In Afghanistan, the trials of child marriage and malnutrition often go hand in hand
Married too young, women and their children are vulnerable to malnutrition
©UNICEF Afghanistan/2017/Karimi
Interviews and photos by Sahraa Karimi
GARDEZ, Afghanistan, 18 September 2017— In Afghanistan, the trials of child marriage and malnutrition often go hand in hand. More than one in three Afghan girls are married before their 18th birthday: Not only does this practice deprive young women of their childhood, an education, and the freedom to chart the course of their life, it also exposes them and their children to the harsh realities of malnutrition.
In rural Paktia Province, near the border with Pakistan, young mothers travel to the Gardez Provincial Hospital to treat their sick infants at a UNICEF-supported Department for Severe Acute Malnutrition. Here are their stories.
“I don’t remember my childhood. I don’t know what ‘childhood’ means”
“I have been married for 13 years. I was seven when my father forced me to marry a man 40 years older. He is nearly blind and can’t even see me properly. My family wasn’t poor. It wasn’t because of money. My father’s close friend proposed me for his brother. And my father accepted. I was a child, I didn’t know what was happening. I thought I was going to the man’s house to play with his daughters. He already had two wives and eight children. I didn’t know what it meant to have a husband. No one used my name, Shabnam. Instead, they would say, ‘Hey, wife of Qadir, come to play…Hey, wife of Qadir, do that’. I lost my own identity.”
“At 13, I became pregnant. I wasn’t ready to have a baby. Now, I have three daughters and a son. All the wives and children live together in one house. Forty people. We share everything. There is only one washroom. We don’t even have a proper bathroom. I’m anaemic and all my children have health problems. My son is very malnourished so I have been here treating him here for 10 days.”
“I don’t remember my childhood. I don’t know what ‘childhood’ means. Instead of being sent to school, my father sent me away to become a wife. I buried all my dreams when my father made me get married so young.”
“My husband doesn’t let us plan when it comes to having children. I gave birth to six children in 10 years.”
“I was 14 when my parents decided I had to marry a man much older than me. That was 10 years ago. It is shameful for families in my village if daughters older than 14 aren’t married yet. My husband was our neighbour. He was a rich man and all parents wished to give him their daughter. So my father ‘won’ this competition. His last two wives had died while giving birth.”
“Parents do not ask for their daughter’s opinion in Gardez. Girls must marry the man of the parents’ choice. I don’t recall any girl who married a man whom she loved or wanted. I see some women who achieved many things in their life. I see them on TV. But they are very far from us. They didn’t marry very early. They could go to school. Many girls can only dream of the life they see on TV.”
“I have five daughters and one son. I’ve been at the hospital for almost three weeks with my daughter, Aisha. She is just six months old and I was told she has [severe acute] malnutrition. When I breastfeed her, she vomits, sometimes blood. All my children have had similar symptoms. My husband doesn’t let us plan when it comes to having children. As a result, I had six children in 10 years. My husband’s family loves boys. I have only one son and must have at least two or three.”
“My daughter weighs much less than others at her age. All my children had the same problem when they were born.”
©UNICEF Afghanistan/2017/Karimi
“I got married when I was 12. It was an arranged marriage. I didn’t want to get married. I was very young, didn’t know many things about life. In our village, all girls get married when they are still children. All these women have the same fate. Nobody asks us if we are ready to marry. Our husbands are much older than us. Some of us are the second, third and even fourth wife of our husbands.”
“Do you think we didn’t want to study? Or that we didn’t have dreams of our own? Of course, we wanted to go to school like others. This bad tradition takes everything from us.”
“I have been at the hospital with my daughter for 20 days. I don’t have enough milk to breastfeed and my daughter’s weight is less than others at her age. All my children had the same problem when they were born. I have six daughters. They were born quickly after one another.”
“I wanted a peaceful life with a man of my choosing… I wanted to become a teacher.”
©UNICEF Afghanistan/2017/Karimi
“I got married five years ago when I was only 13. I am the second wife. My husband is very old. I didn’t want to marry him, but my father forced me. My mother had died and my father wanted to remarry. We had a distant relative who offered to find a wife for my father in exchange for marrying me. My father accepted.”
“I don’t love my husband. I wanted a peaceful life with a man of my choosing. Being second wife of an old man who already had seven children is not very easy. I don’t have a happy life. I live with his first wife in the same house, doing all the housework. I really wanted to become a teacher. But I couldn’t even go to elementary school. My father didn’t allow me to study. I didn’t know my life would turn out like this.”
“My son Khodaydad is one. We have been here for about a week. He refuses my breast milk if I don’t feed him powdered milk first.”
In societies where women lack empowerment, women and children suffer from a so-called ‘poor nutrition status’, which directly impacts their health and opportunities, as well as their ability to contribute to the country’s productivity.
Once married, girls are often quickly thrust into motherhood. Quick succession of children is commonplace, exposing mother and child to unnecessary health risks:
- More than one in three Afghan girls aged 20–24 were married before they turned 18.
- One in three adolescent Afghan girls suffers from anaemia, hindering their physical growth, resistance to infections and cognitive development;
- Less than 20 per cent of Afghanistan’s infants receive the appropriate number of meals they need for healthy development;
- Among children younger than five, over 40 per cent are stunted, one of the highest rates in the world.
UNICEF Afghanistan works with the Ministry of Public Health and Nutrition cluster partners to support the prevention and treatment of malnutrition, and with the Ministry of Education and other partners to get girls into school to complete their education.
Every year, approximately 200,000 children are treated for severe acute malnutrition and about 1.5 million school-going adolescent girls receive weekly iron folic acid supplementation to prevent anaemia.
