New Publication Alert! 

Yes, I am reluctantly blowing my own trumpet.  

Last year, I wrote a journal article about forced marriage and human rights law. It is still under review. That is the academic publication process for you. Apart from that it takes AGES, it also involves a lot of write-and-delete. Or maybe more write-and-take-out-what-you-have-just-written-because-it-pushes-the-article-over-the-wordlimit-but-save-it-in-another-document-just-in-case. I decided to turn one of those take outs into a blog post for An International Law Blog, a project associated with one of my previous employers, Middlesex University.  

In the blog post, I discuss the case of M and Others v Italy and Bulgaria that was decided by the European Court of Human Rights in 2012. Not exactly a recent decision, I know. But even 11 years later, forced marriage is still topical. And hardly anything as been written about how it has been addressed by human rights courts and treaty bodies.  

In the post I argue that conflating child, early, and forced marriage and justifying it as a traditional practice hinders the fight to end it and leads to harmful consequences for both adults and children forced into marriage. Therefore human rights law needs to follow a more nuanced approach and distinguish between child, early, and forced marriage and avoid excusing human rights violations as “just a part of someone’s culture”. 

You can read the post here: https://internationallaw.blog/2023/10/16/m-and-others-v-italy-and-bulgaria-traditions-of-forced-marriage/  

Written by Hannah Baumeister