A Norwegian anti-forced-marriage NGO staged documentary accounts and pressured clients

Evidence

Human Rights Service represents only one feminist voice on the issue of forced marriages and it is certain that their views are contested both within Norway and elsewhere. In March 2004 the organization found itself in a storm of controversy when Muslim girls who had tried to access services accused the organization of having pressured them to take part in a documentary on forced marriage as a condition of getting help. The girls further alleged that Human Rights Service had exaggerated their stories and provided them with the scripts of what to say, as well as sending them on ‘missions’ to find girls who had stories of forced marriages to tell. A Norwegian journalist formally complained to the Ministry of Children and Family Services, which partially funds H.R.S., that the organization ‘lured’ Muslim girls by offering them money. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 257

Categorization

• XREF: The staged ‘rescue’ documentary claims resonate with how the author elsewhere documents orientalist rescue narratives manufacturing their own evidence — and with fabrication scandals in Western anti-trafficking NGOs.