Rotterdam: Concern about girls disappearing

The city of Rotterdam is concerned about immigrant girls who had not returned to school after the summer vacation.

The City Board will investigate how many such cases there are and if they had been married off against their will in their homeland.

The PvdA even wants the municipality to find the girls in their homeland, in case they need help there.  "It can be that everything is ok, but also that such a girl languishes sadly because she was forced to marry somebody," says party chairperson Peter van Heemst.

It's unclear how big is the problem of minor girls who have been married abroad.  But almost every Rotterdam school is aware of cases of girls between 14 and 16 who have not returned to school after a vacation for this reason.  Often it's girls from countries such as Pakistan, Turkey and Morocco.

According to Frans Roozen of the Albeda College it's a "relatively small number of cases in recent years" in his school.  "As a school there is little you can do against it.  It's very complicated to act against it: so somebody is simply not here anymore."

Peter van Heemst wants to do more to help those girls abroad.  "You could for example, with help of the embassy there, also drop in by these children."  Van Heemst thinks that the girls must know that people pay attention to their fate.  Should a girl want to come back, this would help her.

Source: AD (Dutch)

1 comment:

Bapakgila said...

It's much to late for these girls and of course if you try the parents or an ogranization such as CAIR will sue you for interferring with the practices of their faith. suffice to say, what did you expect?