Forced Marriage

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

We have a major programme which is accelerating action against child and early forced marriage. We have been leaders in this area and put significant resource into it, and it has been engaging. We need to remind people not about the need for new declarations and new initiatives but of the fact that, 70 years ago, this matter was in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Article 16.2 states that there must be consent between the spouses. We just need to hold people to what they have already signed up to.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, given that the noble Lord, Lord Bates, said in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, that there was not compelling evidence, will he undertake at least to look at the Aurat Foundation’s evidence of 1,000 forced conversions every year and other evidence from Pakistan that suggests that between 20 and 30 women from Hindu backgrounds are forcibly converted every single month? In citing, as he has done, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, will he point Commonwealth countries to Article 18, which states quite emphatically that everyone has the right to believe, not to believe or to change their beliefs and that no one should be forcibly converted?

[Lord Bates]

That is why we are doing so much in this area. We have done work through the Magna Carta Fund at the Foreign Office; we have new work coming on stream now. This is a fundamental area. Why are we doing it? It is simply because inclusive societies tend to be the most peaceful. Societies which empower and protect women tend to be the most prosperous. If you are in development, that is what you want to happen.