Update, 20 May 2026: Since this article was first published, further reports have described a new Taliban family regulation in Afghanistan that recognises some marriages involving minors as legally valid in certain circumstances. The regulation also allows the silence of a “virgin girl” after puberty to be treated as consent in some circumstances. This makes the argument below even more urgent. When hunger pushes families towards child marriage, the law should protect girls. In Afghanistan, reports suggest the law is now being used to remove that protection.
In Ghor, one of Afghanistan’s poorest provinces, children are going to bed hungry. So are their parents.
Fathers who cannot find work carry the shame of being unable to feed their families. Mothers are trapped too, in a country where women and girls have been pushed out of education, work and public life. When every adult route out is blocked, the danger moves towards the child.
No father dreams of selling a daughter.
For that to become thinkable, something has already broken.
Afghan girls have now been banned from secondary education for more than 1,500 days. The world adjusted to that fact far too quickly. UNESCO says Afghanistan is the only country in the world where secondary and higher education are strictly forbidden to girls and women. Nearly 2.2 million girls are barred from school beyond primary level.
First, the girls disappeared from classrooms.
Now some are disappearing into marriage.
A recent BBC World Service report has forced attention back on Afghan families who say hunger has pushed them towards selling daughters to survive. Reports from Ghor describe families facing extreme poverty, unemployment and impossible choices, including the sale of daughters into future marriage or domestic servitude.
But this did not begin with one report. It began when girls were shut out of school, women were shut out of work, aid was reduced, health services closed and families were left to survive with almost nothing.
A child crying from hunger changes a household.
Day after day, hunger changes what people fear, what they sell and what they begin to believe they have no choice but to do. Most parents would rather go hungry themselves. Many do. But eventually there is nothing left to sell.
Then the danger moves closer to the children.
This is not simply cruelty. It is not simply desperation. Both truths must stand together. A family may be trapped by hunger and humiliation. A child may still be a victim of exploitation.
A daughter is not a debt payment. A child is not currency. Poverty does not remove a child’s rights.
UNICEF warned in March 2025 that, if the ban continues until 2030, more than four million girls could be deprived of education beyond primary school. It also warned that the consequences for girls, and for Afghanistan, are catastrophic.
This is why education matters. A classroom is not only a place to learn. It is visibility. It is delay from early marriage. It is contact with teachers, friends and protection. It is a route to work, health and independence.
Take that away, and a girl becomes easier to hide.
Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis is vast. OCHA’s 2026 plan says 21.9 million people, around 45 per cent of the population, will need humanitarian assistance. The UK Government’s April 2026 country note records the same figure and describes a crisis driven by conflict, economic fragility, food insecurity, drought, restrictions on women and girls, and reduced access to services.
These are not distant policy details.
They are the conditions in which a child becomes a bargaining tool.
When aid is cut, a clinic closes. When a clinic closes, a mother cannot get help. When girls are banned from school, they lose protection. When women cannot work freely, families lose income. When fathers cannot find work, shame enters the home. When food runs out, childhood becomes vulnerable.
That is the chain the world prefers not to see.
A girl forced into marriage loses more than school. She may lose safety, health, freedom and control over her own body. She may become pregnant before her body is ready. She may vanish behind a door the world will never open.
This is not marriage in any meaningful sense.
Where poverty, fear, coercion or family survival decides the outcome, a child cannot freely consent.
The latest reports from Afghanistan show why child marriage can never be treated as a private family matter. It is not only hunger that places girls at risk. It is also law, power and silence.
Amu TV reported that the Taliban has issued a 31-article family regulation titled “Principles of Separation Between Spouses”, which recognises some marriages involving minors as legally valid in certain circumstances. It also reported that annulment after puberty would require a court order.
The most dangerous provision is the treatment of silence. Reports state that the silence of a “virgin girl” after puberty may be interpreted as consent to marriage, while silence by a boy or a previously married woman does not automatically carry the same meaning.
For safeguarding professionals, that matters. Silence is not consent when a girl is frightened, hungry, dependent, threatened or surrounded by adults who control her future. Silence may mean fear. It may mean coercion. It may mean she has learned that speaking will place her in greater danger.
That is why Afghanistan child marriage is now both a humanitarian crisis and a legal crisis. Hunger may push families towards desperate choices, but law can either protect a child or abandon her. When a legal system treats a girl’s silence as agreement, it does not hear her. It erases her.
There is no honour in a girl being sold, hidden or forced into marriage. This is dishonour, coercion and exploitation.
A child cannot consent to being sold, traded or forced into marriage. A child’s silence must never be used as evidence against her.
As someone who has spent years working on forced marriage, I know this danger: once a girl is removed from education and hidden inside family arrangements, the outside world often sees her too late.
The response cannot be pity alone. Afghan families need food, healthcare, humanitarian access and protection funding. Afghan girls need education, safe reporting routes, child protection and sustained international pressure for their rights.
Governments cannot cut aid, reduce attention and then express surprise when girls are pushed into early marriage.
By the time families are selling daughters for food, the failure is no longer individual.
It is international.
A child is never a survival asset.
Not in famine.
Not in war.
Not in debt.
Not because a father is unemployed.
Not because a mother is starving.
Not because the world is tired of Afghanistan.
An entire generation of girls is being sacrificed to hunger, restriction and global indifference.
The real scandal is not only what is happening to Afghan girls. It is how quickly the world learned to live with it.
By Aneeta Prem MBE
19 May 2026
Updated 20 May 2026
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