Re KBH and Others (Forced Marriage Protection Order: Non-resident British Citizen)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Neutral Citation | [2018] EWHC 2611 (Fam) |
| Date | 2018 |
| Court | Family Division |
High Court - Jurisdiction - Forced marriage protection order - Vulnerable British citizens living in Somalia - Older sister living in England concerned about siblings’ forced marriage in Somalia - Solicitor instituting proceedings for protection orders - Whether proceedings properly instituted
The older sister of three younger siblings, two brothers aged 19 and 17 and a sister aged 15, contacted the Forced Marriage Unit of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and said that she was concerned that at least one of her younger siblings was about to be forced into marriage by his mother in Somalia. The siblings, all British citizens, had been living lawfully with their mother in Somalia for at least ten years and none of them had set foot in England in that time, nor, despite various efforts, had anybody been able to locate the family in Somalia. Having been contacted by the Forced Marriage Unit, a solicitor instituted proceedings in the High Court, naming the three younger siblings as the applicants. In those proceedings the court had made several forced marriage protection orders the last of which was expressly stated to expire at the time of the present hearing. The solicitor applied to renew or extend the existing orders and to make the two youngest siblings wards of court.
On the applications—
Held, refusing the application, that the court’s inherent jurisdiction to make protective orders in respect of vulnerable persons based on nationality alone required to be exercised with caution and circumspection; that here none of the siblings had lived in the United Kingdom at all for at least ten years and the youngest had been born in Somalia, albeit that she might be entitled to British citizenship because her mother was a British citizen at the time of her birth; that the solicitor involved, although acting in the utmost good faith, was in fact acting without any instructions at all from, or on behalf of, any of the named applicants so that the application was being made entirely altruistically without instructions; and that, while the court declined to extend or renew the existing orders being unsatisfied that currently there was a properly constituted set of proceedings, that outcome and the judgment had to be drawn to the attention of the Forced Marriage Unit, and the order would make express on its face that if the Government, through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, wished to apply for an order in protection of any of the present applicants on the basis of their being British citizens, it might do so (post, paras 5, 8).
Al-Jeffrey v Al-Jeffrey [
Per curiam. If it is the view of the Government, through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, that the British Government should itself pro-actively...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
P v Q
...[2020] Fam 283; [2020] 2 WLR 1279; [2020] 1 FLR 904, CAKBH (Forced Marriage Protection Order: Non-resident British Citizen), In re [2018] EWHC 2611 (Fam); [2018] 4 WLR 137Volodina v Russia (Application No 41261/17) (unreported) 9 July 2019, ECtHRThe following additional cases, supplied by c......