More School, Less Early Marriage for Afghan Girls

Thank you for your contribution to ending early marriage for girls in Afghanistan. You are enabling young Afghan girls to go through Sahar's Early Marriage Prevention Program - to learn their rights and to stay in school longer. 

We are excited to announce that as a result of our Early Marriage Prevention Program (EMPP) Sahar was selected to join Girls Not Brides on June 10, 2018.  “Girls Not Brides is a global partnership of more than 900 civil society organisations from over 95 countries committed to ending child marriage and enabling girls to fulfil their potential.” As part of the group, Sahar now has access to a larger network of change makers working collectively to end child marriage. It is our first international collaboration.

Additonally, we are extremely pleased that our efforts have been succcessful in bringing the fathers of our EMPP students together to discuss that why early marriage is harmful and how they can participate in ending child marriage, starting from their families and communities. 

This problem directly affects millions of girls in a country with one of the youngest populations in the world: 63 percent of Afghanistan’s population is under age 24. Girls face greater risks than boys of failure to continue their educations through secondary school. Girls’ schools continue to be targeted by violent extremists and there continues to be a stigma against girls’ education in the country where the Taliban very recently outlawed education for girls. Through Sahar’s work we combat many of these issues, but we continued to see a dropoff in girl students in our programs around the age of 12 to 13, when many girls begin to be forced into early marriage and their husbands or parents encourage them to drop out of school. So, we developed our Early Marriage Prevention intiaitve to address this issue. 

Freshta, one of the female Afghan teacher liaisons who co-developped the curriculum and runs the program, shared thoughts at a recent graduation event for students who had completed the program: "We all know in Afghanistan that girls and women face a lot of problems and that women don't know about their rights in their family and in their communities. We all know that many girls are victims of early and forced marriage, it's a big problem in our country, but it's my job and your job to increase our knowledge about our rights and continue to fight for our education. We will not accept to get married under the legal age and we will fight against this problem together. Our victory is in our unity on this matter. I want all of you girls, to carry this message to your family, friends and other classmates. Teach them all of the things that you learn in this course. It's your responsibility."

Thank you for your support to end early marriage for girls in Afghanistan. Your contribution helps improve the lives of thousands!