The stark figures show that since the hardliners seized power in 2021, women have been erased from public life, poverty is forcing hopeless families to marry off their daughters and healthcare is on the brink of failure
‘I married off my daughter so that none of us would die of hunger.” Malika hesitated before saying the words aloud. The 46-year-old lives with her husband and four youngest children (three girls and a boy) in Chihil Dukhtarān, one of Kabul’s poorest neighbourhoods.
Poverty pushed the family to the brink before Malika and her husband made what they describe as the hardest decision of their lives: marrying off their eldest daughter, Maryam, for 200,000 afghanis (£2,270). She was still a teenager.
