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Forcing girls and young women into marriage is illegal in most countries and banned under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but that doesn't keep the practice from remaining prevalent in dozens of countries. In Europe, immigrants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East continue to force partners on their children for economic security, clan continuity or the preservation of a girl's virtue. Now, some young victims of the practice are speaking out and defending themselves against the traditions of their homelands, and their calls for help are no longer falling on deaf ears.
In Germany, the government ran a campaign to raise awareness about the problem after several women published books revealing their own experiences and, in the U.K., police have set up a forced marriage unit to investigate cases.
Take the situation of the 13-year-old Kurdish girl we'll call "Gülay." Serap Çileli, the activist who helped her starting in 2003, says Gülay was to be married to a 60-year-old man in a private religious ceremony in Germany. She was to become the man's second wife and bear him a son. Çileli, who describes the family as very traditional and conservative, was able to intervene when Gülay came to school wearing new gold jewelry and casually mentioned to her teacher that over the weekend strangers had presented it to her. The teacher alerted Çileli, who had held a seminar at the school about the problems faced by many Muslim girls in Germany. Çileli and the teacher talked with the girl and got the authorities involved.
"Now Gülay is living in a shelter because her family cast her out when she fought the marriage. The family had already given their word that the wedding would take place, and they believed they had lost their honor," says Çileli. "At first, this was very difficult for Gülay. She had problems sleeping, and so on. But the social workers and therapists were able to help. Now she is doing just fine. She has goals -- she wants to be a nurse. She wants to finish school and help others."
Young girls like Gülay end up paying the biggest price for early and forced marriage since their education is usually interrupted or ended, and this leads to limited chances for economic independence from a husband. In addition, the rules of marriage are enforced differently for women than men.
Çileli knows this first hand, as she was married to a stranger at 15 and forced to leave her school in Germany to move in with her husband's family in Turkey. Seven years later, she escaped the marriage and returned to Germany with her two kids. She eventually fled to a women's shelter when her parents tried again to arrange a liaison. Çileli had already met her current husband and was intent on making a life with him.
When Çileli spoke to a group of about 25 people in Frankfurt in November, she was accompanied by her husband Ali, who was dressed in a dark, modern-cut business suit. Using a home video camera, he recorded the session and panned the audience during the question and answer period. Later, he explained in broken German that essentially he works as a security detail for his wife. She never travels alone, and the couple had a police escort while in Frankfurt.
This is the price of speaking out on topics welcomed by one segment of the population in Germany but taboo for another. Still, Çileli, who has become something of a national spokeswoman for the rights of Muslim women, presses on with her work. She was invited to testify as a key witness at a hearing on forced marriage at the Hesse state parliament in Wiesbaden in December, but other work kept her from attending. The parliamentary committee was considering how to help girls who face this problem.
Sibylle Schreiber, who represented women's rights organization Terre des Femmes at the hearing, says forced marriage is a union that takes place against the will of at least one of the partners and under pressure from outside parties, usually the family. The organization says few figures are available, but it has documented cases from around the world -- from Yemen, Burkina Faso, China and among certain sects of Mormons in the United States. Çileli, who has focused her research and efforts on Turkish women in Germany, believes about 50 percent of Turkish arranged marriages are forced.
Germany criminalized forced marriage in 2005, calling it a special case of unlawful coercion. Penalties can range from six months to five years in prison. But few if any cases have been prosecuted.
Forced marriages among Turks and Kurds in Germany often follow a particular pattern. At home, a girl is raised to be obedient and unquestioning, while at school she is surrounded by others her same age who are taught to think critically and examine the status quo. Puberty, and with it, her parents' closer scrutiny , arrives; the girl may be forced to put on a head scarf and she is watched more closely. If she shows an interest in boys or vice versa, the whole process may be sped up. Parents begin looking for an appropriate mate in Germany or in Turkey. Usually they want to avoid any problems by marrying the girl off early before she has a chance to lose her virginity.
The girl's family may select a first cousin to be the groom or begin interviewing other families by inviting or accepting invitations to "drink mocha." In a bridal viewing, the young man and his parents observe how the girl prepares and serves the drink and draw conclusions from her behavior. A girl who doesn't like a boy may slip salt in the drink instead of sugar. If she does like him, she may strive to get the right amount of froth. If a family is impressed, they may make an offer.
Çileli has worked with hundreds of girls since becoming a full-time activist, and some of them assure her that they have not been forced into marriage because they were allowed to go through the mocha process with several applicants. But, for Çileli, such cases can still constitute forced marriage.
"Not all arranged marriages are forced marriages. For me, the question is how a young girl is brought up. Can she make decisions for herself . . . or was she brought up to obey?" Çileli says.
Arranged (and potentially forced) marriages among Turks and Kurds in Germany follow a larger social pattern as well. In many cases, girls who grew up in Germany are sent home to marry. This often happens on school holidays -- a so-called "Holiday Marriage" -- while the family is home on vacation. Often, the girl's friends back in Germany only find out about the situation when the girl fails to show up for school the next year.
Hülya Kalkan, a Turkish German from the Stuttgart area, is finishing high school at age 27. Her schooling was cut short when her mother plucked her from her life in Germany and enrolled her in a Quran school in Turkey. A couple of years later, her mother tricked her into a "vacation" in Turkey and tried to set a marriage in motion. Huelya told a lie and fled back to Germany.
Girls are not only sent to marry in Turkey, they're also brought to Europe. Activists have coined a special name for these young women from Turkey who innocently come to Germany in hopes of a better life: They areknown as "Import Brides." These women rarely speak German and are isolated from society, having little or no contact with people outside their families. And all too often, they are exploited by a mother-in-law or relative who wants a break from housework and child care, activists say.
Practiced on a small scale, the tradition of importing Turkish brides would not represent a social problem in Germany; it would rather be seen as the private problem of a certain set of women. But scholars and activists have begun to link the phenomenon with the state of integration and cultural assimilation among Turks in Germany. In her book, "The Stranger Bride," Turkish-German sociologist Necla Kelek says that more than 21,000 people from Turkey immigrated to Germany in 2001 under a law that allows for families to be reunited. (After 2001, the statistics were not separated out among various immigrant communities.) She believes that many of these immigrants came to marry.
Turks and Turks of Kurdish origin began coming to Germany as part of the country's guest worker program in the 1950s, during the wirtschaftswunder, or economic miracle. Both Turks and Germans expected the workers to return to their homes after a few years in Germany, so few policies were put into place to support the foreign workers. The first generation of workers eventually brought their families to join them or married among themselves. The second generation, what Çileli calls the commuter generation, lived a few years in Turkey and a few years in Germany, putting down roots in neither place. This second generation began marrying off the third generation, often to relatives or acquaintances in Turkey.
"We've had 10 years of import brides -- which brings us back to a community of first-generation immigrants," says Çileli . In other words, with each wave of import brides, Germany must start from scratch with the integration process.
To this end, Germany has recently developed integration courses for foreigners who aren't working or studying. These classes focus on language skills and introduce participants to their rights and responsibilities as citizens of Germany.
Kelek recommends a more concrete approach: The German government should raise the minimum age from 16 for immigrants who want to come to Germany to marry. The Dutch government raised it to 21 in 2004, and the Danish government announced in 2003 that marriage immigrants would have to be 24. A higher age would give girls more time to complete their education before marriage.
Terre des Femmes representative Schreiber says mothers often organize the marriages because they were wedded in the same fashion. If a daughter follows a different path than the mother, this brings a mother's experience into question. Schreiber has counseled hundreds of women and a few men who have fought the tradition, but the women's lives are most affected: Men loose less freedom when they're married. And, if they are the cause for a break-up, men are not rejected by the family. Because they are afraid of such rejection or fear violence, many girls simply go along with their parents' marriage plans.
Schreiber puts forced marriage into the context of the women's movement: "German women fought for their emancipation, and now we've got a wave of migrants who need to start all over. We need the 1960s all over again for migrant women. A few of these women agree."
Rhea Wessel is a freelance correspondent based in Frankfurt. She is at work on a book called "Honor Killings in Our Midst: The Fates of Three Women Who Broke with Tradition."
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