More than 100 children aged 12 or under were referred to the British government’s Forced Marriage Unit between 2021 and 2025, new Home Office figures show.
The figures include 27 children aged five or under.
Dame Jasvinder Sanghera, a campaigner who escaped a forced marriage when she was 14, described the number of very young children as “deeply disturbing.”
She warned that some children could disappear from school because they had been taken away for a forced marriage.
It’s the one type of slavery the West ignores
“New York Officially Bans Child Marriage, Only Sixth State in the U.S. to do so.” You might picture this headline on a yellowing newspaper in the archives of a public library. But in actual fact it appeared online, less than a month ago. And yes, you read it correctly. New York is only the sixth American state to ban child marriage, meaning there is still a legal pathway to marrying a minor in 44 states.
More than 85 per cent of marriage certificates granted to Canadian children between 2000 and 2018 were issued to girls, who typically wed much older spouses, according to the study. Researchers say this “gendered patterning” is uniform with child marriage practices around the world.
