KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – A 17-year-old girl named Soraya committed suicide by ingesting rat poison to escape a forced marriage in Takhar province, northern Afghanistan, local sources said.
According to the sources, the incident occurred in Taleqan city, the provincial center, on Monday, December 16. A source in the provincial hospital in Takhar also confirmed the incident.
The sources explained that the teenage girl was engaged to a man without her consent, which is believed to be the reason for the incident.
The Taliban have not yet commented on the incident.
This young girl’s story is becoming increasingly common in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. In the past year alone, at least 103 women and girls took their lives by ingesting poison, hanging, or gunshot to escape forced marriages, slavery, sexual abuse, and domestic violence.
The actual numbers may be even higher, as many incidents go unreported due to Taliban media restrictions and families’ preference to keep such cases secret.
Meanwhile, forced and early marriages have been on the rise in recent years, driven by Taliban oppression, economic pressures, and other factors. In some cases, parents marry off their adolescent daughters to avoid forced marriages to Taliban fighters.
In a broader context, gender-based violence (GBV) has surged across Afghanistan. A report by Afghan Witness documented over 700 GBV cases between January 2022 and June 2024, involving 840 women and girls. Among these, at least 322 were femicides—cases where women were intentionally killed because of their gender. The report also recorded 287 instances of arrest, detention, and enforced disappearances, as well as 75 cases of sexual assault or rape.
International experts and human rights groups have condemned the Taliban’s oppressive policies, warning that the escalating violence against women and girls constitutes a form of gender apartheid.
