Home Office figures obtained under a freedom of information (FOI) request have shown that at least 100 children aged 12 or younger were referred to the Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) between 2021 and 2025, including 27 aged five or under.
Campaigners have warned that some pupils may not return when schools reopen in September.
The data, released to the Press Association, cover five calendar years. Of the children recorded, 62 were aged 10 or under.
The Home Office also declined to give the age of the youngest child referred over the period, saying disclosure could deter others from coming forward.
A referral does not, by itself, prove that a marriage has taken place or will take place. The department said it means only that some details have been provided about an actual, potential or suspected forced marriage.
Official statistics published separately by the FMU note that cases involving very young children often relate to a promise of a future marriage, known as betrothal, to a younger sibling of someone already at risk, or to female genital mutilation (FGM) rather than an imminent wedding.
The FMU is a joint Home Office and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office unit. It takes referrals from police, social services, schools, family members, colleagues and people seeking help themselves.
In 2025 it provided tailored assistance in 406 cases. Of those, 163 (40 per cent) involved people aged 17 or under, including 87 aged 15 or under.
Social services made 112 of those referrals, the police 52 and education professionals 25.
The unit received 1,295 contacts in total that year relating to possible forced marriage or FGM.
That total has marked a 69 per cent rise on the 240 cases recorded in 2024, though the Home Office has said the years are not directly comparable after a change in recording.
Officials stress that forced marriage is often hidden and that recorded cases do not capture the full scale of the problem.
Not every case involves travel abroad. In 2022 there were nine referrals of children aged 12 or under in which there was no overseas element, meaning any potential or actual marriage would have taken place entirely in the United Kingdom.
Figures for other years in that age group were withheld because they fell between zero and five in each category, small enough that publication could have identified the children concerned.
Across all ages, cases with no overseas element have risen. Official FMU statistics recorded 10 such cases in 2023 (4 per cent of the total), 15 in 2024 (6 per cent) and 58 in 2025 (14 per cent).
The Home Office said the increase “continues to highlight that forced marriages can and do take place in the UK”.
In 2025, Pakistan was the most frequently cited focus country outside the United Kingdom (165 cases), followed by Bangladesh (36) and Afghanistan (28). The unit handled cases relating to 34 focus countries in all.
British nationals, including dual nationals, accounted for 64 per cent of people in tailored-assistance cases. Non-British nationals, among them EU citizens, made up a further 25 per cent. Three-quarters of cases involved female victims.
Forcing someone to marry is a criminal offence throughout the United Kingdom.
In England and Wales the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022, which came into force on February 27, 2023, raised the legal age of marriage and civil partnership from 16 to 18.
It also made it an offence to do anything intended to cause a child to marry before their 18th birthday, whether or not coercion is used and whether or not the ceremony is legally binding.
The maximum sentence is seven years’ imprisonment. Victims and those at risk can also apply for a Forced Marriage Protection Order in the family courts.
The Home Office has said forced marriage is “not a problem specific to one country, religion or culture” and that there is no typical victim or perpetrator.
Jasvinder Sanghera, founder of the charity Karma Nirvana, which she set up in 1993, and herself a survivor who left home at 14 to avoid a forced marriage, described the ages in the FOI figures as “deeply disturbing”.
She said a child can be “promised to somebody from birth”, with the marriage taking place years later.
She warned: “I know that when schools open in September, there will be missing children. The opportunity to identify them was pre-school holidays. Is somebody going to ask where they are, or are they simply just going to go off school roll? Or children will come back engaged or even married.”
“Cultural acceptance does not mean accepting the unacceptable. This is abuse.”
Rakib Ehsan, a social policy analyst, told GB News: “What this has exposed is the dark underbelly of modern, multicultural Britain.”
He said: “What we need to really challenge is the culture within certain public institutions, statutory services, for fear of being accused of racism and being bigoted against certain communities. What they need to do is prioritise their duty of care.”
Sanghera said it was the “tactics of perpetrators” to hide behind accusations of racism.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “There is nothing more important than the safety of our children.”
The department pointed to strengthened Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance, which tells school staff how to identify forced marriage and other forms of abuse and how to respond.
It also cited the relationships, sex and health education curriculum, which from September 2026 is intended to teach pupils about recognising and reporting risks and abuse at ages judged appropriate.
The education ministry of the German State of Baden-Württemberg has issued an emergency form to schools to help staff respond to possible cases of forced marriage or girls being held abroad against their will after the summer holidays. https://t.co/yMNWrAgSrl
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) August 24, 2026
