West Yorkshire again

[Imnobody4]

West Yorkshire has 'country's highest number of recorded child marriages', report by Leeds honour abuse charity Karma Nirvana claimsMore than a third of alleged child marriages in the UK were reported to police in West Yorkshire, according to a local charity.

www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/crime/west-yorkshire-has-countrys-highest-number-recorded-child-marriages-report-leeds-honour-abuse-charity-karma-nirvana-claims-3060390

It's about time the gov took action on banning marriage under 18. This has been called for since about 2012.

@Imnobody4

Totally agree. I would be appalled at the thought of my 16 year old being married off when she is in some ways still transitioning from child to women and finding her way. I agree the age should be raised to 18.

However, this issue is about children younger than 16 being married off which is utterly appalling and child abuse. The girls are often brought over from Pakistan and in Bradford may originate from the Mirpur district which is a small part of the country. Many families from Bradford maintain strong familial links and often travel back and forth. As a consequence many of these marriages are cousins (and their parents frequently related as well) and hence the astronomical level of deformities and abnormalities in babies in the district. This was a hidden scandal never spoken about for years as health professionals were all at risk of being labelled racists. So,e families experience abnormalities and deformities in all their children which is a tragedy

It took the courageous MP for Keighley Anne Cryer to blow the whistle on this and guess what, she suffered the screams of racism, including from her own colleagues, Labour MPs. The matter needs to still be discussed more formally and some progress has been made in that in Bradford genetic testing is available to make them aware of the risks, but of course this doesn't help vulnerable young children being married illegally.

A test for me of Keir Starmer is when public health issues and child abuse issues are recognised for what they are by his own MPs and do not stem from racism. We have still not learnt the lessons from Rotherham and all the other places where this has occurred

I was working locally as a midwife in the 1970s. We knew about these issues then.

The youngest mother I cared for was 13.

Possibly the most corrupt police and local government in the country

And people still wonder why Labour lost so many seats in the north in the last election. Once a stronghold, Labour have lost the plot here now and with people from all ethnic backgrounds.

Northerners might be traditionally staunch Labour strongholds but they are also culturally conservative. Bradford is not Brighton.

Do women here think all marriage below the age of 18 should be banned

I do and 1st cousin marriage

I believe marriage under 18 should be banned.
And if medical evidence backs it up, marriage of first cousins.

I suspect it's not first cousins that's the issue- it's first cousins in families that are already interrelated in other ways. Evidence may not back up straight forward first cousin marriages, there may need to be further consanguinity for the evidence to be clear cut.

When first cousin marriage is perpetuated down 4 generations, the gene pool is concentrated and the risks increase.

Do women here think all marriage below the age of 18 should be banned

That's a yes from me too.

Of course you shouldn't be able to tie yourself into a legal contract with far reaching, long lasting consequences, which is difficult and expensive to get out of (and if the other partner refuses to cooperate, can take 5 years to get out of) while you are still a child.

Add into that the potential for sexual abuse within marriage, especially where there's an age difference.

I can't believe this needs to be said on a feminist board.

Of course child marriage is a BAD thing, and bringing UK law into line with UN recommendations is long overdue.

@testing987654321

It's not clear from the title that this thread is about child marriage in the UK.

Do women here think all marriage below the age of 18 should be banned?

Yes. It’s a legal contract and no one should enter that before age 18.

I do think marriage under 18 should be banned. They're supposed to still be in education or training and hopefully enjoying life before they head out into the world of adulthood.

A relative works with a girl who is in a forced, abusive marriage. The husband is a "cousin" , the marriage took place outside the UK. The husband is illiterate, doesn't work, spends all his time with his male friends. She is much younger than him, works full time and does all the domestic drudgery. So not even traditional housewife supported by working husband. Just an excuse for lazy misogyny.

Yes, marriage under 18 should be banned - there's plenty of other things that are forbidden to under 18s, and entering into a contract of marriage should be one of them.

I actually think that 1st cousin marriage should also be on the list - I confess to it largely being because I can't imagine that the benefits outweigh the risks here.

If the marriages take place outside the UK are they legally recognised in the UK? If so, wouldn't an obvious place to safeguard be at the point of this legal recognition? An individual interview with each of the couple to establish what's going on? And if it's happening in the UK, I thought we were getting pretty hot on sham marriages, I feel that again, this is something that could be flagged and investigated, and the only reason it's not must be fear of accusations of racism.

The fact of the matter is, that the culture of the UK doesn't support forced marriage or child marriage. Nothing wrong with arranged marriage if all are happy with it, but abuse is abuse, and the women need to be helped, families need this cultural tradition to be broken, and girls need to know where and who they can go to for help.

As to why it's not talked about, I've seen it talked about, but like others have said, if it's not in the news, I don't even live in the UK any more, and never lived in Yorkshire, so I would have no way of knowing unless someone from there starts talking about it.

There was some discussion recently of making marriage under 18 illegal. Previously it had been a vanishing small number of girls generally to boys of similar age. Not sure which parliamentary group it was.

www.girlsnotbrides.org/child-marriage/united-kingdom/

The United Kingdom has committed to eliminate child, early and forced marriage by 2030 in line withtarget 5.3of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The United Kingdom co-sponsored the following Human Rights Council resolutions: the2013procedural resolution on child, early and forced marriage, the2015resolution on child, early and forced marriage, the2017resolution on recognising the need to address child, early and forced marriage in humanitarian contexts, and the2019resolution on the consequences of child marriage. In 2014, The United Kingdom also signed ajoint statementat the Human Rights Council calling for a resolution on child marriage.

The United Kingdom co-sponsored the2013,2014,2016and2018UN General Assembly resolutions on child, early and forced marriage.

The United Kingdom ratified theConvention on the Rights of the Childin 1991, which sets a minimum age of marriage of 18, and theConvention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women(CEDAW) in 1986, which obligates states to ensure free and full consent to marriage.

In 2016 the UN Child Rights Committeerecommendedthat the United Kingdom raise the minimum age of marriage to 18 across all devolved administrations, overseas territories and Crown dependencies. It raisedconcernsabout the number of children exposed to harmful practices such as Female Genital Mutilation and Cutting (FGM/C) and forced marriage within parts of the UK and its territories.

In 2019, the CEDAW Committeeexpressedconcerns about the relatively high number of forced marriages in the country, despite efforts made by the Forced Marriage Unit. The Committee recommended the United Kingdom to strengthen efforts to combat forced marriages, including by sensitising parents on the need for free and full consent of their daughters to enter into marriage, and consider alleviating the costs for the repatriation of victims (in cases of child marriage performed overseas).

@gardenbird48

That’s an odd thing to say Flax.

It would be interesting to find out how good the police are at prosecuting these crimes or are there the same difficulties as experienced in the Rotherham scandal putting racial/cultural sensitivities ahead of the safety of (mainly) girls.

It dies seem that being a Stonewall champion corresponds with a worrying lack of effectiveness from the police.

I agree with this.

I'm not sure that banning marriage under 18 will work. Surely the involved parties will just not declare the marriage has taken place to authorities, though the community will know.

You have a situation where girls and young women will be religiously married and seen to be so in their community, but there will be no British state recognition of the union. In the eyes of the state, these women will be single and if they have children, they will be single mothers.

This is the predicament of a lot of second and third wives in Britain. They are legally single mothers.

I'm not sure that this is a better circumstances at all.

I think first cousin marriages should be banned - they are responsible for a huge number of disabilities amongst children, particularly in the Pakistani community.

The only reason this hasn't been addressed is because it is easier to sweep things under the carpet than be accused of racism.

@Packingsoapandwater

I'm not sure that banning marriage under 18 will work. Surely the involved parties will just not declare the marriage has taken place to authorities, though the community will know.

You have a situation where girls and young women will be religiously married and seen to be so in their community, but there will be no British state recognition of the union. In the eyes of the state, these women will be single and if they have children, they will be single mothers.

This is the predicament of a lot of second and third wives in Britain. They are legally single mothers.

I'm not sure that this is a better circumstances at all.

No, you tackle this with educational outreach, community outreach via organisations like Karma Nirvana.

You don't throw up your hands and effectively say "well bad things are going to happen anyway, they've always happened, so hey, let's just decriminalize those bad things, problem swept under carpet, phew."

You can make as many laws as you like.
If people don't recognise or adhere to the law and the police don't uphold the law, there isn't much point.

I agree Flax I live in SY in an affected area and it's still not discussed.
A 21 yo woman was Gang raped at six pm in a local park. (Only last week)
They've made arrests now and the suspects are aged 16, 15, 14, 14 and thirteen.

There won't be much coverage in the media due to the ages of suspects but there won't be discussion because of community tensions

SYP are tossers.

I got absolutely pilloried on here a while ago for pointing out that there are areas in certain parts of WY that are extremely unsafe. Certain ethnic groups (of women and girls) are considered by other ethnic groups (of men) to be whores, slags, prostitutes. No exceptions. Holbeck doesn't help.

Don’t worry about posting here flax

We are a mix o& people

I am Scottish. It’s legal to get married here without parents permission

Sometimes we have to be careful what we can post here

I think it’s good that people bring other things to discuss and hear about our different regions

Should have said 16

Postie was at the door 😂