After more than two and a half years of unprecedented gender apartheid, too many families are plunging into poverty and facing the impossible choice of selling a daughter or starving the family. Women–including widows–are often forbidden from working. Girls are unable to go to school past sixth grade. These factors are contributing to Afghanistan’s economic collapse. Around 90% of Afghans are reportedly going hungry today. The consequences for girls couldn’t be worse. A bride price of 150,000 Afghanis (about $2000) can feed an entire family for a year. This is why we’re seeing a 500% spike in child marriages in recent years.  

Your donation will help Too Young To Wed’s comprehensive approach to ending child marriage, which is helping hundreds of families, including the ones featured here.

TYTW has a holistic approach to supporting these families. Thanks to YOUR SUPPORT, last year we provided more than 1 million meals to families facing food insecurity – a key driver of child marriage . Once a family’s immediate needs are met, girls’ families can enroll in vocational training, like carpet weaving and poultry farming, as a means of establishing self-sufficiency and long-term financial security.

Saliha, one of TYTW’s beneficiaries recently featured in a Washington Post OpEd written by TYTW , was sold into marriage at age 7. “I sold my daughter due to poverty and hunger to save the life of the others,” her father told us. “I feel guilty but I had no other choice.” Thanks to the intervention of the TYTW team who worked with the two families and local faith leaders, the marriage was annulled and Saliha is now enrolled in school.

What can your gift do?

Your support of Too Young to Wed will help families on the brink by providing for their immediate and long-term needs–food, education, employment and self sufficiency. Your gifts help: 

• Protect girls from violence: When a girl is forced into marriage, she is robbed of her bodily autonomy, her opportunity to complete her education, and her physical and emotional wellbeing. She is subjected to early, forced, and frequent sexual relations, regardless of her own physical limitations, and more prone to serious health complications and injuries.
• Increase girls’ lifespans: Child mothers under age 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their twenties.
• Improve infant and child health: Infants born to child mothers are at higher risk for health complications.
• Empower lifelong change: Position families for greater economic security through a suite of market-ready livelihood opportunities.

You’re also driving generational change -- as each girl who evades child marriage is more likely to prevent her own children from marrying early. Thank you for your support!

Why Afghanistan?

As media coverage of Afghanistan fades, conditions continue to worsen under the Taliban. Restrictions on banks and rising food prices have left families financially struggling to meet their most basic needs. The United Nations warned that a million children could die imminently of malnutrition without intervention. 

Our team is working in several provinces, conducting surveys to identify the most vulnerable families, particularly widows. It’s not clear how the Taliban expect widows to feed their children when they’re forbidden from working. We also work to rectify these bans whenever possible, one community at a time.

Last year alone, TYTW prevented the forced marriage of thousands of girls through case management and family child protection agreements. We provided sensitization dialogues and training for 5,000 Afghan families, local elders, community members and de-facto authorities explaining the detrimental effects child marriages have on girls’ physical and emotional well-being as well as the broader social fabric. Girls younger than 15 are five times more likely than women to die in childbirth, and their babies are often born premature.

Earthquake Devastation

Ninety percent of the nearly 3,000 victims in the earthquakes that struck Herat province last October were women and girls, because without access to jobs or school, they’re stuck in their homes all day. 

Aziza, 27, has four daughters and is raising them on her own. Widowed when her husband was caught in the crossfire between the Taliban and the Afghan army, Aziza struggles to make ends meet and earns 40 Afghanis ($0.5 USD) a day spinning wool. Her house collapsed during the earthquake and now she and her family live in a tent. Aziza says, “If the situation doesn’t improve, I’ll be forced to sell one of my daughters.”

In December 2023, TYTW visited the Shahrak-e-Sabz settlement and counted 118 girls who had already been sold as child brides and another 116 families with intentions to do the same. TYTW is currently working to cancel those 118 marriages and bring financial stability to these families.

Selling Organs Out of Desperation: One Kidney Village

In northwestern Afghanistan, near the town of Herat, so many residents of Sufi-Abad have sold their kidneys that it has become widely known as “One Kidney Village.” Here, most homes lack electricity, water, heating systems, and even stoves.

Organ harvesting has catastrophic consequences, but many families feel they have no other choice. In the above photos are Alida, who is 20 years old, sitting with her children, Mohammad Yusuf (7), Benyamin (5), and Asma (3). Alida had planned on selling one of her kidneys to provide for her family and even went as far as scheduling the operation.

That’s when TYTW intervened, enabling Alida to cancel the operation and instead enroll in tailor training. TYTW provides food assistance for her family and thanks to the training, Alida can make clothes and earn 500-600 Afghanis per week. She says, “My life has improved. Before we had nothing to eat…now we eat rice, potatoes, red beans. We also have gas to eat food.” Alida hopes to open her own store in the future and her husband, Mohammad Awaz who is a daily worker, supports her in this endeavor. Next year, her oldest son will go to school.

Too Young to Wed’s Mission

Led by renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and activist Stephanie Sinclair, the mission of Too Young To Wed (TYTW) is to empower girls and end child marriage globally.

While child marriage occurs in almost all countries, and is not exclusive to any particular religion or society, TYTW focuses its programming in areas where child marriage is most egregious and underreported.

Learn more at Too Young to Wed's website: www.tooyoungtowed.org.