Victims of forced marriage

Forced Marriage Unit

Our Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) is a joint-initiative with the Home Office. In 2009 FMU gave advice or support to 1682 cases. 86 percent of these cases involved females and 14 percent involved males.

Who do we help?

If you are worried you might be forced into marriage or are worried about a friend or relative see information for victims, or call us on 0207 008 0151.

Our trained professionals offer confidential advice and assistance to:

those who have been forced into marriage
those at risk of being forced into marriage
people worried about friends or relatives
professionals working with actual or potential victims of forced marriage.

Forced marriage e-learning training

The FMU has designed an e-learning training package to support professionals, including education, social and health care professionals, police officers, housing officers, the voluntary sector and others dealing with forced marriage in the course of their work. Using real life case studies, the training will give professionals a basic understanding of the key issues surrounding forced marriage, how cases can present and how to respond appropriately. This tool complements the multi-agency practice guidelines for professionals and should be read alongside the training

Forced marriage multi-agency practice guidelines

The FMU has published a revised set of multi-agency practice guidelines for frontline professionals (such as teachers, police officers, social and health care professionals, housing officers) to help them to work more closely together and to better identify and protect children and adults at risk of forced marriage. The revised guidelines replace the existing individual guidelines which were tailored for specific professionals and now brings these together into one document.

Multi-agency practice guidelines: Handling cases of forced marriage [PDF, 503KB, 105 pages]

What do we do?

Abroad, we work with embassy staff to rescue victims who may have been held captive, raped, forced into a marriage or into having an abortion.

In the UK the FMU assists actual and potential victims of forced marriage, as well as professionals working in the social, educational and health sectors. See our pages on information for professionals and information for victims for more information.