Zero tolerance: That forced marriage is traditional elsewhere in the world is no defence of this crime against women and girls

Perhaps if we simply called “forced marriage” rape many of the cultural and moral issues involved in it would fall into perspective. For that, after all, is what it is, though the rate of prosecution and conviction for forced marriage offences is even lower than that for rape. It is an unacceptable practice that has been allowed to persist for far too long, and certainly we need to acknowledge the strong ethnic and cultural bias in the statistics – the high proportion involving people of Pakistani heritage – in order to better understand and combat it.