“You will marry this old man whether you like it or not because he has given us something to eat,” Aguet’s uncle told her, according to a report by Human Rights Watch that came out earlier this month.

Aguet, a 15-year-old girl from South Sudan, was forced to marry a 75-year-old man in exchange for 80 cows. In a country where average annual income hovers around $1,000, according to World Bank, and a cow can be worth between $50 and $500, there is an enormous incentive to sell your daughter in exchange for food.

Forced child marriages are still the way out of abject poverty for struggling families in South Sudan because of the perverse dowry system. As many as 48 percent of girls between 15 and 19 in South Sudan are married, and some are married off at as young as 12 years old. When livestock offers come in, girls are sold.

Historically, in most countries, the bride’s family provides a dowry. Even in the United States, not long ago, it was typical for the bride’s family to pay for the entire wedding. The system in South Sudan, however, has older men essentially buying young girls, stripping them of their ability to receive an education and enabling an institutionalized problem of domestic violence and marital rape.

The situation in South Sudan is not a product of some cultural convention, but a socially destructive custom derived from deep-rooted poverty and perpetual economic insecurity.

Outside of Juba, the capital of South Sudan, many women are unable to find jobs, as the only ones available are in agriculture. Women’s financial contributions to their family come solely in the form of a dowry.

In South Sudan, these dowries are the single most important, changeable factor in destroying gender equality and women’s lives. Many men either go into debt or resort to stealing cattle in order to get married.

The South Sudanese government should create initiatives in communities to facilitate either the doing away with dowries entirely or the need for more thorough consultation between marrying parties. Speaking about marriage outside the terms of dowries would give women a say in their future while allowing poorer men to get married without needing to steal or go into debt.

It’s not a simple solution. There would have to be a large amount of funding for these initiatives and some convincing would have to be done. But the status quo needs to be changed, and a change is possible.

A version of this articles was published in the Thursday, March 28 print edition. Cody Delistraty is a contributing columnist. Email him at [email protected].