Nasreen

Abstract

In a shelter in Islamabad, thousands of miles away from the English city of Birmingham where she was born and brought up, I met 16-year-old Nasreen. Her story was one that has become increasingly familiar to the British authorities, who rescue dozens of UK passport holders forced into marriage abroad every year. In 2008, the British High Commission in Islamabad repatriated no less than 131 young women. Many others, either less lucky or less brave, do not escape the fate their families have planned for them.