“Here is your bride. It was with these words that Parwana’s father made the worst deal ever: he had just sold his 9-year-old daughter to a stranger with a long white beard.
Covered in a black veil, the Afghan girl is escorted to the car of her new owner. She resists. In vain.
The terrible scene was immortalized by a CNN crew at the end of October in Badghis province, in northwestern Afghanistan, under Taliban control.
In the punchy report, the father explains that he has no choice. That he needs the money – the equivalent of $ 2,800 – to feed the rest of his family.
WATCH the full CNN report
Impossible not to scream while watching this story of deep despair. But even worse, seeing the term used: marriage.
A marriage is the legitimate union of two consenting people before a figure of authority, whether a representative of the law or a religious figure. It is a concept that has absolutely nothing to do with the sale of the little Parwana or that of a 6 month old baby girl, reported by the BBC and which my colleague Agnès Gruda recently reported in a report on the Afghan humanitarian crisis.
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There is nothing “legitimate” about selling a child. There is another word that describes much better the situation in which these little girls find themselves who become the property of others and will not have a say in the domestic work that will be asked of them or their sex life. A terrible word: slavery. A crime against humanity.
A word that UNICEF – which watches over the rights and well-being of children around the world – does not like to use, especially for fear of demonizing parents who make impossible choices in a humanitarian crisis. When they have mouths to feed and have no more resources. “It’s a harmful survival mechanism. It’s really unfortunate, but when parents are looking for a way out, they think of their daughters, of marrying them. It’s linked to gender inequality, ”says Nankali Maksud, senior advisor on harmful practices at UNICEF headquarters.
Instead of talking about slavery, Mr.me Maksud prefers to talk about child marriage or early marriage, a practice criticized by UNICEF around the world.
This phenomenon is a plague. In all, there are currently 650 million girls in the world who were married before they turned 18, a violation of their rights. And of that number, almost a third were married before their 15th birthday.
“Yes, there are sometimes situations that are akin to slavery,” said Mr.me Maksud, but this is not the case for the majority of early marriages, ”she would like to clarify. India is the country with the most underage married girls. Countries where the largest number of girls are affected include Niger, Central African Republic, Chad, Bangladesh and Mali, where more than 50% of girls marry before they turn 18. In Canada, marriage law sets 16 as the minimum age for marriage – a fact denounced by UNICEF.
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In Afghanistan, early marriages were common before the current crisis which has plunged half the country into food insecurity. Overall, 28% of Afghan girls are married before reaching adulthood, and around 4% before their 15th birthday.e birthday.
It is not the first time that stories of girls sold at the cradle or before puberty have reached UNICEF ears either. “Yes, we see that in humanitarian crisis situations,” says Nankali Maksud. In addition, in Afghanistan, we are in a cultural context where early marriages are rooted in culture, traditions and religion. When you combine the two, it’s the worst possible situation and you see more occasions where girls are sold at a very young age, ”she laments.
Afghanistan is not the only place where this phenomenon has been observed. In warring Syria, little girls have been sold. In Cameroon, baby girls are promised in marriage from birth in exchange for money. Last year, the Mexican magazine Reforma reported the sale of girls in the state of Guerrero. Over 300,000 children – most of them from indigenous communities – have reportedly suffered this fate over the past 50 years.
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To curb child marriages in Afghanistan, UNICEF – which never left the country after the Taliban took power – has started paying 80,000 particularly vulnerable families in the country, and hopes to multiply these gifts. The idea is simple: if they can feed themselves and meet the basic needs of their families, poor parents will be less likely to sell their daughters.
It’s pragmatic, but it seems like a tiny band-aid on a gigantic evil: in Taliban Afghanistan, the value of little girls’ lives is plummeting. And the consequences are already evident and are likely to continue to worsen.
It is understandable that UNICEF is paying attention to the words used to talk about the situation. The UN organization is deployed in Afghanistan and above all does not want to jeopardize its activities when Afghan children need it most.
On the other hand, from outside the country, in the comfort of our homes, it is our duty to strongly denounce this form of slavery that no wedding dress can hide.