Marriage age in England, Wales rises to 18

Feb. 26 (UPI) -- In an effort to protect children from exploitation, the legal minimum age of marriage in England and Wales has increased to 18, the British government announced Monday.

The legal minimum age of marriage in the two countries was previously 16 or 17 if they had parental consent, but as of Monday, such marriages and civil partnerships are prohibited under the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022, which received Royal Assent in April.

"This law will better protect vulnerable young people, by cracking down on forced marriage in our society," Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab said in a statement. "Those who act to manipulate children into marrying underage will now rightly face the full force of the law."

The law makes arranging child marriages a criminal offense with a maximum prison sentence of seven years.

Member of Parliament Pauline Latham, who introduced the member's bill, said Monday was a "landmark day" for campaigners, such as the Girls Not Brides Coalition, which seeks to end child marriage worldwide and had supported the British initiative for some five years.

"Child marriage destroys lives and through this legislation we will protect millions of boys and girls over the coming years from this scourge," Latham said.

Karma Nirvana, a member of the Girls Not Brides Coalition, said that based on self-reported data, between 2020 and last year, 177 children in Britain faced the threat of child marriage and 90 were going to be taken abroad to be married.

In 2021 alone, the British government's Forced Marriage Unit gave advice and support in 316 cases related to forced marriage, 118 of which involved girls below the age of 18.

In 2020, that number was 199, according to government statistics.

"The change to legislation on child marriage is a huge victory for survivors," Natasha Rattu, director of Karma Nirvana, said in a statement. "It is a huge leap forward to tackling this usually hidden abuse and will provide a greater degree of protection to those at risk."

The minimum legal marriage age in Scotland and Northern Ireland remains 16 years old.

The change comes amid an initiative by the United Nations to end child marriage and female genital mutilations by 2030 as part of its Sustainable Development Goals.

According to statistics from the United Nations human rights office, more than 650 million women alive today were married as children, with at least 12 million girls under the age of 18 being married each year.