Desperate parents sell their babies as food poverty spirals in Afghanistan

A humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Afghanistan where an extra nine million people have been plunged into severe food poverty since the Taliban seized power.

New parents said they have sold their babies just to get enough money to feed their other children.

Just two months on from the takeover, living conditions in Afghanistan have deteriorated so rapidly that it could already be the world’s biggest humanitarian disaster, even worse than the situation in Yemen.

Destitute citizens include a couple who sold their newborn child for £400, which will get the family ‘through a few months’.
The baby will stay with them until she’s learnt to walk and then be taken by the man who bought her.

They were told she’ll marry his child once she’s grown up, BBC News reports.

The father, who used to collect rubbish and is unable to earn any money now, said: ‘We are starving. Right now we have no flour, no oil at home. We have nothing.

‘My daughter doesn’t know what her future will be. I don’t know how she’ll feel about it. But I had to do it.’