A report on the state of women’s lives in Afghanistan:
Between 60 and 80 per cent of all marriages in Afghanistan are forced. As many as 57 per cent of girls are married off below the age of 16, some as young as six. Because of the custom of paying a bride price, marriage is essentially a financial transaction, and girls a commodity.
The custom of baad, when girls and women are exchanged to settle debts and disputes, is still widely practised. The women are not treated as proper wives, but in effect are slave workers for their husbands.
…The Taliban were vilified for denying girls education, but even now only 19 per cent of Afghan schools are for girls and only 5 per cent of girls of secondary school age are enrolled.
And the West cannot blame the Taliban, as many of the abuses take place in the north and west, where the Taliban are not active.
In the north-east, where the Taliban never had control, a woman dies every 20 minutes in childbirth.
(By the NGO Womankind Worldwide).
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