step Out, Henna, Women Connect First, Mewn Cymru, Welsh Women’s Aid and Cardiff Women’s Safety Unit. These organisations provided a lot of assistance to Inspector Penhale during her period of secondment. The main conclusion of Inspector Penhale’s work was that whilst there are pockets of good practice in Wales there must be a more co-ordinated approach focusing on prevention, awareness raising, training and guidance and proper monitoring.

The three year action plan will ensure that these issues are taken forward and a forced marriage sub-group of the All Wales Domestic Abuse Working Group will be responsible for providing advice on how best to co-ordinate the work.