Neda was just 12 years old and a schoolgirl in Kabul when her parents married her off to a distant relative, a man she had never met.
Her family was poor; his was better off. Neda believes money and her mother’s illiteracy sealed her fate. She was taken to her new 20-year-old husband’s home in the remote Darwaz district in northeastern Afghanistan, where her childhood ended abruptly.
“I didn’t even have my first period yet. I had no idea what marital life or sex was,” she told RFE/RL. “My parents didn’t ask me if I wanted to get married.”
Neda said her in-laws expected her to do all the household chores, and her husband would beat her if she was unable to clean or cook the way his family liked.
“I was abused in every way possible,” said Neda, whose name has been changed for privacy reasons.
Three years later, her father intervened. With his help, Neda sought a divorce through a Shari’a court, which applies Islamic law, in a process that took two years.
Child marriages have always been commonplace in Afghanistan, but rights groups say the practice has intensified since the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
On May 14, the Taliban issued a new law on divorce that for the first time implicitly acknowledges that child marriage is permitted in the country. The decree, titled On The Judicial Separation Of Spouses, sets out conditions for divorce in courts.
“Upon reaching puberty, the minor has the option to dissolve the marriage,” Article 5 of the decree states, referring to marriages arranged by relatives. Until then, a girl has no right to seek divorce. The law also states that, if a girl does not formally object to her marriage upon reaching puberty, her silence is interpreted as consent.
The typical age range for the onset of puberty in girls is between eight and 13, according to medical experts.
Islamic scholars have differing interpretations of puberty, with some schools of thought placing it at 15 or 18, while several classical texts suggest that nine is the earliest age a girl can be considered to have reached puberty.
The UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) condemned the decree as “another step in the erosion of Afghan women and girls’ rights.”
“By devoting a chapter on separation for girls who reach puberty and who are married, the decree implies that child marriage is permitted,” UNAMA said in a statement.
Men can initiate divorce by simply saying “talaq,” the Arabic word for divorce.
Law Versus Reality
The law states that a girl married to a man who “has not treated her with kindness or is well-known for his bad choices” has the right to seek the annulment of the marriage through courts upon reaching puberty.
But if her husband refuses to divorce her and she fails to bring witnesses to support her claim, the law orders the court to accept the husband’s word.
Taliban officials did not respond to RFE/RL’s request for comment.
Rights activists and many Afghan women who have endured early marriages say that while Afghanistan’s Shari’a-based laws allow women to seek divorce in theory, in practice the process is slow and costly, taking many months or even years.
The Taliban has banned girls’ education beyond the sixth grade and introduced sweeping restrictions on women’s lives, including limits on work, travel, and access to public spaces.
In strictly conservative and poverty-stricken Afghanistan, many believe that it is nearly impossible for a girl -- a child -- to go to court and convince witnesses to testify against her husband. Divorce is a social taboo and often brings lifelong disrepute to the divorcee and her family.
Blaming Poverty
Parents often blame poverty, debt, and insecurity for their decision to marry off their young daughters.
Speaking to RFE/RL on condition of anonymity, a resident of the Zindajan district of Herat Province said he struggles with “worry and remorse at night” after marrying off his 15-year-old daughter in 2025.
Seeking to justify his “difficult decision,” the man said it was the only solution to save the girl and the family from what he described as mounting social and financial pressures.
For Sana, now 38, the new decree revived memories of a childhood she says was stolen from her.
She said she was forced into marriage at the age of 13 after she lost both her parents and her eldest brother became her legal guardian.
“I had to move from my native city of Balkh to my husband’s village in Samangan Province, where I was forced to do housework and look after livestock,” Sana told RFE/RL, on the condition that her real name not be published.
Social Stigma
Former child brides Sana and Neda told RFE/RL that their early marriages have shaped every aspect of their lives -- long after the marriages ended.
Sana said she suffered several miscarriages. She dreamed of going to school but was never allowed. Instead, she secretly studied by reading her cousins’ textbooks.
At 18, an uncle helped her apply for a divorce. A year later, it was granted. After the marriage was dissolved, Sana joined a women’s military training program and later the Afghan Army.
But social stigma followed her.
“In society’s eyes, I was a divorced woman serving in the army,” Sana said. “That meant a woman with loose morals.”
With few options, she remarried in early 2021 as the second wife of an older man. Six months later, the government collapsed. She lost her job and became fully dependent on her new husband -- who, she said, forbids her from going out even to seek medical treatment and often taunts her about her past divorce.
Neda, too, went back to finish school after obtaining a divorce and found work. She dreamed of having a family of her own but says that “most Afghan men don’t want to marry a divorced woman.”
She married an unemployed man several years her senior and went on to have three children. But the couple “had nothing in common,” Neda says, and the marriage ended in divorce.
“I had a horrible start to my life and have never been able to put it right,” said Neda, who now lives as a refugee in Pakistan with her children and works as a cleaner to pay the bills.
“Before the Taliban, at least women could work and had some degree of freedom,” Sana said. “But now that window has closed. It is just darkness.”
