A desperate family in Afghanistan has sold their baby for $ 500 so that the rest of the family can have money for food in the coming days.
The baby girl is said to have been sold to a man who will raise her to marry his son in future.
The unidentified man has paid half of the money and will pay the balance when he goes to pick the baby after she starts walking.
“My other children were dying of hunger so we had to sell my daughter. How can I not be sad? She is my child,” the baby’s mother said in an interview with BBC.
Her husband is a garbage collector and they live in the west of the country. The father said they had no choice but to sell the baby.
“We are starving. Right now we have no flour, no oil at home. We have nothing. My daughter doesn’t know what her future will be. I don’t know how she’ll feel about it. But I had to do it.”” he said.
Many families in the country have resolved to sell their young ones to meet their daily needs especially after the Taliban takeover that stopped foreign funds that propped up the fragile economy, leaving it on the brink of collapse.
The BBC team that visited the country reported that they were also offered a child during their stay.
Child marriages have been practiced in Afghanistan for centuries, but the country’s dire economic situation has driven many families, like this one, to resort to striking deals earlier and earlier in girls’ lives.
BBC reported the child sale to Unicef child protection team.
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