Child marriage is merely a subset of the wider problem of forced marriage, which is staggering in scale. In 2016, the International Labour Organization found that “15.4 million people were living in a forced marriage to which they had not consented”. 37% of those victims are under the age of 18, and 44% of those children were “forced to marry before the age of 15 years”. “While men and boys,” the report states, “can also be victims of forced marriage,” 88% of victims are female. That figure rises among child victims of forced marriage: 96% were girls.

For me, the subject of forced marriage is personal. When I was living in Kenya, my father arranged for me to marry a man I had never met. His name was Osman Moussa. He was 27. When we were introduced, only six days before the marriage, I found that he was bald, dim and expected me to give him six sons.

Before the nikah ceremony, which would legally wed us, I begged my father to reconsider. I had no interest in the man he had chosen for me and dreaded a lifetime with him. My father insisted and when I continued to resist, he reminded me of my place. In the end, my father married me to Osman when I wasn’t even there — which might have been an issue had my participation been a matter of concern. But the arrangement was a mere transfer of ownership from one man to the next; my presence, let alone my consent, was not required.

Fortunately for me, I was not a child when this happened. I was 22 and had the self-confidence to flee to the Netherlands to escape my future with Osman. What if I had been 15, without the wherewithal or determination to flee?

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But while my story might sound exotic, forced marriages and child marriages do not occur only in far-away countries. They are happening in the West today. This April, Unchained At Last, an organisation fighting child and forced marriages in the United States, released a study that found “nearly 300,000 minors, under the age of 18, were legally married in the US between 2000 and 2018”. The victims’ religious and ethnic backgrounds varied, but the vast majority were girls. Some were as young as 10.

In the United Kingdom, the situation is hardly any better. Here, child marriage is “thriving”; according to official data, between 2008 and 2017 more than 2,740 minors were married in England and Wales — a disturbing figure which doesn’t include minors wed in traditional ceremonies or taken abroad for the ceremony. Karma Nirvana, a British charity, recently reported “it had seen a 150% increase in teenagers calling about forced marriage since lockdowns began on March 23”. They expect that figure to rise now that the UK has removed most of its Covid-19 restrictions and gatherings are allowed to take place.

It’s encouraging, then, that UK introduced a bill this year that would close the child marriage loophole, which allows 16 and 17-year-olds to marry, with their parents’ permission. Health Secretary Sajid Javid, for what it’s worth, has committed his support, stating that “child marriage is child abuse”. Meanwhile, several states in the US are also fighting to end this practice within their borders; eleven states introduced legislation this year that would ban all marriages for those under 18. (New York and Rhode Island have already succeeded.)

All this has caused me to reflect on my own experiences and the countless stories I’ve heard from women and girls who have come to my Foundation seeking to escape or prevent a forced marriage. But at the heart of each of their tragic stories lies a simple question: what constitutes a marriage?

These days, in much of the Western world, it is a legal union of two human beings in pursuit of love, companionship and personal fulfilment. It is an agreement into which both parties willingly enter and from which they may leave if the relationship breaks down. The word “marriage” conjures up ideas of romance, love, desire, but also of partnership, posterity and security.

But for those legally locked in marriages they didn’t want, the word has a very different meaning. Fraidy Reiss, the founder of Unchained At Last, was forced into a marriage in 1995 when she was 19 years old. It quickly turned abusive. She came from an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and eventually escaped her abuser, which led her family to shun her. When I asked her about it, she told me: “The day I was forced into my so-called marriage to a stranger, I lost all sexual, reproductive and financial rights. My family handed me over to the stranger for a lifetime of rape, forced motherhood and domestic servitude. What part of that sounds like a ‘marriage’?”

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Naila Amin was forced into a marriage with her 28-year-old cousin when she was just 15-years-old. Her parents brought her from New York to Pakistan for the ceremony and left her there. With the help of the US State Department, she was able to escape about five months later.

“I can only explain my marriage as a gun to my head,” she told me. “I literally had no choice but to be married or die as a result. I was a prisoner in my own body. Even though it belonged to me, it wasn’t mine.”

My friend Yasmine Mohammed escaped a forced marriage to an al-Qaeda terrorist in Canada. I recently asked her on my podcast how she viewed her relationship. Did it really constitute a marriage?

“Absolutely not. The reason is because I don’t constitute a human being, so I am a thing. I am a possession that is owned by my family and I am given to him for him to now own.”

Humans beings — often young girls — treated as property. Individuals unable to leave a situation on their own accord. These descriptions call to mind another institution which also dates back to ancient times: slavery. From antiquity onwards, countless civilisations have been built upon slavery. And it still exists in many forms today, including in these so-called marriages.

Because when an adult man — whether he is in his 20s or 50s — marries an 11-year-old girl, she inevitably gains all the essential attributes of a slave: she has no real power to leave — unless she accepts total destitution, permanent ostracism, or even honour violence. She is subject to the arbitrariness and capriciousness of an authority with absolute power over her life: her husband. And she is profoundly vulnerable to physical, sexual or emotional abuse.

Behind these forced marriages lie any number of dark motives. Girls may be trafficked, perhaps after false employment promises made to families living in dire poverty, perhaps after being kidnapped. Sometimes, a girl is married to satisfy a debt. Sometimes, a girl is married to solidify a certain tribal alliance. Sometimes, a girl is married to protect a family’s honour.

Sometimes, a girl is forced to marry the man who raped her because no one else will marry such a “tainted” girl. I’ve seen first-hand how families pressure women and girls into marriage. There are many possible motives, but the manipulation — and the absence of true consent — is a constant.

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In cases of forced marriage, particularly where honour plays a cultural role, extreme coercion can be brought to bear to ensure compliance by one or both parties. It is true that men can also be the victims of honour violence (particularly as it pertains to sexual minorities), but in general women are the more common victims: they’re generally seen as embodying the sexual honour of their tribe and community through their perceived sexual purity. Hence the need to marry them off quickly and quietly.

“Marriage” is, of course, a misnomer for these horrific situations. For a marriage to be an ethical union between two free parties, both persons have to make the decision without duress and through the use of reason. Preventing the formation of such marriages, like ending slavery, is an imperative of decency and humanity.

Yet, this year, headlines like “Victory Against Child Marriage in New York State” contrast starkly with others, like this: “Some NC lawmakers let child marriage ban stall because they or someone they know married as minors”. In North Carolina, children as young as 14 (the legal age to marry in North Carolina if a girl is pregnant) are being forced into “marriages”.

Last month, Judy Wiegand came forward to testify for a ban of child marriages in North Carolina, recounting her own experiences of marrying in northern NC in 1996, at the age of 15. Her husband turned 18 soon after they wed and became her “guardian”. As a minor, she was not able to “go to medical appointments by herself, she needed [her husband’s] permission to be on birth control, which he denied, and she couldn’t sign for utilities, rent an apartment or get a driver’s license without his approval”.

Yesterday, the NC House considered the “SB 35” bill, which would raise the age of marriage to sixteen, with no more than a four years age difference allowed for those marrying at sixteen or seventeen. The bill passed unanimously — but despite these efforts towards progress, this bill remains inadequate. Sixteen and seventeen-year-olds are still minors and also need protection, as illustrated by Judy Wiegand’s experiences above.

Indeed, it’s striking that the North Carolina House passed over their own brightline bill, HB 41, which would raise the age of marriage to 18 years old, no exceptions, to instead let the focus sit on the watered down SB 35. We would not ignore a brightline bill if it were a slavery ban that was stalling in North Carolina — or any of the other 44 states where child marriage is still legal.

So perhaps what’s needed here is a shift in terminology. To reflect what’s truly happening when a family offers up their 12-year-old daughter to a 27-year-old distant cousin — and to stop people turning a blind eye for fear of being culturally insensitive — we need to call child marriages what they are: slavery.

It is just the latest example of the fear and abuse many women experience in communities in which ‘honour-based violence’ is the norm. This is nothing short of a disgrace – and the fact that so many police and prosecutors take a ‘softly, softly approach’ shows us the level or cowardice and incompetence in dealing with this issue.

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Originating from tribal customs, primarily in the Middle East and southern Asia, honour crimes can occur in Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Christian and Jewish communities. But the victims are mainly girls and women living under Islamic law.

Male family members are required to spy on the female members, with the focus on virginity, chastity and the family’s reputation. If the women are seen as violating the ‘honour code’ by behaving in a way that is forbidden ­– for example, if she refuses an arranged marriage, is accused of adultery, liaises with a man from another religion, or becomes ‘Westernised’ – she can be punished for disgracing her family. In countries such as Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, that punishment could be rape or murder.

But honour crime is not restricted to Middle Eastern communities. While the UK may pride itself on being a liberal democracy with one of the finest criminal justice systems in the world, many so-called ‘honour crimes’ are being committed on British soil – and the UK is tragically failing the women and girls who are the victims.

Across the world, there are an estimated 5,000 honour killings every year, and in the UK, officials estimate that at least a dozen women are victims of honour killings annually, often within Asian and Middle Eastern families.

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In 2003 in London, for example, Heshu Yones was murdered by her father for “becoming too Westernised”. Heshu had run away with her Christian boyfriend but her father tracked her down and cut her throat. In Ireland last year, Thomas Ward was sentenced to 16 months in prison after he punched and kicked his niece as punishment for her escaping an arranged marriage. Ward screamed “prostitute” and “whore” as he carried out the attack.

Honour-based violence is the most extreme end of an ideology that says female sexuality should be totally controlled by men. In England and Wales, there were 137,000 women and girls affected by female genital mutilation (FGM) in 2015, and last year the UK’s Forced Marriage Unit provided support in well over 1,000 cases.

UK police forces recorded 11,744 honour-based crimes between 2010 and 2014, including forced marriage, FGM, sexual and physical assault, and murder. Between 2014 and 2017, the number of incidents reported to the police increased by 53%. And given that honour crimes are often unreported, these figures are likely to underestimate the true scale of abuse. Shockingly, in 2016/17 just 5% of incidents were referred by the police to the Crown Prosecution Service, the lowest in five years.

In 2015, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary had reported that while there are “pockets of good practice”, most police forces need to do more to improve the way they deal with honour-based violence. What on earth is going on here? How can police still be lacklustre in their approach to this so many years after Henshu’s death, and with the significant number of training courses available to them?

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The first murder in the EU that was recognised as honour-based violence was that of Fadime Sahindal in 2002. She was 26 when her father shot her in the head during a visit to her mother. Fadime, whose family moved to Sweden from a small village in Turkey, had fallen in love with a Swedish man named Patrik. Her father had discovered the relationship and was appalled that she had chosen for herself a man outside of her culture and religion. The case highlight how women from these cultures are treated like chattel; nothing more than goods to be owned and traded.

Fadime’s case helped Sweden recognise the dangers women face from communities that impose strict sanctions on them. Fadime was threatened endlessly by her father for four years. Then one day he saw her with Patrik in the street and attacked her, spitting in her face and shouting: “Bloody whore. I will beat you to pieces.” He murdered his daughter in cold blood. It is mainly because of Fadime that Sweden is the centre of an EU-supported cross-European project on honour crime.

In 2006, the Swedish Liberal politician Nyamko Sabuni popularised the campaign against honour crime when she published her book The Girls We Betray. As integration and equalities minister until 2010, Sabuni was responsible for producing the government’s first action plan for honour crime.

As well as denouncing what she deemed the “honour culture” of some immigrant groups, Sabuni proposed banning the veil for girls under the age of 15, compulsory medical examinations to check for FGM, outlawing arranged marriages and ending state funding of religious schools.

For this, Sabuni has been labelled ‘Islamophobic’ because she has said migrants should try to adapt to the cultural norms and laws of their adopted countries, and has suggested a ban on religious insignia in schools. “A lot of people misread their rights,” says Sabuni. “They think that freedom of religion means that they can do anything in the name of religion, or that human rights means that they can act however they want against others.”

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There can be no doubt that Sweden pays less heed to so-called ‘cultural sensitivity’ than the UK when it comes to dealing with the perpetrators of honour crime. In 2017, the Equalities Minister announced a 10-year national strategy to prevent and combat men’s violence against women, including honour-related violence, refusing to see it as a ‘cultural’ issue, but a criminal one.

When I write about religious and cultural oppression of Muslim women, including honour crime, I am routinely accused of inciting ‘Islamophobia’. I press ahead regardless, taking my lead from the numerous Muslim-born feminist campaigners that also rail against the niqab, FGM, and forced marriage. Meanwhile, many white liberals, including some politicians and criminal justice agents, shy away.

But change is slowly taking place, thanks to feminists and other human rights campaigners such as Iranian-exile Maryam Namazie, who tirelessly fights against the normalisation of sharia imposed on Muslim-born women in the UK.

However, the UK still lags behind, particularly in respect to female genital mutilation (FGM), which, even though it was made a criminal offence in 1985, to date, there has not been one conviction, despite an increase in reporting. The UK criminalised forced marriage in 2014, but only after a torturous debate as to whether or not to do so would ‘stigmatise’ the Muslim community.

Honour crime is committed in any community where women’s and girls’ lives are deemed worthless, and where laws fail to protect those vulnerable to male dominance and abuse. Any country or community that fails to afford dignity and equality to women should, in my view, be at the very least stigmatised. The word ‘honour’ has no place in any discussion about rape, murder and violence, and the perpetrators should bear the brunt of the shame and stigma, not the victims.