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Girls increasingly at risk of child marriage in Afghanistan
UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said this week she is “deeply concerned by reports that child marriage in Afghanistan is on the rise”.
In a statement issued Saturday, Fore said: “We have received credible reports of families offering daughters as young as 20 days old up for future marriage in return for a dowry.
“Even before the latest political instability, UNICEF’s partners registered 183 child marriages and 10 cases of selling of children over 2018 and 2019 in Herat and Baghdis provinces alone. The children were between 6 months and 17 years of age,” she said.
UNICEF estimates that 28 percent of Afghan women aged 15 to 49 years were married before the age of 18.
Fore attributed the rise in child marriages to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing food crisis. She said the onset of winter has also further exacerbated the situation for families.
In 2020, almost half of Afghanistan’s population was so poor that they lacked necessities such as basic nutrition or clean water.
“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 UNICEF is working with partners to raise awareness around the risks for girls if they are married early.
“We have started a cash assistance program to help offset the risk of hunger, child labour and child marriage among the most vulnerable families. We plan to scale up this and other social services programs in the months to come.
“UNICEF will also work with religious leaders to ensure that they are not involved in the “Nekah” (the marriage contract) for young girls,” she said.
In light of this, UNICEF called on all central, provincial and local authorities to take concrete measures to support and safeguard the most vulnerable families and girls. “We urge the de facto authorities to prioritize the reopening of schools for all secondary school girls and allow all-female teachers to resume their jobs without any further delays.
“The future of an entire generation is at stake,” Fore said.
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International Day of Education: UNAMA says no country has thrived by leaving behind half its population
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), in a statement on the occasion of the International Day of Education, has criticized the restrictions on girls' education in the country, saying no country has thrived by leaving behind half its population.
UNAMA noted in the statement that it has been 1,225 days since the Islamic Emirate imposed a ban on girls’ education beyond the sixth grade.
“It is a travesty and tragedy that millions of Afghan girls have been stripped of their right to education. No country has ever thrived by disempowering and leaving behind half its population. The de facto authorities must end this ban immediately and allow all Afghan girls to return to school,” said Roza Otunbayeva, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and head of UNAMA.
The International Day of Education, celebrated annually on January 24, underscores education’s critical role in achieving peace, development, and equality.
The Islamic Emirate has repeatedly stressed that restrictions on girls' education are an internal Afghan issue and foreigners should not interfere.
Germany is working hard to deport more Afghan criminals, said Interior Minister Nancy Faeser in Berlin on Thursday, a day after an Afghan asylum seeker was arrested for a deadly knife attack.
"We are the only country in Europe to have deported serious criminals back to Afghanistan for the first time since the Taliban rule. And I would like to make it very clear that we are working hard to deport further criminals to Afghanistan," said Faeser.
The interior minister also took aim at the EU's Dublin rules, under which someone's asylum application has to be processed in their first country of arrival.
The suspected attacker in the southern German city of Aschaffenburg had come to Germany via Bulgaria.
"We are already seeing once again that the Dublin system no longer works," said Faeser.
Acting Defense Minister Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid on Thursday met with Mirdef Alqashouti, the Chargé d'Affaires of Qatar for Kabul, and described Qatar as a "friend and partner" of Afghanistan.
Enayatullah Khwarizmi, the spokesman for the ministry, said in a statement that Mujahid emphasized the importance of strengthening relations with Qatar.
Mujahid also expressed gratitude for Qatar's long-standing assistance and cooperation with the people of Afghanistan.
The statement added that the two sides discussed further cooperation in areas such as economic relations, trade, strengthening bilateral ties between Kabul and Doha, and other related issues.
On Wednesday, Yaqoob Mujahid also met with Faisal bin Talq al-Buqami, the Saudi Ambassador to Kabul, and stressed Riyadh's commitment to expanding economic, political, and humanitarian cooperation with Afghanistan.
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