By Maria Van Hoorn | Development Associate
Meet Mina*, a beautiful 15 year old girl who we met standing on a street corner, selling gum and cigarettes. She’s forced to work there everyday by her mother.
You see, Mina’s family is very poor. So poor in fact, that she not only sells small goods on the street corner, but she is also forced to sell her body. With two brothers and four more sisters at home, keeping food on the table and a roof over their head is too much for the mother to handle alone. Mina’s father became disabled 3 years ago and for the first year the family lived off of selling each item in their house. Now that nothing is left, the mother feels she has no option but to sell her daughter to the highest bidder. ‘My daughter is the only capital our family has,’ she told me, with emotionless eyes.
Mina’s future seems ruined. There is now no chance that any man will accept her as a bride. There is no possibility of her going to school or learning a new skill, nor will she ever have the chance to have a child of her own. The poverty that surrounds her has claimed her opportunities. She seems destined to be a sex worker for life.
And this is the whole reason why Hagar is in Afghanistan. We hear her cries for help.
*Hagar pursues the highest degree of care and protection for each of its clients. To protect the identity of our clients, names have been changed and pictures do not depict the individual profiled.
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