Surviving at Any Cost: How Afghanistan’s Mothers Are Forced to Sell Their Children

Cover Photo by Afshin Ismaeli

In a collapsing Afghanistan, hunger and poverty have been forcing desperate parents into unthinkable decisions, selling their children to strangers just to survive another day.

On a winter morning in 2023 in Kabul, Lima carried her three-year-old son, Safir, to a market in the city to do something unthinkable – to sell her child so that her other children might survive. Unfortunately, in today’s Afghanistan, hunger has made this reality for many parents. 

That was nearly two years ago. Lima remembers weaving in between stalls that sold rugs, cups, and cookware, until she sold her son to an older man for just over 200 dollars.

Today, she finds herself at the edge of yet another impossible choice.

Burning Plastic to Keep Warm

Lima lives with her six remaining children in a single dark room of a crumbling house that is shared with other families in Kabul. There is no kitchen, so they cook outdoors. For months, they have not been able to afford fuel.

“We barely have electricity. The winters are bitterly cold. We burn plastic to stay warm,” Lima explains.

In January 2024, the UN warned that Afghanistan teeters on the brink of humanitarian disaster and economic collapse. At the time, more than 85 percent of the country’s 34 million people lived under the poverty line meaning that nearly nine in ten Afghans struggled to meet basic needs.

Lima is one of them, often forced to beg on the streets. Some days she receives enough for buying bread, but on many days, she goes without.  “It’s been months since we last had a proper dinner. We cannot even afford to eat twice a day,” says 12-year-old Soumaira, one of Lima’s daughters. The children do not attend school. They have no phone and no way of reaching the outside world.

Photo by: Afshin Ismaeli

At night, Lima cries for the son she sold. She has no photographs, no reminders. She does not know whether he is safe or even alive. “No one should ever be forced into such a decision. He is my own flesh and blood,” she says.

Lima’s husband was killed in an explosion in Kabul three years ago. Since then, life has only grown harder. For a time, Lima received support from charities, but when the Taliban seized power in 2021, the help disappeared.

Western aid, once Afghanistan’s lifeline, has all but dried up. The Norwegian Refugee Council warns that cutting aid is leaving women and children on a ‘dangerous trajectory,’ as agencies struggle to maintain operations under severe funding constraints.

Under Taliban rule, women have been barred from working. For widows like Lima, that ban is devastating. Without income, feeding children becomes nearly impossible.Across Afghanistan, the signs of collapse are everywhere. Prices have skyrocketed. Public workers go unpaid. This forces families to sell what little they have.

The causes for these circumstances are both global and local: the war in Ukraine, conflict in Gaza, years of drought, and the sanctions imposed after the Taliban’s return to power have all contributed to the worsening situation in Afghanistan. Symptoms of this are evident: regular crop failures occur, supply lines have faltered, and food prices are soaring.

The “One-Kidney Village”

Lima’s desperation is echoed across Afghanistan. In Herat, for example, families confront an equally devastating choice: selling their organs. On the outskirts of the city lies the Shahreke Sabz refugee camp, home to more than 12,000 families displaced by drought. Locals call it the “One-Kidney Village.”

Here, organ trafficking has become a grim reality. Many Afghans sell their kidneys for thousands of dollars, hoping to pay debts or buy food. The trade existed even before the Taliban’s takeover, but poverty and joblessness have driven numbers higher, even as prices fall.

One of the sellers is 22-year-old Wakil Ahmad Ramati. For his right kidney, he received the equivalent of 2,400 dollars. “I owed people money. I thought I could repay my debts and feed my family,” he says. Instead, the surgery left him ill and unable to work. Today, he lives in a tent with his wife and two children, scraping together a living by selling recycled waste. Most days, it buys little more than bread.

Photo by: Afshin Ismaeli

Selling Daughters

It has long been common in Afghanistan to arrange marriages between young girls and older men. As the crisis deepens, however, families are being forced to marry off their daughters earlier and earlier. Lima is now trying to arrange a marriage for 12-year-old Soumaira.

The UN estimates that 80,000 Afghan households have been forced into early or child marriage as a way to survive. A recent U.S. government report (SIGAR) noted a sharp rise in such cases in recent months.

Around Lima, Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis deepens, pushing thousands of families into choices that defy imagination. Yet in Kabul, Herat, and beyond, this is what survival looks like.