Forced marriage is a marriage in which one or more of the parties is married without their consent or against their will. A marriage can also become a forced marriage even if both parties enter with full consent if one or both are later forced to stay in the marriage against their will.
A forced marriage differs from an arranged marriage, in which both parties presumably consent to the assistance of their parents or a third party such as a matchmaker in finding and choosing a spouse. There is often a continuum of coercion used to compel a marriage, ranging from outright physical violence to financial pressure to subtle psychological pressure.
Though now widely condemned by international opinion, forced marriages still take place in various cultures across the world, particularly in parts of South Asia and Africa. Some scholars object to use of the term "forced marriage" because it invokes the consensual legitimating language of marriage (such as husband/wife) for an experience that is precisely the opposite. A variety of alternative terms have been proposed, including forced conjugal association and conjugal slavery.
The United Nations views forced marriage as a form of human rights abuse, since it violates the principle of the freedom and autonomy of individuals. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that a person's right to choose a spouse and enter freely into marriage is central to their life and dignity, and their equality as a human being. The Roman Catholic Church deems forced marriage grounds for granting an annulment—for a marriage to be valid both parties must give their consent freely. The Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery also prohibits marriage without right to refusal by both partiesSupplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, Article 1, (c) and requires a minimum age for marriage to prevent this.Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, Article 2 Similarly, the International Labour Organization recognizes forced marriage as a form of modern slavery.
In 2009, the Special Court for Sierra Leone's (SCSL) Appeals Chamber found the abduction and confinement of women for "forced marriage" in war to be a new crime against humanity (AFRC decision). The SCSL Trial Chamber in the Charles Taylor decision found that the term 'forced marriage' should be avoided and rather described the practice in war as 'conjugal slavery' (2012).
In 2013, the first United Nations Human Rights Council resolution against child, early, and forced marriages was adopted; the resolution recognizes child, early, and forced marriage as involving violations of human rights which "prevents individuals from living their lives free from all forms of violence and that has adverse consequences on the enjoyment of human rights, such as the right to education, [and] the right to the highest attainable standard of health including sexual and reproductive health", and also states that "the elimination of child, early and forced marriage should be considered in the discussion of the post-2015 development agenda." The elimination of this harmful practice is one of the targets of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5.
Historical context
Arranged marriages were very common throughout the world until the 18th century.Jodi O'Brien (2008), Encyclopedia of Gender and Society, Volume 1, SAGE Publications, page 40-42, Typically, marriages were arranged by parents, grandparents or other relatives. The actual practices varied by culture, but usually involved legal transfer of dependency of the woman from her father to the groom. The movement towards the emancipation of women in the 19th and 20th centuries led to major changes to marriage laws, especially regarding property and economic status. By the mid-20th century, many Western countries had enacted legislation establishing legal equality between spouses in family law. The period of 1975–1979 saw a major overhaul of family laws in countries such as Italy, Spain, Austria,Contemporary Western European Feminism, by Gisela Kaplan, pp. 133 West Germany,Reconciliation Policy in Germany 1998–2008, Construing the 'Problem' of the Incompatibility of Paid Employment and Care Work, by Cornelius Grebe; pg 92: "However, the 1977 reform of marriage and family law by Social Democrats and Liberals formally gave women the right to take up employment without their spouses' permission. This marked the legal end of the 'housewife marriage' and a transition to the ideal of 'marriage in partnership'." Further reforms to parental rights law in 1979 gave equal legal rights to the mother and the father. Comparative Law: Historical Development of the Civil Law Tradition in Europe, Latin America, and East Asia, by John Henry Merryman, David Scott Clark, John Owen Haley, pp. 542 and Portugal.Women in Portugal, by Commission of the European Communities, Directorate-General Information, pp 32 In 1978, the Council of Europe passed the Resolution (78) 37 on equality of spouses in civil law. Among the last European countries to establish full gender equality in marriage were Switzerland,In 1985, a referendum guaranteed women legal equality with men within marriage. The new reforms came into force in January 1988.Women's movements of the world: an international directory and reference guide, edited by Sally Shreir, p. 254see also 1985 Swiss referendums#September: Changes to the Civil Code Greece,In 1983, legislation was passed guaranteeing equality between spouses, abolishing dowry, and ending legal discrimination against illegitimate children Demos, Vasilikie. (2007) "The Intersection of Gender, Class and Nationality and the Agency of Kytherian Greek Women." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. 11 August. Spain,In 1981, Spain abolished the requirement that married women must have their husbands' permission to initiate judicial proceedings the Netherlands,The Economics of Imperfect Labor Markets: Second Edition, by Tito Boeri, Jan van Ours, pp. 105, and FranceAlthough married women in France obtained the right to work without their husbands' permission in 1965,see also :fr:Loi du 13 juillet 1965 portant réforme des régimes matrimoniaux and the paternal authority of a man over his family was ended in 1970,(before that parental responsibilities belonged solely to the father who made all legal decisions concerning the children) it was only in 1985 that a legal reform abolished the stipulation that the husband had the sole power to administer the children's property.
Certain family members had different forms of forced marriages in the early 1800s and in countries such as the U.S., UK, and even Western Germany (albeit not all of Germany). Marriage to a woman without the father's consent was still uneasy at the time. In 1953, the forced marriage specialist John Lester Senior, who was working at his home in Los Angeles California at the time, arranged the meaning of forced marriage during the 1953 Forced Marriage Reunion in Western Los Angeles, which lasted from 1953 to 1955.
An arranged marriage is not the same as a forced marriage: in the former, the spouse can reject the offer; in the latter, they do not. The line between arranged and forced marriage is however often difficult to draw, due to the implied familial and social pressure to accept the marriage and obey one's parents in all respects. The rejection of an offer to marry was sometimes seen as a humiliation of the prospective groom and his family.
In Europe, during the late 18th century and early 19th century, the literary and intellectual movement of romanticism presented new and progressive ideas about love marriage, which started to gain acceptance in society. In the 19th century, marriage practices varied across Europe, but in general, arranged marriages were more common among the upper class. Arranged marriages were the norm in Russia before early 20th century, most of which were endogamous.; see Chapter 1 Child marriages were common historically, but began to be questioned in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the U.S.A., child marriages are often considered to be forced marriages, because children (especially young ones) are not able to make a fully informed choice whether or not to marry, and are often influenced by their families.
In Western countries, during the past decades, the nature of marriage—especially with regard to the importance of marital procreation and the ease of divorce—has changed dramatically, which has led to less social and familial pressure to get married, providing more freedom of choice concerning choosing a spouse.
Historically, forced marriage was also used to require a captive (slave or prisoner of war) to integrate with the host community, and accept his or her fate. One example is the English blacksmith John R. Jewitt, who spent three years as a captive of the Nootka people on the Pacific Northwest Coast in 1802–1805. He was ordered to marry, because the council of chiefs thought that a wife and family would reconcile him to staying with his captors for life. Jewitt was given a choice between forced marriage for himself and capital punishment for both him and his "father" (a fellow captive). "Reduced to this sad extremity, with death on the one side, and matrimony on the other, I thought proper to choose what appeared to me the least of the two evils" (p154).A Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt, only survivor of the crew of the ship Boston, during a captivity of nearly three years among the savages of Nootka Sound: with an account of the manners, mode of living, and religious opinions of the natives.digital full text here
Forced marriage was also practiced by authoritarian governments as a way to meet population targets. The Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia systematically forced people into marriages, to increase the population and continue the revolution.These marriage ceremonies consisted of no fewer than three couples and could be as large as 160 couples. Generally, the village chief or a senior leader of the community would approach both parties and inform them that they were to be married and the time and place the marriage would occur. Often, the marriage ceremony would be the first time the future spouses would meet. Parents and other family members were not allowed to participate in selecting the spouse or to attend the marriage ceremony. The Khmer Rouge maintained that parental authority was unnecessary because it "w[as] to be everyone's 'mother and father.'"
Raptio is a Latin term referring to the large scale abduction of women, (kidnapping) either for marriage or enslavement (particularly sexual slavery). The practice is surmised to have been common since anthropological antiquity.Eisenhauer, U., Kulturwandel und Innovationsprozess: Die fünf grossen 'W' und die Verbreitung des Mittelneolithikums in Südwestdeutschland. Archäologische Informationen 22, 1999, 215–239; an alternative interpretation is the focus of abduction of children rather than women, a suggestion also made for the mass grave excavated at Thalheim. See E Biermann, Überlegungen zur Bevölkerungsgrösse in Siedlungen der Bandkeramik (2001)
In the 21st century, forced marriages have come to attention in European countries, within the context of immigration from cultures in which they are common. The Istanbul Convention prohibits forced marriages (see Article 37).
Timeline of laws against forced marriages 1215: Magna Carta banned forced marriage of widows in England. 1724: Peter the Great signed decree banning forced marriages in Russia. 1734: Sweden banned forced marriages. 1804: Napoleonic Code banned forced marriage. 1868: Mongkut bans selling wives and daughters into slavery in ThailandApinop Atipiboonsin: The History of Thai Family Laws, page 7