Harmful Practices

Harmful practices cover a range of practices, not all of which are covered by current legislation.

They can be traditional, re-emerging or emerging practices. From a policing perspective, harmful practices include Forced Marriage, Honour Based Abuse, Female Genital Mutilation, Breast Ironing and Child Abuse Linked to Faith or Belief.

According to the United Nations harmful practices are ‘persistent practices and behaviours that are grounded on discrimination on the basis of sex, gender, age and other grounds as well as multiple and/or intersecting forms of discrimination that often involve violence and cause physical and/or psychological harm or suffering’.