UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said that reports are emerging that families in war-torn Afghanistan are offering daughters as young as 20 days old up for future marriage in return for a dowry.

In a statement, Henrietta said that even before the latest political instability, UNICEF recorded 183 child marriages and 10 cases of selling of children between 2018 and 2019 in Herat and Baghdis provinces alone.

The children were aged between six months and 17 years of age.

“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,” she said.

The UNICEF official said that the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing food crisis, and the onset of winters have worsened the situation.

In 2020, almost half of Afghanistan’s population was so poor that it lacked necessities such as basic nutrition or clean water, she added.

“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.

“As most teenage girls are still not allowed to go back to school, the risk of child marriage is now even higher. Education is often the best protection against negative coping mechanisms such as child marriage and child labour,” she added.

She said that UNICEF is working with its partners to make communities aware of the risks for girls if they are married early.

She also said that girls who are married off early rarely finish school and become victims of domestic abuse. These in turn they suffer from mental and health problems.

Nearly 700,000 people in the county are said to have been displaced this year alone, with more than 3.5 million Afghans having been uprooted in the decades-long conflict overall.