When Hunger Arranges the Marriage: Survival Deals in Afghanistan
- UNICEF Team uOttawa
- Nov 19
- 6 min read
Lina Benabdellah - Awareness Content Reporter
On the ground
In drought-hit districts and crowded displacement sites across Afghanistan, a cruel calculus has returned to family life: when there isn’t enough food, a daughter’s childhood becomes a bargaining chip. Caseworkers and community volunteers recount stopping the marriages of girls barely in their teen’s arrangements forged not out of tradition, but out of hunger and debt. The choice is as stark as it is familiar: a bride price today, or empty plates tomorrow. Funding cuts to aid programs and an education ban that locks girls out of secondary school have stripped families of safer options and erased hard-won protections.
Context: The weight of hunger
Afghanistan’s hunger emergency remains among the world’s most severe. The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis projected 9.52 million people, (about one in five Afghans) in “crisis or worse” (IPC Phase 3+) from May through October 2025, driven by a fragile economy, climate shocks and significant cuts to humanitarian assistance compared with 2024. Even when harvests briefly improve conditions, the underlying drivers persist. The consequences are starkest for children and mothers. UNICEF reports 3.5 million children and 1 million pregnant and new mothers are acutely malnourished and require treatment, a caseload fuelled by high food prices, low household incomes and repeated disasters. UNICEF’s 2024 annual report also notes that 66.9% of Afghan children live in multidimensional poverty deprivation that increases the risk of exploitation when food runs out. Multiple shocks compound the crisis. The UN says 22.9 million people (nearly half the population) will need humanitarian assistance in 2025, even as funding lags far behind requirements. By May 2025, only 16% of the year’s plan was supported by new contributions; UNICEF’s US$1.2 billion appeal was only 51–56% funded through mid-year to September. Climate shocks and displacement deepen the squeeze on households. FAO warns that 2024 floods and pest attacks destroyed nearly 14% of cultivated areas, threatening food supplies ahead of the 2025 lean seasons. At the same time, mass returns from Pakistan and Iran have accelerated: IOM reports over 4 million Afghans returned since September 2023, including 1.5 million in 2025 alone, while UNHCR tracks continuing weekly repatriations that strain services in border provinces. Financial pressure is compounded by shrinking lifelines. With international funding falling, aid agencies warn of pipeline breaks and closed services, including protection hubs that once gave girls somewhere safe to seek help. As resources thin, negative coping strategies child labour, debt, and early marriage rise.
How hunger fuels early marriage
When a family cannot cover food or rent, the logics of survival take over. A promised dowry or bride price can settle debts. A married daughter is one less mouth to feed. In recent field research across 11 provinces, ODI found that economic precocity, restrictions on education and work, and fear of coercion have shifted social norms toward earlier unions since 2021. Families described marrying girls younger than they otherwise would because school doors are closed and livelihoods have collapsed. UNICEF warned early in the crisis that child marriage was rising as a direct coping strategy. The agency’s baseline estimates 28% of Afghan women aged 15-49 married before 18 pre-dates the current wave of restrictions; practitioners now describe greater tolerance for “survival marriages,” including in provinces hit hardest by drought and displacement. The mechanics vary some rely on a future promise of marriage; others exchange marriages between families but the underlying driver is the same: food insecurity.
The human cost
Early marriage nearly always ends a girl’s education and starts a cycle of risk: early pregnancy, health complications, domestic violence, and isolation from support networks. In Afghanistan, the cost is magnified by a continuing ban on girls’ schooling beyond grade six, which removes the single most powerful shield against child marriage education itself. UNICEF estimates 3.7 million children are out of school, 60% of them girls; about 1.8 million secondary-school girls remain directly affected by the ban. Without classrooms, families lose both the reason and the leverage to delay a wedding. The pressures are intimately linked. UNICEF’s protection brief in 2024 puts it plainly: amid multiple crises, girls and boys face heightened risks of violence, hazardous labour and child marriage “just to help parents put food on the table.” When rations are cut and work disappears, the path out narrows to one decision: marry a child to save a household.
What UNICEF and partners are doing
Despite shrinking space, Afghan and international teams continue work that directly interrupts forced and early marriages. UNICEF supports community case management that identifies girls at risk, mediates with families and local leaders, and links households to emergency cash, food and services. Where possible, women-and-girls’ safe spaces provide psychosocial support, referrals and legal information critical points of contact that have prevented unions before they are sealed. Keeping girls learning is equally vital. With the formal ban still in place, partners have expanded community-based education and accelerated learning at the local level, alongside skills programmes for adolescent girls. These initiatives do more than fill a timetable; they anchor girls in their communities and give families a reason to keep daughters at home and in class, not in a bridal convoy. At the same time, nutrition teams are treating acute malnutrition at scale and pre-positioning supplies where access can vanish with the first snows. Every treatment course delivered and every ration distributed buys time-time that keeps marriage off the table and childhood within reach.
What must happen now?
First, the ban on girls’ secondary education must be lifted. Education delays marriage protects health and income and gives families a credible alternative to survival deals. Without it, any progress will be fragile. Second, donors need to close urgent funding gaps. When cash pipelines break and protection hubs close, families lose the very services that keep children safe. Restored, predictable funding for food, nutrition and child protection will immediately reduce the pressure to marry girls for dowries or debt relief. Third, national and community leaders should enforce a clear minimum marriage age and back local mechanisms that refuse to register or officiate under-age unions. Paired with livelihoods and cash assistance for the poorest households, this is how norms shift from the ground up even in hard times.
Conclusion
When hunger arranges marriage, childhood disappears. Yet the equation is not immutable. Where food assistance is steady, where a social worker can intervene, where a classroom door is open, families choose school over survival deals. Afghanistan’s girls do not need miracles; they need time, safety and the chance to learn. With funding restored and education reopened, parents can reclaim the decision every child deserves: to grow up before growing into a marriage.
Sources
Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. (2025, June 4). Afghanistan: Acute food insecurity situation, March–April 2025; projection May–October 2025. https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/c/1159622/?iso3=AFG
UNICEF Afghanistan. (2025, April 10). UNICEF Afghanistan annual report 2024 [PDF]. https://www.unicef.org/afghanistan/media/11336/file/UNICEF%20Afghanistan%20annual%20report%202024_low%20res.pdf.pdf
UNICEF. (2021, November 12). Girls increasingly at risk of child marriage in Afghanistan. https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/girls-increasingly-risk-child-marriage-afghanistan
National Statistics and Information Authority (NSIA) & UNICEF Afghanistan. (2023). Afghanistan Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2022–2023: Summary findings report [PDF]. https://mics.unicef.org/sites/mics/files/2024-08/Afghanistan%202022-23%20MICS_English.pdf
Safi, M., Browne, E., Kamninga, T., & Khan, A. (2024). Changing social norms around age of marriage in Afghanistan: Data on repression and resistance under the Taliban. https://odi.org/documents/8904/Afghanistan-full-report-final.pdf
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). (2024, December 19). Afghanistan: Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2025. https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/afghanistan/afghanistan-humanitarian-needs-and-response-plan-2025-december-2024
OCHA. (2025, August 13). Afghanistan: Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2025—Response overview (i 1 January–31 May 2025). https://reliefweb.int/report/afghanistan/afghanistan-humanitarian-needs-and-response-plan-2025-response-overview-1-january-31-may-2025
UNICEF Afghanistan. (2025, September 30). Afghanistan humanitarian situation report No. 9 [PDF]. https://www.unicef.org/media/175686/file/Afghanistan-Humanitarian-Situation-Report-No.-9%2C-30-September-2025.pdf
International Organization for Migration. (2025, August 7). IOM warns of mass returns to Afghanistan, urges immediate funding to scale response. https://www.iom.int/news/iom-warns-mass-returns-afghanistan-urges-immediate-funding-scale-response
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (2025). Afghanistan situation-Operational Data Portal. https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/afghanistan
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2024, December). Afghanistan: Assessment on flood damage
https://www.fao.org/emergencies/resources-repository/publications/AFG
UNICEF. (2025, September 17). Statement by UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell on the denial of education to adolescent girls in Afghanistan for 4 years. https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/statement-unicef-executive-director-catherine-russell-denial-education-adolescent
Comments