Forced Marriage of Afghan Girls: Families Sell Daughters to Survive

Last updated: 5 October 2026

Photo: Speechless - Afghanistan Matters

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Forced marriage in Afghanistan has reached crisis levels since the Taliban's return to power in August 2021. Across the country, families facing extreme poverty are selling their daughters — some as young as nine years old — to older men in exchange for cash, livestock, or debt relief. The practice, already prevalent in rural areas before 2021, has surged dramatically as Afghanistan's economy collapsed. According to UNICEF, approximately 28% of Afghan girls are married before the age of 18. Since the Taliban takeover, that figure has climbed sharply. For expert witnesses and asylum decision-makers, Afghanistan forced marriage constitutes a clear form of gender-based persecution with direct implications for refugee protection.

This report examines the scale of the crisis, the drivers behind it, the different forms forced marriage takes in Afghanistan, and the legal framework — or lack thereof — under Taliban rule. It draws on evidence from UNICEF, Human Rights Watch, the UN Special Rapporteur, and Afghan women's rights organizations. The findings are directly relevant to asylum claims involving Afghan women and girls.

The Scale of Afghanistan Forced Marriage

The scale of Afghanistan forced marriage defies simple quantification. The practice occurs in every province, among every ethnic group, and across both urban and rural communities. However, it has accelerated dramatically since August 2021. UNICEF estimated in 2023 that the rate of child marriage in Afghanistan had increased by at least 25% compared to pre-Taliban levels. Some provinces, particularly in the south and east, have seen increases of 50% or more.[1]

Before the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan already had one of the highest child marriage rates in the world. UNICEF data from 2017 showed that 28% of girls were married before 18, and 4% before the age of 15. These figures were based on incomplete data and almost certainly underestimated the true prevalence. Since 2021, systematic data collection has become virtually impossible due to Taliban restrictions on NGO operations and media access. Nevertheless, every available indicator points to a sharp increase.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) documented cases in all 34 provinces. Reports from community organizations describe families openly advertising daughters for marriage in exchange for cash payments. Prices vary by region but typically range from $500 to $5,000 — sums that represent years of income for impoverished Afghan families. In some cases, girls as young as nine have been sold into marriage.[2]

Drivers of the Crisis

Economic Collapse and Desperate Poverty

The primary driver of Afghanistan forced marriage is economic desperation. Since the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan's economy has collapsed catastrophically. International aid, which once funded 75% of government spending, was largely frozen. The banking system seized up. Unemployment surged. By 2023, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimated that 97% of Afghanistan's population lived below the poverty line. This is not relative poverty — it is absolute destitution, with families unable to afford food, shelter, or basic healthcare.[3]

In this context, daughters become economic assets. A family that cannot feed its children may sell a daughter in marriage to obtain money for food. The "bride price" (walwar or toyana) paid by the groom's family provides immediate cash relief. For families facing starvation, the choice is agonizing but, in their calculation, necessary. This economic dimension distinguishes many Afghan forced marriages from forced marriages driven purely by tradition or honour. It is survival-driven exploitation.

The Education Ban and Its Consequences

The Taliban's ban on girls' secondary and university education has profoundly worsened the forced marriage crisis. In March 2022, the Taliban reversed its initial promise to allow girls' education and barred all girls above grade six from attending school. In December 2022, they banned women from universities as well. Approximately 3.5 million girls have been excluded from secondary education as a result.[4]

This ban directly fuels forced marriage in two ways. First, it removes the primary alternative to early marriage. When girls can attend school, families have a reason to delay marriage. Education provides hope for economic independence, professional employment, and social mobility. Without it, marriage becomes the only available "path" for a girl's future. Second, the education ban signals to families that daughters have no economic value beyond marriage. The Taliban's ideology reinforces the view that women exist solely as wives and mothers.

Cultural Practices: Baad and Badal

Cultural practices predating the Taliban also drive forced marriage. The practice of baad involves giving a girl or woman to another family to resolve a dispute, pay a debt, or compensate for a crime. If a man from one family kills a member of another family, the perpetrator's family may be required to give a daughter to the victim's family. The girl has no say in the arrangement. She is treated as property — a commodity exchanged to settle accounts between men.[5]

Badal, or exchange marriage, involves two families swapping daughters. Family A gives a daughter to Family B, and Family B gives a daughter to Family A. This practice eliminates the need for a bride price and is common in poorer communities. However, it also means that if one marriage fails, the other is dissolved as well. Girls in badal marriages face intense pressure to endure abuse and mistreatment because their departure would destroy their brother's or cousin's marriage too.

Types of Afghanistan Forced Marriage

Economic Survival Marriages

Economic survival marriages represent the most common form of forced marriage in current-day Afghanistan. These marriages are driven entirely by the family's need for money. The girl is typically sold to an older man, often a widower or a man seeking a second or third wife. The groom may be 30, 40, or even 50 years older than the bride. These transactions function as sales, with the bride price negotiated like any commercial transaction.[6]

Forced Marriage to Taliban Fighters

Reports have documented cases of Taliban commanders demanding girls from local families. These demands are backed by the implicit or explicit threat of violence. Families who refuse risk retaliation, including arrest, property confiscation, or physical harm. In some provinces, Taliban fighters have forcibly married women and girls who were previously associated with the former government — including former police officers, soldiers' wives, and women who worked for international organizations.[7]

Baad: Girls as Dispute Resolution

The practice of baad persists across Afghanistan despite being technically illegal under the previous government's laws. Under Taliban rule, baad has reportedly increased. Taliban courts and local councils (jirgas) actively endorse the practice as a legitimate method of dispute resolution. Girls given in baad face especially harsh treatment because they enter the receiving family as symbols of shame and guilt. They are frequently subjected to domestic violence, sexual abuse, and near-slavery conditions.[8]

Legal Framework Under Taliban Rule

The Taliban has no minimum marriage age law. The previous Afghan government's Civil Code set the minimum age at 16 for girls (with exceptions allowing marriage at 15 with court approval). The 2009 Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) criminalized forced and child marriage. However, the Taliban has effectively nullified all these legal protections. Their legal system, based on a strict interpretation of Sharia law, does not recognize a fixed minimum age for marriage. Instead, it relies on the concept of "physical maturity" (bulugh), which can be determined as early as age nine.[9]

Furthermore, the Taliban has dismantled the institutional mechanisms that previously offered some protection to women and girls. The Ministry of Women's Affairs was abolished and replaced with the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Women's shelters, which provided refuge for those fleeing forced marriages, have been closed. Female judges, lawyers, and prosecutors — who were essential to enforcing women's rights — have been banned from working. There is no functioning system to prevent, investigate, or punish forced marriage.

Afghanistan Forced Marriage: Before and After Taliban

Impact on Girls and Women

Health Consequences

Afghanistan forced marriage inflicts devastating health consequences on girls. Child brides face significantly higher risks during pregnancy and childbirth. Girls under 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their twenties. Obstetric fistula, a condition caused by prolonged obstructed labour, is common among young brides and causes lifelong suffering. Afghanistan already has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world — approximately 620 deaths per 100,000 live births — and child marriage drives this figure higher.[10]

Psychological and Educational Impact

The psychological toll is equally severe. Girls forced into marriage experience trauma, depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Many are subjected to domestic violence and marital rape, with no possibility of escape or legal protection. The isolation from peers, family, and community compounds the psychological damage. Studies conducted before the Taliban takeover found that child brides in Afghanistan had significantly higher rates of depression and suicidal ideation compared to their unmarried peers.[11]

Education, already denied by the Taliban's school ban, becomes permanently inaccessible after marriage. Once married, a girl's identity is subsumed into her husband's family. Her role is restricted to domestic labour and childbearing. Any ambition, talent, or potential she possessed is effectively extinguished. The loss to Afghan society is incalculable.

Afghanistan is the only country in the world that bans girls from secondary education. Combined with rising rates of child marriage, this creates a generation of girls with no education, no autonomy, and no future outside of forced domesticity.
UNICEF, 'Education Denied: Afghan Girls Under Taliban Rule', 2024

International Response

The international community has condemned Afghanistan forced marriage in strong terms but has achieved little in practice. The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, has repeatedly highlighted the crisis in his reports to the Human Rights Council. UNICEF and UNFPA have maintained programmes in Afghanistan aimed at supporting vulnerable families, but their reach is limited by Taliban restrictions on humanitarian operations.[12]

Several countries have imposed targeted sanctions on Taliban officials responsible for human rights abuses. However, these sanctions have had no discernible impact on the practices documented in this report. The fundamental problem is structural. As long as the economic crisis persists and the Taliban refuses to allow girls' education and women's participation in public life, forced marriage will continue to rise. The international community's leverage over the Taliban remains extremely limited.[13]

Implications for Asylum Claims: Gender-Based Persecution

Afghanistan forced marriage constitutes gender-based persecution within the meaning of the 1951 Refugee Convention. Women and girls fleeing forced marriage can claim asylum on the basis of membership of a particular social group — namely, women in Afghanistan, or more specifically, girls at risk of forced marriage. This ground is well established in international and domestic asylum jurisprudence.[14]

UK case law provides clear guidance. In Islam v Secretary of State for the Home Department [1999] UKHL 20, the House of Lords recognized that "women in Pakistan" could constitute a particular social group for refugee convention purposes. This reasoning applies equally to Afghan women. The Upper Tribunal's country guidance on Afghanistan has consistently recognized the severe risks facing women who defy Taliban social norms. A woman or girl who has fled a forced marriage, or who faces one upon return, has strong grounds for refugee status.[15]

Decision-makers should consider several factors when assessing these claims. First, the risk is not limited to any specific region — it exists across all 34 provinces. Second, internal relocation within Afghanistan offers no protection for women and girls, given the Taliban's nationwide control and uniform imposition of gender restrictions. Third, the absence of any state protection mechanism eliminates any suggestion that the claimant could seek help from Afghan authorities. Finally, the cumulative impact of forced marriage — loss of autonomy, physical harm, sexual violence, psychological trauma — meets the threshold of serious harm under both the Refugee Convention and Article 3 ECHR.[16]

For expert witnesses preparing reports on these cases, the evidence base is extensive. UNICEF data, UNAMA reports, Human Rights Watch documentation, and academic research all confirm the systematic nature of Afghanistan forced marriage. Expert testimony should address both the general risk facing all women and girls in Afghanistan and the specific circumstances of the individual claimant. Comprehensive asylum guidance should reflect the extreme vulnerability of this group.

Conclusion

Afghanistan forced marriage represents one of the most severe human rights crises in the world today. The practice has surged dramatically since the Taliban takeover, driven by economic collapse, the education ban, and the total absence of legal protections for women and girls. Girls as young as nine are being sold into marriage. The practices of baad and economic survival marriage continue unchecked. The Taliban has no minimum marriage age law, has closed women's shelters, and has banned female legal professionals.

For asylum purposes, the evidence is clear. Afghan women and girls who flee forced marriage face a well-founded fear of persecution on grounds of gender. There is no internal relocation alternative. There is no state protection. The international community must ensure that asylum systems recognize this reality and provide protection accordingly. Every claim from an Afghan woman or girl who faces forced marriage deserves serious and compassionate consideration.