Girls forced to marry before they even reach adolescence, minors who give birth repeatedly, and children given away as future brides to repay family debts. The testimonies recorded by The Guardian and Zan Times in Afghanistan depict a social and humanitarian tragedy that has deepened since the Taliban returned to power. For security reasons and to protect their identities, the names of the women and girls who spoke have been changed, as The Guardian clarifies.

The ban on girls’ education after the sixth grade, the exclusion of women from employment, poverty, and household over-indebtedness have created an environment in which marriage is presented to many families as the only way out. Behind the numbers are children like Sima — a pseudonym used for her protection — who married at 13, has already given birth four times, and says that, at just 18 years old, she feels “like a 70-year-old person.”

The cases of girls who have been given to men’s families from infancy or toddlerhood are shocking, with agreements that they will be handed over to their future husbands when they turn seven, eight, or nine. The accounts describe a society trapped between hunger, debt, and a regime that systematically deprives women and girls of every possibility of education, work, and independence.

Her father beat her and she agreed to marry at 13

Eighteen-year-old Sima has already given birth four times. Her youngest child is a newborn, while her oldest is four years old. Sitting with her children in their mud-brick room in Badghis province, Sima says: “After the Taliban came in, I had just finished sixth grade and was about to start seventh. But two months later, my father pressured me unbearably to marry my cousin. After he beat me several times, I was forced to agree.”

At 13, Sima became a bride and became pregnant. One of the children she gave birth to died of pneumonia at the age of one. She now also does all the household chores: carrying water, caring for the cows, and baking naan in a clay oven. At the same time, her children cling to her legs and cry.

Dramatic rise in underage mothers after the Taliban’s return

Unfortunately, Sima’s case is no longer an exception. Interviews with workers at a public hospital in northern Afghanistan revealed that 42 underage girls gave birth during the first five months of this year. Six were in their second pregnancy. Five had ectopic pregnancies and 18 underwent Caesarean sections. Two died, although their babies survived.

They are victims of an intensifying trend toward child marriages, fueled by Taliban policies that legitimize this practice and force girls to leave school, combined with an increasingly severe humanitarian crisis in which families are forced to sell their daughters to repay debts or buy food. In addition to Sima’s family, The Guardian and Zan Times spoke with three other families with daughters under the age of nine who were given in marriage to settle debts. The youngest was two months old when she was promised as a bride, with all families agreeing to hand the girls over to their future husbands when they reached between seven and nine years of age.

Child marriage is not a new phenomenon in South Asia. However, while the practice had been declining across the region, the Taliban’s seizure of power reversed this trend in Afghanistan.

“To feed my other children, I had to sacrifice one of them”

Shabnam, who is a midwife, says: “Since the new government came to power, the number of underage mothers has increased dramatically. In the past, perhaps only two underage mothers visited the hospital each month, most of whom came from illiterate families. But now, both educated and illiterate families are marrying off their daughters at a young age.”

Shabnam recalls a case in 2024 in which a 13-year-old girl came to her with severe bleeding after a miscarriage. “I felt deeply saddened. I spoke with her mother, and the answer I heard from her still echoes in my mind. When I asked her why she had allowed her 13-year-old daughter to marry a man almost 30 years old, she said: ‘To feed my other children, I had to sacrifice one of them.’”

Some families wrongly believe that the younger the mother, the healthier and smarter the child will be. Mothers who are themselves still children often have not completed their physical or psychological development and face increased risks of severe bleeding, anemia, miscarriage, obstructed labor, and premature birth, as well as a greater likelihood of giving birth to a baby with low birth weight or health problems.

“I feel 70 years old”

Sima says she continues to experience the consequences of having children at such a young age. “During my pregnancies, I fainted several times because my blood pressure dropped very low. I constantly have headaches. My kidneys hurt. I feel like a 70-year-old person,” she says.

Shabnam says that families often oppose Caesarean sections, believing that they limit future pregnancies. Two young mothers who were recently under her care died during childbirth because their husbands refused to allow them to undergo Caesarean sections.

A report published in June by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated maternal mortality in Afghanistan at 600 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with 16 in Iran, 155 in Pakistan, and 12 in the United Kingdom. The report cites restrictions imposed on women in healthcare and the lack of healthcare workers in rural areas as causes, while describing investment in education and female healthcare personnel as vital.

More than 2.2 million girls excluded from education

Sima is one of more than 2.2 million girls in Afghanistan who have been prohibited from continuing their education beyond the sixth grade — around the age of 12 — since the Taliban returned to power. Many are now being forced into marriage and early motherhood. The Afghanistan Human Rights Center reports that, according to an estimate by an educator, 70% of girls expelled from school were led into forced marriages, while a smaller survey of 15 such girls found that 66% of them were under 18.

While the country’s laws before the Taliban criminalized marriages involving people under the age of 15, a new decree this year did not establish any minimum age limit at all. The decree comes after the closure of schools and universities for women and increasing restrictions on their freedom of movement. The new laws have excluded women and girls from education and employment, worsening Afghanistan’s economic hardship amid rising unemployment.

“Most of the time we go hungry”

Sima’s 24-year-old husband is unemployed. He went to Iran in search of work, but returned empty-handed after three months. She wishes she could work, but as a mother of three children with responsibilities at home, she has no opportunity to earn money or learn a skill. “Five families live in the same compound: my parents, my uncle with his two wives, and my brother with his wife,” Sima says. “Whenever something is left over from the others, they give it to us. Most of the time we go hungry,” she added.

After the Taliban closed the gates of schools and banned women from working in most public positions, Sima’s family used her to repay a debt: her father owed his brother around €2,800, and Sima was given to his brother’s son instead of the money.

A recent report by the United Nations Development Programme shows that three-quarters of Afghanistan’s population, around 28 million people, cannot meet their basic needs and that more than 80% of households are in debt. With the weakening of USAID and the retreat from aid commitments by Europe and the United Kingdom, international assistance to the country fell by more than 16% in 2025, resulting in hundreds of medical clinics closing or reducing their operations. Without investment in employment and services, the report warns, the prospects for rebuilding people’s lives are bleak.

Girls sold from infancy

The other three families interviewed are from western Afghanistan and say that their daughters were used to repay debts—the money was paid upfront and the daughters would be handed over later. Three of the girls are still under the age of 10, unaware of the future that has been planned for them…

The one-year-old granddaughter of 57-year-old Golnar was sold to settle her father’s debt. As Golnar explains, the family had no food, the father fled from his creditors, and they agreed to sell the child for marriage in exchange for €2,650 in cash and a partial cancellation of the debt.

“When she turns eight years old, they will take her away from us,” Golnar says. “They gave 100,000 Afghanis in advance and will give another 100,000 once they take the girl from me. We gave it directly to the creditors for the debts,” she added. The grandmother worries about her granddaughter’s future, remembering girls who were sold years ago in her neighborhood: “They have no future. Whether they let us burn in a fire or they face anything else, we will never know.”

Fifty-one-year-old Saheb Jan promised her granddaughter when she was two months old in order to repay a debt, with the agreement that she would hand her over when she turned seven. Jan finds some comfort in the fact that they at least know the buyer, but she is distressed because no cash was given at all and their hunger continues. “We gave this girl for the debts and that was all. God is my witness that even now our living conditions are terrible and miserable,” she says.

Forty-four-year-old Sambza sold her daughter, who is now seven years old, when the child was three, for a debt of €3,900, after returning from Pakistan and finding nothing for them to eat, while her husband was too ill to work. She is now devastated because her daughter will be taken from her in a year. “If there had been someone to give us that money, I would have been so happy. If my daughter stayed with me, I would have been overjoyed,” she says.

Her other children constantly ask her why she sold their sister, she says. “When my daughter goes to her aunt’s house, she comes back terrified and asks me where her sister went. I do not know what condition they will be in after they take her away. When I think that they will take my daughter in a year, the sky collapses on my head. I tell myself that only one year remains, nothing more,” she says.