Family in Baghlan Sales Two of Their Children Due to Poverty

KABUL (MEP) – Man with paralyzed legs and seemingly very depressed, starts telling the bitter story of his two newborn children, which he sold them due to the extreme poverty.

Abdul Ghyas  45, suffered a back injury eight years ago in Iran while digging a well, and says he has lost the ability to work and cannot stand on his foot after that incident two years ago.

Abdul Ghyas is currently living in a trust house with his wife and five children, four of whom are girls, in the Nahrain district of Baghlan province.

In an interview with MEP, he said that he was facing major economic problems due to his inability to work, and that he sold his another baby to a wealthy family in exchange for 15,000 Afghanis last winter, providing his wife with some food, medicine and other necessities she needed after giving birth.

“I sold my first baby about two years ago.” Abdul Ghyas said.

He says his wife was in dire need of money at the time of the birth and was forced to do so (selling a baby) and sold his second child to a family lacking children for 15,000 Afghanis.

Abdul Ghyas’ wife sitting next to her husband’s bed together with her five children, cries as she misses her sold children who are in stranger’s homes.

She says she has been forced to sell her two children two years ago due to severe economic problems.

According to her, the stress caused by the sale of his two children and their economic incapacity have caused her psychological problems.

“No mother can afford to sell her child to another family with her own hands,” she said.

Both of the children sold by the family were girls.

She says that she always severely misses her two children and the pain of their separation has caused her to suffer from a mental illness.

The wife of Abdul Ghyas, although dissatisfied with the sale of her children, but she says she is happy that they are growing up in better conditions and she always prays for them.

Abdul Ghyas is now bedridden due to a back injury and has lost the ability to work.

According to him, their morning and evening meals are obtained through the charity by the neighbors and the rich people, and currently do not have any stable income.

Abdul Ghyas sheds tears as he recalls the sale of his children, and says he has repeatedly asked for help from the Nahrain district administration. But despite the distribution of large donations to the people, he has never been helped.

This family urges the government and aid agencies to help poor and needy families and not allow any other family like them to mourn the separation of their child.

The family has four daughters and a son, the eldest is 14 and the youngest is 3 years old, and the sold children were the sixth and seventh children of the family.

Poverty, along with the multiplicity of children in most Afghan families, occasionally leads to the sale of babies or the transfer of custody of the child to families who are suffering from a lack of children.

By: Babur Yagana