International Projects
Statement from SI Manchester on the Home Office Consultation on Forced Marriage.
February 2012
Following our recent club meeting where the issue of forced marriage was debated, the members of SI Manchester have asked me to express their point of view on how we should respond to the Home Office Consultation on Forced Marriage.
As a club we believe there are sufficient existing laws that can be brought to bear upon the perpetrators of forced marriage (such as laws against abduction, rape and child abuse) and that it is unnecessary to campaign for a separate crime of forced marriage.
We feel that while it is not criminalised, young victims are more likely to come forward and seek help, and that criminalisation will inhibit this process and do more harm than good. As it is often parents who force their children into marriage, family loyalty and honour play a big part in preventing young people reporting events that may lead to court action against their own parents.
We also feel that our justice system will be able to cope adequately using the existing laws, and that the introduction of a new law will unnecessarily complicate the process of perpetrators being brought to justice.
We urge fellow Soroptimists to consider both sides of this debate before deciding how to act in this matter.
Val Moss
President SI Manchester 2011-12
The Sight Camp
Soroptomist International of Calcutta Downtown (one of our Friendship Links) recently travelled to a remote village out of Calcutta where a medical team tested the sight of 150 people. Measurements were taken and spectacles delivered the following week. Appromimately, 90 people needed glasses. Where do we come in? We raised around £300 by various events to fund this camp.
New Hope – Orissa
Internationally, one of our most satisfying projects was the funding of a hospice for children with HIV/AIDS in Orissa, India. This link arose from a small beginning. One of our members read an article in the Manchester Evening News asking for clean, used tights to be posted out to Orissa’s New Hope Leprosy Colony to be used to hold in place the wound dressings of the leprosy victims.
Dr Eliazar Rose, the Director of the New Hope Project, visited the club members when in this country. We learned that leprosy is not now the main focus of work there, as modern medicine has been very successful in the fight against it. There are, however, many children there with HIV/Aids that really needed our help and the project was born and our hospice built. We have continued to give support to these children and have sent soft knitted toys, and woollen hats for the cold nights.