The Home Office advises citizens who believe they are being forced into marriage to contact the police or a friend who might alert law enforcement.
The British government rescued 14 victims of forced marriage under the age of 16 after they were taken out of the country.
Newly released figures show 14 children were bought back into the UK by the Foreign Office’s Forced Marriage Unit in 2016. They had been taken or sent overseas, against their will, apparently to be married, The Birmingham Mail reported.
A Freedom of Information request revealed that nine young people aged 16 to 18, and 32 adults over 18, were also repatriated by the Forced Marriage Unit last year.
In a separate report by the Forced Marriage Unit it was revealed that it 1 428 cases in total were registered in 2016, including 202 in the West Midlands, the only region with more cases than London.
A caseworker in the Forced Marriage Unit described the case of a young woman “taken overseas by family under the guise of a family holiday and left with relatives” who was then told she would be married. The repatriation case was revealed in an article published by the Foreign Office in 2015.
The British caseworker had approached the relative when the young woman “sent a text saying her aunt was planning a shopping trip to a well known nearby mall, so my colleague arranged to meet up with her”.
When they met, the Foreign Office official escorted the young woman to the safety of the British embassy where she stayed until a flight home could be arranged.
The second report also showed that 612 of the cases involved Pakistan, with 121 involving Bangladesh and 79 India.
Forced Marriage Unit reported 202 calls or emails from people worried about being involved in, or knowing someone involved in, a forced marriage.
The Foreign Office received one call every two days on average from women and children in the West Midlands being forced into marriage. From January to December 2016, the Forced Marriage Unit noted a significant increase on last year, when the number stood at 165.
This represented nearly one in seven – 14 per cent – of all cases advised by the FMU. In total, the FMU received approximately 350 telephone calls per month in 2016.
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