The United Nations Child Fund (UNICEF) has raised concerns over reports of increasing child marriage in Afghanistan due to economic problems among poor families.

UNICEF executive director, Henrietta Fore, has said child marriage is on the rise. “I am deeply concerned by reports that child marriage in Afghanistan is on the rise,” she said in a statement.

According to Fore, poor families make their daughters marry at a young age in return for a dowry to feed their family. “We have received credible reports of families offering daughters as young as 20 days old up for future marriage in return for a dowry.”

The statement said child marriage has been increasing since the political change amid families’ dire need for economic support, adding even before the former government’s collapse, child marriage was reported in Afghanistan.

“UNICEF estimates that 28 per cent of Afghan women aged 15–49 years were married before the age of 18,” the statement said.

According to the statement, the COVID-19 pandemic and the current food crisis joined with the onset of winter has increased the number of child marriages in Afghanistan. “The extremely dire economic situation in Afghanistan is pushing more families deeper into poverty and forcing them to make desperate choices, such as putting children to work and marrying girls off at a young age.”

According to UNICEF, education has always been a good protection against child marriage and child labour and now as the girls are not allowed to go back to school, the risk of child marriage has become higher.

UNICEF said it has started economic initiatives to help poor families economically so that the level of child marriage does not scale up. “We have started a cash assistance program to help offset the risk of hunger, child labour and child marriage among the most vulnerable families. We plan to scale up this and other social services programmes in the months to come.”

According to the statement, UNICEF will work with religious leaders to address the problem. It also called on government authorities to help the poor families and vulnerable people, especially the young girls, not to become victims.

UNICEF said the government should reopen schools for girls so that the risk of child marriage decreases in the country.