Annual Report 2022. The Expert Team against Forced Marriage, Female Genital Mutilation and Negative Social Control.

The purpose of the Expert Team is to help prevent and uncover instances of forced marriage, honour-based violence, negative social control and female genital mutilation, and ensure that those subjected to or at risk from such abuse receive adequate assistance. To this end, we provide expertise and guidance to the public services and voluntary organisations that encounter such individuals in the course of their work. We also provide guidance to those victims and potential victims who contact us, and put them in touch with the relevant public services. For each year that has passed, we have seen an increase in the number of cases where we have given advice and guidance or have provided other forms of assistance. The steadily rising number of cases could be the result of both greater competence the part of the public services, and thus more cases being uncovered, and that the existence of the Expert Team may have become more widely known. The number of cases that reach the Expert Team does not necessarily reflect the actual scale of the problem in Norway. There is reason to believe that many cases go unreported and that not everyone receives assistance. The Expert Team notes that some groups are under-represented in our cases. We believe that more work is required to reach out with information about the assistance that is available.