But upon her arrival, she was shocked to learn she had been married to an eight-year-old boy, and was forced to work as a prostitute instead. The girls would then be forced to sleep with up to four men in one night.
Soma was lucky. Her safety however is not guaranteed; she is now back in the home of her grandfather in Mazar-e-Sharif, and the man who subjected her to sex slavery in Kabul has eluded arrest. Deceiving relatives are doing it; it is more family-orientated. And they cannot approach social workers or organisations for help as they might be ultimately killed.
Of those, 45 percent were girls, and 38 percent were women. Domestic exploitation was the biggest motivation for internal trafficking, followed by prostitution. However, many human rights activists point to the lack of capacity of government ministries to implement the laws effectively; it is often the female victim who is branded a criminal by the justice system, and imprisoned.
She was raped repeatedly before she escaped and hid out at a shelter for a couple years, in fear of being killed for shaming her family. She is now married with a child, and is reported to have re-established a relationship with her mother and father.
Across town, the Women and Youth Support Centre gathers names from the police of suspected prostitutes, and pays house calls to deliver aid and advice. For instance, the men are addicted to drugs like heroin and hash. We study their backgrounds, and usually the father and mother were divorced, or one had died. Sayar recalls one of the women she met. The husband was bringing strangers to the house and she was pushed to sleep with them. So she set herself on fire when she was 18 to avoid this. There is not a national vision for preventing such activities.
