Women in Afghanistan are the most deprived member of the community.In a patriarchal society like Afghanistan, women are not given equal opportunities as given to men. As men have absolute sovereignty and decision-making power in families and communities in Afghanistan, it seems that Afghanistanis the land of men.In such a heavily male dominated society, if you are born as a girl, you may experience the harshest punishment – selling you for the survival of the rest of family – simply because you are a girl.
As the economic challenges mount in Afghanistan, the problems thatAfghan girls and women encounterare also the on the rise. These problems range from forced marriage, child marriage and selling child girls for food and money – a new rising market in Afghanistan. According to the reports, recently a family in Kabul has sold one of their children, a daughter at 25,000 AFN. The family says that poverty has pushed them to sell their child. However, the problem of selling children in Afghanistan is not limited to just selling them. The reports from Afghanistan project that at the Malalai Maternity Hospital in Kabul, everyday around 60 children are born. Of these newborn babies, one or two of them are being abandoned by their families due to not being able to feed them.
Moreover, there have been frequent reports that in some northern provinces of Afghanistan, 2 to 3 girls are being sold on a daily basis. One of the most severe cases was in Takhar province, which was reported to have been attended by dozens of people to buy a 9-year-old girl. Similarly, in Herat, another province located in the west of Afghanistan, there are many displaced families who are living in Shadiya area of Herat province. These displaced families are suffering severely from poverty. For their survival, they are selling their daughters. For example, Firooza a migratory girl who lived with her father, mother and two brothers in the Shadiya area of Herat provincewas sold because of her father’s treatment fees. For her sale auction, Firooza’sfamily had set a rate of 150,000 AFN.
The UN Children’s Fund says that the children who are sold in Afghanistan are from one month to 16 years old. According to the UN Children’s Fund, over the past four months of the current year, 161 displaced children have been put on auction for selling, have been wedded, or have been sold in Herat and Badghis.The families argue that they are selling their daughters because of being debtors and poverty.
Poverty and struggling for food among the poor families in Afghanistan is intensifying another important dilemma in the society – early childhood marriage. Although this problem is common to both boys and girls, it is more acute regarding girls’ child marriage. Traditional Afghan families believe that it is better for the girl to get married sooner rather than later. They think that the more girls marry in their early ages, the more they will be secure. It is believed that when girlsare getting married, they become safe. The reports from the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission demonstrate that such marriages have devastating consequences and often lead to divorces and varioustypes of family violence.
In 1994, Afghanistan joined the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is a human rights treaty which sets out the civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights of children. Subsequently, the Afghan government in 2017 drafted a law to protect the rights of children in Afghanistan. In this law, the basic rights of the child, the rehabilitation of children with disabilities, social care, education, cultural development, child labor care, child support against economic exploitation, child abuse, child trafficking, prostitution, and sexual exploitation have been discussed. The Child Protection Law is organized in 16 chapters and 108 articles, in which the responsibilities of the parents and the government against the children are also identified.
In 2017, when the Ministry of Justice sent the Child Protection Law to parliament, it was rejected. For the second time, third time and even fourth time, it was rejected and has notbeen passed yet by the parliament. Most members of the House of Representatives don’t have a unanimous consensus on the age of the child. Some representatives consider the age of the child to be under the age of 18, while some other representatives say that if a child has signs of puberty but under the age of 18, she/he is not considered to be a child. Hence, this controversy over the age of child led to the disapproval of the Child Protection Law in Afghanistan.
Recommendations for Policy Implications
To fight against selling children in Afghanistan, first, the Afghan government should eliminate the rampant negative attitudes of families towards a girl child, since they are mainly being sold rather than a boy child. The government of Afghanistan and other national and international related organizations should launch public awareness campaigns in this regard. Media, audio and video presses and other social informant channels can help the governments and related organizations in this respect.
Second, as currently there is no any law to prohibit the sale of children in Afghanistan, the government just has relied on condemning this action and says that selling children is a crime but did not act practically against it yet. Thus, the government of Afghanistan should convince the parliament toapprove the Child Protection Law because the approval of this law can enable and authorize the responsible entities to act promptly against the child sale.
Third, when it comes to the challenge of selling children by parents for food and money, legislation alone cannot solve this social tragedy. Therefore,the Afghan government should look intoother ways for creating employment for the citizenry so that families can have access to their basic rights – the availability of food on their table that they should not be obliged to sell their children. As a recent survey by the Central Statistical Bureau of Afghanistan, conducted in 2016 and 2017 indicates that more than 54 percent of Afghans are under the poverty line. In thissurvey,the living conditions in Afghanistan, the level of poverty, the food security of citizens, employment rates and migrations from villages to cities have been analyzed.
Studies project that to address the poverty reduction, successful countries have swiftly achieved economic and social advancements by setting the principles and good practices for implementing their corporate policies within the framework of a comprehensive development strategy as following: First, these countries simultaneously consider social and economic rights, not merely the economic growth, but rather the social development or the improvement of the quality of life of the people. Second, these countries have paid more attention to the poorest citizens in order to ensure fairness. They have tried to provide the basic social services,particularly to the poorest and impoverished communities so that they could have tackled the economic inequality in the society.
Last but not least, creating suitable opportunities for female participation in the job market so that they can work shoulder by shoulder with men to uplift the financial burdens of the families. Currently, in Afghanistan, men are the main breadwinners of families, and women are mostly housewives. Either they are not allowed by their husbands to work outside or there is not any opportunity for them in the job market.Moreover, women’s participation in the job market does not only help families financially but also it will help the males of the families not to treat girls as a native and incapable person, and inferior in the society. When they are given the opportunities, they can play role in social, political, economic and other spheres of the society as successfully as men. All the above factors will ultimately institutionalize this notion among the people that selling girls for food and money cannot solve the problems, on the contrary, it can destroy of the fabric of the families, and paralyze the human capital of the society in the long run.
