'To Feed My Other Children, I Had to Sacrifice One of Them'

Afghan girls are increasingly becoming a form of currency, traded away as child brides to pay debts and buy food, according to a joint investigation by the Guardian and Afghan outlet Zan Times. Reporters Neda Noran and Atousa Azar trace how the Taliban's recent removal of any minimum marriage age and its bans on girls' secondary and higher education have coincided with a sharp rise in child marriage and "child mothers." At one hospital in northern Afghanistan, medics recorded 42 girls under 18 giving birth in the first five months of this year; two died. Some girls are promised in infancy, with contracts that they'll be handed over at ages 7, 8, or 9. A midwife recalls one mother who, when asked why she'd let her 13-year-old—who came to the midwife due to bleeding suffered after a miscarriage—marry a man nearly 30, the mother replied: "To feed my other children, I had to sacrifice one of them."

According to Noran and Azar, the drivers are a mix of new Taliban rules, entrenched patriarchal norms, and a collapsing economy that has left three-quarters of Afghans unable to afford basic needs. Families describe selling toddlers or school-age daughters to clear loans of a few hundred thousand afghani (the equivalent of a few thousand dollars) while humanitarian aid shrinks and clinics shut. "If there were someone to give us this money, I would be so happy. If my daughter stays with me, I will be overjoyed," says one mother who, a few years back, arranged for her 3-year-old daughter to be sold off once she got older; the girl is now 7, and her mother expects her to be sold off within a year. For more firsthand accounts, data, and on-the-ground context, the full investigation here.