The national charity Yasmin founded in 2011, supporting Black and minoritised victims and survivors of forced marriage, honour-based abuse, and female genital mutilation.
Yasmin Khan founded the Halo Project in 2011. At the time, there was no specialist national provision for Black and minoritised survivors of forced marriage, honour-based abuse, and female genital mutilation. The mainstream services that existed were not equipped to respond to the specific cultural, religious, and community dimensions of these harms. Survivors, often women and girls in extreme danger, were falling through every available system.
Halo was built to fill that gap. It began as a small specialist service in the North East of England and has grown into one of the United Kingdom’s leading national charities working on these hidden harms. It supports survivors directly. It trains police forces, local authorities, schools, and NHS bodies. It informs national policy. And it provides the frontline evidence base that underpins much of Yasmin’s advisory and policy work.
Specialist casework, refuge, and advocacy for survivors of forced marriage, honour-based abuse, FGM, domestic abuse, and sexual violence, with a focus on Black and minoritised women and girls whose needs are not met by mainstream provision.
Training and consultancy for police forces, local authorities, schools, the NHS, the Crown Prosecution Service, and other public bodies on the recognition, response, and prosecution of honour-based harm.
Evidence to government, parliamentary briefings, and contributions to national policy on violence against women and girls. The Halo Project’s casework underpins much of the United Kingdom’s current understanding of honour-based abuse.
Yasmin Khan establishes the Halo Project in Middlesbrough in response to critical gaps in provision for Black and minoritised women and girls experiencing domestic abuse, sexual violence, and hidden harms, launching its inaugural programme of work across the Tees Valley.
Halo establishes a pioneering partnership approach to honour-based abuse, forced marriage, and FGM across the statutory and voluntary sectors, developing the region’s first multi-agency protocols designed specifically for Black and minoritised victims of cultural harms.
Halo secures its first Police and Crime Commissioner commission, establishing the charity as a trusted specialist provider within the criminal justice framework.
Halo establishes the first dedicated refuge of its kind in the Tees Valley, addressing a critical gap in culturally competent safe accommodation for survivors fleeing honour-based violence.
Yasmin Khan takes up her first government advisory role, beginning a long-term engagement with national policy development on violence against women, domestic abuse, and sexual violence.
Halo extends its service provision across Cleveland, Durham, and North Yorkshire.
The Durham University Student Halo Hub is established, pioneering campus-based prevention and awareness work on hidden harms in higher education. Halo also begins developing specialist training programmes for statutory agencies.
Yasmin Khan is appointed National Advisor to the Welsh Government on Violence Against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence.
The Student Halo Hub model extends beyond Durham to further institutions, and Halo secures a second Police and Crime Commissioner commission, extending specialist coverage across the region.
The Halo Project is named Small Charity of the Year at the North East Charity Awards.
Yasmin Khan contributes to the national discourse on honour-based abuse through media, parliamentary engagement, and policy consultation.
Yasmin develops the United Kingdom’s first case scrutiny group focused on forced marriage and honour-based violence cases, a model that has since influenced national practice.
Drawing on Halo’s casework and frontline evidence, Yasmin authors the Tees Valley Inclusion Project’s super-complaint, the first ever made under the police super-complaints system, exposing widespread failures in the investigation of sexual abuse.
Yasmin establishes the BME VAWG Survivor Group in response to the 2024 riots, drawing on Halo’s relationships with affected communities to influence policing and government policy at speed.
The Student Halo Hubs programme extends Halo’s specialist expertise into higher education, where the safeguarding of students at risk of forced marriage, honour-based abuse, and related harms has been historically inconsistent.
The programme is currently being prepared for national rollout across United Kingdom universities, building on Yasmin’s work as International EDI Lead on the board of Teesside University.
The Halo Project remains the foundation of Yasmin’s advisory and policy work. It is the source of the evidence she brings to ministers, the casework that underpins her engagement with policing and the criminal justice system, and the relationships with survivors and communities that ground her at every stage of her career.
For information about the Halo Project’s services, current programmes, partnerships, and ways to support its work, please visit the charity’s website.