The UN has warned of “a sharp increase in suicide” among Afghan minors and is collecting testimonies from these young women. “If I have no possibility of leaving the country, my only option is to die.“, one of the dozens of victims tells this organization. This is the case of Sadiika, who plays with her friends in a rural village west of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. She doesn’t know it yet, but at eight years old she already has been sold into forced marriage.

A few meters away is his mother and in her eyes we can read a gesture of pain. “We don’t have money, we don’t even have medicine for them”, account; and also her father argues how could it be that they had no other option. His daughter It is one of the 371 minors who have been victims of these arranged marriages only in the first quarter of this year.

It is a drama that affects numerous minors due to the political and economic circumstances of the country. “There are several factors that explain the growing number of minors sold, among them: gender inequality, lack of access to education, extreme poverty that many families face and also that they are practices established in that culture,” explains Lorena Cobas. González, the emergency manager for Unicef ​​Spain.

One in five girls is a victim of forced marriage

Sadiika’s is not an isolated case. One in five girls is forced to marry under the age of 15. With that statistic, we know that many of those girls with whom Sadiika happily walks have been or will be sold to other families.

There are several videos circulating on social networks denouncing the situation of these minors. In one of them we see a 13-year-old girl, clinging to her mother, resisting going to live with the 60-year-old man, the same age as her father, to whom she has been sold. Another video has also gone viral in which we sense, under the burkas, the great displeasure caused by the mother of a child under 12 years old (and her sisters) who has to leave the family unit to marry a Taliban fighter.

“This is tremendous for girls, because It is not only a physical attack because they have to fulfill their roles as wives, and they even end up having very early pregnancies with a body that is not yet prepared, but it also causes them to drop out of school,” argues the Unicef ​​emergency manager.

No right to education

That is another of the serious problems. Since the Taliban came to power in the summer of 2021, more than three million Afghan girls have been banned from going to class. The cry of one of those girls at the closed door of her school went around the world. Like her, girls like 12-year-old Samaa have shown the aid workers Unicef ​​your day to day.

She keeps her notebooks and pens and tries to continue writing and drawing clandestinely, hidden in her house. “I should be in seventh grade, I continue doing my drawings and homework and I hope to be able to go back to school soon,” he says with a sad expression.

In another of the videos, Unicef ​​interviews Zahra, 15 years old. She shows the camera a stethoscope and a white coat that she has stored in a closet. They symbolize her dream, that of becoming a doctor, which she has to give up without the possibility of training: “I am sad, depressed and hopeless“, he comments with his head down.

Suicides of Afghan women and girls soar

This hopelessness has taken its toll on Afghan women. The UN rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennet, warns of a “sharp increase in suicides or suicide attemptsespecially among young women.” A previous United Nations report already warned that even before the arrival of the Taliban in 2021 one in two women suffered psychological distress.

To this we must add a extreme poverty what makes Half of the population Afghan people do not have basic nutrition or even access to drinking water; but the situation for women has worsened significantly. It is very difficult to obtain suicide figures because the Taliban prevent doctors from registering the cases of people who have decided to end their lives. The latest reports, from 2012, already indicated that 95% of suicides were women, and the vast majority were between 14 and 21 years oldthe average age at which they are sold.

NGOs have collected anonymous testimonies from girls that are heartbreaking: ““If I have no possibility of leaving the country, my only option is to die.”. The Taliban regime not only does not allow girls to go to school (from primary school to university) but the UN rapporteur maintains that They have also prevented dozens of women from traveling to other countries where they had received scholarships.

In the context of poverty and hunger, furthermore, many families see dowry as the only way out. Rabia, a 28-year-old Afghan woman, gave up her 12-year-old daughter in marriage to return the 50,000 Afghanis (about 550 euros) that a 40-year-old man had lent her. Also the sale of a minor was the only way out for Saida, who tried to sell her daughter, but ““She was so malnourished that they revoked the marriage contract.”she laments through tears for not even being able to give him anything to eat.

The person in charge of Emergencies at Unicef ​​Spain also warns that the age at which girls are sold is increasingly younger, “there are families that even compromise his daughters since they are 15 days old“, he denounces. An extreme situation that requires urgent measuresso that no girl can be sold as a commodity and that her right to have a worthy future.