The first bell rings, chairs scrape across the floor and names are called. Fatima’s place stays empty. Her family took her abroad for the summer, but the school has heard nothing about her return. The teacher records an absence. As the days pass, the empty chair begins to suggest something more sinister.
Some girls remain abroad. Others reappear after a few weeks with a new status their families expect them to accept. Returning to Germany does not free them from the forced marriage. The pressure follows them home through relatives, threats, surveillance and the possibility of being taken abroad again.
Germany has known for years that forced marriage abroad does not always mean the victim remains there. Earlier federal research involving 331 affected girls and young women identified patriarchal concepts of family honor and traditional marriage structures as important factors.
It also found cases in which the marriage was meant to enable someone from the family’s country of origin to migrate to Germany. The girl returns, while relatives may later attempt to bring the husband to the country.
The term “forced marriage” can make the offense sound like a single event ending with a ceremony. For many victims, it marks the beginning of a life of domestic violence and abuse. The Council of Europe says forced marriage for women and girls is often accompanied by repeated sexual assault and rape.
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Germany’s Fragmented Response
The state of Baden-Württemberg has now given teachers emergency guidance. It lists fear of an overseas trip, suddenly announced travel, growing control by relatives, talk of an engagement and unexplained absence after the holidays among the warning signs. The guidance may help a teacher recognize the danger. From there, however, responsibility splinters.
Berlin has no binding national protocol for what happens after the alarm is raised. In a federal reply on 13 August, the government points to the responsibility of Germany’s 16 states for education and to arrangements made by individual authorities. The same reply admits that Berlin has no figures showing how often protective measures were used between 2019 and 2025 or how many schools reported children who failed to return.
Yet the nationwide women’s rights and aid organization SOLWODI alone supported 261 women and girls threatened by or subjected to forced marriage in 2025, according to its case figures.
One likely reason for this paralysis is the fear of appearing culturally insensitive. German institutions prefer to frame such cases in broad terms such as family conflict or gender-based violence rather than confront honor-based control in certain migrant milieus directly.
What Britain, Sweden and Norway Do Better
Britain created a national Forced Marriage Unit jointly operated by the Home Office and Foreign Office. It advises victims and professionals, coordinates policy, provides consular assistance and helps people who are being pressured to sponsor a spouse they never wanted. Its national guidance covers schools, police, social services, health care, housing authorities, registrars and border personnel.
British family courts can issue a Forced Marriage Protection Order before departure, while the victim is abroad or after she returns. Local authorities may apply without forcing her to confront the family herself, and courts can act without warning the suspected perpetrators.
An order can prohibit travel, demand information about the victim’s location, require relatives to organize her return and seize British or foreign travel documents. Breaching it can lead to five years in prison under the official court guidance.
The Forced Marriage Unit received 1,295 contacts in 2025 and provided tailored assistance in 406 cases, 40% of which involved minors, according to its annual statistics. Family courts opened 349 forced-marriage-protection cases that year and another 120 during the first quarter of 2026, according to the latest court data.
Sweden requires a travel ban when there is a substantial risk that a minor will be taken abroad for marriage or genital mutilation. Parliament expanded the law in 2024 to cover other harmful stays, including so-called re-education trips and conversion practices. Authorities can intervene on the basis of a substantial risk alone and do not need evidence of a fixed wedding date or booked travel.
Norway operates a national interagency expert team and has placed specialist integration representatives at its missions in Ankara, Amman, Islamabad and Nairobi. Diversity advisers work at selected schools in every county, while protected housing is available to victims who must leave their families. Its current action plan contains 29 measures covering prevention, legal protection, professional training and involuntary stays abroad.
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Germany Already Has the Tools
Forced marriage is punishable under Section 237 of the German Criminal Code, including when someone is taken abroad or prevented from returning for that purpose. A youth welfare office can place a minor in immediate protection under Section 42 of the Youth Welfare Code. Family courts may restrict contact, replace parental decisions and partially or fully withdraw parental custody under Section 1666.
Taking the child away from her parents remains a last resort, but a family that has already arranged her forced marriage provides strong grounds for considering it. Germany does not have to accept the marriage as a fait accompli either. Under German law, a foreign marriage involving a girl under 16 is invalid. If she was 16 or 17, a court can annul it. Marriages entered into under duress can likewise be annulled, and that right does not lapse while the coercion continues.
Nor does the wedding give the husband an automatic ticket to Germany. Immigration law requires authorities to refuse family reunification when there is credible evidence that either spouse was forced into the marriage. Both spouses must also normally be at least 18.
But those safeguards work only if officials uncover the coercion. They are unlikely to do so if the girl is questioned in the presence of the relatives controlling her.
Another journey can be stopped through a family-court departure ban and a Schengen-wide border alert. Police may temporarily block departure when it is imminent and obtain the judicial order afterward. Germany’s Passport Act already allows a passport to be refused when genital mutilation abroad is feared, but contains no equivalent provision for forced marriage.
Benefit payments are a more limited instrument. Parents cannot have their entire subsistence support withdrawn merely because they are suspected of arranging a marriage, but an unexplained stay abroad should trigger a review of child-related payments.
Families must notify the Family Benefits Office if a child leaves the household, remains abroad beyond a holiday or is reported missing. Payments made without entitlement can be reclaimed under the benefit rules.
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What Germany Still Lacks
A German Forced Marriage Protection Act could bring these powers together. A pupil returning late after a suspicious overseas stay should be interviewed alone by a trained specialist. Evidence of coercion should immediately be passed to the youth welfare office, police, family court and immigration authority.
Protected accommodation and independent legal advice would have to be available on the same day, while a federal unit would remain responsible until the danger had passed.
Such a law would force Germany to confront the crime without hiding behind federal structures or diplomatic language. It would also require officials to speak openly about patriarchal concepts of honor and coercion in certain migrant milieus, knowing that accusations of cultural prejudice would follow. The present caution protects nobody except the adults who benefit from official hesitation.
The government’s own federal reply captures the result. Asked whether youth welfare offices and family courts needed additional powers, it said no. Asked a few lines later whether current law was sufficient to combat child abductions abroad, it answered: “No.”
In a couple of weeks, Fatima may be back at her desk, still legally a child, yet expected at home to submit to the rapist chosen for her by her family.
