The UK Government has issued an alert for teachers, doctors and airport staff to be vigilant toward the problem of forced marriages of teenagers with origins in the Indian subcontinent during school holidays.
It is feared that British teenagers, mostly with origins in the Indian subcontinent, are taken abroad on pretext of holiday and forced into marriage. Figures suggest cases are particularly common during summer break as the Govern-ment’s Forced Marriage Unit received 400 reports between June and August last year.
“The school summer holidays are the time when youth is at the highest risk of being taken overseas for a forced marriage,” Foreign Office Minister Mark Simmonds said.