UK forcing abused African women to pay for protection costs

The British Foreign Office has been accused of seeking to recoup the cost of repatriating young women who have been forced into marriages overseas, prompting charities to criticize the government for making women “pay for protection”.

An investigation has found that many of the 82 victims of forced marriage repatriated between 2016-17 had to pay for living costs incurred between making distress calls and returning home to the UK.

Other costs included their flight ticket and lifeline loans received from the Foreign Office.

Some British parliamentarians have likened repatriates being forced to foot the bill for their protection to the 2018 Windrush scandal which saw UK immigration police detaining British-Caribbean citizens who lived a worked in the UK since the 1950s and deporting them back to the Caribbean.

“It is morally repugnant for the Foreign Office to charge British victims of forced marriage for the costs of bringing them home,” said the Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry.

The investigation discovered that four British Somali women were rescued from so-called “correctional schools” which have been described to as detention centers. They each were forced to pay £740 to return to the UK, where the burden of the loans allegedly contributed towards them becoming destitute.

Some British-Somali families send their British born daughters to Somalia where they are subject to behavioral correction at local schools, but the quality of care they are getting in these facilities is now under scrutiny.

Reports of attendees being routinely subjected to physical, sexual and mental abuse are surfacing and, in many cases, those held against their will are told the only way out is through marriage.

Child marriages are a problem in Somalia, with families believing they are doing the best for their daughters by marrying them off. Arranged marriages are a tradition that dates back to before the arrival of Islam to East Africa.

Young women and girls brought up with British values are being forced to accept a whole new way of life. There might be some success stories, but there are also many accounts of young women being raped in abusive marriages.

The victims are accused of calling help lines and embassies to make false allegations to get them back to the UK, but the mental state of some who have been returned suggests trauma and that the British system has failed them yet again. The four young women recently rescued were charged £740 for their repatriation.

Left destitute by the loans two of them are now living in refuges and the other two have become drug addicts.

Victims who cannot pay and are over eighteen can take out emergency loans from the government. But if they do not pay the money back in under six months, the loan will gain interest.

Some have had their British passports cancelled and had been told they cannot get a new one until the debt is repaid.

“Dozens of the most vulnerable women in the most desperate circumstances have been penalized for turning to their government for help, and many more may have been put off from seeking that help because of the costs involved. The Foreign Office must immediately scrap these charges, and write off all outstanding debts owed by women brought home in recent years,” said Labour’s Thornberry.

The Foreign Office helped 27 victims of forced marriage return to the UK in 2017 and 55 in 2016 and gave nearly 12,800 men and women support or advice from 2009 to 2017.

In 2017, 37 percent of forced marriage cases related to Pakistan, 11 percent to Bangladesh, eight percent to Somalia and seven percent to India. Some 10 percent were entirely internal British cases. The number of cases relating to Somalia has increased 100 percent year on year, the Foreign Office.

Many Somali families outside the capital city say they are not aware of the situation.

They have been stopped at airports when travelling with young girls and questioned about the nature of their trip.

Moreover, young girls are being encouraged to sound the alarm if they think they are being taken to their country of origin to be married off against their will.

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