Project Findings

Our project had 13 key findings regarding the impact of Covid-19 and Covid-related restrictions on people vulnerable to, or already experiencing, a forced marriage in the UK. These mainly related to England and Wales, but we did find some data from Scotland and Northern Ireland. You can read our full report here. We found that:

• Calls to forced marriage (FM) helplines provided by Karma Nirvana (KN) and the UK government Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) decreased during the first lockdown. However, they decreased further in subsequent lockdowns.
• There is not one particular restriction (for example, “lockdown”, quarantine after travelling, school closures) that has affected rates, and the risk of, FM, but the package of restrictions taken together have.
• Staff at schools are not calling the KN or FMU helplines directly very often, but schools seem to be providing networks of support which lead to other people ringing (both victims themselves, and other concerned parties).
• The FMU plays an official “duty to notify” role, being contacted by those stakeholders with statutory safeguarding and/or reporting (for FM and FGM) duties. However, many other stakeholders do not contact the FMU, or only contact it infrequently. Indeed, we can say that KN and the FMU (and Family Courts in England and Wales) are dealing with almost entirely separate constituencies of people at risk.
• Despite travel restrictions, people were still taken abroad for the purpose of FM in 2020. Although this happened to fewer people than in pre-pandemic years, it was still a significant number of people, and the likelihood of FM does not seem to have been impacted by changes to the number of flights entering or leaving the country.
• Forced Marriage Protection Orders (FMPOs) showed very different patterns of increase/decrease during periods of lockdown between two different age groups (children and adults) in England and Wales. This further suggests that children were increasingly invisible in the pandemic.
• Remote working impacted people working in this area both positively, as it meant service providers could speak to more victims and stakeholder partners, and negatively, as there are significant issues with privacy for those working from home, and with accessing support from interpreters.
• Service providers dealt with more calls and longer calls than before. This, alongside workingfrom-home when that was mandated, had a knock-on impact on the well-being of service providers.
• Helplines kept going through lockdowns/restrictions, with – in general – fewer cases of FM, and more of domestic abuse to handle. Front-line police services carried on in-person, but with fewer FM cases to deal with.
• Lockdowns and similar restrictions saw increased victim isolation, which put victims at more risk.
• Victims relied more on helplines because they could not access other forms of help.
• Staff at KN’s helpline noted that they were providing on-going support for much longer than prepandemic.
• Covid-related restrictions brought back historic trauma for some survivors of forced marriage, particularly where they had been forced to “stay-at-home” by those forcing them to marry, or the people they were forced to marry as part of on-going control and abuse in the relationship. Helplines saw an increase in calls from distressed survivors of historical FM. This also suggests future surges in calls if similar restrictions are ever re-imposed, not just of historic FM, but of abuse experienced in the last two years of restrictions.

We continue to research in this area. We recently worked on understanding risk and prevalence of forced marriage in Nottinghamshire. Our findings have led to several questions being asked in the Houses of Parliament. We have submitted evidence based on this project to several Select Committee calls for evidence. Our evidence has been cited by the International Labour Organisation and Walk Free in their Global Estimates of Slavery, and by the Special Rapporteur for Contemporary Forms of Slavery.

Project Summary