Afghanistan - selling children - guess which ones?

100% agree. I actually think it's pretty awful in terms of human rights that we're accepting single men fit enough and well off enough to pay to get here (often having been denied asylum or convicted of crimes in other countries en route) and spending so much on them when there are far more vulnerable people - particularly women and children - facing far worse human rights abuses that that money could go towards saving - including providing safe routes out.

Edited to add: We have a finite amount of money to spend on this sort of thing, our country is in massive debt. It's a choice to put up single young men with no papers and no knowledge of whether they have previous rape or other convictions, costing the taxpayer millions, allowing them to roam freely and allow them to claim asylum. Whilst not paying for safe journeys home for the women working in contact with them (RIP Rhiannon Whyte). Then pay more hundreds of thousands in court cases when they commit crimes here, then more money to deport them. This is a choice and it's a choice that prioritising men over women. You could probably argue sex discrimination if anyone in power cared about women, they don't.

If they did, they would send their female relatives here and stay behind themselves.

The men coming here alone give no shits about their female relatives

You know many? You have talked to many?

Last night, I wrote:

I'm also very much of the view that no one is obliged to send aid to a country in trouble. It may be a kind act, but it's not an obligation, just as I'm not obliged to donate money to a charity and I'm not responsible for them having a financial crisis if I stop.

I've reevaluated that position. My application of standards for individuals to nation states that have chosen to join the UN is a logical fallacy. A comparable situation is the Equality Act in this country placing obligations on non-human entities, not on individual people. We generally accept the idea that a body corporate can be legally or morally obliged to act in a way that an individual rightly should not be.

Trump has breached moral, and possibly UN treaty, obligations by stopping this aid.

This still doesn't make the famine itself artifical, it's a consequence of natural phenomena and Taliban mismanagement. But it does allow us to argue convincingly that richer UN members should contribute famine relief according to their means.

You have made an excellent argument for deporting single Afghani men. Thank you.

This was covered in “From our own correspondent” first item I think. It’s worth a listen - I felt for the whole family, including the father. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002wsjf

Look at that little girl, it's appalling.

Of course not everyone's circumstances are the same but this undoubtedly applies to some of these men. As a feminist, I would like to see an asylum policy that prioritised women and children, who suffer the most in war and displacement, not unaccompanied men, who may or may not be a threat to women, because men.

In no way is this morally ok. It depresses wages leading to children going hungry in THIS country. It's not like we have no problems. Men doing this should be deported.

And as PP have said they have to pay a lot of money to get here so it's unlikely they're doing this for altruistic reasons. If they cared about their female relatives they'd stay and protect them from the horrific human rights abuses these women face - particularly if no male relatives to protect them - or at least try and bring them with them. The men coming here alone give no shits about their female relatives. Given the lack of medical care for women, there is a strong chance their female relatives will die between them leaving and arriving in the UK.

Young, fit male Afghan refugees who come alone are abandoning their female relatives to the whims of the Taliban, to live without medical care and often no-one to advocate for them. I would argue having a male relative willing to protect you in situ is probably worth more than theoretical foreign cash (that will probably be intercepted by men of one kind or another).

Absolutely. I work with Afghani women (via Victory Afghanistan). There was and is plenty of resistance, but it's quickly squashed. And people are scared.
Let's not blame ordinary Afghanis for their own oppression.

1. The girls will probably have brothers.
2. Their lives would be longer and less shit than if they die in childbirth off their nth baby.

Until their much older husband dies and they are left with no sons, then they'll starve to death in the houses they aren't allowed to leave.

If men really want to help women suffering

They could provide free snips for men in such extreme poverty that selling their daughters will be likely

The snip is reversible, non invasive

Men will still be evil and rape women - but this could prevent the number of women suffering in future 😞😞

FFS will you read what I actually write? I was asking a question, not making a statement. I've seen someone interpreting a question as a statement twice on FWR in the last few days. Is this a new linguistic trend, or is it a non-autistic-people behaviour that I've just not noticed before?

I'm genuinely not sure whether sending aid will just end up making the Taliban stronger. We know that aid can be, and is, intercepted by corrupt regimes.

I'm also very much of the view that no one is obliged to send aid to a country in trouble. It may be a kind act, but it's not an obligation, just as I'm not obliged to donate money to a charity and I'm not responsible for them having a financial crisis if I stop. The US haven't done anything that they aren't entitled to do. We can't force Trump's hand. If we are confident that the aid will reach the people who need it, we can lobby our own govt to send more aid.

The Taliban are responsible for creating a society where women cannot make a living and girls cannot access education,

And cannot access healthcare without a male guardian with them. Women have died because their husbands were working elsewhere during a medical emergency. The Taliban have jurisdiction in Afghanistan. Trump doesn't. The Taliban could let the women return to work and the girls return to school tomorrow. They could let women out of the house unescorted tomorrow so that they can go to hospital.

The boycotts and sanctions were aimed at reducing profit of SA companies that actively propped up Aparheid and social snubs.

What we could and should do immediately is to stop playing against Afghanistan in sports. That can't be diverted by a corrupt regime.

There's very few practical things we can do. But one thing we can insist on is honouring these girls by centreing them as the principal victims and giving themour sympathy

Yes, I am sure they prefer your centring and honouring them as primary victims on an internet forum they will never see and never be able to read over speaking up to our leaders and protesting until humanitarian food aid starts flowing through the UN WFP so they aren’t promised in an arranged marriage at 15/16 to pay off a debt for food today so they didn’t starve to death now.

But, is it right to send aid to regimes like the Taliban where women and girls are treated like chattel?

Yes it is always right to send humanitarian aid. Edited to add- the food aid isn’t going to the Taliban regime, it was going direct to women and children.

Glad to see you agree that stopping 70% of food humanitarian aid by Trump has caused famine in Afghanistan as a sort of collective punishment for Taliban mismanagement.

Taliban mismanaging the country is generally true. However, according to the UN WFP prior to Trump cancelling food aid, Afghanistan was in severe food insecurity due to a multi-year drought, hostilities and forced returns from Pakistan, and natural disasters like earthquake shocks.

So not all Taliban, but even if it was 100% Taliban fault that Afghanistan is experiencing a famine, I don’t think it is ethical to just stand back and let regular people starve to death. We never let SA go into famine. The boycotts and sanctions were aimed at reducing profit of SA companies that actively propped up Aparheid and social snubs.

However, my point still stands, why do you think that Trump deliberately starving Afghan civilians is good? Is it not entirely predictable what would happen to women and girls in a manufactured famine?

Food aid would have prevented fathers of starving families from securing a bride price now for their daughters’ future arranged marriages at 15/16.

The Taliban are responsible for creating a society where women cannot make a living and girls cannot access education, Trump is now joining those ranks imho by now creating a famine that then forces girls into arranged marriages to prevent their family from starving to death.

If he hadn’t cut off aid, then many of these girls could have had at least some choice in who to marry.

Trump has done the exact opposite of helping these women and girls, he has sided with the Taliban to make their lives even worse, if they’re lucky. The unlucky ones die of starvation. Humanitarian aid is literally a lifeline.

Trump cancelling food aid and pushing the country into an artificial famine

It strikes me that, far from the famine being artificially induced by Trump, it has been caused by the Taliban mismanaging the country. Trump has stopped compensating for the Taliban's mismanagement of their own country.

The ones who suffer the most from stopping humanitarian aid is always the women and children.

This is entirely true. But, is it right to send aid to regimes like the Taliban where women and girls are treated like chattel? When the people mistreated had being black in common instead of being female, most of the world agreed that boycotting South Africa was the moral action.

When we are examining and critiquing the BBC's misdirected sympathy "oh these poor men, selling their daughters to be raped" and calling out how the original report said "children" when it's mostly girls being sold, we can and absolutely should lay the blame at the feet of the very men who claim to be so heartbroken.

There's very few practical things we can do. But one thing we can insist on is honouring these girls by centreing them as the principal victims and giving them our sympathy

Men can choose not to father children in an environment where they will have to sell their daughters to survive. Unlike the women in such a misogynist shithole, they have some agency. It is up to them to use it.

Famine isn’t something you can predict when Trump waves a pen and then a month later 70% of food aid disappears from the market. Then the months after that you also have that year’s harvest failing.

I am not sympathising with the Taliban in this, they are evil misogynists. I am sympathising with the regular families caught under the thumb of the Taliban and then being collectively punished by Trump.

I am pointing out your theory of very poor men having “agency” causing this situation when it is Trump cancelling food aid and pushing the country into an artificial famine when they already have children and/or a pregnant wife.

The same thing has been going on in Gaza. Famine wasbeing used as a weapon. The ones who suffer the most from stopping humanitarian aid is always the women and children.

It's irrelevant that it's the fault of the men.

Telling married couples not to have sex doesn't work.

And say if it did, what would the parents then do in old age, especially the women who are likely to be widowed, without sons?

The way things are now in Afghanistan, not having children isn't an option. The girls are expendable and the boys are needed by their families.

Short of overthrowing the Taliban (which we've already done once, only for them to be let straight back in a few years on) and completely restructuring Afghan society, there isn't a good solution to how to stop this happening.

You said this: And if you think that advising married couples to stop having sex is a reliable alternative to contraception then I don't know what to tell you.

I haven't suggested that the men sell themselves. I don't believe that any human being should be for sale.

I was saying that suggesting the men sell themselves is a stupid suggestion and most 3 yos could see why.

You might as well suggest that the men go out and catch magic money pixies.

You weren't offering solutions. You were offering excuses for shit men. Demanding solutions from me is an attempt to deflect from how you were making excuses for shit men.

Men can choose not to father children in an environment where they will have to sell their daughters to survive. Unlike the women in such a misogynist shithole, they have some agency. It is up to them to use it.

What we can do, as onlookers, is refuse to let these men off the hook for their choices. We can refuse to sympathise with them more than the real victims, their daughters.

We can lobby our govt to welcome those few women and children who can escape. And we can donate to Sarah Porter's charity once it is properly established.

Right.

Let's agree that the men involved are terrible.

How does that help this situation at all, in any way?

So far, we've got suggestions ranging from banning Afghan men from seeking asylum to encouraging Afghan men to sell themselves, but so far I've seen not one sensible idea as to any way we can help little girls being sold into sexual and domestic slavery.

Any decent man would refuse to impregnate his starving wife when he cannot feed his existing children.

You are making excuses for male selfishness. He has two hands, he can masturbate if he's horny. He does not have a right to sex and, if he had a shred of decency, he would abstain under such adverse circumstances.