Mother Sells Her Newborn Child For Money To Feed
Information reaching Naija News House Mother Sells Her Newborn Child For Money To Feed
An Afghan mother has been forced to sell one of her newborn twins to get money to feed the other amid the country’s rapidly worsening food crisis.
The 40-year-old woman, from northern Jawzjan province, gave the baby to a childless couple in return for $104 (N43, 000 at the official rate of N410 to $1) which she hoped would buy enough food to last her family for another six months, Daily Mail reports.
Drought had forced the couple to move to a nearby city, where her husband and second-eldest son worked as labourers before the Taliban take-over in August collapsed Afghanistan’s economy and work dried up.
The UN now warns that more than half of Afghanistan’s population faces starvation this winter, a problem compounded by the fact that many aid agencies fled the country as the government collapsed and international aid dried up.
This family’s plight was uncovered by Save the Children, which does still have workers on the ground who are distributing what food they have to those in need.
Mother Sells Her Newborn
Speaking to the charity workers, the Afghan mother explained that she had given birth to the twins – a boy and a girl – around four or five months ago, shortly after leaving their farm due to drought.
Sitting in a bare room carpeted in rugs donated by a local mosque, the woman explained that all of the children’s clothes are secondhand and donated by locals.
She had initially planned to keep both children, but was barely able to get hold of enough food for even one of them – typically bread, and sometimes milk powder.
Her husband, 45, works as a labourer but says there are only enough jobs for one day of work in five – and the day’s wages, around $1, are enough for just two days of food.
Mother Sells Her Newborn
The second-eldest son also works in the nearby market, the mother said, pushing carts that stall owners use to carry their produce.
But because he is young, owners often prefer to use stronger children and he frequently goes without work as well.
With the new babies crying continually from hunger, the woman says a childless couple approached her and offered $104 to take her newborn son away.
Initially she refused, but after several days of seeing the boy cry with nothing to eat – she decided that giving him away was the best option to provide for him and for her remaining children.
She said: ‘It was hard. Harder than you can imagine. I gave my child away because of destitution… I was unable to take care of him and I could not afford anything.
Mother Sells Her Newborn
‘I gave all of the money to my husband. He bought some rice, oil, and flour. We already finished them.’
Her husband added: ‘We need help, we are hungry and poor.
‘There are no work opportunities in Afghanistan. We have children. We need flour and oil the most, which we don’t have. It’s also good to have firewood.
‘I could not afford to buy meat in the last two or three months. We only have bread for the children which is not always available.’
Save the Children provided the family with emergency packages for their home.
They were given items for the kitchen, blankets, winter clothing, shoes, tool kits and other essential items such as a gas cooking stove.
Workers also learned of a second case where another mother of twins was pressured by her family to leave one of them to die because she was suffering from malnutrition – but she refused to give up on the girl.
The woman’s 18-month-old twins are both unwell and weak. With the weather getting colder and the little suffering from severe malnutrition, the woman explained she can’t afford to care for her children as a single parent.
“My son and my daughter cried all last night because they were hungry. We have nothing in my house. We have no food, no flour, we have nothing,” she said.
“My husband doesn’t send us money. (He says) ‘let her die’. Everyone was telling me, “We ‘will buy her, but I didn’t give her up.”
Mother Sells Her Newborn
