US news network CNN has captured on camera the moment a father in Afghanistan sold his 9-year-old daughter to a 55-year-old man in a forced marriage in order to get money for food. As he completed the sale, the father begs the buyer of his child to treat her well and not to beat her.
Parwana Malik, who is 9, was sold by her father Abdul Malik, who told CNN that he had no choice but to sell the girl into marriage in order to save his starving family. She was sold for around 200,000 Afghanis (£1,600). The family lives in an Afghan displacement camp in the northwest of the country and has been living on humanitarian aid for the last 4 years.
Parwana told reporters:
"My father has sold me because we don't have bread, rice or flour. He has sold me to an old man."
While her father said:
"We are eight family members. I have to sell to keep other family members alive."
The man who bought Parwana appeared to claim that she would be put to work on his behalf, in a form of modern slavery. He said:
"[Parwana] was cheap, and her father was very poor and he needs money. She will be working in my home. I won't beat her. I will treat her like a family member. I will be kind."
The father has now said he may even be forced to sell his 2-year-old daughter going forward.
Since the recapture of Afghanistan by the Taliban, earlier this year foreign aid to the country has been severely curtailed and the economy has all but collapsed. Afghanistan was already one of the poorest nations on Earth.
This was not the only incident captured by the reporters, they witnessed dozens of girls being sold off to older men, including a 10-year-old girl sold off to a 70-year-old man in order to pay off a debt.
Heather Barr, an associate director of the women's rights division at Human Rights Watch, told the UK Daily Mail newspaper:
"It's absolutely cataclysmic. We don't have months or weeks to stem this emergency. We are in the emergency already. As long as a girl is in school, her family is invested in her future. As soon as a girl falls out of education, then suddenly it becomes much more likely that she's going to be married off."
[Based on reporting by: The Daily Mail]
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