Forced-marriage activists reclaim right to wed on own terms

Mariam was a sixth-grader in Toronto when her family started pressuring her to get engaged. They sent her on a summer trip to their native Pakistan, ostensibly to study but actually to meet a fiance chosen by her aunt. When she protested after returning home, she said, her mother kept insisting and wearing her down.
“She cried a lot. She prayed loudly to God that I would change. She refused to speak to me for days. She told me the family’s honor was at stake,” recounted Mariam, now 20, who asked that her last name not be published. “I wanted to finish school and go to college, but at times I almost said yes, just so she would stop crying.”
Finally, when she turned 17, Mariam decided to leave home — an unthinkable act in her culture. With encouragement from a women’s rights group, she slipped out early one morning, taking a small bag. No shelter would accept her, because she had not been physically abused, and she felt racked with guilt and loneliness. Eventually, though, she found housing, friends and a measure of emotional independence.

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Today, Mariam is active in a growing movement in the U.S. and Canada to promote public awareness and legal protections for victims of forced marriage. She visited Washington, D.C., last week as part of a nationwide tour organized by theTahirih Justice Center, a legal aid and advocacy group in the Virginia suburbs that helps immigrant women facing abuse.
According to officials at Tahirih, a 2011 survey of social agencies and other experts reported as many as 3,000 suspected or confirmed cases of forced marriage in the United States over the previous two years. They said the practice is found in many immigrant communities, especially among South Asians, from the Washington suburbs to ethnic enclaves in cities including Houston, New York and San Francisco.
Nevertheless, they said, there is no U.S. law against the practice, and laws that could help victims in some regions are more geared to victims of kidnapping or physical violence. Moreover, many shelters and welfare agencies are unfamiliar with forced marriage and ill-equipped to help young women fleeing it.
Many traditional societies observe the custom of arranged marriage, in which family relationships matter more than individual choice.
Forced marriage is less common and illegal in most countries, but it is harder to define or prove. A daughter may be ordered to marry someone she may not know or like, such as an older relative, a stranger or someone who is owed a debt. Even if she finally agrees under pressure, activists assert that such marriages are neither fair nor legitimate.
Tahirih has been working for the past three years with a coalition of women’s groups in North America on the campaign to curb forced marriage. They met with White House officials last week, asking for national legislation similar to a new law in the United Kingdom that makes forced marriage a crime.
Mariam said she eventually overcame her guilt and sorrow about leaving home. She was able to enroll in college and earn money making clothes, and she plans to become a fashion designer while keeping up her activism. She never fully reconciled with her parents but said she keeps in touch with them “on my own terms.”
“For me, it is important to talk to victims who are in situations like I was, to let them know they do have options,” she said. “The system failed me, and it fails many girls.”
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