Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what recent steps her Department has taken to help prevent forced religious conversions overseas.

The UK is committed to defending freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) for all, and we strongly condemn child, early and forced marriage and forced conversion of all women and girls. The Foreign Secretary has publicly committed to putting women and girls at the heart of foreign and development policy, this will be set out in the upcoming International Development Strategy and the upcoming Women and Girls Strategy, which will emphasise the importance of taking account of intersectionality and those facing multiple exclusions including on the basis of their ethnicity, religion or belief. In November 2021 the UK announced £18 million new funding to prevent child marriage, working through the United Nations Population Fund-Unicef Global Programme to End Child Marriage. This funding will strengthen laws and policies to support girls to access formal and informal education and tackle the harmful beliefs underlying child marriage.

Bilaterally, Ministers and officials raise specific cases of concern about FoRB, women and girls' rights and gender equality with governments. For example, the UK Government has supported the Government of Pakistan in setting up eight child courts to provide child-sensitive justice to children who come in contact with the law, including victims of child abuse, trafficking and child marriage. Multilaterally, we work with international partners including the UN, G7, and other multilateral fora to promote FoRB and women and girls' rights. In 2020 and 2021, we continued to protect language on tackling the harmful practice of Child, Early and Forced Marriage by helping secure the adoption by consensus of relevant resolutions at the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council.