Those women are deprived of one of their basic rights. Many of those women, who were forced to marry, experience in their marriage often violence and sexual abuse.
To get out of that miserable situation, the only way is often to break completely with the family and to try to start a new life in another environment. If they don`t do that, women are very often threatened by reprisal, violence or even murder, since relatives consider such a breakout as a violation of their honour code. In spite of such a threat, many women feel guilty when breaking with the family or acting as a witness in court against those men depriving them of their rights.
Women threatened to be forced to marry as well as those women trying to break out of such an enforced marriage can get support from SOLWODI. As a first step they can be safely accommodated in a distant flat provided by SOLWODI. An advisor will then take care of the next administrative steps, making sure, the woman can`t be found by her husband and she can stay in Germany as long as necessary. After the first critical days or weeks, a perspective for the future will be developed. In detail, SOLWODI will assist in finding a job, a flat and in getting integrated in the new environment. For a long time those enforced marriages were considered to be a private problem of those women concerned. However, on 19. February 2005 the German criminal code was changed such that an enforced marriage is now considered to be a severe form of compulsion. As a result, more women, threatened to be married, were approaching SOLWODI in the last years for help.