Forced Marriage

Forced marriage is a term used to describe a marriage in which one or more of the parties is married without his/her consent or against his/her will. It is practice with deep historical roots, and in modern times, constitutes a demand factor for human trafficking.

The United Nation General Assemble has deemed the practice a human rights violation, yet the practice has increased in scale over the past decades. Driven by the skewed sex ratio associated with a strong son preference in certain Asian countries, transporting brides has become a lucrative business for many human traffickers. As an illustrative example, in parts of China where girls are frequently aborted or even killed at birth in attempts to procure a son in the face of the one-child policy, men now outnumber women by 117 to 100. As these men reach the age of majority, the social pressure to marry often culminates in the purchasing of a bride from another country. In fact, the US State department has reported that in some villages between 30-90 percent of marriages result from human trafficking.