Parwana Malik was just nine years old when her father sold her as a bride to a man in his 50s, desperate to find enough money to feed his family. As tears streamed down his face, Abdul Malik pleaded with the groom to show mercy to his little girl.
'This is your bride. Please take care of her. You are responsible now, please don't beat her,' he said.
Parwana is one of millions of girls in poverty-stricken Afghanistan forced into under-age marriage, where desperate families have resorted to selling even their newborn babies just to survive.
In late 2021, UN children's agency Unicef reported credible accounts of families offering daughters as young as 20 days old for future marriage in return for a dowry. And in a practice outlawed by most governments worldwide, the Taliban last week formally recognized child marriage under a new law that sets out specific rules governing 'virgin girls'.
The law states that a marriage arranged with a child is legally valid provided the spouse is socially compatible and the dowry is appropriate, and that the child may later seek annulment after reaching puberty, but only through a court order. The document also adds that the silence of a 'virgin girl' is interpreted as consent to marriage, whereas the same silence from a male or previously married woman is not.
In Afghanistan, where women and girls are unlikely to speak out for fear of punishment, the new legislation risks leaving many girls trapped.
Economic Desperation Fuels Sales of Daughters
The practice of selling daughters to older men for financial gain has become an unfortunately normalized response to deepening poverty in Afghanistan, a trend expected to rise as the economic crisis worsens. A staggering three in four people cannot meet their basic daily needs. Unemployment is rife, healthcare systems are struggling, and aid that once came from across the world is now drying up.
Perhaps the most stark cut comes from the United States, a nation that was once the biggest donor to Afghanistan but has since slashed nearly all aid to the country. Other nations, like the United Kingdom, have also followed suit, and the UN says Afghanistan now receives less than 70 per cent of the aid it did last year.
Women are disproportionately bearing the brunt of the worsening humanitarian crisis, a reality highlighted by a recent BBC documentary where fathers admitted they are forced to sell their young daughters simply to afford food.
Abdul Rashid Azimi, from the Ghor province of Afghanistan, told the BBC that the economic situation in his home country, now run by the Taliban, is so dire that he has been forced to make this terrible choice. He said: 'I come home from work with parched lips, hungry, thirsty, distressed and confused. My children come to me saying "Baba, give us some bread". But what can I give? Where is the work?'
He said he is so desperate for money that he needs to sell one of two seven-year-old twins, either Roqia or Rohila. 'If I sell one daughter, I could feed the rest of my children for at least four years. It breaks my heart, but it's the only way.'
He is not the only man taking this desperate action. Saeed Ahmad said he had already sold his five-year-old daughter, Shaiqua, after she got appendicitis and a cyst on her liver. 'I had no money to pay the medical expenses. So I sold my daughter to a relative,' he said.
New Taliban Law Legitimizes Abuse
In February of this year, the Taliban introduced a new penal code creating a caste system which puts women on the same level as 'slaves'. As part of the new law, husbands are permitted to beat their wives as long as there is no serious bodily harm. This law leaves young brides vulnerable to extreme violence from older and stronger men.
In Parwana's heartbreaking case covered by CNN, she was sold by her father Abdul to a man named Qorban so the family could afford to buy food. Abdul, who claimed to be 'broken' with guilt, broke down in tears as he begged the buyer not to beat his daughter.
Parwana, her small face peeping out from her pale pink hijab, told CNN: 'My father has sold me because we don't have bread, rice or flour. He has sold me to an old man.' Abdul had previously sold Parwana's 12-year-old sister to help his family survive.
'We are eight family members. I have to sell to keep other family members alive,' he told the news outlet.
Qorban insisted he would look after Parwana as his child and said he had a wife already. '[Parwana] was cheap, and her father was very poor and he needs money,' he said. 'She will be working in my home. I won't beat her. I will treat her like a family member. I will be kind.'
But Abdul said he has no power over what happens to his daughter now and recalled: 'The old man told me, "I'm paying for the girl. It's none of your business what I'm doing with her, that's my business".'
After the story drew international outrage, a US-based charity called Too Young to Wed helped free the girl from the barbaric arrangement, and her siblings and mother were moved from their camp to a safe house in Herat - the first time they had ever been in a real home after living in tents. Qorban was also forced into hiding after a backlash among his own community.
However, not every child is as lucky, as reports have also emerged of destitute parents promising baby girls for future marriage in exchange for dowries.
'It paralyses (my) heart hearing these stories ... It's not a marriage. It's child rape,' said prominent Afghan women's rights campaigner Wazhma Frogh. She said she was hearing of cases every day - often involving girls under ten years of age, although it was not clear if young girls would be forced to have sex before reaching puberty.
Bacha Bazi: Exploitation of Boys
While girls remain the disproportionate targets of this exploitation, young boys have also fallen victim to the brutalities of the Taliban government, with many sexually exploited by older men and turned into sex slaves for the elite. Under the barbaric tradition of the 'Bacha Bazi', young boys and adolescents are adorned in makeup, dressed in brightly coloured women's clothing and sent before groups of powerful men to dance and entertain.
Bacha Bazi, whose name translates to 'boy play', has persisted for centuries and, while Afghanistan's current Taliban leadership claim to oppose it, the practice continues as an open secret. A report released in November 2024 detailed how boys remain at high risk of commercial sexual exploitation through Bacha Bazi and 'are frequently underreported due to stigma and fear, particularly when perpetrators are police'.
'Despite the Taliban's public stance against the practice, reports suggest it remains prevalent and largely unaddressed,' the UK government report said. Survivors who have escaped speak of beatings, rape, and psychological torment, only to be cast out once they grow facial hair and are no longer considered desirable. Many turn to prostitution, drug addiction or suicide, unable to escape the trauma they have endured.
Though some boys reportedly volunteer, many are sold into this life by their own impoverished families desperate to get by. Others are quite simply abducted, including by police officers - the very people supposed to prevent Bacha Bazi from resurging.
