Who is Buying? The Demand Side of Afghanistan’s Child Marriage Market

The buyers in this market share one thing across every category: nobody is looking for them. Coverage of Afghanistan’s child marriage crisis is overwhelmingly supply-side. How many girls. How poor are the families. What do the Taliban edicts say? The buyers — the men whose demand makes the market function — receive almost no scrutiny. No government in the region faces meaningful pressure to investigate or prosecute the purchase of Afghan girls. Western donors have not conditioned their aid or...