Hansard

Child marriage and honour killing are just two elements of the wider systematic subjugation, exploitation and domination of women and girls around the world, and, as we have heard, Scotland is not free of those things. Previous Labour Governments have legislated on them, and the Scottish Government is to be commended for leading on them today.

Womankind will not be free until we have made more significant progress towards protecting women and girls from the horrors of FGM, forced marriage—it is very often children who are forced into marriage—and so-called honour-based violence, which is murder and violence just the same.

Child marriage is often physically violent and in many cases is tantamount to rape. Jasvinder Sanghera, who founded the charity Karma Nirvana, which receives 850 calls a month, mostly from victims, said:

“Emotional blackmail is huge in these cases. Either you are going to be raped on your wedding night or you are going to be disowned by your family. Lots of young people are faced with that choice.”

Children who have been forced into marriage are having children when they are as young as 13 or 14 and have hardly had time to become adults themselves.

What is meant by “honour-based killing”? It is said that there is an unwritten code, known as “honour”. Girls are raised to believe that their purpose in life is to uphold the honour of the family, and that if they bring so-called dishonour on the family, they will pay the price with their lives. Many, many women have come to the UK from other countries to escape such violence, and some women have not escaped.

The killing takes place to erase the dishonour. The majority of victims of honour killings are girls and women, but men can also be victims. The perpetrators are usually men, but it is important to note that family members can be actively and passively involved in the killings. The majority of reported killings were carried out by family members. In the UK, 29 cases were recorded between 2010 and 2014. The UK police recorded more than 28,000 cases of honour-based violence, which included abduction, mutilation, acid attacks, beatings and murder.

As Gordon Lindhurst said, there have been 191 cases of forced marriage in Scotland over the past four years. We need more data on that.

I want to focus on the international picture. One in three girls in the developing world is married before she reaches 18. A staggering 700 million women who are alive today were married as children. If there is no reduction in child marriage, the global number of child brides will reach 1.2 billion by 2050. Niger has the highest proportion of child brides, at 76 per cent, but India has the highest number, with 26.5 million child brides.

According to research from the Women’s Refugee Commission in Ethiopia, Lebanon and Uganda, child marriage is regarded as a way of protecting girls or alleviating hardship caused by conflict. It appears that we need to add into the picture the fact that the current humanitarian crises in areas of conflict are working to increase child marriage and forced marriage.

As we heard, the practice is found to be cultural. Whatever and wherever it is, it is pervasive discrimination and violence against women and girls. Early marriage forces girls into adulthood and frequently motherhood before they are physically and emotionally mature. I have heard women say that they do not feel equipped to look after their babies and fear that something will happen to their babies because they are not old enough and mature enough to protect the lives that they have brought into the world.

The experience profoundly affects a girl’s life, not only because it substantially lowers her educational prospects but because it causes health complications and harms her psychological wellbeing. We know that the causality runs both ways. Child marriage reduces educational attainment, and girls who have less access to quality education are much more likely to marry early.

In Scotland, we must have a harsh message in our criminal law on all so-called honour-based crimes. We must review our law to ensure that it takes account of all aspects of such violence and covers not just the perpetrators but any family member or other person who is involved in the premeditated murder of a man, woman or girl.

Culture can be no excuse for violence and deep-rooted discrimination. We should never forget that there is much work to be done, including internationally, to achieve global progress for all women and girls.