From BBC News, with thanks to Shiva:
Forced marriage should be made a specific criminal offence, police say.Currently families who compel their children to marry can be charged only with offences like assault or kidnap.
Officers are due to tell a London conference that in the past two years nearly 500 people have asked for help to avoid being forced into marriages.
Metropolitan Police research suggests a link between forced marriage and honour killings and officers say a specific offence would make prosecutions easier.
Honour killings are when people are murdered because they are deemed to have shamed their families and can occur when someone refuses to marry a partner chosen for them.
Police say making forced marriages illegal would send a clear message that this is not acceptable in the UK....
Last year, government officials said a special unit within the Foreign Office had dealt with almost 1,000 cases of forced marriage since it was set up in 2000.
It had also rescued and repatriated to the UK 70 young people a year from overseas....
It's already against the law,it just hasn't been called what it really is.
Forced marriage = Rape
Forced marriage to a family member = Rape/Incest
Forced marriage to a family member who is under age =Rape/Incest/Pedophilia
JLP
I thought that forced marriage was made illegal in England in the 12th century.
maybe forced marriage was made illegal in england in the 12th century, but muhammad said in the 7th century that allah condoned rape, incest and pedophilia.
and, you see, allah knows best.
old news-relevant news
Forced marriages targeted
The government wants to prevent forced marriages
The raising of the age at which a person can apply for a spouse from outside the European Union to be allowed to live in Britain has been criticised by groups representing UK Muslims.
The change, introduced by Home Secretary David Blunkett last month, means British 16- and 17-year-olds will now have to wait until they are 18 before they can invite their husband or wife to live in the UK.
The minimum age a spouse from outside the EU has to be before they can take up residence in Britain remains 16.
The move is being seen as a response to widespread concern about schoolgirls being forced into marriages with men from their parents' home countries, who go their own way once they have been granted residency in the UK.
This is creating two sets of rules
Iqbal Sacranie,
Muslim Council of Britain
"This provision will stop young girls being pressured into marriage when they are 16 or 17 years old, " said a Home Office spokesman.
"At 18 they are more able to resist parental pressure and are likely to be much more confident of their own decisions about whether they want to get married to someone living abroad whom they might never have met."
But the age increase has angered many Muslims in Britain's Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, who see it as an attack on the tradition of arranged marriages.
The secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, Iqbal Sacranie, said the measure was ill-conceived
"There has to be consistency as far as legislation is concerned," he said.
Consultation
"This is creating two sets of rules, depending on where the person you've married who wants to live in Britain comes from.
"If there is clear evidence that there are young people under the age of 18 who appear to be involved in forced marriages, then one has to look at how best this can be prevented.
"The government may be trying to address the problem but this is going to end up penalising many people in genuine marriages."
Mr Sacranie also criticised the government for what he said was a lack of consultation over the changes.
But the Home Office spokesman said consultation had taken place.
"These changes were included in a White Paper published in February last year, entitled Securing Borders, Safe Havens, and we had a lot of responses to it from various groups," he said.
I always take a perverse kind of delight in reading about the antics of the Commission for the Pursuit of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. First, because the name is like something that George Orwell might have made up. Second, because I am amused by the redundancy of the name. One of their p.r. flaks should, for the sake of clarity and effective communication, have advised them to pick either virtue OR vice and stick with it. Finally, because the name reminds me of another authoritarian body devoted to societal purity that ended up degenerating into an instrument for keeping the populace in line: the French Revolution's Committee of Public Safety. The religious Robespierres in Saudi Arabia might have given the Reign of Terror's architects a run for their money.