NOTE OF THE FORCED MARRIAGE NETWORK MEETING: 24 MARCH 2005, MILLENNIUM HOTEL, GLASGOW
In Attendance
Chair: Yvonne Strachan, Head of SE Equality Unit
Inspector Gordon Hunter, ACPOS
Annette Bonar, Association of Directors of Social Work
Shenaz Bahadur, City of Edinburgh Council
Jackie McPhail, CoSLA Refugee and Asylum Seekers Consortium
Huma Awan, Council of British Pakistanis (Scotland)
Lesley Irving, Equality Unit
Joyce McVarrie, Equality Unit
Eileen Flanagan, Equality Unit
Suzanne Rennie, Equality Unit
Helen Hughes, Family Law Association
John McCafferty, General Register Office for Scotland
Alison Elliot, Glasgow City Council
Ann Marie Mullaney, Glasgow City Council
Kath Gallagher, Glasgow Violence Against Women Partnership
Katie Cosgrove, Greater Glasgow NHS Board
Sathi Majumdar, Hemat Gryffe Women's Aid
Rita Kathuria, Hemat Gryffe Women's Aid
Brij Gandhi, Meridian
Salma Siddique, Napier University School of Community Health/SAMH
Pat Elsmie, Saheliya
Girijamba Polubothu, Shakti Women's Aid
Nasra Bibi, Shakti Women's Aid
Michael Clancy, The Law Society
Ghazala Hakeem, The Muslim Women's Resource Centre
Rosemary Sleith, Senior Welfare Advisor University of Paisley
Jeanette Black, Rape Crisis Worker, Women and Children First
Welcome and Apologies
1. Yvonne Strachan welcomed everyone to the first meeting of the Forced Marriage Network and invited the members to introduce themselves. Apologies had been received from Citizen's Advice Scotland, the Commission for Racial Equality, the Edinburgh Muslim Community Association, Janette de Haan, Glasgow Women's Support Project, Jean Murphy, Corporate Policy, Glasgow City Council and Susan Gunn, Equalities & Diversity Team, Dundee City Council.
Update on the Scottish Executive's Work on Forced Marriage
2. Yvonne gave a brief outline of the purpose of the meeting and an update on the work to date. She explained that the development of specific work around forced marriage needed to be looked at in a Scottish context, building on the excellent work currently being carried out by statutory and voluntary bodies, many of whom were represented at the meeting. The Network would be crucial in taking the issue forward in Scotland and giving it a national focus. She informed the group of the UK Government's intention to consult over the summer on whether to create a specific criminal offence of forcing someone to marry. The meeting then went into discussion on the areas that Network members felt needed to be tackled.
3. Brij Gandhi highlighted the need for caution when raising the issue of forced marriage to avoid sole reference to the Pakistani/ South Asian communities. There was agreement that the issue was not particular to any one race or religious group, and that in all communications we should be clear on the distinction between forced and arranged marriages.
4. Nasra Bibi felt it was very important for the Scottish Executive to consider if this is an issue about culture or human rights. She felt there must be a working definition for forced marriage which is adhered to. Eileen Flanagan stated that the issue was very much a human rights issue. Nasra said it was very important for the Executive to promote that view.
5. It was reported that an internal Scottish Executive Working Group to connect the Executive's work in this area across all Departments. This will feed into the Network and also receive feedback from it. It may be that the appropriate contact points across the Executive attend the Network meetings or smaller sub-groups as is felt appropriate.
6. Michael Clancy asked several questions: what were the connections between the Scottish Executive, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office(FCO) and the Home Office (HO); had there been any research on the extent of the problem in a Scottish context; what impact is there on males who are forced to marry and could we replace the term 'honour killing' with murder?
7. It was explained that the Executive had a good relationship with the FCO and HO through the recently launched Forced Marriage Unit (FMU), with members of the FMU speaking to the Executive's internal working group. Some of the issues (such as immigration) are reserved, and some (such as marriage) are devolved which means that there is a need to work closely with the UK Government, and link our work to theirs. In terms of research there had been little carried out in Scotland although organisations working in the field had undertaken studies.
8. Human Awan said that the Council of British Pakistanis (Scotland) had carried out research over a three year period through their Incompatible Marriages Project. It identified that in the 300+ cases of incompatible and forced marriage that they came across 90% of cases had an overseas element, so links with the FCO were very important. The Project also found that in 38% of cases the victim was male, therefore it was vital that the Network look at their needs too.
9. Inspector Gordon Hunter said that from a police perspective Scotland had not been involved in much work on forced marriage to date and that the issue must be moved forward. ACPOS guidelines had been developed on the back of those issued by ACPO, but these now needed to be mainstreamed and updated.
10. Salma Siddique felt it would be very useful to undertake a mapping exercise to discover what work is being undertaken in the area of forced marriage across Scotland. She also felt that there were lessons to be learned from work underway in other areas of the UK. In answer to Michael Clancy's question, she understood the meaning behind his point but felt that the term "honour killings" was a term which some organisations had worked hard to gain recognition of and it may become problematic or cause a negative impact if Scotland moved away from its general use. She felt it was essential to have an agreed glossary of words and stick to these terms consistently. These same terms should be used, so that they are understood by everyone. She also felt it would be very important that the Network be visible and publicised, possibly via a dedicated website?
11. Sathi Majumdar strongly felt that research was required on why forced marriages are happening. Until we understand why we will be unable to prevent them. Huma added that they happen sometimes because parents and grandparents want to preserve their culture. They fear that their children are becoming too westernised.
12. Gordon cautioned that if the Executive tries to tackle the issue of forced marriage through awareness raising/education then it must ensure that appropriate support systems and resources are in place to deal with the response. England found that more cases were being reported as a direct result of increased awareness of the problem and support organisations found it difficult to deal with the increased numbers of people looking for help and advice. This was agreed to be an important point.
13. Pat Elsmie said that it was not enough to work with young girls in isolation, there was a need to educate parents too as things that can be protected and prevented at school still go on in the home. Saheliya were currently looking at doing work in this area.
14. Katy Cosgrove felt that if we do plan to carry out research in this area and look at the support systems in place that we must look at the different needs of men and women in relation to the problem. This is a gendered issue and different approaches need to be taken.
15. Helen Hughes raised the issue of funding, where would funds come from to ensure that these support systems were in place? Yvonne said it is important to identify what systems are already in place before deciding how much money will be allocated to this. This is part of the remit of the group. Eileen felt that a mapping exercise would be crucial. The FMU would be carrying out an awareness-raising campaign to coincide with their consultation this summer, which is sure to trigger interest in Scotland, so it is essential that we are aware of what support is available in Scotland to tackle the problem.
16. Brij advised the group that Meridian had jointly hosted a conference in January on the subject of forced marriage and would publish the conference report in early April. Meridian planned to set up a pilot project in conjunction with Strathclyde Police to look into the issue of forced marriage in Glasgow. Many organisations have done work in isolation but they now all need to work together.
17. Kath Gallagher said that we need to be sure that work is being done to mainstream gender equality into service provision. Many women don't have access to public funds to escape forced marriage and the Home Office fund is not available to Scottish women. She also advised that the joint researched undertaken by Hemat Gryffe, Glasgow City Council and Strathclyde Police on forced marriage in Glasgow would hopefully be published in June this year.
18. Rosemary Sleith highlighted the case of a young women that she had been working with in conjunction with Hemat Gryffe, which raised the problem of further or higher education students affected by forced marriage as they have no access to support - there is no funding available to them. This needs to be rectified.
19. Alison Elliot informed the Network of a pilot scheme being run in high schools in Glasgow, using the Action Against Abuse pack, and also using a developed lesson plan and DVD. The pilot had had difficulties because some teachers had been concerned that they would be seen as being racist in raising these issues, and white pupils switched off when the issue of forced marriage was raised as they felt the problem didn't relate to them.
20. Shenaz Bahadur felt the main difficulty was how to address the issue of mainstreaming. She welcomed the Network and said that Edinburgh had looked to include this issue in its anti violence strategy but sought guidance on how the work would be best taken forward in terms of mainstreaming when in a lot of cases the issues were so specialised that mainstream services were not equipped to deal with the issues. Salma raised the issue of victims feeling stigmatised and shamed, and not wanting to access help from community support projects, but rather be supported through mainstream services, where they could become invisible. She felt that both choices should be open to those affected.
21. Giri Polubothu identified that partnership working and guidelines were required on how this will work. There must be a different set of guidelines for children under 16 and those over 16.
22. Michael asked whether there was a prescribed amount of funding allocated to this work. Yvonne said that, as she had mentioned earlier, there was a need to identify any gaps and look at the services already available first rather than saying x amount of funding is available and then trying to make this cover the work required. She restated the Executive's commitment to develop work in this area.
23. Salma felt there was a need to focus on the rights and responsibilities of the individual, that a human rights and legislative approach was required. She felt it would not be worthwhile to just concentrate on cultural sensitivities, when the essence of the argument is about consent of the individual.
Membership and future meetings
24. Members of the Network felt that representatives from Education organisations such as EIS and ADES should be included in the membership as well as the Crown Office, the Scottish Children's Reporters Administration and professionals working in the area of Child Protection.
25. It was felt that it would be useful for the Network to invite speakers from the Forced Marriage Unit and organisations from other parts of the UK such as the Southall Black Sisters to speak at future meetings.
26. It was agreed that after one further full meeting, the Network would change to a mainly virtual group but have irregular meetings, possibly timed to coincide with developments of the FMU's work, to maintain momentum and possibly sub-groups of the Network to focus on particular issues.
27. It was felt it would be helpful if the Executive distributed all the relevant UK Government guidance and policy documents on forced marriage to Network members.
Key Areas for the Network's Workplan
28. Yvonne summarised the key areas that the Network had identified where work should be progressed:
- Production of a timeline of activity including the UK Government's consultation
- Develop a glossary and definition of terms
- Look at interagency working and relationship between the FMU and Executive
- Mapping exercise covering support work in Scotland and available research at UK and Scotland level
- Regional links - look at work underway across the UK
- Educational input
- The issue of under 16s and what needs to be done in relation to child protection
- Look at utilising the links we already have across Scotland and enhance their work/partnerships already in place
- Mainstreaming
- Linking to human rights and understanding gender-based analysis
- Look at how the network can be as visible as possible/awareness raising
- The issue of funding (need to look at this as work unfolds)
- Look at material available on forced marriage already
Next Steps
29. Yvonne stated that the Executive would draft a workplan, based on the Network's discussions and the key areas identified and circulate this to members for comment/amendment and agreement.
30. In addition to the mapping exercise, Yvonne agreed that Executive should begin to collate statistics on forced marriage from those collected by organisations working in this area. Lesley Irving felt it was vital that the workplan for the Network be looked at in conjunction with the Executive's existing strategies to ensure it fits with ongoing work.
31. Network members felt it would be useful to circulate along with the minutes of the meeting, a contact list for Network members and information on member's participation on other national groups.
Gender Equality Team, Scottish Executive
May 2005