"Sad doesn't even come close to how I feel," said Nosheen as she explained her family's decision to sell her unborn child.
Nosheen, 36 — whose name has been changed to protect her identity — lives with her husband and their five children in Afghanistan's northern province of Jawzjan.
With five other children to feed, her husband, Aziz — whose name has also been changed — said when they were offered $US565 ($762) for their unborn baby, they had no choice but to agree to the deal.
"We are in a very bad situation. We have nothing to eat in the house," he said.
As Afghanistan's economic crisis deepens, young families across Afghanistan faced this same dilemma in numbers that are staggering, according to Save the Children.
In a recent survey, the international children's charity spoke to 30 families — including Nosheen's — who had exchanged a child for debt.
Their report, which was released this week, estimated that as many as 121,000 children could have been exchanged since the country fell to the Taliban in August 2021.
Already reeling from 40 years of war, regime change lead to a sudden cessation of foreign aid and international financial relations.
Billions of dollars in assets held internationally by Afghanistan's central bank were frozen by foreign governments opposed to Taliban rule.
As economic collapse loomed, women were largely forbidden from working and jobs for men such as Aziz became scarce.
To add to that, the ongoing fallout from two year's of drought — which led to the loss of an estimated 40 per cent of the country's grain produce — has triggered Afghanistan's worst-ever food crisis.
And the predicament families find themselves in is that, as food prices soar, most have lost some or all of their income.
More than half the population is not able to eat enough, with an estimated 2 million children malnourished, according to the World Food Programme.
"The tragic lengths that parents are going to, to keep their children alive, tells you just how dire the situation is getting in Afghanistan," said Save the Children's director of advocacy and campaigns, Athena Rayburn.
"Organisations like ours are doing everything they can to support families who have lost everything, but with the economy at a standstill, Afghan families are sinking into quicksand."
As the war in Ukraine increases the price of commodities around the world, there's a risk that the cost of living in Afghanistan could rise even further.
Ms Rayburn urged the world not to forget the people of Afghanistan as the Ukraine crisis tops world news.
She said that, while funding was urgently needed to support families like Nosheen's, "there is no amount of aid that can replace a functioning economy".
With little foreign aid and Afghan state assets frozen, Save the Children urged the international community to find solutions to unfreeze financial assets to restart the Afghan economy.
Girls sold into marriage by desperate parents
While babies like Nosheen's are sometimes sold to childless parents, an increasing number of girls as young as nine are being sold into marriage.
The marriage of teenage girls for the price of a dowry was common in Afghanistan long before the current political instability.
After 2018-19, UNICEF reported 183 child marriages and 10 other children had been sold in just two Afghan provinces.
UNICEF estimated that 28 per cent of Afghan women aged 15-49 years were married before the age of 18.
Poverty is now pushing families to make marriage deals for their daughters at increasingly younger ages.
In December, 10-year-old Aziz Gul was sold into marriage by her father so he could feed his family of five children.
In January, her mother told the Associated Press of the night she found out what her husband had done.
"My heart stopped beating. I wished I could have died at that time," Ms Gul said.
"He said he wanted to sell one and save the others: 'You all would have died this way.'
Another father said he was selling two daughters, aged six and seven, into arranged marriages for money to treat his chronically ill wife, who is pregnant with their fifth child.
"What should we do? We have to do it. We have no other option," his wife said.
When marriage deals are made at such a young age, part or all of the dowry can be paid in advance, but the girl usually stays with her parents until she is around 15 years old.
In the current economic climate, aid groups say the minimum age has been dropping.
Months after taking control of the country, the Taliban government announced a ban on forcing women into marriage or selling women and girls.
However, Afghan families in some regions have told the ABC of unverified accounts of women and girls being forced into marriage to men, including Taliban officials.
One mother said her 17-year-old daughter was abducted from her grandparents' home by five men last month.
Her whereabouts remains unknown.
A Taliban spokesperson dismissed the claims, saying such accounts were "baseless".
'Excruciating choices that no parent should have to make'
Of those families that have managed to stay together, around 20 per cent have been forced to send their children out to work, Save the Children reported earlier this month.
Before her family received assistance from Save the Children, 12-year-old Laila — whose name has been changed — was cleaning homes for the equivalent of about 14 cents a day.
She has lived in a displacement camp with her mother and four siblings in Balkh Province since her father was killed.
"When I worked in people's houses, it was very hard," she said.
"I would go and work from morning till evening. I worked because I had to."
Laila can now spend time learning and playing with other children at the camp's Child Friendly Space run by Save the Children, but her 15-year-old sister continues to work.
Their mother, who earns around $3 a day working at a local greenhouse, struggled with the decision to send her girls to work.
"How can I feel when a piece of my heart goes out and works for others, but what could I do?" she said, describing the difficulties they have faced without her husband.
"I make the children eat less or once a day so that the food lasts for one more day. And we cook smaller quantities, to avoid running out of food for the next day. My children are weak and skinny."
"I've never seen anything like the desperate situation we have here in Afghanistan," said Chris Nyamandi, Save the Children's country director in Afghanistan.
"We treat frighteningly ill children every day who haven't eaten anything except bread for months."
Mr Nyamandi said Afghan parents were being forced to make impossible decisions.
