Women and girls should not be forced to marry. Women and girls should not be forced to spend their life time in slavery. Nothing can justify that. Non-consensual marriages, sale of wives and wife inheritance are forms of servile marriages which reduce a spouse to a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised.
The UN Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery clearly defines them as slavery practices, and international law has further reiterated and reinforced the provisions within the Convention that prohibit forced marriages in adults and children.
Shahinian said. Such legislation, the rights expert stressed, should go hand in hand with community programmes to help detect, provide advice, rehabilitation, education and shelter where necessary. Programmes and policies should also ensure the equal access to education for girls reinforced by mandatory measures to ensure that girls go to school.
Public awareness raising campaigns should be implemented to highlight the nature and harm caused by forced and early marriages.
Gulnara Shahinian was appointed as the first Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, its causes and consequences in May Check the Universal Human Rights Index. Posted on Sunday 2nd Dec Human rights slavery.
