The Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) is a joint Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and Home Office unit which covers the government’s forced marriage policy, outreach and casework. It operates both inside the UK (where support is provided to any individual) and overseas (where consular assistance is provided to British nationals, including dual nationals). It was established in 2005 and also supports on consular casework relating to British national victims of FGM who are overseas.
The Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) has published it’s 2022 data on forced marriage cases and forced marriage enquiries to its national helpline, however owing to changes in recording practices, the statistics data in 2020 is not directly comparable with those in previous years, and the data in 2021 and 2022 are not directly comparable either with the data in 2020 or with those in the years prior to it.
The FMU helped with 302 cases related to forced marriage and FGM in 2022, including 297 forced marriage cases and 5 FGM cases. Additionally, the unit received 545 general enquiries. 29% of cases were 17 years old or younger, 39% were between 18 and 25 years old, and 19% had mental capacity concerns. 78% of cases were female and 22% were male.
74% of all cases concerned victims who were British nationals, 19% were non-British nationals, and 7% had an unknown nationality. Most cases were linked to Pakistan (147 cases), Bangladesh (41 cases), and India (20 cases), however 8 cases occurred entirely within the UK. Although this represents a decrease from 11 cases in 2021, it continues to highlight that forced marriages can and do take place in the UK.