16/11/2025
More Than Thirty-Five Years On - Honour-Based Violence Still Thrives. Why Has Nothing Changed?
Luton Today “Police log 57% more 'honour-based' abuse offences in Bedfordshire” (https://www.lutontoday.co.uk/news/crime/police-log-57-more-honour-based-abuse-offences-in-bedfordshire-5400734). Published 13th Nov 2025, 11:25 GMT Updated 13th Nov 2025, 11:35 GMT
By Aklima Bibi - someone who has been fighting this for over three decades both personally and professionally!
More than thirty-five years ago, when I was still a teenager, honour-based violence, including forced marriage was brushed aside as a “cultural matter.” For me and other brown girls like me, it was seen as a typical Asian situation. Girls disappeared abroad during school holidays and returned as someone’s wife. Others were taken to villages they could barely remember and married off to men they had never met, but known them as cousins and also far older than themselves.
Victims or the brides are mostly British girls. As brown as we may have been, or as Asian as we may have looked, we were British girls. Human beings who deserved bit of compassion and respect at least from a country such as Britain who advocates human rights and justice. But British authorities turned a blind eye in many cases and let us be exploited as a Typical Asian Situations - ‘its their culture’
I still remember the sight painfully well: My own forced marriage which is highlighted on BBC and other media outlets, in order to raise awareness but also my friends - after getting married over the weekend, a friend showed up in school uniform on Monday morning fully decorated with henna. Others were married off when they were aged around 14, 15, or 16, after taken back to their home countries during the summer holidays.
One of my friend was forced into marrying a man in his mid-thirties when she was only fifteen. When she became pregnant, she was forced to have an abortion in a filthy village hospital in case the authorities discovered it but she was kept there until she was of legal age to be pregnant in order for her husband to apply for the visa to the UK. Another attempted to flee the daily rapes by running away to a nearby village. Imagine a 14 or 15-year-old going through these abuses. Others who were old enough to become parents were ‘imprisoned’ in the villages until they became pregnant, at which point they were permitted to return to the UK, then blackmailed and groomed to obey and bring their husbands on spouse visas. Upon these men arriving we the girls from the 80s and 90s endured many other forms of abuse in the name of honour and izzat.
These are few of the stories of the 80s and 90s mostly brown girls that I remember. Not to mention myself who was also shipped abroad to be married off, suffered the same or similar torture.
We were commodities not human beings, allowed by the Great British nation who were and still are tiptoeing on cultural sensitivity. Children suddenly turned into brides in the name of Honour and Izzat. Everyone around us knew it was happening. Families knew. Teachers suspected. Community leaders whispered quietly. Authorities avoided the issue. And the government saw it as something not worth “interfering” in.
Decades later, recent report by Luton Today states increasing honour-based violence in our area. I am watching the very same patterns unfold again. As I always knew and tried to bring to attention of the authorities to take it more seriously. But no, they say its in the decline. Well why is it on rise now. So I have been right all along and wrote articles about this, especially that unless the government sees the elephant in the room, actually see this honour based violence as a crime rather than culture, this will never go away.
For more than three decades I have supported victims, advocated for them, and fought relentlessly against the structures that enable this abuse. And the truth is ugly: not only did families and communities try to silence me - authorities did too. The Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) and local authorities attempted to quieten me, discourage me, even warn me off assisting victims of forced marriage. Instead of protecting vulnerable young people, they were more concerned with avoiding “cultural sensitivity issues.”
Imagine that: being under pressure from the very institutions meant to safeguard victims because you dared to help them.
You would think that after all these years, after all the cases, after all the heartbreak, things would be different. I wrote about these failures in my Byline Times article, “Forced Marriage Is Not Being Taken Seriously in the UK” (5 April 2022), and on other similar articles before that, nothing since has convinced me otherwise.
Despite the laws, despite the awareness campaigns, forced marriage and honour-based abuse continue to rise. Yet the government claims the numbers are “declining.”
Declining? According to what reality?
Let me state this clearly: laws mean nothing if authorities won’t enforce them.
Yes, forced marriage is a criminal offence. Yes, Forced Marriage Protection Orders exist. Yes, the Forced Marriage Unit exists. But in practice, when a terrified young person reaches out, the response is often slow, limited, or totally inadequate.
I have been the one in the meetings. I have made the referrals. I have experienced and watched cases be dismissed, ignored, or quietly buried because authorities “don’t want to get involved in cultural issues.” I have seen social services who put young people in danger, indirectly pressured young girls so that they can return to the parents to be sold off, until I intervened. Hence, certain authorities don’t really like me.
What culture justifies abuse? What tradition excuses violence?What sensitivity overrides the duty to protect children?
This has never been about culture. It has always been about control. About power. About families treating girls as property, visas, or bargaining chips and about a system too timid, tiptoeing to intervene.
Victims repeatedly tell me that the Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) sounds reassuring in theory, but when they need urgent protection, it often fails them. Meanwhile the government congratulates itself on training sessions and campaigns while victims keep slipping through the cracks.
And the most devastating part? My story from more than three decades ago should be history, not the present. But here we are, repeating the same failures.
So I ask again:
Why is the UK still failing to protect its most vulnerable from honour-based violence?
Until the government answers honestly without spin, without statistics, without PR gloss, victims will continue paying the price for silence and inaction.
As stated on recent article in the Luton Today “We want to reassure victims that they will be listened to and supported.” This was the same message told by the Bedfordshire Police chief on my own documentary in 2015. (BBC Inside Out January 2015 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1043662672317777). A line we’ve been hearing for decades. Still not delivered.
Silencing victims has all too often been the norm. Too many have been dismissed by the authorities as if they don’t exist, not only those subjected to honor-based abuse but also victims of grooming gangs still fighting for justice to this day and high-profile cases such as Epstein’s. Perhaps the only path to justice is for victims to unite, forming their own league to hold accountable the very institutions that are meant to protect them. Crimes must be treated as crimes, not brushed under the carpet.
Reference
Aklima Bibi. Forced Marriage Is Not Being Taken Seriously in the UK.Byline Times, 5 April 2022.https://bylinetimes.com/2022/04/05/forced-marriage-is-not-being-taken-seriously-in-the-uk/
https://www.lutontoday.co.uk/news/crime/police-log-57-more-honour-based-abuse-offences-in-bedfordshire-5400734
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1043662672317777
The Liberator Cosmopolitan Magazine : https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a60617688/forced-marriage-uk/
