Thirteen-year-old Marjan, lying moaning on a hospital bed wrapped in bandages from her neck to her feet, is probably going to die. She has 75 percent burns after setting herself alight with fuel in a suicide attempt, her doctor says.

Her sister died the same way last year, when she was 14, says Homayoon Azizi, the head of the burns unit at the public hospital in Afghanistan's main western city of Herat.

The sisters are among hundreds of women and girls who have chosen self-immolation as a way to escape from the many difficulties of life in Afghanistan, where females have some of the hardest lives in the world.

The disturbing trend will be the focus of a three- day conference in the capital Kabul starting today, which will draw representatives from countries including Bangladesh, India, Iran and Uzbekistan.

The aim is to try to come up with a comprehensive strategy to address self-immolation, says organizer Ancil Adrian-Paul from medica mondiale, a nongovernment organization that supports women and girls in war and crisis zones.

Azizi says work by rights groups has already dented the trend in his city - which sees the highest number of cases in the country.

Cases of self-immolation soared in Herat after the fall of the extremist Taleban regime in 2001, when refugees started returning from Iran, where this method of suicide is also practiced, he says.

From a peak of 196 cases in his hospital in 2004, the number dropped to 162 last year and 53 in the first half of this year. Most die, usually from infection. Azizi puts the drop down to an increase in information available to women about their rights and where they can turn for help. Also, such cases were previously not treated as a crime but now they are, he says.

The motives for women who choose such drastic action are often difficult to pinpoint. Families often obscure the cause to hide shame, with suicide forbidden by Islam, and can give false accounts. Marjan, for example, will only say she had "psychological problems."

Her mother, Zahra, just says she was outside washing clothes when someone brought her burning daughter to her. "We put clothes on her to stop the fire," Zahra says.

The family of six sons and three daughters is desperately poor: Zahra washes sheeps' wool to earn money while her husband carries goods between shops. Marjan was taken out of school this year because her mother needed her help.

Afghanistan's high rate of illiteracy - at about 70 percent - means many families do not know how to extricate themselves from difficulties, the doctor says.

"When men and women are illiterate, they cannot think widely and because they cannot solve their problems, they decide to burn themselves or husbands decide to burn the women," Azizi says. Forced marriages, with young girls being made to marry older men - often as second or third wives - or being given to other families to settle disputes, contribute to the rise of conflicts and desperation among women.

With divorce taboo in Afghanistan, women can choose to kill themselves or make the attempt as a cry for help. Self-immolation is a ready option, with fuel easily available.

In another ward in the gloomy hospital, tears run down the face of 25-year-old Torpikay when she explains why she set herself alight.

Her husband's son from his first wife beat her, sometimes with a big stone, she says from her bed. She told her husband to make him stop or she would kill herself.

"He said go ahead," she weeps.

"I felt I didn't have any other way. I did not want to go to the police. I couldn't help myself," she says, feebly waving her bandaged hands.

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