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Home » Parwana rescue: 9-year-old boy sold for child marriage in Afghanistan taken to safe place

Parwana rescue: 9-year-old boy sold for child marriage in Afghanistan taken to safe place

Parwana Malik, 9, wearing only a warm-up blanket, balances on her mother’s lap with her siblings, while the family is rescued by an aid group that rescues girls from child marriage. .

“I’m very happy,” Parwana said during the trip. “(Charity) freed me from my husband and my husband has become old.”

Parwana’s father at the time, Abdul Malik, said that he used to cry day and night and beg her not to sell him, saying that he wanted to go to school and study.

After the international outcry that resulted from the CNN story, Parwana was returned to her family due to the community’s backlash to the buyer.

The United States-based non-profit organization Too Young to Marry (TYTW) was also involved in relocating girls, their siblings and their mothers to shelters.

“This is a temporary solution,” said Stephanie Sinclair, founder of TYTW. “(But) what we’re really trying to do is stop girls from selling themselves for marriage.”

Afghanistan is under pressure.

Afghanistan’s economic life has been in disarray since mid-August, when the Taliban took control following the march of US and coalition forces. Billions of dollars in central bank assets have been frozen, banks are running out of cash and wages have not been paid for months.
Now, aid agencies and human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, warn that the country’s poorest people are facing famine during the bitter winter.
More than half of the country’s nearly 39 million people will face emergency levels of acute hunger in March, according to a recent CPI report that assesses food insecurity. The report estimates that more than 3 million children under the age of five are already severely malnourished.

“The international community is turning its back on this country as it faces the threat of a man-made disaster,” said Dominic Stillhart, director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Six day tour. In Afghanistan

Even before the Taliban took over, the impoverished country was ravaged by famine, and now young girls are paying the price with their bodies and lives.

“Young Afghan girls are becoming the price of Afghan food,” Mehbooba Siraj, an Afghan women’s rights activist, told CNN. “Because otherwise his family would starve.”

“Usually there’s a lot of pain, a lot of abuse, a lot of abuse in these things.”Dear SirajWomen’s rights activist

Although marriage under the age of 15 is illegal throughout the country, it has been practiced regularly for years, especially in more rural areas of Afghanistan. And the situation has worsened since August, as families have become disillusioned.

“Usually there’s a lot of pain, a lot of abuse, a lot of abuse in these things,” Siraj said, adding that some girls forced into marriage die in childbirth because they. ..

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