The United Nations Children’s Fund on
Friday bemoaned the rise of child
marriage in Afghanistan, stating that girls
are at a risk.
UNICEF Executive Director, Henrietta
Fore, in a recent statement, mentioned
that the agency has received report that
families offer their 20-day-old daughters
for future marriage in exchange for
dowry.
She said, “I am deeply concerned by
reports that child marriage in
Afghanistan is on the rise.
“We have received credible reports of
families offering daughters as young as
20 days old up for future marriage in
return for a dowry.
“Even before the latest political
instability, UNICEF’s partners registered
183 child marriages and 10 cases of
selling of children over 2018 and 2019 in
Herat and Baghdis provinces alone. The
children were between 6 months and 17
years of age.”
In the statement titled, ‘Girls increasingly
at risk of child marriage in Afghanistan’,
Fore stated that the issue of poverty is
also a contributing factor to early
marriage.
“The extremely dire economic situation
in Afghanistan is pushing more families
deeper into poverty and forcing them to
make desperate choices, such as putting
children to work and marrying girls off
at a young age,” she said.
Fore also mentioned that UNICEF is
working with partners to raise
communities’ awareness of the risks for
girls if they are married early.
The agency has also started offering
monetary assistance to vulnerable
families, as a way of fighting against
child marriage.
“We have started a cash assistance
programme to help offset the risk of
hunger, child labour and child marriage
among the most vulnerable families. We
plan to scale up this and other social
services programmes in the months to
come,” said Fore.
She added, “We call on central,
provincial and local authorities to take
concrete measures to support and
safeguard the most vulnerable families
and girls.”
https://punchng.com/afghan-families-offer-20-day-old-daughters-for-future-marriage-unicef/